At the end
of three years he was duly called to the Bar.
I was not; for
alas, as usual, something 'turned up,' which drew me in
another direction. For a couple of years, however, I 'ate'
my terms - not unfrequently with William Harcourt, with whom
Cayley had a Yorkshire intimacy even before our Cambridge
days.
Old Mr. Cayley, though not the least strait-laced, was a
religious man. A Unitarian by birth and conviction, he began
and ended the day with family prayers. On Sundays he would
always read to us, or make us read to him, a sermon of
Channing's, or of Theodore Parker's, or what we all liked
better, one of Frederick Robertson's. He was essentially a
good man. He had been in Parliament all his life, and was a
broad-minded, tolerant, philosophical man-of-the-world. He
had a keen sense of humour, and was rather sarcastical; but,
for all that, he was sensitively earnest, and conscientious.
I had the warmest affection and respect for him. Such a
character exercised no small influence upon our conduct and
our opinions, especially as his approval or disapproval of
these visibly affected his own happiness.
He was never easy unless he was actively engaged in some
benevolent scheme, the promotion of some charity, or in what
he considered his parliamentary duties, which he contrived to
make very burdensome to his conscience. As his health was
bad, these self-imposed obligations were all the more
onerous; but he never spared himself, or his somewhat scanty
means. Amongst other minor tasks, he used to teach at the
Sunday-school of St. John's, Westminster; in this he
persuaded me to join him. The only other volunteer, not a
clergyman, was Page Wood - a great friend of Mr. Cayley's -
afterwards Lord Chancellor Hatherley. In spite of Mr.
Cayley's Unitarianism, like Frederick the Great, he was all
for letting people 'go to Heaven in their own way,' and was
moreover quite ready to help them in their own way. So that
he had no difficulty in hearing the boys repeat the day's
collect, or the Creed, even if Athanasian, in accordance with
the prescribed routine of the clerical teachers.
This was right, at all events for him, if he thought it
right. My spirit of nonconformity did not permit me to
follow his example. Instead thereof, my teaching was purely
secular. I used to take a volume of Mrs. Marcet's
'Conversations' in my pocket; and with the aid of the
diagrams, explain the application of the mechanical forces, -
the inclined plane, the screw, the pulley, the wedge, and the
lever. After two or three Sundays my class was largely
increased, for the children keenly enjoyed their competitive
examinations. I would also give them bits of poetry to get
by heart for the following Sunday - lines from Gray's
'Elegy,' from Wordsworth, from Pope's 'Essay on Man' - such
in short as had a moral rather than a religious tendency.
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