Chapter III: Preface (2)

“The involute of progression is the subconscious evolution of the particular function.” No close reasoner will deny this. It is the final summing up of all that is meant by Development. It is the root formula of the nineteenth century that is now, alas! drawing to a close under our very eyes. Now to such a fundamental proposition I add a second. “The sentiment of right is the inversion of the subconscious function in its relation to the indeterminate ego.” This also I take to be admitted by all European philosophers in Germany. Now I will not go so far as to say that a major premiss when it is absolutely sound, followed by a minor equally sound, leads to a sure conclusion. God fulfils himself in many ways, and there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. But I take this tentatively: that if these two propositions are true (and we have the word of Herr Waldteufel,[44] who lives in the Woodstock Road, that it is true) then it follows conclusively that no certainty can be arrived at in these matters. I would especially recommend you on this point (_here Mr. Lambkin changed his lecturing voice for a species of conversational, interested and familiar tone_) to read the essay by the late Dr. Barton in _Shots at the Probable_: you will also find the third chapter of Mr. Mendellsohn’s _History of the Soul_ very useful. Remember also, by the way, to consult the footnote on p. 343, of Renan’s _Anti-Christ_. The Master of St. Dives’ _Little Journeys in the Obvious_ is light and amusing, but instructive in its way.

There is a kind of attitude (_this was Lambkin’s peroration, and he was justly proud of it_) which destroys nothing but creates much: which transforms without metamorphosis, and which says “look at this, I have found truth!” but which dares not say “look away from that--it is untrue.”

Such is our aim. Let us make without unmaking and in this difficult question of the origin of _Right_, the grand old Anglo-Saxon sense of “Ought,” let us humbly adopt as logicians, but grimly pursue as practical men some such maxim as what follows:

“Right came from nothing, it means nothing, it leads to nothing; with it we are nothing, but without it we are worse than nothing.”[45]

Next Thursday I shall deal with morality in international relations.

VIII.

Lambkin’s Special Correspondence

Lambkin was almost the first of that great band of Oxford Fellows who go as special correspondents for Newspapers to places of difficulty and even of danger. On the advantages of this system he would often dilate, and he was glad to see, as he grew to be an older, a wealthier, and a wiser man, that others were treading in his footsteps. “The younger men,” he would say, “have noticed what perhaps I was the first to see, that the Press is a Power, and that men who are paid to educate should not be ashamed to be paid for any form of education.” He was, however, astonished to see how rapidly the letters of a correspondent could now be issued as a book, and on finding that such publications were arranged for separately with the publishers, and were not the property of the Newspapers, he expressed himself with a just warmth in condemnation of such a trick.

“Sir” (said he to the Chaplain), “in my young days we should have scorned to have faked up work, well done for a particular object, in a new suit for the sake of wealth”; and I owe it to Lambkin’s memory to say that he did not make a penny by his “Diary on the Deep,”[46] in which he collected towards the end of his life his various letters written to the Newspapers, and mostly composed at sea.

The occasion which produced the following letter was the abominable suppression by Italian troops of the Catholic Riots at Rome in 1873. Englishmen of all parties had been stirred to a great indignation at the news of the atrocities. “As a nation” (to quote my dear friend) “we are slow to anger, but our anger is terrible.” And such was indeed the case.

A great meeting was held at Hampstead, in which Mr. Ram made his famous speech. “This is not a question of religion or of nationality but of manhood (he had said), and if we do not give our sympathy freely, if we do not send out correspondents to inform us of the truth, if we do not meet in public and protest, if we do not write and speak and read till our strength be exhausted, then is England no longer the England of Cromwell and of Peel.”

Such public emotion could not fail to reach Lambkin. I remember his coming to me one night into my rooms and saying “George (for my name is George), I had to-day a letter from Mr. Solomon’s paper--_The Sunday Englishman_. They want me to go and report on this infamous matter, and I will go. Do not attempt to dissuade me. I shall return--if God spares my life--before the end of the vacation. The offer is most advantageous in every way: I mean to England, to the cause of justice, and to that freedom of thought without which there is no true religion. For, understand me, that though these poor wretches are Roman Catholics, I hold that every man should have justice, and my blood boils within me.”

He left me with a parting grip of the hand, promising to bring me back photographs from the Museum at Naples.

If the letter that follows appears to be lacking in any full account of the Italian army and its infamies, if it is observed to be meagre and jejune on the whole subject of the Riots, that is to be explained by the simple facts that follow.

When Lambkin sailed, the British Fleet had already occupied a deep and commodious harbour on the coast of Apulia, and public irritation was at its height; but by the time he landed the Quirinal had been forced to an apology, the Vatican had received monetary compensation, and the Piedmontese troops had been compelled to evacuate Rome.

He therefore found upon landing at Leghorn[47] a telegram from the newspaper, saying that his services were not required, but that the monetary engagements entered into by the proprietors would be strictly adhered to.

Partly pleased, partly disappointed, Lambkin returned to Oxford, taking sketches on the way from various artists whom he found willing to sell their productions. These he later hung round his room, not on nails (which as he very properly said, defaced the wall), but from a rail;--their colours are bright and pleasing. He also brought me the photographs I asked him for, and they now hang in my bedroom.

This summary must account for the paucity of the notes that follow, and the fact that they were never published.

[There was some little doubt as to whether certain strictures on the First Mate in Mr. Lambkin’s letters did not affect one of our best families. Until I could make certain whether the Estate should be credited with a receipt on this account or debited with a loss I hesitated to publish. Mr. Lambkin left no heirs, but he would have been the first to regret (were he alive) any diminution of his small fortune.

I am glad to say that it has been satisfactorily settled, and that while all parties have gained none have lost by the settlement.]

* * * * *

THE LETTERS

_s.s. Borgia, Gravesend,
Sunday, Sept. 27th, 1873_

Whatever scruples I might have had in sending off my first letter before I had left the Thames, and upon such a day, are dissipated by the emotions to which the scenes I have just passed through give rise.[48]

What can be more marvellous than this historic river! All is dark, save where the electric light on shore, the river-boats’ lanterns on the water, the gas-lamps and the great glare of the town[49] dispel the gloom. And over the river itself, the old Tamesis, a profound silence reigns, broken only by the whistling of the tugs, the hoarse cries of the bargemen and the merry banjo-party under the awning of our ship. All is still, noiseless and soundless: a profound silence broods over the mighty waters. It is night.

It is night and silent! Silence and night! The two primeval things! I wonder whether it has ever occurred to the readers of the _Sunday Englishman_ to travel over the great waters, or to observe in their quiet homes the marvellous silence of the night? Would they know of what my thoughts were full? They were full of those poor Romans, insulted, questioned and disturbed by a brutal soldiery, and I thought of this: that we who go out on a peculiarly pacific mission, who have only to write while others wield the sword, we also do our part. Pray heaven the time may soon come when an English Protectorate shall be declared over Rome and the hateful rule of the Lombard foreigners shall cease.[50]

There is for anyone of the old viking blood a kind of fascination in the sea. The screw is modern, but its vibration is the very movement of the wild white oars that brought the Northmen[51] to the field of Senlac.[52] Now I know how we have dared and done all. I could conquer Sicily to-night.

As I paced the deck, an officer passed and slapped me heartily on the shoulder. It was the First Mate. A rough diamond but a diamond none the less. He asked me where I was bound to. I said Leghorn. He then asked me if I had all I needed for the voyage. It seems that I had strayed on to the part of the deck reserved for the second-class passengers. I informed him of his error. He laughed heartily and said we shouldn’t quarrel about that. I said his ship seemed to be a Saucy Lass. He answered “That’s all right,” asked me if I played “Turn-up Jack,” and left me. It is upon men like this that the greatness of England is founded.

Well, I will “turn in” and “go below” for my watch; “you gentlemen of England” who read the _Sunday Englishman_, you little know what life is like on the high seas; but we are one, I think, when it comes to the love of blue water.

_Posted at Dover, Monday, Sept. 28, 1873._

We have dropped the pilot. I have nothing in particular to write. There is a kind of monotony about a sea voyage which is very depressing to the spirits. The sea was smooth last night, and yet I awoke this morning with a feeling of un-quiet to which I have long been a stranger, and which should not be present in a healthy man. I fancy the very slight oscillation of the boat has something to do with it, though the lady sitting next to me tells me that one only feels it in steamboats. She said her dear husband had told her it was “the smell of the oil”--I hinted that at breakfast one can talk of other things.

The First Mate sits at the head of our table. I do not know how it is, but there is a lack of _social reaction_ on board a ship. A man is a seaman or a passenger, and there is an end of it. One has no fixed rank, and the wholesome discipline of social pressure seems entirely lost. Thus this morning the First Mate called me “The Parson,” and I had no way to resent his familiarity. But he meant no harm; he is a sterling fellow.

After breakfast my mind kept running to this question of the Roman Persecution, and (I know not how) certain phrases kept repeating themselves literally “_ad nauseam_” in my imagination. They kept pace with the throb of the steamer, an altogether new sensation, and my mind seemed (as my old tutor, Mr. Blurt, would put it) to “work in a circle.” The pilot will take this. He is coming over the side. He is not in the least like a sailor, but small and white. He wears a bowler hat, and looks more like a city clerk than anything else. When I asked the First Mate why this was, he answered “It’s the Brains that tell.” A very remarkable statement, and one full of menace and warning for our mercantile marine.

* * * * *

_Thursday, Oct. 1, 1873._

I cannot properly describe the freshness and beauty of the sea after a gale. I have not the style of the great masters of English prose, and I lack the faculty of expression which so often accompanies the poetic soul.

The white curling tips (white horses) come at one if one looks to windward, or if one looks to leeward seem to flee. There is a kind of balminess in the air born of the warm south; and there is jollity in the whole ship’s company, as Mrs. Burton and her daughters remarked to me this morning. I feel capable of anything. When the First Mate came up to me this morning and tried to bait me with his vulgar chaff I answered roundly, “Now, sir, listen to me. I am not seasick, I am not a landlubber, I am on my sea legs again, and I would have you know that I have not a little power to make those who attack me feel the weight of my arm.”

He turned from me thoroughly ashamed, and told a man to swab the decks. The passengers appeared absorbed in their various occupations, but I felt I had “scored a point” and I retired to my cabin.

My steward told me of a group of rocks off the Spanish coast which we are approaching. He said they were called “The Graveyard.” If a man can turn his mind to the Universal Consciousness and to a Final Purpose all foolish fears will fall into a secondary plane. I will not do myself the injustice of saying that I was affected by the accident, but a lady or child might have been, and surely the ship’s servants should be warned not to talk nonsense to passengers who need all their strength for the sea.

_Friday, Oct. 2, 1873._

To-day I met the Captain. I went up on the bridge to speak to him. I find his name is Arnssen. He has risen from the ranks, his father having been a large haberdasher in Copenhagen and a town councillor. I wish I could say the same of the First Mate, who is the scapegrace son of a great English family, though he seems to feel no shame. Arnssen and I would soon become fast friends were it not that his time is occupied in managing the ship. He is just such an one as makes the strength of our British Mercantile marine. He will often come and walk with me on the deck, on which occasions I give him a cigar, or even sometimes ask him to drink wine with me. He tells me it is against the rules for the Captain to offer similar courtesies to his guests, but that if ever I am in Ernskjöldj, near Copenhagen, and if he is not absent on one of his many voyages, he will gratefully remember and repay my kindness.

I said to the Captain to-day, putting my hand upon his shoulder, “Sir, may one speak from one’s heart?” “Yes,” said he, “certainly, and God bless you for your kind thought.” “Sir,” said I, “you are a strong, silent, God-fearing man and my heart goes out to you--no more.” He was silent, and went up on the bridge, but when I attempted to follow him, he assured me it was not allowed.

Later in the day I asked him what he thought of the Roman trouble. He answered, “Oh! knock their heads together and have done with it.” It was a bluff seaman’s answer, but is it not what England would have said in her greatest days? Is it not the very feeling of a Chatham?

I no longer speak to the First Mate. But in a few days I shall be able to dismiss the fellow entirely from my memory, so I will not dwell on his insolence.

_Leghorn, Oct. 5, 1873._

Here is the end of it. I have nothing more to say. I find that the public has no need of my services, and that England has suffered a disastrous rebuff. The fleet has retreated from Apulia. England--let posterity note this--has not an inch of ground in all the Italian Peninsula. Well, we are worsted, and we must bide our time; but this I will say: if that insolent young fool the First Mate thinks that his family shall protect him he is mistaken. The press is a great power and never greater than where (as in England) a professor of a university or the upper classes write for the papers, and where a rule of anonymity gives talent and position its full weight.[53]

IX.

Lambkin’s Address to the League of Progress

Everybody will remember the famous meeting of the Higher Spinsters in 1868; a body hitherto purely voluntary in its organisation, it had undertaken to add to the houses of the poor and wretched the element which reigns in the residential suburbs of our great towns. If Whitechapel is more degraded now than it was thirty years ago we must not altogether disregard the earlier efforts of the Higher Spinsters, they laboured well each in her own sphere and in death they were not divided.

The moment however which gave their embryonic conceptions an organic form did not sound till this year of 1868. It was in the Conference held at Burford during that summer that, to quote their eloquent circular, “the ideas were mooted and the feeling was voiced which made us what we are.” In other words the Higher Spinsters were merged in the new and greater society of the League of Progress. How much the League of Progress has done, its final recognition by the County Council, the sums paid to its organisers and servants I need not here describe; suffice it to say that, like all our great movements, it was a spontaneous effort of the upper middle class, that it concerned itself chiefly with the artisans, whom it desired to raise to its own level, and that it has so far succeeded as to now possess forty-three Cloisters in our great towns, each with its Grand Master, Chatelaine, Corporation of the Burghers of Progress and Lay Brothers, the whole supported upon salaries suitable to their social rank and proceeding entirely from voluntary contributions with the exception of that part of the revenue which is drawn from public funds.

The subject of the Conference, out of which so much was destined to grow, was “The Tertiary Symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor.”

Views upon this matter were heard from every possible standpoint; men of varying religious persuasions from the Scientific Agnostic to the distant Parsee lent breadth and elasticity to the fascinating subject. Its chemical aspect was admirably described (with experiments) by Sir Julius Wobble, the Astronomer Royal, and its theological results by the Reader in Burmesan.

Lambkin was best known for the simple eloquence in which he could clothe the most difficult and confused conceptions. It was on this account that he was asked to give the Closing Address with which the Proceedings terminated.

Before reciting it I must detain the reader with one fine anecdote concerning this occasion, a passage worthy of the event and of the man. Lambkin (as I need hardly say) was full of his subject, enthusiastic and absorbed. No thought of gain entered his head, nor was he the kind of man to have applied for payment unless he believed money to be owing to him. Nevertheless it would have been impossible to leave unremunerated such work as that which follows. It was decided by the authorities to pay him a sum drawn from the fees which the visitors had paid to visit the College Fish-Ponds, whose mediæval use in monkish times was explained in a popular style by one who shall be nameless, but who gave his services gratuitously.

After their departure Mr. Large entered Lambkin’s room with an envelope, wishing to add a personal courtesy to a pleasant duty, and said:

“I have great pleasure, my dear Lambkin, in presenting you with this Bank Note as a small acknowledgment of your services at the Conference.”

Lambkin answered at once with:

“My dear Large, I shall be really displeased if you estimate that slight performance of a pleasurable task at so high a rate as ten pounds.”

Nor indeed was this the case. For when Lambkin opened the enclosure (having waited with delicate courtesy for his visitor to leave the room) he discovered but five pounds therein. But note what follows--Lambkin neither mentioned the matter to a soul, nor passed the least stricture upon Large’s future actions, save in those matters where he found his colleague justly to blame: and in the course of the several years during which they continually met, the restraint and self-respect of his character saved him from the use of ignoble weapons whether of pen or tongue. It was a lesson in gentlemanly irony to see my friend take his place above Large at high table in the uneasy days that followed.

THE ADDRESS

MY DEAR FRIENDS,

I shall attempt to put before you in a few simple, but I hope well-chosen words, the views of a plain man upon the great subject before us to-day. I shall attempt with the greatest care to avoid any personal offence, but I shall not hesitate to use the knife with an unsparing hand, as is indeed the duty of the Pastor whosoever he may be. I remember a late dear friend of mine [who would not wish me to make his name public but whom you will perhaps recognise in the founder and builder of the new Cathedral at Isaacsville in Canada[54]]. I remember his saying to me with a merry twinkle of the eye that looms only from the free manhood of the west: “Lambkin,” said he, “would you know how I made my large fortune in the space of but three months, and how I have attained to such dignity and honour? It was by following this simple maxim which my dear mother[55] taught me in the rough log-cabin[56] of my birth: ‘Be courteous to all strangers, but familiar with none.’”[57]

My friends, you are not strangers, nay, on the present solemn occasion I think I may call you friends--even brethren!--dear brothers and sisters! But a little bird has told me.... (_Here a genial smile passed over his face and he drank a draught of pure cold water from a tumbler at his side._) A little bird has told me, I say, that some of you feared a trifle of just harshness, a reprimand perhaps, or a warning note of danger, at the best a doubtful and academic temper as to the future. Fear nothing. I shall pursue a far different course, and however courteous I may be I shall indulge in no familiarities.

“The Tertiary symptoms of Secondary Education among the Poor” is a noble phrase and expresses a noble idea. Why the very words are drawn from our Anglo-Saxon mother-tongue deftly mingled with a few expressions borrowed from the old dead language of long-past Greece and Rome.

What is Education? The derivation of the word answers this question. It is from “e” that is “out of,” “duc-o” “I lead,” from the root Duc--to lead, to govern (whence we get so many of our most important words such as “Duke”; “Duck” = a drake; etc.) and finally the termination “-tio” which corresponds to the English “-ishness.” We may then put the whole phrase in simple language thus, “The threefold Showings of twofold Led-out-of-ishness among the Needy.”

The Needy! The Poor! Terrible words! It has been truly said that we have them always with us. It is one of our peculiar glories in nineteenth century England, that we of the upper classes have fully recognised our heavy responsibility towards our weaker fellow-citizens. Not by Revolution, which is dangerous and vain, not by heroic legislation or hair-brained schemes of universal panaceas, not by frothy Utopias. No!--by solid hard work, by quiet and persistent effort, with the slow invisible tenacity that won the day at Badajoz, we have won this great social victory. And if any one should ask me for the result I should answer him--go to Bolton, go to Manchester, go to Liverpool; go to Hull or Halifax--the answer is there.

There are many ways in which this good work is proceeding. Life is a gem of many facets. Some of my friends take refuge in Prayer, others have joined the Charity Organisation Society, others again have laboured in a less brilliant but fully as useful a fashion by writing books upon social statistics which command an enormous circulation. You have turned to education, and you have done well. Show me a miner or a stevedore who attends his lectures upon Rossetti, and I will show you a man. Show me his wife or daughter at a cookery school or engaged in fretwork, and I will shew you a woman. A man and a woman--solemn thought!

A noble subject indeed and one to occupy the whole life of a man! This “Education,” this “Leading-out-of,” is the matter of all our lives here in Oxford except in the vacation.[58] And what an effect it has! Let me prove it in a short example.

At a poor lodging-house in Lafayette, Pa., U.S.A., three well-educated men from New England who had fallen upon evil times were seated at a table surrounded by a couple of ignorant and superstitious Irishmen; these poor untaught creatures, presuming upon their numbers, did not hesitate to call the silent and gentlemanly unfortunates “Dommed High-faluthing Fules”; but mark the sequel. A fire broke out in the night. The house was full of these Irishmen and of yet more repulsive Italians. Some were consumed by the devouring element, others perished in the flames, others again saved their lives by a cowardly flight.[59] But what of those three from Massachusetts whom better principles had guided in youth and with whom philosophy had replaced the bitter craft of the Priest? They were found--my dear friends--they were found still seated calmly at the table; they had not moved; no passion had blinded them, no panic disturbed: in their charred and blackened features no trace of terror was apparent. Such is the effect, such the glory of what my late master and guide, the Professor of Tautology, used to call the “Principle of the Survival of the Fittest.”

(_Applause, which was only checked by a consideration for the respect due to the Sacred edifice._)

Go forth then! Again I say go forth! Go forth! Go forth! The time is coming when England will see that your claims to reverence, recognition and emolument are as great as our own. I repeat it, go forth, and when you have brought the great bulk of families to change their mental standpoint, then indeed you will have transformed the world! For without the mind the human intellect is nothing.

X.

Lambkin’s Leader

Mr. Solomon was ever determined to keep the _Sunday Englishman_ at a high level. “We owe it” (he would say) “first to the public who are thereby sacrificed--I mean satisfied--and to ourselves, who secure thereby a large and increasing circulation.” [“Ourselves” alluded to the shareholders, for the _Sunday Englishman_ was a limited Company, in which the shares (of which Mr. Solomon held the greater number) were distributed in the family; the tiniest toddler of two years old was remembered, and had been presented with a share by his laughing and generous parent.]

In this laudable effort to keep “abreast of the times” (as he phrased it), the Editor and part Proprietor determined to have leaders written by University men, who from their position of vantage enjoy a unique experience in practical matters. He had formed a very high opinion of Lambkin’s journalistic capacity from his unpublished letters as a special correspondent. Indeed, he was often heard to say that “a man like him was lost at Oxford, and was born for Fleet Street.” He wrote, therefore, to Mr. Lambkin and gave him “Carte Blanche,” as one French scholar to another, sending him only the general directions that his leader must be “smart, up-to-date, and with plenty of push,” it was to be “neither too long nor too short,” and while it should be written in an easy familiar tone, there should be little or no seriously offensive matter included.

Mr. Lambkin was delighted, and when at his request the article had been paid for, he sent in the following:

* * * * *

THE LEADER.

“The English-Speaking Race has--if we except the Dutch, Negro, and Irish elements--a marvellous talent for self-government. From the earliest origins of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the latest Parish Council, guided but not controlled by the modern ‘Mass Thegen’ or local ‘Gesithcund man,’ this talent, or rather genius, is apparent. We cannot tell why, in the inscrutable designs of Providence, our chosen race should have been so specially gifted, but certain it is that wherever plain ordinary men _such as I who write this and you who read it_,[60] may be planted, there they cause the desert to blossom, and the waters to gush from the living rock. Who has not known, whether among his personal acquaintance or from having read of him in books, the type of man who forms the strength of this mighty national organism? And who has not felt that he is himself something of that kidney? We stand aghast at our own extraordinary power, and it has been finely said that Nelson was greater than he knew. From one end of the earth to the other the British language is spoken and understood. The very words that I am writing will be read to-morrow in London, the day after in Oxford--and from this it is but a step to the uttermost parts of the earth.

“Under these conditions of power, splendour, and domination it is intolerable that the vast metropolis of this gigantic empire should be pestered with crawling cabs. There are indeed many things which in the Divine plan have it in their nature to crawl. We of all the races of men are the readiest to admit the reign of universal law. Meaner races know not the law, but we are the children of the law, and where crawling is part of the Cosmos we submit and quit ourselves like men, being armed with the armour of righteousness. Thus no Englishman (whatever foreigners may feel) is offended at a crawling insect or worm. A wounded hare will crawl, and we Read that ‘the serpent was cursed and crawled upon his belly’; again, Aristotle in his Ethics talks of those whose nature (φύσις) it is ‘ἕρπειν,’ which is usually translated ‘to crawl,’ and Kipling speaks of fifes ‘crawling.’ With all this we have no quarrel, but the crawling cab is a shocking and abominable thing; and if the titled owners of hansoms do not heed the warning in time they will find that the spirit of Cromwell is not yet dead, and mayhap the quiet determined people of this realm will rise and sweep them and their gaudy gew-gaws and their finnicky high-stepping horses, and their perched-up minions, from the fair face of England.”

XI.

Lambkin’s Remarks on the End of Term

_Delivered in Hall on Saturday, Dec. 6th, 1887, the morning upon
which the College went down._

MY DEAR FRIENDS; MY DEAR UNDERGRADUATE MEMBERS OF THIS COLLEGE,

The end of Term is approaching--nay, is here. A little more, and we shall meet each other no longer for six weeks. It is a solemn and a sacred thought. It is not the sadness, and even the regret, that takes us at the beginning of the Long Vacation. This is no definitive close. We lose (I hope) no friends; none leave us for ever, unless I may allude to the young man whom few of you knew, but through whose criminal folly the head of this foundation has lost the use of one eye.

This is not a time of exaltation, so should it not be a time for too absolute a mourning. This is not the end of the Easter Term, nor of the Summer Term. It is the end of Michaelmas Term. That is the fact, and facts must be looked in the face. What are we to do with the approaching vacation? What have we done with the past term?

In the past term (I think I can answer for some of you) a much deeper meaning has entered into your lives. Especially you, the young freshmen (happily I have had the control of many, the teaching of some), I know that life has become fuller for you. That half-hour a week to which you pay so little heed will mean much in later years. You have come to me in batches for half-an-hour a week, and each of you has thus enjoyed collectively the beginning of that private control and moulding of the character which is the object of all our efforts here in Oxford. And can you not, as you look back, see what a great change has passed over you in the short few months? I do not mean the corporeal change involved by our climate or our prandial habits; neither do I allude to the change in your dress and outward appearance. I refer to the mental transformation.

You arrived sure of a number of things which you had learnt at school or at your mother’s knee. Of what are you certain now? Of nothing! It is necessary in the mysterious scheme of education that this blind faith or certitude should be laid as a foundation in early youth. But it is imperative that a man--if he is to be a man and not a monster--should lose it at the outset of his career. My young friends, I have given you the pearl of great price. You have begun to doubt.

Half-an-hour a week--four hours in all the term ... could any positive, empirical, or dogmatic teaching have been conveyed in that time, or with so much fullness as the great scheme of negation can be? I trow not.

So much for knowledge and tutorship. What of morals? It is a delicate subject, but I will treat of it boldly. You all remember how, shortly after the month of October, the College celebrated Guy Fawkes’ day: the elders, by a dinner in honour of their founder, the juniors by lighting a bonfire in the quadrangle. You all know what followed. I do not wish to refer again--certainly not with bitterness--to the excesses of that evening; but the loss of eyesight is a serious thing, and one that the victim may forgive, but hardly can forget. I hope the lesson will suffice, and that in future no fellow of this College will have to regret so serious a disfigurement at the hands of a student.

To pass to lighter things. The Smoking Concert on All Souls’ Day was a great success. I had hoped to organise some similar jollity on Good Friday, but I find that it falls in the Easter vacation. It is, however, an excellent precedent, and we will not fail to have one on some other festal occasion. To the action of one of our least responsible members I will not refer. But surely there is neither good breeding nor decency in dressing up as an old lady, in assuming the name of one of our Greatest Families, and in so taking advantage of the chivalry, and perhaps the devotion, of one’s superiors. The offence is one that can not lightly be passed over, and the culprit will surely be discovered.

Of the success of the College at hockey and in the inter-University draughts competition, I am as proud as yourselves. [_Loud cheers, lasting for several minutes._] They were games of which in my youth I was myself proud. On the river I see no reason to be ashamed; next term we have the Torpids, and after that the Eights. We have no cause to despair. It is my experience (an experience based on ten years of close observation), that no college can permanently remain at the bottom of the river. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune, let us therefore taking heart of grace and screw our courage to the sticking point. We have the lightest cox. in the ’Varsity and an excellent coach. Much may be done with these things.

As to the religious state of the college it is, as you all know, excellent--I wish I could say the same for the Inorganic Chemistry. This province falls under the guidance of Mr. Large, but the deficiency in our standing is entirely the fault of his pupils. There are not twenty men in the University better fitted to teach Inorganic Chemistry than my colleague. At any rate it is a very grave matter and one by which a college ultimately stands or falls.

We have had no deaths to deplore during this term, and in my opinion the attack of mumps that affected the college during November can hardly be called an epidemic. The drains will be thoroughly overhauled during the vacation, and the expense of this, spread as it will be among all undergraduate members whether in residence or not, will form a very trifling addition to Battells. I doubt if its effect will be felt.

There is one last thing that I shall touch upon. We have been constantly annoyed by the way in which undergraduates tread down the lawn. The Oxford turf is one of the best signs of our antiquity as a university. There is no turf like it in the world. The habit of continually walking upon it is fatal to its appearance. Such an action would certainly never be permitted in a gentleman’s seat, and there is some talk of building a wall round the quadrangle to prevent the practice in question. I need hardly tell you what a disfigurement such a step would involve, but if there is one thing in the management of the college that I am more determined upon than another it is that no one be he scholar or be he commoner shall walk upon the grass!

I wish you a very Merry Christmas at the various country houses you may be visiting, and hope and pray that you may find united there all the members of your own family.

Mr. Gurge will remain behind and speak to me for a few moments.

XII.

Lambkin’s Article on the North-west Corner of the Mosaic Pavement of the Roman Villa at Bignor

Of Mr. Lambkin’s historical research little mention has been made, because this was but the recreation of a mind whose serious work was much more justly calculated to impress posterity. It is none the less true that he had in the inner _coterie_ of Antiquarians, a very pronounced reputation, and that on more than one occasion his discoveries had led to animated dispute and even to friction. He is referred to as “Herr Professor Lambkin” in Winsk’s “Roman Sandals,”[61] and Mr. Bigchurch in the Preface of his exhaustive work on “The Drainage of the Grecian Sea Port” (which includes much information on the Ionian colonies and Magna Graecia) acknowledges Mr. Lambkin’s “valuable sympathy and continuous friendly aid which have helped him through many a dark hour.” Lambkin was also frequently sent books on Greek and Roman Antiquities to review; and it must be presumed that the editor of _Culture_,[62] who was himself an Oxford man and had taken a House degree in 1862, would hardly have had such work done by an ignorant man.

If further proof were needed of Mr. Lambkin’s deep and minute scholarship in this matter it would be discovered in the many reproductions of antiquities which used to hang round his room in college. They were photographs of a reddish-brown colour and represented many objects dear to the Scholar, such as the Parthenon, the Temples of Paestum, the Apollo Belvedere, and the Bronze head at the Vatican; called in its original dedication an Ariadne, but more properly described by M. Crémieux-Nathanson, in the light of modern research, as a Silenus.

Any doubts as to Lambkin’s full claim to detailed-knowledge in those matters, will, however, be set at rest by the one thing he has left us of the kind--his article in the _Revue Intellectuelle_, which was translated for him by a Belgian friend, but of which I have preserved the original MSS.[63] It is as follows:

THE ARTICLE.

I cannot conceive how M. Bischoff[64] and Herr Crapiloni[65] can have fallen into their grotesque error with regard to the Head in the Mosaic at Bignor. The Head, as all the world knows, is to be found in the extreme north-west corner of the floor of the Mosaic at Bignor, in Sussex. Its exact dimensions from the highest point of the crown to the point or cusp of the chin, and from the furthest back edge of the cerebellum to the outer tip of the nose are one foot five inches and one foot three inches, respectively. The Head is thus of the Heroic or exaggerated size, and _not_ (as Wainwright says in his _Antiquities_), “of life size.” It represents the head and face of an old man, and is composed of fragments, in which are used the colours black, brown, blue, yellow, pink, green, purple and bright orange. There can be no doubt that the floor must have presented a very beautiful and even brilliant appearance when it was new, but at the present day it is much dulled from having lain buried for fifteen hundred years.

My contention is that M. Bischoff and Herr Crapiloni have made a very ridiculous mistake (I will not call it by a harsher name) in representing this head to be a figure of Winter. In one case (that of M. Bischoff) I have no doubt that patriotic notions were too strong for a well-balanced judgment;[66] but in the other, I am at a loss to find a sufficient basis for a statement which is not only false, but calculated to do a grave hurt to history and even to public morals. M. Bischoff admits that he visited England in company with Herr Crapiloni--I have no doubt that the latter influenced the former, and that the blame and shame of this matter must fall on the ultra-montane German and not on the philosophical but enthusiastic Gaul.

For my opponents’ abuse of myself in the columns of such rags as the _Bulletin de la Société Historique de Bourges_, or the _Revue d’Histoire Romaine_, I have only contempt and pity; but _we_ in _England_ are taught that a lie on any matter is equally serious, and I will be no party to the calling of the Mosaic a figure of “Winter” when I am convinced it is nothing of the kind.

As far as I can make out from their somewhat turgid rhetoric, my opponents rely upon the inscription “Hiems” put in with white stones beneath the mosaic, and they argue that, as the other four corners are admitted to be “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Autumn,” each with their title beneath, _therefore_ this fourth corner must be Winter!

It is just such an argument from analogy as I should have expected from men brought up in the corrupt morality and the base religious conceptions of the Continent! When one is taught that authority is everything and cannot use one’s judgment,[67] one is almost certain to jump at conclusions in this haphazard fashion in dealing with definite facts.

For my part I am convinced that the head is the portrait of the Roman proprietor of the villa, and I am equally convinced that the title “Hiems” has been added below at a later date, so as to furnish a trap for all self-sufficient and gullible historians. Are my continental critics aware that _no single copy_ of the mosaic is to be found in the whole of the Roman Remains of Britain? Are they aware the villa at Bignor has changed hands three times in this century? I do not wish to make any insinuations of bad faith, but I would hint that the word “Hiems” has a fresh new look about it which puzzles me.

To turn to another matter, though it is one connected with our subject. The pupil of the eye has disappeared. We know that the loss is of ancient date, as Wright mentions its absence in his catalogue. A very interesting discussion has arisen as to the material of which the pupil was composed. The matter occupied the Society at Dresden (of which I am a corresponding member) in a debate of some days, I have therefore tried to fathom it but with only partial success. I have indeed found a triangular blue fragment which is much the same shape as the missing cavity; it is however, somewhat larger in all its dimensions, and is convex instead of flat, and I am assured it is but a piece of blue china of recent manufacture, of which many such odds and ends are to be found in the fields and dustbins. If (as I strongly suspect) these suggestions are only a ruse, and if (as I hope will be the case) my fragment, after some filing and chipping, can be made to fit the cavity, the discovery will be of immense value; for it will show that the owner of the villa was a Teuton and will go far to prove the theory of Roman continuity, which is at present based on such slight evidence. I will let you know the result.

The coins recently dug up in the neighbourhood, and on which so many hopes were based, prove nothing as to the date of the mosaic. They cannot be of Roman origin, for they bear for the most part the head and inscription of William III., while the rest are pence and shillings of the Georges. One coin was a guinea, and will, I fear, be sold as gold to the bank. I was very disappointed to find so poor a result: ever since my enquiry labourers have kept coming to me with coins obviously modern--especially bronze coins of Napoleon III.--which they have buried to turn them green, and subsequently hammered shapeless in the hopes of my purchasing them. I have had the misfortune to purchase, for no less a sum than a sovereign, what turned out to be the circular brass label on a dog’s collar. It contained the name of “Ponto,” inscribed in a classic wreath which deceived me.

Nothing else of real importance has occurred since my last communication.

XIII.

Lambkin’s Sermon.

A man not over-given to mere words, Lambkin was always also somewhat diffident of his pulpit eloquence and his sermons were therefore rare. It must not be imagined that he was one of those who rebel vainly against established usage. There was nothing in him of the blatant and destructive demagogue; no character could have been more removed from the demons who drenched the fair soil of France with such torrents of blood during the awful reign of terror.

But just as he was in politics a liberal in the truest sense (not in the narrow party definition of the word), so in the religious sphere he descried the necessity of gentle but persistent reform. “The present,” he would often say, “is inseparable from the past,” but he would add “continual modification to suit the necessities of a changing environment is a cardinal condition of vitality.”

It was, therefore, his aim to keep the form of all existing institutions and merely to change their matter.

Thus, he was in favour of the retention of the Regius Professorship of Greek, and even voted for a heavy increase in the salary of its occupant; but he urged and finally carried the amendment by which that dignitary is at present compelled to lecture mainly on current politics. Mathematics again was a subject whose interest he discerned, however much he doubted its value as a mental discipline; he was, therefore, a supporter of the prize fellowships occasionally offered on the subject, but, in the determination of the successful candidate he would give due weight to the minutiae of dress and good manners.

It will be seen from all this that if Lambkin was essentially a modern, yet he was as essentially a wise and moderate man; cautious in action and preferring judgment to violence he would often say, “_trans_former please, not _re_former,” when his friends twitted him over the port with his innovations.[68]

Religion, then, which must be a matter of grave import to all, was not neglected by such a mind.

He saw that all was not lost when dogma failed, but that the great ethical side of the system could be developed in the room left by the decay of its formal character. Just as a man who has lost his fingers will sometimes grow thumbs in their place, so Lambkin foresaw that in the place of what was an atrophied function, vigorous examples of an older type might shoot up, and the organism would gain in breadth what it lost in definition. “I look forward to the time” (he would cry) “when the devotional hand of man shall be all thumbs.”

The philosophy which he thus applied to formal teaching and dogma took practical effect in the no less important matter of the sermon. He retained that form or shell, but he raised it as on stepping-stones from its dead self to higher things; the success of many a man in this life has been due to the influence exerted by his simple words.

The particular allocution which I have chosen as the best illustration of his method was not preached in the College Chapel, but was on the contrary a University Sermon given during eight weeks. It ran as follows:

SERMON

I take for my text a beautiful but little-known passage from the Talmud:

“_I will arise and gird up my lions--I mean loins--and go; yea, I
will get me out of the land of my fathers which is in Ben-ramon, even
unto Edom and the Valley of Kush and the cities about Laban to the
uttermost ends of the earth._”

There is something about foreign travel, my dear Brethren, which seems, as it were, a positive physical necessity to our eager and high-wrought generation. At specified times of the year we hunt, or debate; we attend to our affairs in the city, or we occupy our minds with the guidance of State. The ball-room, the drawing-room, the club, each have their proper season. In our games football gives place to cricket, and the deep bay of the faithful hound yields with the advancing season to the sharp crack of the Winchester, as the grouse, the partridge, or the very kapper-capercailzie itself falls before the superior intelligence of man. One fashion also will succeed another, and in the mysterious development of the years--a development not entirely under the guidance of our human wills--the decent croquet-ball returns to lawns that had for so long been strangers to aught but the fierce agility of tennis.

So in the great procession of the times and the seasons, there comes upon us the time for travel. It is not (my dear Brethren), it is not in the winter when all is covered with a white veil of snow--or possibly transformed with the marvellous effects of thaw; it is not in the spring when the buds begin to appear in the hedges, and when the crocus studs the spacious sward in artful disorder and calculated negligence--no it is not then--the old time of Pilgrimage,[69] that our positive and enlightened era chooses for its migration.[70]

It is in the burning summer season, when the glare of the sun is almost painful to the jaded eye of the dancer, when the night is shortest and the day longest, that we fly from these inhospitable shores and green fields of England.

And whither do we fly? Is it to the cool and delicious north, to the glaciers of Greenland, or to the noble cliffs and sterling characters of Orkney? Is it to Norway? Can it be to Lapland? Some perhaps, a very few, are to be found journeying to these places in the commodious and well-appointed green boats of Mr. Wilson, of Tranby Croft. But, alas! the greater number leave the hot summer of England for the yet more torrid climes of Italy, Spain, the Levant and the Barbary coast. Negligent of the health that is our chiefest treasure, we waste our energies in the malaria of Rome, or in Paris poison our minds with the contempt aroused by the sight of hideous foreigners.