THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF DEAN GREGORY.*
No better memorial of a long and strenuous life could have !been devised than these characteristic pages, in which the late Dean of St. Paul's has set down briefly, but with no lack of vigour•, the story of his battles and triumphs. His point of view in ecclesiastical politics was not ours ; but for• two of ids achievements we have the greatest admiration ; first for Isis pioneer work in Lambeth as incumbent of St. Mary the Less, and then for his quickening of the capitular deadbones at St. Paul's Cathedral. The record of his fifteen years at Lambeth is a testimony, not only to his indefatigable energy .and zeal, but also to his sound common sense and business capacity. (It is worth noting that at twenty-one he bad been -offered by the firm in Liverpool in which he was clerk a joint- partnership worth about £4,000 a year, which he declined, as lie had made up his mind to take Orders.) Besides building a .district church and schools of various grades, he founded an art school for the sake of the employees at the engineering works in the parish, some of the pupils of which afterwards arose to eminence, among others Ouless and Tinworth. Ire also persuaded Mr. Doulton to reproduce the once famous Lambeth pottery. The condition of things at St. Paul's when Gregory went there as canon, on the nomination of Disraeli, in 1868 is sufficiently illustrated by a story he tells of Archbishop Temple, who as a young man attended the morning service there, intending to remain for Holy Communion. When the earlier part of the service was over a verger came to him and said : "I hope, sir, you are not intending to remain for the Sacrament, as that will give the minor canon the trouble of celebrating, which otherwise he will not do." Gregory's strong hand and absolute fearlessness soon told upon his brethren, and led to a reformation, not without various skirmishes, which he tells with the gusto of a born fighter. But if St. Paul's owes much to his initiative in -the matter of its services it owes still more to his business training in the settlement of its finances, when the estates • The Autobiography of Robert Gregory, Dean of St. Paul's. Prepared for the Press, with Notes, by W. H. Hutton. London: Longman and Co. [6s.]
were handed over to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. That the Cathedral has funds at its disposal, by which it is enabled to play its part as the Mother Church of the diocese, is entirely due to the clear view taken by Gregory of the part it ought to play and his sound judgment as to the cost of play- ing it.
Archdeacon Hutton's editing of the late Dean's Memoirs is an admirable piece of work. He breaks them into sections, to which he adds just what is necessary by way of elucidation. It hardly falls within his province to criticise the views expressed, or we might have expected a comment on •the following reference to the Privy Council, which Gregory habitually censured for partiality in its judgments, forgetting that they were sometimes in favour of his Tractarian friends. After quoting a remark of Lord Cairns in a debate on the subject of Emmanuel Hospital, " that the action of the Privy Council was not confined to legal questions; but extended to questions of discretion, expediency, and policy," Gregory para. phrases : "Lord Cairns declares that the Privy Council acts from motives of discretion, expediency, and policy." But on this obvious " defect of his quality" we do not wish to enlarge.
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