Its brightness is dimness, its meetings are partings.'

ARABIC POEM.

IN quoting the Arabic couplet at the heading of this chapter to Mrs. French in one of his letters from Beyrout, the bishop said, 'The last words, alas, have been too often true in our experience'; and now this fleeting character of earthly unions was to receive its final illustration in his own life-history. He found it impossible to rest or to be idle, and the work of pleading mission causes before such varied congregations was wearing and exciting, and seemed to leave his gift of languages to rust unused; so, as no settled post of duty offered itself to him in England, in little more than a year he was preparing once again to sally forth upon a final venture against the untouched fortresses of Islam. His principal correspondent at this time was Mrs. Moulson, his daughter absent in India, and the gradual forming of his purpose to go out again will be noticed in his letters.

To MRS. MOULSON.

Chislehurst, May 22, 1889. It is sad to see in village parishes the gradual wasting away of the agricultural population. One old farmer I talked with two days since complained bitterly of the Punjab wheat supply cheapening the corn in England, so that they could not make both ends meet. . . . Yet the food and dress of the villagers seem on the whole better than I remember them thirty or forty years ago, and the intelligence is wonderfully increased. Even

the Fonthill girls were getting up high music last week for a choral festival at Salisbury soon. They do not answer Scriptural questions, however, as the Syrian girls do in the brighter Eastern sunshine, and having richer imaginations, and more taste for the superhuman it may be. . . . E. J. gave me a little volume of selected sermons of Padre Agostino Montefeltro on social and moral questions, which show that he is a man of wide culture and research as well as of eloquence. What a reformation of the R. C. Church such a man might be the agent of, if chosen to be pope but the Jesuits will be careful to block his way to promotion. They seem to be a revived order again, and to put terrible pressure on all efforts towards reform. . . I made a very sorry début at Exeter Hall yesterday' (May 23); but the fact was I was thoroughly flurried at having to succeed two great guns, and to precede two other ditto. It gave me no fair chance, as I could not keep the audience from men of whom great things were expected, so the speech I had carefully prepared had to be pocketed instead of proclaimed! Useful experiences however these, and likely to be multiplied the older one grows now. . . .

One longs to live at the elevation of Fénélon in spiritual matters. Religion seems less and less to find admission into conversation, and the world's chill starves and dries one up, not that I want empty talk without occasion, but something to tell we are not Hindus or Agnostics, but Christians.

This letter illustrates the bishop's shrinking from May meetings: however two months later he was speaking at the Duke of Argyll's house in London for the Archbishop's Assyrian Mission; the Archbishop, the Duke, Mr. Athelstan Riley, Dean Hole, and Canon Bright being the other speakers. Afterwards he dined and slept at Lambeth Palace, which led to a correspondence with the archbishop (in the midst of his heavy preoccupations with the Lincoln judgement) in reference to the obtaining of educational institutes for Greeks in Syria, or Palestine, or Cyprus. The bishop wrote on July 27 from Penzance:

As I believe your Grace would consider the formation of a fresh society both impolitic and impossible, it would seem that the only practicable course would be that some wealthy laymen or laywomen, taking large and clear views of the present crisis in the East, should approach your Grace with the offer of some considerable sums to be specially devoted to this line of Church work

In speaking for the Christian Evidence Society.

CHARGE AT ST. PAUL'S, PENZANCE

309

under the general directions of the Board or Council of Missions, and in response to the urgent and pathetic appeals addressed to the heads of the Anglican Church from the Eastern patriarchs and bishops.'

With reference to the locality for such a work, the bishop looked on Cyprus as being too remote, and Beyrout as too strongly occupied by the Americans, while the C. M. S. college for praeparandi on Mount Zion could hardly on its present lines of action form the basis of such a school of prophets as would be acceptable to the Greek Church and conciliate their confidence. The existing praeparandi college he described as 'not devoid of some very hopeful and promising elements of usefulness'; but he felt that something more was wanted in the direction of Bishop Blyth's suggestions, as a continuation and higher elevation of it, 'avoiding to the utmost everything polemical and controversial, rather witnessing friendlily, as sister might to sister, in the way of recalling them to their own old paths, and their great early authorities to which the Church Catholic (and our own branch of it not least) is so deeply indebted.'

In this letter he mentions having taken a light charge for seven or eight weeks at St. Paul's, Penzance. The vicar, the Rev. J. J. Hunt, the present writer was informed, had advertised in some church paper for a locum tenens, 'a spiritually-minded brother in the Lord,' or words to like effect. Bishop French, as has been stated, had special pleasure in the thought of Penzance as a post of healthful duty, and answered the advertisement, declaring that, though he would not like to claim to be what the advertisement required, he had had some experience in the Lord's vineyard, and was really desirous to labour for the good of souls1.

1 After the bishop's death, Mr. Hunt, the Vicar, wrote in his Parish Magazine :-'One there was, a poor woman who, without hearing the bishop speak a single word, was so struck by his whole demeanour, as observed by her in a casual glance through the vestry window, that she felt she must go to church to hear him. That one glance of hers at this holy man was made to her, in God's providence, the first step towards a Christian life.'

His offer was joyously accepted, and he was able to gather many of his family about him, and combine some pleasant. expeditions with his pastoral work.

To MRS. MOULSON.

Penzance, August 18, 1889.

Yesterday we went together to see Marazion. I to see some old MSS., Sanskrit and Arabic, which an old clergyman, Mr. Stott, has treasured up for years past. His MSS. are not of such antiquity as he wished to believe, I fancy. Nearly opposite the church at which he serves for a few weeks is Lydia Grenfell's house, Henry Martyn's affianced. It is now called Grenfell Lodge. The lady who lives in it (sixty years of age, she may be) was a pupil of Miss Grenfell, who lost her reason through a broken heart, if this lady's account is true, for the last twenty years of her life. I made her smile by saying, 'As it must be eighty years since Henry Martyn visited Lydia Grenfell in this house, suppose you can scarcely remember his face!'

To MRS. MOULSON.

Royal Hotel, Bath, Sept. 11, 1889. The weather at present is the perfection of climate, such as the old English style of summer more than any can lay claim to. Yesterday it seemed doubly enjoyable as one was borne through the soft green slopes of Somersetshire, rolling up to the Mendips and Cheddar, having Weston and Clevedon and other choice watering-places on the right, and breezes of the Bristol Channel wafted over the wolds, everybody in holiday trim and many radiant with smiles. My two years at Clifton made all scenes vividly impressed on mind and memory, and recalled old characters, and friendships which endeared the spots more than mere beauty of scenery could. I am particularly impressionable in the way of loving pilgrimages to old spots, consecrated by recollections of those loved and lost.

I have been visiting this morning the old Roman baths which have been recently excavated almost immediately under the present pump-rooms and bathing establishments, which are recovering their old importance greatly, and attracting visitors from afar, Americans and others. It has been really a great discovery, and is so unmistakably antique and quaint, besides exhibiting the wondrous engineering skill and craft of Roman workmen, that I should have been sorry to miss it. Our work in the East seems

(much as modern Bath restores the antique Balnea Salis of ancient Roman Bath) to be building up again the foundations of ancient generations, and restoring breaches long unfilled, and reviving old heaps of ruins.

BISHOP AUCKLAND AND LIGHTFOOT

3II

I walked up Lyncombe Hill early to day to refresh recollections of uncles and aunts at whose houses I loved to stay forty years ago. There they stand still, but occupied by strangers. A young cousin, Filleul, has St. James' Church. . . At Lyncombe Church I preached the first sermons I delivered on taking orders. could not help looking with some little interest on a spot of such early history.

One

Shortly after this he spent three or four days at Bishop Auckland, during the last weeks of Bishop Lightfoot's life, and wrote thence to Mrs. Knox :

Auckland Castle, Oct. 21, 1889.

The bishop here is very feeble, and talks but little. I much fear that there is little hope of his rising to his former power in public, though he labours on at his literary efforts as much as ever, perhaps.

He has beautified the chapel marvellously by painted windows, done by a Bruges artist, representing the chief events and personages in Northumbrian Church history. The faces are those of modern bishops-Tait, Benson, Selwyn, Harold Browne, Wordsworth of Lincoln, and others; Canon Westcott also.

The forest and river scenery from my window are very striking, even in this dull damp weather.

I addressed the Highbury young students (Mr. Waller's 1) last week. They seemed very susceptible of missionary interest, and grateful for information. Our old friend, Mr. Gee', cultivates this

spirit.

A day or two afterwards he wrote to Mrs. French from Stockton-on-Tees:

'I had a chat with Bishop Lightfoot yesterday before lunch in his study on the Greek Church, and proposed educational institutes. He spoke very encouragingly and hopefully, and asked me to employ any patronage which his name and support could yield to so good a cause.'

The remembrance of this visit was a source of great thankfulness to Bishop French when a few weeks later Bishop Lightfoot died. He refers to it more at length in the little pamphlet called Some Notes of Travel by a Missionary Bishop, which he published early the next year at Sir W. Farquhar's particular request 2.

1 Rev. C. H. Waller, D.D., Principal; Rev. H. Gee, B.D., F.S.A., Senior Tutor, London College of Divinity.

2 See pp. 26 and 31 of the pamphlet.