154 
Among the few rivals who have nearly approximated, may he 
named Charles Webb Le Bas, afterwards Principal of Hailebury 
College, and the Hon. William Cavendish, now Duke of Devon- 
shire. Almost as a matter of course, Mr Cotterill was, soon after 
taking his degree, elected a Fellow of St John’s. 
The present imperfect sketch is mainly concerned with the career 
of its subject in relation to those gifts which would be felt to con- 
stitute his claim to become a Fellow of this Royal Society. But it 
is impossible to pass by in silence certain elements of the case 
which exercised a very real, though in part an indirect, influence 
upon his mental development. 
At this juncture he might have laid out for himself a course of 
life which would necessitate his remaining a man of study rather 
than of action ; or he might have chosen a profession, such as that 
of the bar, in which it would be possible, while relegating to a 
secondary position his Cambridge studies, to make use of the mental 
training thus acquired. His University had abundant examples to 
encourage him in either of these directions, — brilliant honour-men 
who had become famous as scholars or men of science, and others 
who had been conspicuous as barristers and as judges. 
But the tone of another profession ruled in the home in which 
he had been brought up, even more strongly than the love of 
culture for its own sake, or for the prizes which might thereby be 
won. Entirely by his own choice, — though no doubt it was a choice 
greatly moulded by the influences around him, — Henry Cotterill 
resolved to take Holy Orders. But this was not all. His father 
had begun to cherish, in his maturer years, a keen sympathy with 
missionary work. It came seemingly too late in life for him to 
change his sphere of labour. But he had expressed a hope that 
his sons, even if they did not feel called to devote their lives to 
direct missionary work, might at least for a time occupy positions 
in which they could support and assist missionary efforts. The 
father’s wish was never forgotten by the son, who always regarded 
it as a grave mistake to send out to our Colonies only clergy of 
powers below the average. 
Henry Cotterill was ordained deacon in 1835, and priest in the 
year following. In this latter year a presentation to one of the 
East India Company’s chaplaincies was placed in the gift of the 
