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results, and in no respect giving way to punctiliousness as to what might come between the wind and his nobility.

In a word, he has found his pattern in the fashions of a primitive rather than a decadent church, and so has escaped inclining either to High Church parties or Low, and has offended neither a Nonconformity dating from a degraded period, nor a progressive party by no means ecclesiastical in its tendencies, and judging by facts rather than from prestige.

The Bishop of Manchester has been called a "wild bishop;" and, if plain apostolical perseverance be wildness, certainly he deserves the name. Anyway, an unbiassed bystander is more likely to credit such wildness with heart of gold, than that particular kind of tameness which the French poet must have had in his view when he made his epigram upon the golden-cross-ornamented "bishop of wood."

James Fraser was born on the 18th of August, 1818, in Prestbury, near Cheltenham, a village nestled under the range of the Cotswold hills. He was the eldest son of "James Fraser, a Forfarshireman, the youngest son of a large family, a cadet branch of the Frasers of Darris;" to follow his own words, in reply to a recent inquiry. "My father," the Bishop states, "went out very young to India, and pursued a successful career there. My mother was the daughter of John Willins, Esq., solicitor, of Bilston, Staffordshire, descended from an old Herefordshire family, who in the seventeenth century were settled, almost in the proportions of a clan (as I discovered by looking over the register books), in the parish of Llanwarne in that county.

"My parents moved, in the year 1824, to Heavitree, near Exeter, partly for the education of their boys, and partly to be near some old Indian friends of my father's.

"My first school was at Mount Radford, near Exeter, where I remained till I was fourteen. The Rev. C. R. Roper was my master, and an excellent one he was. In 1832 I was sent to Bridgenorth School, then under Dr. Rowley; and in 1834, my mother, wishing to give me every advantage possible, placed me at Shrewsbury, where I spent two years under Drs. Butler and Kennedy. In 1836 I went to Oxford, having gained an open scholarship at Lincoln College, where I enjoyed the advantage of the tuition of the Rev. Richard Michell, late principal of Hertford College. In 1840 I was elected a fellow of Oriel College.

"I lost one brother, an engineer officer of much promise, favourably mentioned by Sir John Kaye in his history of the Sepoy mutiny, in that disastrous outbreak in 1857. He was then in command of the Bengal Sappers and Pioneers, and was one of the first officers who fell-at Meerut, on the 16th of May. My only surviving brother-out of fiveis Major-General Alexander Fraser, C.B., who is now at the head of the Department of Public Works in India, and who has, in various capacities,

particularly in the erection of lighthouses on the coast of the Bay of Bengal, rendered good service to the country.

My admirable mother still survives, in the 88th year of her age." The Bishop's father was a man of active mind, and invested his means in iron and stone-mining in the Forest of Dean district, but most of what he had was lost, and he died comparatively young, leaving a family of seven. This was at the time when James Fraser left his first school. His mother, as he told an audience not long ago," was a woman of sound sense, and one who would do anything for her children. She said, ‘I cannot give these lads of mine a large fortune, but by denying myself a bit and living quietly I can give them all a good education.' She did so, and I cannot understand how she managed it. By God's providence that mother is still spared to me. She is now paralysed, speechless, and helpless, but every day when I go into her room and look on her sweet face I think gratefully of all I owe to her, of what I was, and of what I have been enabled to do."

In the very brief sketch given above the Bishop omits to name that he took the Ireland Scholarship in 1838, a first-class in classics, and his B.A. degree in 1839. He was tutor of Oriel, as well as fellow, and retained the post until 1847, when he was presented by the college to the Rectory of Chaldrington, Wilts. This was a small parish, consisting of only thirty-five houses, and a population of 175, or thereabouts. If the experience to be gained here was small it was thorough, and the knowledge the rector acquired of the habits and feelings of the rural poor was turned to good account afterwards. In 1854-6, and again in 1862, Mr. Fraser was Select Preacher to the University. He was chaplain to the late Bishop of Sarum, and also acted as diocesan inspector of schools in the Oxford district. In 1858 he was appointed Chancellor of Salisbury Cathedral, and in 1860 he became Rector of Ufton Nervet, Berkshire, a village of something under 400 inhabitants. In this year, too, he received a prebendal stall in Salisbury Cathedral. During the years 1858-60 he was taking a busy part as assistant-commissioner under the Commission appointed to inquire into the state of popular education. His rural experience stood him in good stead, and the value of his reports amply justified his appointment; the result of the work being that a lamentable amount of ignorance was brought to light, and the public conscience was awakened to a sense of the deplorable condition of the poorer part of the population as regards opportunities of education.

In connection with the Schools Inquiry Commission, 1865, he visited Canada and the United States, and made some valuable observations on the American school system. His report fills a large volume, and was reprinted at Sydney in 1868, by order of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales. In 1867 he was once more pressed into the service of the Government in connection with the Parliamentary

Commission appointed to inquire into the possibility of so enlarging the scope of the Factory Act as to make its benefits extend to the numerous young persons and children engaged in agricultural labour. The inquiry extended also to the agricultural employment of women, and in his report he made some suggestions for meeting the difficulty of giving day-school instruction to children employed in the fields from a very early age. The places mapped out for his investigation were the counties of Norfolk, Essex, Sussex, and Gloucester. Of course the whole ground could not be covered by such an investigation, but sample districts were selected, and the inquiry as to these was thorough and searching. Boards of guardians, corporate bodies, officials, and private individuals were visited, and many public meetings convened, at which the various points of the questions involved were freely discussed. With the exception of one or two trifling holidays, Mr. Fraser expended nearly half-a-year in prosecuting these close investigations. It will be observed that the pathway to high and important positions does not always lie in court or family interest; in this instance the way led through a career of hard work. Upon the life of this plain and comparatively unknown man burst in 1870 something of a surprise. One Monday morning he took up the letters on his breakfast table, "having no idea what would be the contents of one of them." But, as he told an audience a short time afterwards with much simplicity, "I saw in the corner of one of them the Premier's name, and that the letter was to be forwarded; and I opened it with trembling, because something within me-a sort of presentiment-told me what it might contain. It contained an offer of the bishopric of Manchester." From this time forth, if he had been busy before, he was to be busier; and his mode of life was now to be altogether changed. He was not then familiar with public platforms or large audiences; he has since been practically compelled to take platform work to an extent that he could not possibly have anticipated, for it is without precedent. And the fact of this almost compulsion is a proof that he is regarded as in his element in the work. But at first there was a certain shrinking from the prospect. "I had always lived," he said, "and lived contentedly, in a quiet little village, and nothing was further from my thoughts and hopes, and, I might most honestly say, from my desires, than to be made a bishop of the Church of England in these troublous times. I did not feel that I had the gifts; I shrank from the terrible responsibilities and the possibilities of a failure; but the whole course of my life has been a succession of providences. Whatever I have been, and whatever place I have filled, has come to me, and I have never once gone in search of it." A few weeks after his acceptance of the post, he made, on the occasion of the consecration of a little village church, his apology, so to speak, for becoming a bishop:

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