With Mr. Beresford-Hope, who died on Thursday, a separate if
not a very distinguished figure disappears from English society. He was one of the few wealthy men in England who filled their lives fall, and were conspicuous at once in art, literature, and politics, yet subordinated everything to acute theological and ecclesiastical interests. Whether starting a newspaper, or building a palace, or fighting a hopeless cause in Parliament, Mr. Beresford-Hope never forgot for a moment to defend the Church, and that party within her with which his own sympathies were bound up. He was not a first-rate man, as he found when he ventured to re- sist his leader, Mr. Disraeli, and went down under the merest touch of his sword of satire ; but he was a very good one, and he had sturdy opinions which he never concealed. In a flabby generation, softened out of all manliness, he seemed a strong man, with a will and convictions. He dared, in fact, to be un- popular, and that kind of benefactor to thought will speedily, unless, indeed, a period of misfortune braces us all up, be as extinct as the dodo.
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