Mr. Robert Wallace, who died a few hours after a
sudden seizure while speaking in the debate on the grant to Lord Kitchener early on Tuesday morning, was one of the ablest and wittiest men of his generation. After a brilliant academical career, he was for some twenty years the most popular preacher in the Scottish Established Church. He was Examiner of Philosophy at St. Andrews, Professor of Church History at Edinburgh, Doctor of Divinity at Glasgow. Renouncing his clerical orders about twenty years ago, he was for four years editor of the Scotsman, in succession to Mr. Russel, was called to the English Bar in 1883, and turned out Mr. Goschen in Edinburgh in the year 1886. In the House of Commons he contributed more to the entertainment of his hearers than to the consolidation of party discipline, and in one famous speech on the In and Out clause of the Home- rule Bill in 1893, asked the Chairman what was he to do " seeing that he was not possessed of the flexibility or the fluidity of intelligence which made so many of his co-disciples not only equal to one another, but equal to anything." A man who had played so many parts—scholar, divine, preacher, journalist, barrister—was obviously too mercurial to achieve solid or lasting success in any line. But, at least, no one filled the role of the candid friend with so much acceptance. Mr. Courtney is a far greater mathematician than Mr. Wallace ever was, but he could never have hit upon the delightfu/ geometrical metaphor of which we have quoted the concluding passage.
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