casuistry. His stores of knowledge
and helpful criticism were always at the service of his pupils or his
fellow-workers.

From his earliest college days he had been just, well-balanced,
conscientious alike in the pursuit of truth and in the regulation of
his own life, appearing to have neither prejudices nor enmities, and
when he had to convey censure, choosing the least cutting words in
which to convey it. Yet in earlier years there had been in him a touch
of austerity, a certain remoteness or air of detachment, which
confined to a very few persons the knowledge of his highest qualities.
As he grew older his purity lost its coldness, his keenness of
discernment mellowed into a sweet and persuasive wisdom. A life
excellently conducted, a life which is the expression of fine
qualities, and in which the acts done are in harmony with the thoughts
and words of the man, is itself a beautiful product, whether of
untutored nature or of thought and experience turning every faculty to
the best account. In the modern world the two types of excellence
which we are chiefly bidden to admire are that of the active
philanthropist and that of the saint. The ancient world produced and
admired another type, to which some of its noblest characters
conformed, and which, in its softer and more benignant aspect,
Sidgwick presented. In his indifference to wealth and fame and the
other familiar objects of human desire, in the almost ascetic
simplicity of his daily life, in his pursuit of none but the purest
pleasures, in his habit of subjecting all impulses to the law of
reason, the will braced to patience, the soul brought into harmony
with the divinely appointed order, he seemed to reproduce one of those
philosophers of antiquity who formed a lofty conception of Nature and
sought to live in conformity with her precepts. But the gravity of a
Stoic was relieved by the humour and vivacity which belonged to his
nature, and the severity of a Stoic was softened by the tenderness and
sympathy which seemed to grow and expand with every year. In
Cambridge, where, though the society is a large one, all the teachers
become personally known to one another, and the students have
opportunities of familiar intercourse with the teachers, affection as
well as admiration gathered round him. His thoughts quickened and his
example inspired generation after generation of young men passing
through the University out into the life of England, as a light set
high