THE LATE ARCHBISHOP ALEXANDER.
[To THE EDITOR. OF THE " SPECTATOR.'.] Sin,—Some twenty years ago Dr. Alexander—then, I think, Bishop of Derry—arrived in Oxford to preach the University Sermon at St. Mary's. In one of our common rooms he happened to see a circular inviting subscriptions to a Schopen- Lauer Memorial. The subject of his discourse was the Transfiguration, and towards the close of a very eloquent sermon he gave expression to the feeling of the moment somewhat in these words :— "And now, in the light of the Transfiguration, which will you chooso—Schopenhauer or Christ ? Some of us have recently been invited to subscribe to a sculptured memorial of that marvellously gifted man. What shall our memorial be ? Shall it be a symbol of the daemonic element in Nature, of the Will imprisoned in the cycle of inevitable change ? Or shall it rather be a symbol of the vanity of human effort : a heap, lot us imagine, of putrefying mould, and, busy thereon, the • burying beetle,' burrowing and battening and breeding in the putrefaction ? And below on the plinth let us write, ` Rottenness and darkness : a tribute from a select circle of admirers, who have committed the absurd but inevitable blunder of coming into existence in the worst of all possible worlds.'" I am trusting entirely to memory, and my report may be corrected by any member of the University whose recollection is more exact than my own.—I am, Sir, &c., Oxford. LECTOR.
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