BOOKS.
'HE LATE LORD SELBORNE'S "MEMORIALS." FEE British statesmen have had so high a reputation as that achieved by the late Lord Selborne for single-mindedness, for readiness, that is to say, to sacrifice personal advancement at the call of what appeared to be public duty. The Memorials : Family and Personal, which have now appeared from his pen, with notes by his daughter, Lady Sophia Palmer, will enable his fellow-countrymen to understand the -atmosphere in which his character was formed and the -sources from which he drew alike the nobility of his natural tendencies and the main inspiration for their fulfilment. Not the late Lord Selborne himself but his father is the hero of these volumes, and that is what, in writing them, he evidently desired. In their dedication "To my children," dated October, 1888, he said, "Of all the characters and influences 'here commemorated, that which it has been most a labour of love to me to delineate is your grandfather's; and if, in what you learn concerning him, you find the main interest of this work, I shall be rewarded." Unquestionably Lord Selborne -succeeded in presenting a portrait of his father which is full at once of attraction and of convincing truth. The Rev. William Jocelyn Palmer was the third son of William Palmer, a prosperous London merchant, of gentle descent, by his marriage with Mary Horsley, daughter of the Rev. John Horsley, rector of Thorley, in Hertfordshire, and of Stoke Newington, and sister of Samuel Horsley, Bishop successively of St. David's, Rochester, and St. Asaph, who was eminent both as a mathematician and as a theologian. William Jocelyn Palmer was educated at Charterhouse and Brasenose, where through the introduction of his schoolfellow, Richard Henry Bounden, he became intimate with the Hebera, who were near neighbours of the Roundells at Gledstone, in Craven. 'The Chunehmanship of Mr. Palmer was very much of the type of that of Bishop Heber High but not dry, at once English and Catholic, truly spiritual and also dominating all the practical relationships of life. In the year in which he Teceived priest's orders, 1802, he was presented by his uncle, then Bishop of Rochester, to whom he acted as chaplain, to the rectory of the small country parish of Mixbury, in Oxfordshire, and there he remained till within a year or two of his death, in 1853. From 1814 he held with Mixbury the -adjacent living of Finmere, the villages and churches being not more than two miles apart. "Neither parish," says Lord Selborne, "was very well endowed. Finmere in that respect had the advantage. With the assistance at all times of a good curate, both parishes were easily worked together; my father, though he lived at Mixbury, constantly visited Fin mere, actively superintending all that was done there, and
' Memorials. Part I. Family and Personal, 1786-1863. By Bounden Palme-, Earl of Selborne. la 2 Tole. London: Macmillan and Co.
taking part in the services of Finmere church." No one can read these volumes, and in particular the numerous letters of his father on ecclesiastical and other subjects, which Lord Selborne gives, without being convinced that Mr. Palmer, who was well known to and connected with persons of high in- fluence in the Church, might at an early date, if he had so desired, have obtained important preferment, and would have adorned any position. But he believed himself to have found his mission as a country parish priest, and to the fulfilment of that mission, together with the discharge of his family responsibilities, he consecrated his life. He felt, says his son, that-
" What God had charged him with was the care of those five or six hundred poor people at Mixbury and Finmere, for whom there was no one else to care, among whom there was no praise to be won, no distinction to be attained, no ambition to be gratified. He was content with this and sought for nothing more. These people he loved and willingly served, wisely also and discreetly, as a spiritual father and friend, who understood them, and was able to speak to them in a way which they could understand. There was not one, old or young, whom he did not personally know, or whose character and conduct he did not observe and study He watched over those who were in sickness, trouble, or any other need. He understood enough of medicine, and had sufficient store of drugs always at hand, to help them much in that way His temporal charities, distributed with discrimination and judgment. were so liberal as to make churlish minds suppose that he must have been entrusted with funds especially devoted to that purpose."
This is no figure of speech, but an allusion, as Lady Sophia Palmer explains, to the curious fact that after the incum- bency of her uncle, the Rev. Horsley Palmer, who succeeded
her grandfather at Mixbury, the unavoidable discontinuance by a later rector of some of the benefits to which the parishioners had been accustomed resulted in a serious dis- turbance, due to the belief of the villagers that they were being defrauded of charitable bequests. Mr. Palmer was not only very liberal with his resources, but helped his parishioners to help themselves, preferring when possible to employ them on his glebe rather than to relieve them in money. Some who fell he reclaimed and aided them to keep straight, and his helpful and stimulating kindness continued from generation to generation. Many of his parishioners he aided to emigrate to Canada and Tasmania, and kept touch with them there by correspondence, "following them still with his pastoral care and wise counsels, and finding out colonial clergymen and others to whom he recommended them for such good offices as he was no longer able to perform towards them himself, and not unfrequently sending out presents to them from this country." Such was the life of simple and beautiful devo- tion to the calls of a small sphere of public duty, in the presence of which Roundell Palmer and his brothers and sisters grew up. Their mother, Dorothea Richardson Roundell, the youngest sister of their father's school and college friend already mentioned, was in every way a worthy helpmeet of her husband. Roundell Palmer, born in 1812, was the second son. The eldest, William, is for a long period the most prominent figure, after his father, in these memorials. The relations of Mr. Palmer, senior, to all the members of his family, as illustrated in these volumes, are fall of interest and attraction. That there was no weak in- dulgence about his affection for any of them is shown by the fact that on his first-born bringing home from Rugby some cases of stuffed birds for his sisters, and having to confess that he had left the paying for them over to "next half," when he would be sure of "tips," the Rector of Mixbury not only told him he was never to order anything he could not pay for on the spot, but sent him back at once to Rugby (a three days' journey there and back) in the gig to return tbe stuffed birds to the dealer. "This lesson," we may well believe, "the boys never forgot." But it is also in connection with his eldest son that the true beauty of Mr. Palmer's character shines out most brightly in its humble and patient tender- ness. That son, as Mr. Goldwin Smith bears witness, was a "man of genius." He was also a man of pure and lofty
character and deep religions feeling. But his undoubted gifts and graces must, in a very real sense, have served to enhance the cruel and protracted disappointment which his lifebrought to his father. These volumes contain what amounts to a praatically complete, and is certainly a very
effective, biographical sketch by Lord Selborne of his brilliant elder brother. How he was led after long years
spent in investigation of the doctrines and historic claims to Catholicity of the Anglican, Greek, and Roman Churches, and after repeated but fruitless endeavours first to obtain com- munion as an Anglican in, and later to be admitted without absolutely and unreservedly unconditional rebaptisro into, the Greek Church, to find refuge at last in the bosom of Rome, is a strange and indeed, as we believe, unique story, the details of which are full of an interest at once intellectual and pathetic. It is clear that, during a large part of his adult life, William Palmer believed that he had a call to promote, at whatever sacrifice of prospects of personal advancement, or of definite spiritual work in the Anglican ministry, in which he had taken deacon's orders, a rapprochement between the Anglican and Eastern Churches. Then ensued a period during which he was increasingly dissatisfied with the position of the Anglican Church, and this finally issued in his going over to Rome. It was especially during that period that the letters written to him by his father, who had naturally hoped to see his eldest son doing great things in his own Church, exhibit in the highest degree the virtues of humility, self- restraint, and fatherly sympathy. There is something singularly pathetic, as well as admirable, in the care and skill with which the father examines his son's elaborate arguments on questions of Church authority, the unbroken gentleness of his tone, and his firm resistance of every temptation to lay stress on the trial which his paternal heart endured in prospect of the growing certainty, though not fulfilled in his lifetime, that his son would abandon the Church of his baptism.
It is pleasant to realise bow great must have been the satisfaction with which Mr. Palmer contemplated the whole career, so far as he was spared to see it, of the author of these volumes. Alike in his friendships, in his distinguished University achievements, in his perfectly happy and congenial marriage with Lady Laura Waldegrave, in the sobriety as well as spirituality of his ecclesiastical point of view, and in his early professional and Parliamentary successes, the future Earl of Selborne must have given, and, as clearly appears, did give, cause of the greatest joy and pride to his father. Mr. Palmer died in 1853, and these volumes bring us down to 1865, by which time Rotindell Palmer had won the Attorney-General- ship, and had had to give advice to and to defend the action of Lord Palmerston's Government on the numerous and grave points of international obligation which arose in connection with the American War. We have from Lord Selborne a clear and interesting sketch of those points as they arose, and among other things an emphatic repudiation of Mr. Thomas Mozley's allegations in his " Reminiscences " as to culpable carelessness and delay on the part of the Ministry in their communications with Sir John Harding, then Queen's Advocate, with regard to the Alabama,' and as to the "joy "of the Ministers at the escape of that vessel. That there might with great advantage have been active interference on the part of the Government to prevent that disaster will, we think, now be admitted by most people, but Lord Selborne shows that in the light of the then known facts and of international law as then defined, there was a very plausible defence for the deliberation with which they proceeded.
We have no space left to notice in detail the many other interesting features of these volumes. They show Lord Selborne's shrewdness and kindliness in his judgment of men,—a kindliness which is conspicuous in his sketch of the character of one so remote in mind and temper from himself as the late Lord Westbury. They show also his readiness, already referred to, to put aside his private interests when any principle was at stake. That readiness is illustrated here by his independent speech and vote against Lord Palmerston's Government on the China War of 1857, by which he lost his seat for Plymouth, and his Parliamentary career was thrown back by several years. Correspondence here given with his great friend, Sir Arthur Gordon, shows the depth of his conviction against Irish Church Disestablish- ment in 1856. In the succeeding volumes which are promised one of the most interesting features will be the account of Sir Roundell Palmer's refusal to join Mr. Gladstone in the measure just mentioned,—a, refusal which again delayed the promotion which his great abilities had won.
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