226 EARLY REMINISCENCES This is all very exaggerated and extravagant. And if in any way true, and I doubt the " in any way," all I can say is, What a falling off is here, now in later life, from what was in the day of sanguine hopes. We had formed among us a Society of the Holy Cross, for mutual edification, prayer, theological study, and alms-giving. It was a very harmless and moderate society, we had prayers together, read papers, and passed resolutions. Barnwell chapel was being restored, and we offered to put in it a stained glass window, but it was objected that in a little medallion was inscribed S.S.C., and was rejected on that account. Nunns, afterwards Canon of Truro ; Wood, Canon of Christ Church ; Lias, Chancellor of Llandaff and Bampton Lecturer ; Kelly, Bishop of Newfoundland ; Beck, also a Canon, I think of Rochester, and others who became notable as hard workers and well beneficed, belonged to our society. Maclagan, who had been in the Indian Army, joined us, but speedily withdrew when he found that we kept a minute-book. He was a canny Scot, and a Scot, like a fox, sweeps his tail over his traces, lest in any way he might compromise his future prospects by anything he had said, or by association. Maclagan buttered his bread well with ecclesiastical margarine. He became eventually Archbishop of York. I suppose that I have always been un enfant terrible, that I was accounted unamenable to control, for I am almost the sole member of our confraternity who went into Holy Orders and did not get preferment in the Church, and from the Church. I was appointed to Dalton in spite of the opposition of the Archbishop of York (Thomson). My nomination to East Mersea I owed to Gladstone, and mine to Lew Trenchard to myself. I make no complaint. I have stood in my own light. I never attend rural deanery meetings, because they evaporate in talk and do nothing. As to preaching, the fifty-six years I have been in Holy Orders, I have had agricultural labourers, farmers, and at one time factory hands to address. Most rarely have I spoken before educated persons—I mean really cultured personages, not merely such as can read their newspapers, and spend their time with dogs and horses. Consequently my mode of address and presentation of matter has been governed by desire to make
