y it was mainly
because Leslie was such a handsome fellow, and always seemed to cut a
good figure in everything he did; while I, on the other hand, excelled
in nothing, and was not brilliant even in the expression of my
discontent, which was tolerably comprehensive. Withal, in other matters
beside discontent, I was a good deal of an extremist, and by no means
lacking in enthusiasm.

My father, too, was an enthusiast in his quiet way. His was the
enthusiasm of the student, and his work as historian and archaeologist
absorbed, I must suppose, a great deal more of his interest and energy
than was ever given to his cure of souls. He was rector of Tarn Regis,
in Dorset, before I was born, and at the time of his death, to be
present at which I was called away in the middle of the last term of my
third year at Cambridge. I was to have spent four years at the
University; but, as the event proved, I never returned there after my
hurried departure, three days prior to my father's death.

The personal tie between my father and those among whom he lived and
worked was not a very close or intimate bond. His contribution to the
Cambridge History was greatly appreciated by scholars, and his
archaeological research won him the respect and esteem of his peers in
that branch of study. But I cannot pretend that his loss was keenly felt
by his parishioners, with most of whom his relations had been strictly
professional rather than personal. A good man and true, without a trace
of anything sordid or self-seeking in his nature, my father was yet
singularly indifferent to everything connected with the daily lives and
welfare of his fellow creatures.

In this he was typical of a considerable section of the country clergy
of the time. I knew colleagues of his who were more pronounced examples
of the type. One in particular I call to mind (whose living was in the
gift of a Cambridge college, like my father's), who, though a good
fellow and a clean-lived gentleman, was no more a Christian than he was
a Buddhist--less, upon the whole. Among scholarly folk he made not the
slightest pretence of regarding the fundamental tenets of the Christian
faith in the light of anything more serious than interesting historical
myths, notable sections in the mosaic of folk-lore, which it was his
pride and delight to study and understand.

Such men as A---- R---- and my father (and there were many like them,
and more who shared their aloofness while lacking ha