Attractive As He Was In Many Ways, I Had Little Sympathy With
His Religious Opinions, Nor Did I Comprehend Oliphant's
Exalted Inspirations; I Failed To See Their Practical
Bearing, And, At That Time I Am Sorry To Say, Looked Upon Him
As An Amiable Faddist.
A special favourite with both of us
was William Stirling of Keir.
His great work on the Spanish
painters, and his 'Cloister Life of Charles the Fifth,'
excited our unbounded admiration, while his BONHOMIE and
radiant humour were a delight we were always eager to
welcome.
George Cayley and I now entered at Lincoln's Inn. 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.
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