this period he did not become personally acquainted, knowing him by his earlier writings only.

But then as now, theories of belief did not withdraw him from the more practical side of things. He took an active part in the Union, not only as regards debates, but in the management of that institution, of which he was an officer.

In conjunction with his friend Vaughan, who had been bracketed equal with him in the Classical Tripos, as he had been second to him in winning the Bell Scholarship, Davies translated the Republic of Plato. This now well-known work is a closer translation than the more recent version of Jowett's, though the latter has a more idiomatic swing. The work was taken up for the pure interest of the thing, each translator taking separate books, each then revising the other's work, and finally the original translator going through his work with the other's corrections for final revision. The book has appeared in several editions, a pleasant one being that of the Golden Treasury series.

Before he quitted Cambridge, Davies was a contributor to Fraser's Magazine; about 1850 he wrote for that periodical, then under Parker's editorship, an article on Maurice's writings.

In the autumn of 1850 Llewelyn Davies was elected to a Fellowship of his College, a position which he retained for eight or nine years. About the close of 1851, he was ordained by a private friend of the family, Bishop Maltby of Durham. As a rule, candidates for ordination have to obtain a curacy before a bishop can be persuaded to ordain them. But the possession of a fellowship enables what is called a title to be dispensed with; a man can be ordained on his fellowship. It is usual under such circumstances for the ordination to take place at Ely or Oxford, but in this case the friendly bishop performed the ceremony at Auckland Castle, in his own diocese, in which Davies's father held his living of Gateshead.

Llewelyn Davies was thus free to accept a curacy or not, as he chose. Like another young man who was also under Maurice's influence—Mr. Haweis-did eight or ten years later, Davies bent his steps to the East of London. It is a terrible east, from which may come, if not wise men, at least men wiser than they went there. Being acquainted with the rector, Davies went to Limehouse, where he assisted as curate without being regularly licensed, serving without stipend.

Towards the end of his year's service at Limehouse, the living of St. Mark's, Whitechapel, became vacant. It was in the gift of Brasenose College, to which belonged at that time nearly all the patronage of the East London parishes. There was some difficulty in finding anyone to undertake this parish, for there was no endowment, and the college authorities were very glad to be able to appoint so capable a man as Mr. Davies. The parish was large and poor, a new district, but Mr.

Davies went there to work, and had the advantage of the income of his fellowship to support him. In spite of this kind of work he did not abandon study. For a man who becomes depressed by the monotonous contact with leaden intelligences and sordid lives and surroundings, an East London parish is not so dreary as a remote country village; a bachelor at least can find means of re-uniting himself with old friends, many of whom any University man may find in every quarter of London. Davies remained at Whitechapel for rather more than four years. A special feature of his residence there was that he made the personal acquaintance of several of the principal men concerned in the working men's movement. Allan, secretary of the Amalgamated Engineers' Society, lived close by him. A strike took place at the time, and, through Tom Hughes's introduction, Davies saw a good deal of the men and became acquainted with their views, with which he could not but feel a certain sympathy. His views of the great labour questions have since been succinctly expressed. This position is a somewhat uncommon one for a clergyman, who, as a rule, looks on matters so important to the commonwealth too much from the outside.

The Christian Socialist movement was also at this time going on, and Davies was brought into close intimacy with Maurice, Hughes, and Kingsley. The desire of reform was then in its young freshness, and there was a vital activity which has departed since working men have gained the political advantages they sought, and some of the most ardent of their leaders, finding their occupation gone through realisation of their programme, have turned from busy propagandism to billiards. During Davies's incumbency at Whitechapel, Maurice, who was then chaplain of Lincoln's Inn and Professor of King's College, came down to lecture in his schoolroom upon Shakespeare. On that very afternoon Maurice had received the not very unexpected notice of his dismissal from the professorship, a notable event in the history of religious thought, but one which did not interfere with the force or beauty of his Shakespeare Lecture.

Whilst at St. Mark's, Whitechapel, Davies published in pamphlet form a criticism upon Jowett's Epistles of St. Paul.

In the latter part of 1856 Davies left St. Mark's, Whitechapel, having been appointed, through Mr. William Cowper, afterwards the Right Hon. Cowper Temple, to the Rectory of Christ Church, St. Marylebone, a Crown living, then in the gift of Lord Palmerston. Here he has remained ever since. The parish is a large one, necessitating a great deal of work. It contains what is known as the Lisson-grove quarter, and was considered one of the worst parts of London for vice and overcrowding. Davies has thus had scope for the exercise of those practical abilities, for which he is as highly esteemed as for his more strictly intellectual successes. He has built a church in a poor neighbourhood,

St. Barnabas, Bell-street, Edgeware-road, and a district served by it has been cut off from his own, as well as another, the district of St. Cyprian; and yet his parish, which originally must have been so unwieldy as to make it impossible for one man to minister to it in any effective manner, has remained so large as to contain eleven thousand persons.

In 1859 Mr. Llewelyn Davies married a daughter of Mr. Justice Crompton. Her brother, like himself, was a fellow of Trinity College; he is now a barrister on northern circuit. Mr. Davies has a family of six sons and one daughter; the eldest son was at Marlborough School, where the two younger are still, and is now, as aforesaid, Bell Scholar at Cambridge.

Mr. Davies has shown in many ways that he is something more than a parson, or if he is no more than a parson, that he considers the significance of the term to include more than scholastic study of Divinity, and a parson's life to have to do with all life that rolls around him. Mr. Davies stretches out his hands with equal intimacy to the rich and cultured, and to the poor and miserable; he realises the position of the Christian ideal which nullifies class. He represents one of the linkstoo often the missing links-between the polar opposites of the community, links that can only be composed of stout principle and expansive love.

For a parochial clergyman, who has to spend great part of his energies in bringing down thought to the level of a miscellaneous congregation, it must be difficult with the same breath, so to speak, to bring it forth in a form in which it is fit to face the controversial force of the leading intellects of the day. Mr. Davies can step from his large and busy parish, swarming with a life by no means eclectic, to the great controversial arenas; and instead of losing heart by the contact with monotonous ignorance and squalid lethargy, he emerges rich in practical knowledge and an influence which the closet theorist can rarely win.

Though the bulk of unlovely life seems too huge to be truly interpenetrated by the higher ideals, yet we must honour more those who expend their force in the attempt, than those who shrink back from the task because it seems so hopeless. Mr. Davies's road is probably now smoother than once it was, when, superadded to the inherent difficulties of practical evangelisation, were bitter and retarding prejudices coming from the brothers of the yoke itself. The medieval theory of a clergyman was to give out the means of grace like a royal dole; the modern radical theory is to endeavour that such influence should accompany the ordinances as may make them reach home; by giving with them labour as practical as men of business are ready to give to a money-making project.

6

To show how fully Mr. Davies belongs to the lend a willing hand' order of divines, a class so opposite to the kid-glove and spotless

millinery' species, it is but necessary to name the various kinds of work in which he is engaged. In his parish "the Rector is recognised as an entity, and as a centre of influence," which is not always the case, even in much smaller parishes. Besides the composition of sermons, and these are new made week by week, for Mr. Davies preaches every Sunday, in the morning as a rule, and finds a discourse freshly composed better to preach, there must be counted the theological and theoretic work done for the Contemporary and other Reviews.

To Mr. Davies's sympathy with working-class combinations we have already referred. At the Church Congress at Bath in 1873 he performed the somewhat daring exploit of combating the prejudices prevailing on this subject among the brethren of his cloth; and there was no mincing matters; he spoke outright. If it is right for society to move further and further away from the old feudalism, the clergy, who are supposed to follow principles, and not cloud their heavenly perceptions under a mass of worldly details, ought to be the first to recognise that right and encourage its progress. Mr. Davies told his brethren :

"It is surely very natural that working men should combine. As single persons they are not powerful. It would be difficult, perhaps, to find any class of grown men throughout the world with less of individual strength and personal resource, more dependent upon those above them, than the unorganised English masses. Like other weak units, working men gain strength by combining. Whilst they are helpless, we all feel compassionate towards them. But as soon as the first filaments of organisation begin to thread the units together, we are alarmed and displeased. Why? Is there any reason in heaven or on earth why the strength of union should be denied to those precisely who most need it?"

"But these unions of working men, it is alleged, will proceed to dictate as to the terms of their labour. And that they should do this is assumed to be something quite contrary to the order of nature. Employers, I have observed, consider that they have taken an impregnable position, when they have declared that they will not submit to dictation on the part of their workmen. But surely this is absurd, unless it be gravely maintained that a working man ought to accept any wages which it may please his employer to give him. In a free contract, the word dictate is out of place, unless we apply it to every one who states positively the price he means to pay or to receive. But we include in the term dictation,' it will be said, 'the open or implied threat of a strike.' I admit that it belongs to the very idea of a labour-union to have in reserve the threat of a strike. And strikes are not things to be regarded with a light heart. But the notions which have invested a strike with a character of sombre wickedness are for the most part unfounded. A strike may be perfectly legitimate. And without the reserve power of striking occasionally exercised, wages would hardly keep up to their fair

level. This resource is analogous to that of going to war, or of inflicting severe punishment in schools. We are all agreed that the fewer wars the better, the less of punishment the better. But it would never do to proclaim that nothing would induce us to go to war or to chastise a rebellious boy. And similarly, working men might as well make unconditional submission to their employers at once as engage never to strike.

. The working classes, however, are so well aware of the suffering caused by strikes, that it has become a fixed policy with the unions to discourage them as much as possible, and to seek to settle differences in all cases by arbitration."

The next paragraph in this address tells, by implication, the reason why the masses can be called the lapsed masses,' society, through its cling to the old feudal faith, having scorned their aspirations, and lost the natural hold and influence that trusted superiors may exercise over those with whom they are in relation.

"There are those who profess that they recognise fully the right of working men to combine for the sake of bettering their condition, in respect of wages or otherwise, and that they have no objection to the existence of such associations, but who protest vehemently against the intervention of strangers stirring up strife between the labourers and their employers. They express their indignation and scorn by stigmatising these interlopers as paid agitators. It is not surprising that those who are angry with the whole movement should be particularly exasperated by the paid agitators; for the movement owes much to those who may be not incorrectly so described. This is especially true of the agricultural agitation. Poor labourers, scattered over wide districts in which the civic impulse is almost starved, not knowing too much of what is going on in the world, with no habits of enterprise, are not very likely to organise themselves into associations without receiving some guidance and stimulation from without. It is conceivable that the necessary help might have been given by resident squires or clergymen, and that paid agency might thus have been rendered superfluous. But not many squires or clergymen have laboured in this cause: and a great part of the indispensable speech-making and organising has been done by men who have been labourers themselves, and who have not been so fortunate as to be able to give time and work for nothing."

A home-thrust was given as follows on the question of agitators : "The Secretary of the Church Defence Institution receives, I presume, a salary-a well-earned one, I am sure-for stirring up enthusiasm and organising associations in defence of the possessions and privileges of the Church. The labourer is worthy of his hire, whether he steers the plough along its furrow, or gets up meetings and makes speeches. But how do you think it must strike the labourers when they find that bishops and clergy consider the man who is paid to agitate in