regulated colleges. But his impatience, when it did break forth, had nothing of personal or scholastic captiousness in it; his words and manner were uniformly those of a highbred gentleman, and a cordial well-wisher to the incorrigible defaulter, mortified at the failure of his earnest attempts to benefit him; and if a tinge of sarcasm now and then mingled itself with his rebukes, the suppressed smiles of the more rational and cultivated men present were apt to show that their secret feeling went along with him, and very much to disturb the self-satisfied repose of the contumacious dunce. I believe that it was about the time of his acceptance of the office of dean, that Mr. Copleston maintained a single-handed controversy with the three chosen champions of the Edinburgh Review in defence of the Oxford system of study, and published also certain pamphlets on the question of finance, much quoted in their time among practical men; but, be that as it may, his pupils were conscious that they were in the presence of a man whose reputation had travelled beyond the precincts of Oxford, and who, well aware of the power of words and associations, rather repressed than indulged his intuitive sense of the ludicrous and incongruous. Nothing short of the necessity of the case could have drawn from him the well-known 'Equo ne credite,' which convulsed all Oxford with laughter in its day.

The same manliness of character, and directness of purpose, marked Mr. Copleston's administration of the duties of dean of the college; and in this capacity also he carried the public opinion along with him as much as a popular captain of a crack frigate.

A successful evasion of the discipline maintained by Mr. Copleston was considered as no great matter of good taste or triumphant ingenuity, and the sympathy felt for those who had come into unpleasant collision with him, was usually of the nature of what you or I should feel for a

D

friend passing through the process of the Insolvent Court, or sued for 'breach of promise' before an impartial judge. Conservatism (if I may so term it) was rather the fashion among our best-bred and best-connected men, whether studious or not; anything of the sort of social bravado which the youngsters call 'slang' and 'swell,' was at as decided a discount as in a Pall-mall club-house now-a-days; and though I do not know that the college was in my time more moral or religious than other well-regulated ones, it was more free from the troublesome follies and petulancy of school-boy society than most others. A Newmarket coat, or a remarkable waistcoat, would have been extinguished in the birth by the unmerciful sarcasms of our dictators in dress; and if a man was in any way tempted to do wrong in more serious matters, it was rather for his own pleasure than from any zest of defying authority.

All this I am apt to trace in some degree to the moral influence of an accomplished and strong-minded man like Mr. Copleston.

I may truly say that I never knew any professed man of letters from whom I heard, in the way of familiar conversation, such sound and discreet maxims as to that art of society in which Parr and Porson certainly were novices, and those business-like habits which qualify a man to take care of himself and other people. I fear that if a German eruditissimus had made a third at our private lectures, he would have held Mr. Copleston's occasional 'prolusiones de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis,' as something almost unholy; though somehow or other I seem to recollect them better than most other things which occurred so long ago. You will smile, I think, at the following characteristic trait of a relative whose turn of mind you knew so well. A note was delivered to your uncle while we were 'enucleating' (as our excellent friend and olim socius, T-, used to style it) a tough part of the Agamemnon. Having opened and

perused it, Mr. Copleston tossed it indignantly to me, pointing to the direction.

'Now, look there-as if that man, who ought to know better, and has called here half-a-dozen times, could not recollect that my name is Cop-les-ton, as you may see it over my door, and that I was baptized Edward, which he must know also, or might have found out.'

H.-'He indulges you, I see, sir, with two superfluous letters.'

C. Yes the Rev. Mr. Copplestone! Now I cannot recommend a better habit to a young man, like yourself, entering the world in good society, than to ascertain the exact prefix, spelling and pronunciation of every man's name with whom you have intercourse: such, I mean, as he and his family choose habitually to adopt. Depend upon it, that people in general infer a sort of onrywpia from such lapses; as if you took so little interest in their identity, as to forget the minor characteristics of it.'

Some years after I left the university, a proof occurred, in a neighbourhood well known to me, of his well-balanced (or, if I may use the term,) ambi-dextrous habits of mind. A remarkably astute elderly man of business, who had made a large fortune on the Stock Exchange, was asked by a neighbour how he had sped as to the renewal of the lease of an important part of his estate, held under Oriel College. 'Why, not so well as I expected,' was the answer. 'I thought I should get a pretty easy bargain with a mere learned, bookish fellow, like Copleston; but I was rather taken aback, I confess: he is as well up to the value of land and money as I am myself, and seems acquainted with every acre of the property.'

'Daran erkenn❜lch meine Pappenheimer,' said I to myself, when I heard the anecdote at second-hand. I could have predicated no other result in any matter to which my

old friend chose to turn his mind. And that my subsequent, and then existing intimacy with such a man as your distinguished uncle continued till his death, is, you will easily believe, a reminiscence in the highest degree gratifying to my feelings and my self-esteem.

I remain, my dear Sir,

Most faithfully yours,

J. HUGHES.

In this year, and the beginning of the next, appeared the three Replies to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review, the occasion and designs of which publications will be sufficiently explained, to those not already acquainted with them, by one or two extracts from the bishop's letters to his father, written at the time when he was preparing the first Reply.

'Next week I go to press, and shall keep the press going. The book (for it will be more than a pamphlet) will, I think, be out this week. It is already known by almost everybody here that I am engaged in this work, and from the vice-chancellor in particular I have received the strongest encouragement to go on. He was once concerned in correcting the edition of Strabo, which called forth so much abuse from that review, and which first provoked me to the undertaking. Since that, a more mischievous article has appeared on Edgeworth's Professional Education, more mischievous, because more lively and clever. This has induced me to extend my plan, and to give a view of our system of study and a vindication of classical learning,'

The passages of the first Reply, more particularly, in which this view is given, are of such en

during interest, and are such admirable specimens of writing, that I could not hesitate to give some of them to the reader, in the form of extracts, which will accordingly be found in the Appendix. But as, in making them, I have endeavoured to consult the interest of the general reader, rather than that of the philologist, it is the more incumbent upon me to remark, that what cost the author most labour, and what he himself thought to be the most valuable portion of his work, will not be found in these extracts. It is with reference to the strictly philological part of the treatise that the bishop thus expresses himself in a letter to his father, about the time of publication.

'My defence of Oxford is at length launched into the world, and it is a great relief to me to have got it off my hands. It cost me nearly five weeks of hard labour. Some part of the work was truly harassing; the part which will be the least interesting, and the least valued, I dare say, by most readers-I mean the Latin criticisms. They are, however, the part which not only cost me most pains, but will, I believe, by people who take an interest in the subject, be thought worth most. They are not to be met with in any books I could find, and I believe are sound.'

I add part of a letter addressed to his friend, the Rev. J. Penrose, about the same time:

"Your praises make me happy, and, indeed, proud. The part which I value most you have commended. It did not cost me most labour, but I think the reasoning close and strong, and sophistry, which is perplexing and confounding to ordinary readers, is, I think, there chased away by The part I allude to is on classical educa

common sense.