Lord Westbury died a few hours after his old antagonist.
Their chief encounter was in the House of Lords, on occasion of the celebrated " Oxford Declaration " that the Scriptures not only "contain" but " are" the Word of God. Lord Westbury described the defence of this declaration in Parliament as " oily, eel-like, and saponaceous," whereupon the Bishop angrily rebuked him for his ribaldry. Lord Westbury was by five years the Bishop of Winchester's senior, being seventy- three, while Dr. Wilberforce was only sixty-eight years of age. The late Ex-Chancellor was one of the few very precocious College men who turn out really able. Mr. Bethell graduated at Oxford before he was 18, taking a first-class in the classical and a second in the mathematical schools. He subsequently got a fellowship at Wadham, was called to the Bar, gained distinction by defend- ing his College in a suit instituted against it in Chancery, which some eminent lawyers advised the College to compromise but in which he advised resistance and proved his advice to be good, rapidly gained practice, took silk in 1810, and got into Parlia- ment in 1851 for +Aylesbury as an advanced Liberal. He was Solicitor-General to " the Government of All the Talents " in 1852, Attorney-General to Lord Palmerston's Government in 1856-7, and Lord Chancellor in 1861,—resigning the office in 1865, when the " scandals" about his use of patronage became so numerous and violent. He was a master in the science of equity and in the art of sarcasm, for he contrived to point his supercilious judgments of men with real wit, which the slow suavity of his utterance made the more stinging. He was great in acupunc- ture. Yet the tradition of his dislike to give pain by anything
except his tongue, and his wish to heal wounds when given, sometimes in spite of all prudence and even wisdom, seems quite trustworthy. Nature, as not unfrequently happens, provided the remedy in the immediate vicinity of the cause of the disease.
