xxi 



not be allowed to pass away without some record of his career in 

 our obituary notices. 



Dean Stanley was born at Alderley in Cheshire, on December 13th, 

 1815. His father, a brother of the first Lord Stanley of Alderley, 

 and then Rector of the parish, was afterwards better known as the 

 energetic, liberal, and enlightened Bishop of Norwich, who among 

 many other accomplishments, was an enthusiastic ornithologist, the 

 author of a still favourite book, the " Familiar History of Birds," and 

 for many years President of the Linnean Society. The future Dean, 

 though he did not inherit his father's taste for science, always took 

 interest in and welcomed its progress. This spirit, which pervaded 

 all his writings and conduct, may be illustrated by the following 

 characteristic passage from his sermon on Sir Charles Lyell, preached 

 in Westminster Abbey in 1875, "The tranquil triumph of geology," 

 he says, " once thought so dangerous, now so quietly accepted by the 

 church, no less than by the world, is one more proof of the ground- 

 lessness of theological panics in the face of the advances of scientific 

 discovery." He was educated under Dr. Arnold, at Rugby, and com- 

 menced a brilliant career at Oxford by obtaining a scholarship at 

 Balliol, and shortly after the Newdigate Prize for his English poem, 

 " The Gipsies." After gaining the Ireland scholarship, he took a first 

 class in classics in 1837, gained the Chancellor's prize for the Latin 

 Essay in 1839, won the English Essay and the Ellerton Theological 

 Prizes, and was elected a Fellow of University College in 1840, where 

 for twelve years he was tutor. He did good service in the cause of 

 university reform, by acting as Secretary to the Oxford University 

 Commission of 1850-52, and was about the same time made a Canon 

 of Canterbury Cathedral. In 1853, he returned to Oxford as Regius 

 Professor of Ecclesiastical History, and Canon of Christchurch, which 

 office he held until his appointment in 1863 to the Deanery of 

 Westminster, a position which he held up to the time of his death, and 

 which he filled in such a manner as to have given the Abbey a place in 

 the history of the religious thought and feeling of the nation, which it 

 had never taken before. His marriage about the same time with 

 Lady Augusta Bruce, contributed to make the Deanery from that time 

 forth a centre of all that was intellectual, cultivated, and refined in 

 English society, and at the same time a place where persons of any 

 distinction, whatever their class, creed, or opinions, were equally 

 welcome, and could meet on equal terms. He was elected F.R.S. in 

 1863, and in 1875 was chosen Lord Rector of the University of 

 St. Andrew's. The first published work by which Dean Stanley was 

 generally known, was his " Life and Letters of Dr. Arnold " — a work 

 generally admitted to be almost without a rival in modern biography, 

 both for the interest of its subject and the accomplished grace of its 

 treatment. This has been followed by " Lectures on the Jewish 



d 



