right that he should go to Durham. He spent Tuesday night in travelling to Stonehouse to consult the Archbishop'. The following Sunday I spent in much retirement and prayer. for guidance as to my final counsel to him. I also offered up the Holy Communion with this intention. I wrote then as impartial a letter to him as I could in which I dwelt rather fully on the importance of his work at Cambridge, if God should lead him to decline the Bishopric. The letter went away and I was rather sleepless, thinking that my impartiality had assumed perhaps, prima facie, a look as if I had wandered in my judgment from the first decision. So I got up early and sent a telegram to him which I knew would reach him as early as the letter, just saying, "I had not wavered but was of the same opinion that he should accept." Then to myself I said, "I must now leave all to God, and nothing shall draw from me any further expression." I should say that the Dean of St Paul's had previously written me a most touching and beautiful letter, which took quite the contrary line to me, and he had pressed strongly on Lightfoot his view of the Student calling. Scarce had I sent my telegram when I received one from the Master of the Temple' urging me to press the matter very strongly on Lightfoot. "He will be guided entirely by your advice, and his decision is to be made to-morrow." A similar letter communication arrived from the Dean of Durham saying that if I agreed with Vaughan and him I must by all means write at once to Lightfoot to press him. Also a telegram from Lightfoot saying that he had now listened to all the advice offered him and that it rested on my decision. In reference to all these three letters I resolved at once to take no further steps; only to pray God to guide him. I had made up my own mind calmly, and expressed it calmly, not urged by any one, and I had resolved that no excitement should move me further. But to Lightfoot himself, to the Master of the Temple, and to Dean Lake it appeared that my morning telegram was the answer to their several communications. Lightfoot alone discovered that it was not so, for mine reached him five minutes after he had dispatched his last question to me. But I did not think it necessary to undeceive the others, and so V. thinks that if he had not telegraphed, and the Dean of Durham thinks that 1 Archbishop Tait said to Dr Lightfoot on this occasion, "Who is there to succeed me?" thinking, no doubt, that Lightfoot might succeed him. 2 The late Charles John Vaughan, D.D. 1879 CONSECRATION OF DR LIGHTFOOT 473 if he had not written, Lightfoot would not have been actuated by me to take the Bishopric. And standing a few weeks later before the fire at the Athenaeum with those two, I was charmed to hear Lake say, "Here are we three conspirators all on one hearthrug." I think a good deal of history is very likely written as confidently as his words were said, by people who "know all about it." From Dr Lightfoot, after accepting the Bishopric MY DEAR BISHOP, of Durham. TRIN. COLL. The kind feeling which my approaching severance from Cambridge has called forth here, appals me and covers me with shame. What a senseless, selfish dolt I have been these many years past-not to feel all this goodness of heart towards me, and the capacity of influence it carried with it. Now, I can hardly look at the front face of an undergraduate without sadness of heart. Once again, Ora pro me. Thanks for reminding me of the "Natale B. Martini." My prayers are with you and your wife and all yours. Ever yours affectionately, J. B. LIGHTFOOT. I seem to have lived two years in the last fortnight. Easter Sunday this year is my birthday. For this reason I should have liked the Consecration then. But I fear the day will be a fatal barrier to the presence of my friends. What say you? To his Wife. (Consecration of Bishop Lightfoot.) 17 PRINCE'S GATE. ......Everything was very beautiful... Lightfoot looked the most modest, simple, unconscious person present. By unconscious I mean utterly without self-consciousness, deepest in the thought and feeling of the whole and as it were unaware of his external It was quite Of course it novelties are existence. But he looked "lovely" in his rochet. perfection and his simplicity was well-dressed in it. was of the new true and Truronian make "all antiquities now," said the Bishop of Carlisle1, twitching my sleeve before service. Well--to come to the inside-Westcott's sermon was perfectly unique in the fierce love of it, and the tremendous charge to the Bishops to choose between the important and the routine of their lives and do the important. (But what becomes of the people who want their letters answered and can't get on without?) However the ideal may leave a little of itself behind with the hardened people who have to get through the day's work. Then his sketch of the history of the See and of all the relics that it keeps and mingles in the present was quite splendid. His voice very good and his aspect lion-like. Lion small, but rising into majesty in a quite incomprehensible mode. I go with Dunelm to Cambridge to-morrow where the Torture awaits me. I have but few records of the Truro life; it was, as has been said, Idyllic: my father travelled about a good deal and made many attached friends among both laity and clergy. From Lord Mount Edgcumbe, Lord Lieutenant of the County, he always received the most cordial and sympathetic assistance. His friendship with the Rev. G. H. Wilkinson, who was to succeed him at Truro, dates from this period. Mr Reeve suggested to Canon Mason in 1878 that Mr Wilkinson should be invited to help them. Canon Mason recommended the Bishop to make him his Examining Chaplain; the Bishop did not then know Mr Wilkinson, and said, "But isn't he very High Church?" He did however offer him the Chaplaincy, and afterwards made him a Canon of the Cathedral. The fervour, simplicity and directness, combined with a singular grace of manner, of Canon Wilkinson's address was invaluable at the Ember seasons: while the Bishop grew to regard him with an affectionate devotion which only increased with lapse of years. 1 Harvey Goodwin, D.D. 1877-1882 HOME LIFE 475 The greater part of the Bishop's time was spent quietly at Truro; he had no resident Chaplain and wrote nearly all of his letters with his own hand, my mother often acting as his Secretary. His day, as always, began early; he rose soon after six, read and worked till Matins, which were at eight o'clock in Kenwyn Church; he loved the walk to Church on the fresh summer mornings; and, as the year closed in, he would stop to watch the sunrise gleaming red on the Truro river, and the mist which hung about the winding alleys of the garden and the tall elms, the churchyard path, with the dew upon the graves; he loved the dimly-lighted silent church, with its empty aisles: he was often accompanied to Church by our collie, Watch, who had a place in a pew in the transept, and whose claws we could sometimes hear pattering in the aisle, if he found his accustomed seat draughty or felt impelled to change it. Watch had also a special place under a window in the Chapel, which he always attended, as well as the eight o'clock Matins, and a special rug of his own. It was at Truro that the two adventures of Watch occurred that gave my father such delight. My father was reading the lesson, which was the 13th Chapter of St Mark, in which the word "Watch" occurs several times. The dog, who had been slumbering peacefully, became very restless, and as the Bishop ended with the words, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch,” in a very imperious voice, there followed a great scuffling and scratching, and Watch emerged hastily from his place, and proceeded to the door of my father's stall. The other occasion was on the evening of an ordination, when some twelve candidates were staying in the house. Watch seeing so many grown sensible men about, when Compline had just begun-it was before the Chapel was fitted up— took the opportunity to go and rout in the bit-basket, and selecting a crumpled envelope he offered it to each in turn, to be thrown for him-then failing to attract attention, he put it down in the middle of the room, looked piteously at my father and wagged his tail. After the early Matins followed breakfast and a short service in the Chapel; then my father read the Bible for a little with the children who were at home; his Bible lessons were always interesting, full of originality and trenchant thought; but somewhat vitiated, I used to think as a boy, by over-insistence on tenses and idioms. One whimsical instance occurs to me. He used to translate the word oixoSEσTÓTηs in the Gospels, the head of a household, by what is the literal equivalent in English, "a house-master." To me, fresh from Eton, the collocation connoted very different ideas from what the word really implied, and many similar renderings used to make me hypercritical, and destroyed much of the pleasure and worth of what, when I grew older and more sensible, I learnt to appreciate. After this Bible reading, he worked at letters or sermons all the morning. In the afternoon he rode or walked, and it was a great pleasure to him to explore the secluded wooded valleys which ramified in every direction, each with its stream of clear swift water, running through marshy dingles, where the wild-duck used to rise splashing as we approached. In our holidays he tried to be as free as possible, and it was his great delight to walk or drive out on summer afternoons in a pony carriage, and picnic in some remote woodland. A favourite place was a low oak-wood, called Bishop's Wood, part of the Bishop of Exeter's original estate, which culminated in a magnificent British camp, below which was a swamp, a quarterof-a-mile long, full of Osmunda regalis: the road to this led through a peaceful valley called Idless, and passed a beautiful old manor-house, green with lichens, a carved |