him that he was bound to keep on his shelves, since publishers and authors had been kind enough to send them to him.  Nearly all the books that belonged to his real library he had read with care.  Most of them were copiously annotated, and his annotations were, as a rule, characterised by a refreshing trenchancy,—­in the case of some, as of Gibbon, tempered with respect; in the case of others, as of F.W.  Newman and W.R.  Greg, bordering on truculence.  The only other noteworthy objects in the study were two splendid engravings of Raphael’s “Transfiguration” and “Spasimo” (the former bearing the signature of Raphael Morghen), which had been a gift to him from Mrs. Balmer.

The greater part of each day was spent in this room.  He could get along with less sleep than most men; and however late he might have sat over his books at night, he was frequently in his study again long before breakfast.  After breakfast came family worship, each item of which was noteworthy.  Although passionately fond of sacred music, he had a wild, uncontrollable kind of voice in singing.  He seemed to have always a perfectly definite conception of what the tune ought to be, but he was seldom able to give this idea an accurate, much less a melodious, expression.  Yet he never omitted the customary portion of psalm or hymn, but tackled it with the utmost gallantry, fervour, and enthusiasm, although he scarcely ever got through a verse without going off the tune.

His reading of Scripture had no elocutionary pretensions about it; it was quiet, and to a large extent gone through in a monotone; but two things about it made it very impressive.  One of these was the deep reverence that characterised it, and the other was a note of subdued enthusiasm that ran all through it.  It was clear to the listener that behind every passage read, whether it was history, psalm, or prophecy, or even the driest detail of ritual, there was visible to him a great world-process going on that appealed to his imagination and influenced even the tones of his voice.  And his prayers, quite unstudied as they of course were, brought the whole company right into the presence of the Unseen.  They were usually full of detail,—­he seemed to remember everybody and everything,—­but each petition was absolutely appropriate to the special case with which it dealt, and all were fused into a unity by the spirit of devotion that welled up through all.  After prayers he went back to his study, and nothing was heard or seen of him for some hours, except when his heavy tread was heard upstairs as he walked backwards and forwards, or when the strains of what was meant to be a German choral were wafted down from above.