against this fine character; but perhaps because of the absence of all the usual events in human life, perhaps because of the unbroken prosperity of it, undisturbed by a cloud or a struggle, the memoir of Bishop Fraser will not, we fear, attract any warmly sympathetic feeling from the reader, which, considering that he seems himself to have been possessed by all the brotherly instincts, is curious. To some, however, it is given to be interesting to their fellow - creatures, just as some are predestined to be fine scholars or great philosophers. Fraser shut his heart to no one, was always ready in kindness and helpful to his friends, but yet he does not touch our heart. The most attractive incidents in his youthful career are connected with that foible (or strong point) to which we have already referred― his love for horses. When he became at a very early age, not more than twenty-two or twenty-three, a lecturer at Oriel, that College had dropped, in the revulsion of feeling after the loss of Newman and the distinguished band with which he was connected, into one of those pauses which are usual to academical communities after a period of conspicuous mental excitement. Its pastors and masters were of exceptionally high calibre, but the pupils had slipped out of their hands. "With the exception of Christ Church, there was at this juncture probably no College in Oxford less addicted to reading for the Schools, or indeed to intellectual work of any kind;" and Oriel, outside of the common-room, had given itself up to athletics. The new Fellow had done nothing in this way to add to the glory of the College, though evidently so well able to have done so if he had pleased and the verdict of the majority of the undergraduates

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was, Mr Hughes tells us, "decidedly unfavourable." "The captains of the boats, and the eleven, and the best boxers in the College, looking at the firm setting on of his head, the breadth of his shoulders, and the splendid muscular development of loin and limb, shook their heads reproachfully. Some moral delinquency, it was felt, must be involved in the neglect of such natnral gifts." It is with a touch of characteristic humour that Mr Hughes explains how the popular feelings gradually came round. "There was a slight reaction in his favour when the hunting imen reported that he owned one of the best hacks that stood at Simmond's, and whenever the old Berkshire met within reach of Oxford, was in the habit of taking his ride in that direction." Then, another point of much effect : Was he not a regular dandy?" "The junior Fellow was beyond all question the best-dressed man in the College. Fraser was always as neat as if he had just stepped out of a band box. He habitually wore a blue frock-coat of perfect cut with velvet collar; and waistcoat and trousers of light colours, not excluding even buff and lavender, equally well made.” A blue frock-coat with velvet collar! Think of that, O shabby Dons, scuffling out and in in shooting-coats and wide-awakes! But the year was 1840, and men had not learnt the delights of undress. "A much more important step was gained when he was seen on the bank on several critical nights of the boat-races, running by the side of the boat and cheertng lustily." (One wonders if he was in the blue frock-coat of perfect cut at this exciting moment!) "Next term came a rumour that in the long vacation he had clubbed horses with a friend and driven tandem round North Wales." Is

that it was not the best way in which he could dispose of himself, and the most fit development of life. "An altogether unlikely place, one would say," says Mr Hughes, with the wonder of a man who was, in his day, of another and more energetic school, tempered by the determination of a biographer to see his subject only in the best light, "for a young man in the prime of life, the foremost scholar of his year at Oxford, who for the last seven years had been enjoying all that was best in the intellectual and social life of that fascinating city, to select deliberately as his future home. No such thoughts crossed Fraser's mind. His simple and healthy nature could make itself not only contented but happy anywhere."

This is, perhaps, not exactly a solution of the problem. It seems a wonderful waste of faculty to devote a young man of so many accomplishments and SO much fresh and vigorous power to the pastoral care of a population consisting of ninety-one men and ninety-two women (children, we suppose, included). He was very comfortable, however: was allowed to hold his fellowship along with this inoffensive little living; had his mother and his aunt to share his home and its expenses, and nothing could be more easy or more agreeable than his position altogether. He kept a couple of horses,-not the humble and useful animals generally to be found in a parson's stables, but expensive, carefully selected, and still more carefully groomed the ideal of horse-flesh, -one of which he drove in the most trim and daintily turned-out of dog-carts. This is a trait which tends to salvation, and Mr Hughes dwells upon it with genuine relish. But this right-feeling and conscientious young clergyman did not

:

hunt: he slew those carnal inclinations in him with an unhesitating hand. Before he took orders at all, indeed, he resigned the sport he loved, in a way which is both amusing and characteristic. "He resolved before doing so to give himself a short season in the shires," and accordingly went down to Melton Mowbray with his two horses, and threw himself into the delights of the chase. For three happy weeks he hunted, we had almost said, day and night; but that is a figure of speech: three times a week is the correct description and in the evening fought his battles over again, by writing a journal with all the incidents of the runs for the instruction of a young brother. When this delightful little holiday was over he returned to Oxford, and "from that day never rode to hounds." This little episode, one feels, affects Bishop Frazer's biographer almost to tears. And no doubt it shows wonderfully the keen conscientiousness, the sense of duty and propriety, and power of self-denial in the man. There was nothing wrong in hunting. He took the pleasure of it to the last practical moment with all his heart, but resigned it at once and altogether the moment he found it an unsuitable indulgence contrary to the decorum of his profession. The sentiment is of no very exalted or primary kind; but it is essentially reasonable, practical, and just.

And there is every reason to believe that Bishop Fraser was an excellent country clergyman, and attended to everything that 180 parishioners could require of himbuilding them schools out of his own pocket, and neglecting none of their wants. After twelve years' faithful serving of his little cure, he removed to another College living, that of Ufton Nervet,

in Berkshire, his motive being, as he himself explains, that he had held his fellowship long enough, and that he could not afford to resign it with so small a benefice as Choldertor. "I shall be more independent, and whether single or married, my income will remain unaffected,-voilà le motif," he says, which is also a perfect blameless motive, but not of an elevated character. The little country rectory; the little rural community; the troublesome squire, who puts up his coat-collar when he comes to church, in mute assertion of a draught, which the provoked parson cannot discover, even with a lighted candle, any signs of; the devoted but puzzled factotum, more like a Scotch "minister's man" than a dependant of the richer establishment who never can quite understand his master's ways, but follows him wherever he goes with boundless faithfulness, make up a pretty and amusing picture. The only wonder is how in our active days, a man like Fraser could have satisfied himself with such a limited sphere, could have contained himself in it, while other men were coursing like knights-errant about the world, pursuing a thousand objects, working in every kind of volunteer way, while he went tranquilly on, putting in painted windows, superintending his village schoolmistress, looking after his old women. That he should have made himself sufficiently well known in these silent corners of the world to be called

to one

one public occupation after another-sent on a mission to America to inquire into schools, employed on other important commissions, and finally chosen as the bishop of an important see-is not more surprising than that he could have thought himself sufficiently occupied in such tranquil places.

A contented mind, "a simple and healthy spirit which could be happy anywhere," is not a sufficient way of accounting for such an extraordinary phenomenon. That it was not from any distaste for work is plainly enough visible, or from the absence of that highest ambition which aims at the elevation of all around. The following letter shows both Frazer's principles and practice at the time when he was only the rector of one of these simple country parishes:

"I want to see a great effort made education. The masses are hostile to to really popularise the Church and the one and indifferent to the other. Why is this? and why are we clergy so misrepresented (as by Goldwin Smith, who never misses the chance of having a shot at us) and so misunderstood? Here have I, for instance, been working three nights aweek for fifteen weeks this winter, with twenty-four night scholars, not one of whom, I venture to say, feels anything like gratitude to me for my trouble, or fancies that I have done anything to deserve thanks. I don't want thanks, but I wish they felt I had been really labouring for their good."

It was to this quiet nook, where, notwithstanding the matter-of-fact way in which they took his services to them, the people all loved him, that Mr Gladstone's letter, offering him the bishopric of Manchester, came. The country clergyman in his little parish was not, however, taken by surprise. He had been previously offered the bishopric of Calcutta, which had possibly prepared him for such an emergency: and though he felt, as all serious men must feel, those "throbs and misgivings of my own heart" which are strongest often in those who have least reason to be alarmed by them, he seems to have felt at once that there was

no sufficient reason why he should not accept the great position offered to him. After consulting the friends whose judgment had most weight with him (there were nine of them-which in itself is a sign of character: for there are few people who can boast of possessing so many intimate counsellors) it is thus that he communicates to the Premier his acceptance of the offer:

"It will be my desire, if called upon to administer this great diocese, to do so in a firm and independent, but at the same time a generous and sympathising spirit. I never was, and never could be, a partisan. Even when seeing my way most clearly, I am always inclined to give credit to others whose views may be different from my own for equal clearness of vision, certainly for equal honesty of purpose. As little of a dogmatiser as it is possible to be, I yet see the use, and indeed the necessity of dogma. But I have always wished to narrow rather than to extend its field, because the less peremptorily articles of faith are imposed or defined, the more hope there is of eliciting agreements rather than differences. Especially have I been anxious to see the Church adapt herself more genially and trustfully to the intellectual aspirations of the age, not standing aloof in a tim

orous or hostile attitude from the

spirit of hostile inquiry, but rather endeavoring (as is her function) to temper her ardour with the spirit of reverence and godly fear. And finally, my great desire will be, without disguising my own opinions, or wishing one set of minds to understand me in one sense, and another in the opposite, to throw myself on heart of the whole diocese of the laity as well as the clergy-of those who differ from the Church as well as those who conform to her. I have a high ideal of what a bishop of the Church of England ought to be."

the

Bishop Fraser's work at Manchester is perhaps too recent to allow of an entire survey of it, or, indeed, to enable the spectator,

without local knowledge, to understand its weight and importance. It is one of the most curious ironies of circumstance that this fair, frank, large-minded, and honest-hearted man, of his own nature indifferent to punctilio, and eager to penetrate to the soul of that universal agreement which exists, under whatsoever wrappings of indifference, among all good Christian men, should have had to tackle one of the most strange phenomena of modern times, the equally honest, devout, and devoted fanatic, ready to go to the stake for the merest rags of external adornment, wrongheaded, narrow-minded, inaccessible to reason, and yet a true servant of God after all. It is impossible to imagine a more perplexing problem, or one which would try more deeply the patience of a man who was nothing if not reasonable, and to whom the reverse of that temper must have been peculiarly exasperating. We will not enter into the Miles Platting case, or all those hopeless struggles with the immovable martyr, ready to die at any moment for the colour of his stole or the candles on his altar, which taxed the Bishop's strength and temper more than all the real labours and difficulties of his diocese. Rome is far too wise to allow her priests to import the element of ridicule into their real struggle with an antagonistic world in this way. It seems to have been reserved for England, supposedly the most practical of nations, to develop this last climax of the impracticable. It is more agreeable to turn from Mr Hughes's careful record of this ecclesiastical conflict to his account of all the Bishop's activities among his people, and the effect he produced on his first appearance