Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: England; he traced to their influence, unconsciously accepted though it may often be, much that is characteristically and happily English. For old institutions, thronged with memories, rich in history, for the very voices of their weathered walls, he had a feeling like that of Burke; and for utilitarian or
scientific
theories of education he felt an almost vehement dislike, so mechanical and impoverishing to the spirit did he think them. There could hardly have been a greater loss to contemporary literature just at the present time; the champion of no school, he was almost alone among the writers of English prose in simply maintaining an ideal of high severity and excellence. His rare work, given to the world from time to time, quietly reminded a new generation of certain palmary and indispensable virtues, not easy of attainment, which are in danger of becoming old-fashioned or forgotten. Emphatically the scholar and man of letters, there was in his life and work a perfect expression of that single-hearted devotion to fine literature, yet without a shadow of pedantry, which is ceasing to flourish in the ancient academic places. There is yet deeper sorrow, upon which I cannot touch, save to say that to younger men concerned with any of the arts, he was the most generous and gracious of helpful friends. In due time, they will be able to think, with nothing but a reverent affection, of the admired writer at last laid to rest under the towers and trees of his own Oxford. CHARLOTTE BRONTE AND HER CHAMPION [The Daily Chronicle, June 23, 1900; The Academy, Aug. 4, 1900.] … What a story is that of that family of poets in their solitude yonder on the gloomy northern moors ! cried Thackeray. To quote Mr. Swinburne, it is to
the sweetand noble genius of Mrs. Gaskell th…