Ixxi 



Sir Edmund Walker Head was bom at Wiarton Place, Kent, 

 February 16, 1805. His ancestor, created a baronet in 1676, resided at 

 the hermitage near Rochester, in Kent ; and his seat is said to have af- 

 forded shelter to James the Second during the memorable week of December 

 1688, the last which he spent in England. The grandfather of the sub- 

 ject of our memoir. Sir Edmund, emigrated to America, and settled at 

 Charleston. In the War of Independence he took the Royalist side, lost 

 the greater part of his fortune, and returned to England, bringing with 

 him his son, afterwards Sir John. This portion of the family history was 

 much noted in Canada and in New Brunswick when the descendant and 

 namesake of this Sir Edmund went to administer the government of those 

 provinces, in both of which there are many families descended from the 

 loyalists " of the last century. 



Sir John became a clergyman, and had by his wife, Miss Walker, two 

 children, Sir Edmund and iVnnette, wife of the Baron de Milanges. He 

 died in 1838. 



Edmund was sent to Winchester in 181 5, where he became, through his 

 rapid proficiency, a very favourite pupil of Dr. Gabell, the then head 

 master. "It is hard," writes the Doctor to Sir John, in 1822, "to part 

 with so delightful a boy ; but there is virtue in parting with him : pray 

 do not detain him beyond the proper time." He entered Oriel College, 

 Oxford, as a gentleman commoner in January 1824, was first class in 

 classics 1827, and elected to a fellowship of Merton. 



Thus introduced into the academical world of his day, Edmund Head 

 became familiar, and continued so through his life, with many of the 

 leading men of that remarkable time for Oxford, and especially for Oriel : 

 the two Newmans, the three Wilberforces, Fronde, JManning, Wrangham, 

 Edward Villiers, Denison, the Bishop of Salisbury were all more or less 

 nearly his cotemporaries, and members of his Oxford circle. But of the 

 friendships which he formed at that place, the most lasting, and in its con- 

 sequences to himself the most important, was with George Cornewall Lewis, 

 then student of Christ Church. No two men could be more singularly 

 fitted to love and esteem each other, and, in a certain sense, to supply 

 each other's deficiencies. Both were strongly addicted to the study of the 

 past ; but Lewis more in relation to antiquities and politics. Head especially 

 in the province of history and art. Both were classical scholars of mark — 

 Lewis, no doubt, with far more of industry and research. Head with at 

 least equal elegance. Both were early engaged in the same line of political 

 and social speculations ; and in both liberal tendencies were accompanied 

 by the same singular candour and modesty of judgment. Some of the 

 epitaph, so to speak, composed by Sir Edmund for his predeceased friend, 

 in his preface to 'Lewis's collected Essays on the Administration of Great 

 Britain' (1861), seems, to those who knew and valued them both, to 



VOL. XVI. g 



