when you come upon these, you may be quite sure that you are in the presence of greatness.  Human beings are made up of a good many pieces.  Nature, character, intellect and temperament:  roughly speaking, these headings cover every one.  The men and women whom I have loved best have been those whose natures were rich and sweet; but, alas, with a few exceptions, all of them have had gimcrack characters; and the qualities which I have loved in them have been ultimately submerged by self-indulgence.

The present Archbishop of Canterbury is one of these exceptions:  he has a sweet and rich nature, a fine temper and is quite unspoilable.  I have only one criticism to make of Randall Davidson:  he has too much moderation for his intellect; but I daresay he would not have steered the Church through so many shallows if he had not had this attribute.  I have known him since I was ten (he christened, confirmed, married and buried us all); and his faith in such qualities of head and heart as I possess has never wavered.  He reminds me of Jowett in the soundness of his nature and his complete absence of vanity, although no two men were ever less alike.  The first element of greatness is fundamental humbleness (this should not be confused with servility); the second is freedom from self; the third is intrepid courage, which, taken in its widest interpretation, generally goes with truth; and the fourth, the power to love, although I have put it last, is the rarest.  If these go to the makings of a great man, Jowett possessed them all.  He might have mocked at the confined comprehension of Oxford and exposed the arrogance, vanity and conventionality of the Church; intellectual scorn and even bitterness might have come to him; but, with infinite patience and imperturbable serenity, he preserved his faith in his fellow-creatures.

“There was in him a simple trust in the word of other men that won for him a devotion and service which discipline could never have evoked.” [Footnote:] I read these words in an obituary notice the other day and thought how much I should like to have had them written of me.  Whether his criticisms of the Bible fluttered the faith of the flappers in Oxford, or whether his long silences made the undergraduates more stupid than they would otherwise have been, I care little:  I only know that he was what I call great and that he had an ennobling influence over my life.  He was apprehensive of my social reputation; and in our correspondence, which started directly we parted at Gosford, he constantly gave me wise advice.  He was extremely simple-minded and had a pathetic belief in the fine manners, high tone, wide education and lofty example of the British aristocracy.  It shocked him that I did not share it; I felt his warnings much as a duck swimming might feel the cluckings of a hen on the bank; nevertheless, I loved his exhortations.  In one of his letters he begs me to give up the idea of shooting bears with the Prince of Wales in Russia.  It was the first I had heard of it!  In another of his letters to me he ended thus: