88 SIR WILLIAM FLOWER CHAP. 



a thoroughly honest man. Darwin was no theologian, and 

 Stanley did not take the slightest interest in, nor had he any 

 knowledge of, natural history, although his father was eminent as 

 an ornithologist, and President of the Linnsean Society. I once 

 took him over the Zoological Gardens. His remarks were original 

 and amusing, but the sole interest he appeared to find in any of 

 the animals was to discover some human trait either in appearance 

 or character. 1 The Dean enjoyed intensely the broader beauties 

 of nature as shown in scenery. But the details of animal and 

 plant life were entirely outside his sympathies. ... If I had 

 the faculty of a Boswell I should have much worth narrating of 

 the many little dinner-parties at one or the other of our houses, 

 at which Huxley and the Dean were the principal talkers. A 

 characteristic rencontre between them took place also on one of 

 the ballot nights at the Athenaeum. A well-known popular 

 preacher of the Presbyterian Church, who had made himself 

 famous by predictions of the speedy coming of the end of the 

 world, was up for election. I was standing by Huxley, when the 

 Dean, coming straight from the ballot-boxes, turned towards us. 

 "Well," said Huxley, "have you been voting for C. ?" "Yes, 

 indeed, I have," replied the Dean. " Oh, I thought the 

 priests were always opposed to the prophets," said Huxley. 

 " Ah," replied the Dean, with that well-known twinkle in his eye 

 and the sweetest of smiles, " but you see I do not believe 

 in his prophecies, and some people say I am not much of a 

 priest." 



The kind Dean (writes Lady Flower) used to come to see 

 our children act small plays or scenes from Shakespeare, mount- 

 ing right up to the nursery, where the acting took place. Scenes 

 from Shakespeare were generally the entertainment, but Dick 



1 This failure to transmit the taste is rather remarkable. Stanley on 

 Birds, written by his father, the Bishop of Norwich, was the first book 

 on the subject which the present biographer ever possessed, and was a 

 lasting joy. Rather later the Bishop's gun, a well-made old single-barrelled 

 muzzle-loader, was presented to us by an old Norfolk squire, into whose 

 family it had come. It seems probable that he was a sportsman as well as a 

 naturalist. 



