chaklEs cahdale babington. 265 



the British Association at York. Babiiigton's affectionate tribute 

 to the memory of his friend will be found in this Journal for 1886, 

 p. 159. 



Any account of Babington would be incomplete which did not 

 contain some reference to the strong religious spirit which domi- 

 nated his life. Brought up in the " Evangelical " school of thought, 

 which at that time aroused the Established Church from the lethargy 

 into which it had sunk, he, unlike so many of his contemporaries, 

 — the two Newmans, for instance, — never deviated from his early 

 beliefs. As a boy he became acquainted with William Wilberforce, 

 an old friend of his father ; at Cambridge as an undergraduate he 

 heard Charles Simeon preach, and later took others to hear him ; 

 he attended missionary meetings where Baptist Noel spoke; he 

 supported Connop Thirlwall in the action which he took as to the 

 admission of dissenters to academical degrees ; and in later life — 

 indeed, up to his death — actively supported a number of philan- 

 thropic societies, all characterized by a strong Protestant tone. 

 His drawing-room was a centre for meetings of these bodies, and, 

 in conjunction with Mrs. Babington, he promoted missionary work 

 both at home and abroad. But all was done quietly and unosten- 

 tatiously ; and however strong his principles might be, his natural 

 kindliness of heart and consideration for others prevented that 

 aggressive assertion of them which characterizes the less cultured 

 representatives of Protestantism. The various and ever- varying 

 aspects of Biblical criticism and the evolution hypothesis never 

 disturbed him. His friend the Rev. H. C. G. Moule, Principal of 

 Ridley Hall, writing in the Record for Aug. 9th, says : " Like 

 Sedgwick, his elder friend, and Adams, his younger, he seemed to 

 live above perplexity and doubt, in a bright, pure air and light, in 

 which the imagined conflict between research and the believer's 

 hope was nowhere to be seen. To him the Bible was the Word of 

 his Lord, reverenced and believed without reserve ; worship was his 

 delight ; and his keen, practical interest in Christian work ran side 

 by side with his enquiries into nature and history." But he was 

 fair to those from whom he differed. Prof. Mayor, writing of a 

 memorable encounter of the British Association, of which body 

 Babington was always a member, — it was at a meeting of the 

 Association that he first met the lady whom he married in 

 1866, — says: "I well remember the glee which he displayed over 

 Samuel Wilberforce's discomfiture by young Huxley. In creed, 

 doubtless, he was much nearer to the Bishop than to his conqueror, 

 but he distrusted and hated clap-trap as a stop-gap for argument 

 and fact. In later life he lamented the tendency to forsake Huxley's 

 Fliydology as outworn." 



Like many of the older men, Babington was not in sympathy 

 with the more recent tendencies of botanical research, the intro- 

 duction of which by Dr. Vines, coupled with the non-insistence of 

 the attendance of medical students, caused a great diminution in 

 the number of those present at his lectures. Prof. Mayor says : 

 "He pitied the botanist who, never seeking living plants in their 

 homes, armed with microscope, ransacks their cell and fibre. A 



