lmost incredible
tidings met them that the Bishop of Winchester was dead; that he had
been killed by a fall from his horse. In a moment, by the most trivial
of accidents, one of the foremost and most stirring men of our
generation had passed away from the scene in which his part was so
large a one. With everything calm and peaceful round him, in the midst
of the keen but tranquil enjoyment of a summer evening ride with a
friend through some of the most charming scenery in England, looking
forward to meeting another friend, and to the pleasure which a quiet
Sunday brings to hard-worked men in fine weather, and a pleasant
country house, the blow fell. The moment before, as Lord Granville
remarks, he had given expression to the fulness of his enjoyment. He
was rejoicing in the fine weather, he was keenly noticing the beauty of
the scenery at every point of the way; with his characteristic love of
trees he was noticing the different kinds and the soils which suited
them; especially he was greatly pleased with his horse. There comes a
slight dip in the smooth turf; the horse stumbles and recovers himself
unhurt; but in that short interval of time all has vanished, all things
earthly, from that quick eye and that sensitive and sympathetic mind.
It is indeed tragic. He is said to have thought with distress of a
lingering end. He was spared it. He died as a soldier dies.

A shock like this brings with it also a shock of new knowledge and
appreciation of things. We are made to feel with a new force what it is
that we have lost, and to understand more exactly what is the
proportion of what we have lost to what we still retain. To friends and
opponents the Bishop of Winchester could not but be, under any
circumstances, a person of the greatest importance. But few of us,
probably, measured fully and accurately the place which he filled among
us. We are better aware of it now when he has been taken away from us.
Living among us, and acting before us from day to day, the object of
each day's observation and criticism, under each day's varying
circumstances and feelings, within our reach always if we wanted to see
him or to hear him, he was presented to our thoughts in that partial
disclosure, and that everyday homeliness, which as often disguise the
true and complete significance of a character, as they give substance
and reality to our conceptions of it. As the man's course moves on, we
are apt to lose in our successive judgments of