No.

THE

From a drawing by Henry Tuite.

BORN.

To face page 4, vol. i

at least three of his inventions, he never succeeded in acquiring any money for himself.

One word about my father's brothers and sisters; the family consisted, beside my father, of:

I. Harriet, who died young.

2. Eleanor Bowes, born 1833, who married, as his second wife, Mr Thomas Hare, of Gosbury Hill, Hook, Surrey. Mr Hare was the inventor of a well-known system of Parliamentary Representation', the methods which he advocated being adopted in Denmark. He was Assistant Charity Commissioner for many years. Mrs Hare died in 1890, and her only child predeceased her.

3. Christopher, born 1835, who was paralysed as a child, and never recovered the use of his limbs. He lived for the greater part of his life in Germany, at Wiesbaden; he married Agnes, daughter of Professor Walker of Oxford, and died in 1890.

4 Emmeline, born 1837, who, of the eight, alone survives, married the Rev. George Girdlestone Woodhouse, Vicar of Yealmpton near Plymouth (who died in 1897), and has several surviving children.

5. Ada, born 1840, who was first Headmistress successively of the High Schools at Norwich, Oxford and Bedford. She married Mr Andrew McDowall, and died in 1882, leaving two children. She was one of the pioneers of the Girls' High School movement.

6. Charles, born 1842, who was for many years Manager of the Oakeley Slate Quarries at Portmadoc in North Wales. He died in 1893.

7. William, twin-brother of Charles, who died as a child. It is a curious fact that of old Mr Christopher Benson's descendants no fewer than twelve have adopted the

1 The Election of Representatives, Parliamentary and Municipal. London, Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans and Roberts, 1859 (3 subsequent editions).

profession of teaching, either at the University or at public schools; that ten have taken first-class honours at one or other University, and that fourteen have published books of some kind. This is, I think, a singular record of kindred tastes and literary activity.

My father was not baptized till the 31st March, 1830. The view which even religious-minded Churchmen took of baptism was very different from the view which prevails now. At St Martin's Church, Birmingham, on Sundays, there were held what were called "public christenings," at which the persons to be baptized were arranged round the Communion rails, and sprinkled from the font with a brush, like a Roman asperging brush. Some of the candidates would be nine or ten years old, some younger children, some infants carried in a parent's or sponsor's arms. But it is interesting to record that Mrs Chavasse, daughter of Mr Stephen Jackson and thus my father's half-aunt, remembers that my grandfather, though a pronounced Evangelical, and holding high Sacramental views in suspicion, used to say that these "public" christenings were a scandal, and that consequently the Archbishop was baptized "privately," that is, by special appointment, by the Rev. J. Byers, in St Martin's Church, together with three other children, the parents and sponsors only being present. She was staying with my grandparents at the time, but was prevented from attending the ceremony.

My father could just remember his maternal grandfather, Mr Thomas Baker, who had been Headmaster of the Lancastrian School, and was afterwards Inspector of the Birmingham Markets. His portrait represents a clericallooking personage in a high-collared black coat and a carefully tied white tie, with his fingers, emerging from long cuffs, curiously arranged on the table before him as though he were playing the piano. My father used often

to go and see him as a little boy, and sit talking to him while he smoked his long "churchwarden" pipes. He was very much marked with the small-pox, and as he smoked used to rest the end of his pipe-stem against his face so as not to be incommoded by the smoke trickling from it. My father imagined that the scars of the small-pox on his face were caused by this habit, and thought that the old gentleman, indifferent about his complexion, preferred to persist in doing this, although each time he did so a fresh scar was the result.

One of my father's earliest recollections, stamped on his mind by childish terror, is that as he played one evening by the nursery windows in Lombard Street, Birmingham, looking out on the red-lighted windows of the laboratory, -a building, formerly a coach-house, which stood at the end of the garden,-a muffled explosion was heard, the glass of the laboratory windows flew out and descended in a tinkling shower, and a great burst of white smoke volleyed out through the panes; a moment later he saw his mother, white-faced, run down the path, and in a few minutes she returned with the laboratory assistant half leading, half supporting his father between them, his face streaming with blood, up the garden paths. Some detonating powder in a mortar had exploded; the room was all wrecked; a ledger on the table cut in two: his father was long and seriously ill from the shock, but his eyesight was not permanently injured as, foreseeing the explosion, he had had time to shelter his face with his hands. My father had been with him in the laboratory, during the progress of the experiment, a few moments before.

Shortly after this my grandfather, wishing to augment his modest revenues, accepted the Managership of large alkali works at Stoke near Droitwich, which had been lately built and contained what was then said to be the