MR. GLADSTONE AND THE RECTORY OF EWELME.
[To THE EDITOR Or TER "SPECTATOR:1
Sin,—In your review of the new volumes of the "Dictionary of National Biography" in the Spectator of September 21st you mention, as one of the two strangely perverse -acts of Mr. Gladstone's life, the presentation of Mr. W. W. Harvey, a Cambridge man, to the Rectory of Ewelme. Although I mentioned it years ago in the Academy, it does not seem to be generally known that Mr. Gladstone in the first instance offered the Rectory of Ewelme to Mr. W. E. Jelf, late Censor of Christchurch, author of the Greek Grammar, and one of the finest Greek scholars in the University, for whom no adequate reward had been made. Mr. Jelf was in opposition to Mr. Gladstone, both in politics and religion. In politics he was a strong Conservative opposed to a Liberal; in religion, while both were most loyal sons of the Church of England, one was devoted to the Evangelical, the other to the Tractarian, school. Yet it was to this bpponent, entirely unsolicited, solely on his merits, which he thought had not been sufficiently recognised, that Mr. Gladstone offered the living of Ewelme. It was a gracious act, and would generally have been regarded as such. I knew Ewelme at the time ; the outgoing rector, the late Dean of Canterbury, was one of my dearest friends. Mr. Jelf declined the living because the exposed position of the Rectory rendered it unsuitable for the health of his youngest son. It was not until it had been thus declined by an Oxford man that Mr. Gladstone turned to Cambridge.-4
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