Dr. William Alexander, who resigned the Archbishopric of Armagh last
year, died at Torquay on Tuesday in his eighty- eighth year. Dr. Alexander, who was the last survivor of the pre-Disestablishment bishops, held the Bishopric of Derry for thirty years before his promotion to the Primacy, and was distinguished as a theologian, a poet, and, above all, as a preacher. He was, as a writer in the Times truly observes, a splendid rhetorician, and his sonorous eloquence preserved the traditions of the grand style of oratory, but his rhetoric was informed by ideas and warmed by humanity. His poetic gift revealed itself early and remained with him to the end. A fine sonnet cycle on the Queen's visit to Ireland appeared in the columns of the Spectator on March 31st, 1900, and a poem on the Coronation was printed in the Times as late as last June. Archbishop Alexander's wife, who died in 1895, was the admirable hymn-writer, whose fame, he declared, would long outlive his own. No mention of him would be complete without a reference to his opposition to Home Rule, which culminated in a memorable speech delivered in the Albert Hall in 1893.
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