144 MEMORIAL SKETCH. 



pain ; and to the imputations which he had occasionally 

 to meet in controversy he was acutely susceptible. Again 

 and again he would occupy the hours of a sleepless night 

 by writing letters, which the calmer judgment of the morn- 

 ing (sometimes under the influence of his wife) withheld ; 

 the energy of protest had expended itself, and reason sug- 

 gested the modifying considerations which agitated sensi- 

 bility had ignored. The same warmth manifested itself in 

 his friendships, and prompted continual acts of kindness, 

 which sometimes surprised the receiver, until he learned 

 that he might rely on his faithfulness with implicit trust 

 The inevitable severance of old family ties, especially the 

 death of his brother Philip and his sister Mary within a few 

 weeks of each other, in the summer of 1 877, deeply affected 

 him ; and in the loss of friends whom he revered or loved, 

 like Mr. Grote and Sir William Siemens, he felt that some- 

 thing passed out of his life beyond recall. It was with no 

 less vigour of heart that he joined in public worship. He 

 well understood the strain involved in the preacher's office : 

 " My work," he said once, " is for the most part merely in- 

 "tellectual ; but when I do anything that deeply interests 

 *' my feelings, I find how much it takes out of me." The 

 more the preacher was himself touched by what he was 

 saying, the more sure was he of Dr. Carpenter's sympathy, 

 and sometimes he would utter that sympathy with earnest 

 emphasis. In music, above all other forms of art, he found 

 for such modes of emotion the fullest expression ; yet his 

 favourite passages in the masses of Haydn and Mozart, 

 the oratorios of Handel, Mendelssohn, and Spohr, or the 

 symphonies of Beethoven, were hardly dearer to him than 

 some of the simplest strains of congregational psalmody, 

 associated as they were with the memories of a life.* 



* He had himself compiled a book of tunes, for the use of the Rosslyn 

 Hill congregation ; it contained several compositions of his own. 



