278 EARLY REMINISCENCES of Evangelical which he had known associated with a very different stamp of adherents. At Cuddesdon he was a drag on the training of the candidates for Orders, interfering because the teaching and the practices were too " Churchy" in his opinion. I went to Cuddesdon to visit one of the students. In the chancel about the altar were a series of Gothic arcades in woodwork, and one of the young men filled these with paintings of the Apostles, in sepia. Wilberforce had them all obliterated. There was a cross on the altar. He ordered its removal. It was transferred to the Credence, but it was not long before it found its way back to its original position. In this case the order was given with a purpose so as to conciliate a commission of Evangelicals, hounded on by Golightly (Agag was his nickname), who visited the institution. Dr. Gilbert, Bishop of Chichester, visited the college for confirmations and on S. John's Day (May 6). He was a tall, handsome man, with a face that apparently could not crease with a pleasant smile without cracking, as ice when affected by a swell. His eye was stony and lustreless, not like that of a parrot, expressionless, but with a look of the Medusa, as though being of stone itself it desired to petrify all on whom that chill eye was turned. An unpardonable offence he committed in inhibiting John Mason Neale from performing any clerical functions in the diocese of Chichester, in 1847, and this inhibition was maintained for sixteen years, although Bishop Wilberforce in vain interceded to have it removed. In i860 Bishop Gilbert virtually, and in 1863 formally, revoked the inhibition. In 1856 he wrote to the Superior of S. Margaret's Home for Nursing Sisters, withdrawing from his post as Visitor, and published a letter addressed to her in which he stated that he entirely withheld countenance from, and approval of, the Community. The Mother Superior at once went to Chichester and requested an interview with the Bishop. It was peremptorily refused. She offered to wait his lordship's time, and urged the importance of the communication she had to make. For all reply she was informed by the butler that till she quitted the apartment into which she had been shown his lordship would be unable to interview anyone else.1 1 Eventually he seemed to take a pleasure in Tractarian ceremonies, in walking in procession with banners waving, in receiving a pastoral staff, in inducting sisters, etc.
