Men travel far to see the dwelling-places and the costly tombs of Kings and Conquerors in their desire to recall the memory and the mighty deeds of the great ones who have gone before, and surely the homes of those who have taught goodness by example to high and low, and shed a holy and a happy influence through their country, are shrines equally worthy of our homage. It is in that spirit, and with the desire to keep green within the sanctuary of the heart the memory of good men, that we enter upon our present pilgrimage. It is to the place where Bishop Stanley spent his happiest years, and where his son, Dean Stanley, passed his boyhood's days—the one, the "good bishop" who united in himself the apostolical charity of a Tillotson and the pastoral energy of a Burnet; and the other, that loving and large-hearted divine who so lately passed into his rest, and whose removal from our midst sent a thrill of sadness through the land, and moved the sensibilities not of Englishmen alone but of the world.

Alderley, or Old Alderley as we prefer to call it in contradistinction to the aggregation of modern Swiss chalets, Italian villas, and imitation castles which Manchester's merchant princes have built for themselves on the wooded hill yclept Alderley Edge, is one of the most charmingly picturesque spots in the county—we had [Pg 51] [Pg 52] [Pg 53] almost said in the kingdom; the sort of place where, if lowered with overwork and worry, you would wish to retire to for perfect peace and quietude—and of a truth the wearied toiler might wander hither and thither for many a day before he could find a retreat more to his liking. The country is rich and varied, and there is an air of wild and untrimmed prodigality in the woods and plantations that is delighting to the eye. It is not a village—it can hardly be called a hamlet, the houses are so few. On a little triangular spot where four roads meet is what is emphatically called "the Cross," and a little way above, standing by the wayside, may be seen an antiquated hostelry that might be called the house of many gables. Time was when the tired wayfarer might find within its cosy parlour a hearty welcome, and be able to refresh himself with nut-brown ale; but good things are oftentimes abused, and so, now-a-days, to enforce sobriety, though the traveller may receive the welcome he must content himself with tea and coffee or such harmless beverages as lemonade and ginger ale. Near the inn is the old corn mill, a building that, with its surroundings, has formed the subject for many a picture, as the walls of our local exhibitions testify; in the rear, half hidden among the trees, is the old-fashioned rectory, standing in the midst of its equally old-fashioned garden, in which the old mulberry trees still flourish. The garden reaches up to the churchyard, reminding us of Wordsworth's exquisite description—

The place belongs entirely to the past; the shadows of bygone centuries seem to spread around, and everything bears the impress of hoar antiquity and undisturbed respectability; while even the few homesteads you see retain the picturesque features their builders imparted to them long ages ago. The church tower, grey and weather worn, and overgrown in places with ivy, looks with placid serenity over the broad pastures and the green country that stretches southwards and away to the west until it seems interminable, and the eye becomes wearied in trying to follow it to its furthest limits. A sombre-looking yew that has braved the winter's blasts through long centuries of time flanks the gateway; the tall trees that partly surround the churchyard throw their shadows across the grass-grown hillocks, the grasshopper skips about and the white moth flits to and fro, and above the blackbirds and the thrushes pour forth their sweetest music. The ancient fane itself is thoroughly English in its character, a church such as an artist loves to paint, and of which a true-hearted Englishman would carry away many a pleasant remembrance. It exhibits many architectural diversities; the tower is broad and massive, and nave, and chancel, and porch are picturesque in their grouping. On the north side a curious dormer window rises above the roof, and on the south the attention is arrested by the old stone staircase that leads up from the outside to the Stanley pew, a feature that may smack somewhat of exclusiveness, but quaint and pleasant to look upon notwithstanding. As you enter you see at a glance that the fabric has been cared for both within and without, for though the "restorer" has been at work he has dealt tenderly and lovingly with it, repairing only where repairs where needed. The old pews in which somnolent bucolics were wont to recline during sermon-time have been taken away; the flat painted ceiling has disappeared and the whitewash of a dozen generations of churchwardens has been removed from wall and pillar, but everything that was worth preserving has been carefully retained, and—

The only part that has been modernised is the chancel. It was rebuilt thirty years ago, and in it you may see many sepulchral memorials of the Stanleys and other local notabilities. On the south side is the monumental effigy of John Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who died in 1850, and on the opposite side, on an altar-tomb, richly inlaid with mosaic work, is the sculptured form of the last lord, who died in 1869; it is an exquisite work of art, and as you gaze upon the chiselled features you are struck with the remarkable resemblance they bear to the late Dean of Westminster. Against the wall on the same side of the chancel is a tablet of white marble in memory of Edward Stanley—the Bishop of Norwich—and his wife and their two sons, Charles Edward and Owen Stanley, and their daughter Mary.

From these marble memorials of the dead you turn to the galleried pew where, in life, those they commemorate were wont to worship. The front of that little enclosure is resplendent with heraldic blazonries, and tells, in the language of the "noble science," the story of the marriages of the lords of Alderley for a couple of centuries or more. The Stanleys are evidently proud of their armorial ensigns, for they are displayed on every hand, and as you gaze upon the oft-repeated shields the memory wanders back along the dim avenues of the past to the time when, ages ago, a Sir William Stanley, by his marriage with the heiress of Bamville, obtained the forest of Wyrral, and with it the right to bear, as his device, the three bucks' heads upon a cross-belt of cerulean hue; and to the time, too, when that Sir William's great-grandson married the heiress of the house of Lathom, and thereafter assumed as his crest the eagle and child—the "brid and babby," as Lancashire people prefer to call it—which tradition commemorates the circumstance of an infant being found in an eagle's nest by a Lathom, who adopted it, and, being childless, made it heir of all his lands.

The church is not a large building, but it is exceedingly picturesque, and its interest is nothing lessened by the consciousness that within its walls the voice of praise and thanksgiving has been heard for five hundred years and more. Everything about it is decent and comely, as befits the house of God, and if a stranger should happen to be there on a Sunday he will find the services creditably sung by a choir of boys, and the prayers devoutly read by a clergyman who is a sound Churchman, and a worthy successor of good old Edward Stanley.

On one side of the entrance to the churchyard an aged yewtree, weather-beaten and decayed, but still fighting time gallantly, flanks the churchyard gate—the emblem of immortality reminding the living that the spirits of those laid low have passed to the life beyond. On the other side is the little school-house, with its quaint windows, and mullions and masonry of red sandstone, a structure that was not reared yesterday, as its grey lichen-stained walls testify. As you enter the garden of the dead your ears are greeted with the pleasant music of young voices, and your attention is arrested by the number of green mounds where successive generations are sleeping their last sleep. A summer's day might be spent here in meditation among the nameless but hallowed graves, and in conning over the "uncouth rhymes" that the weather and the green moss are fast obliterating from the crumbling memorials on which they are inscribed. You may note, too, in places bunches of simple wild flowers that have been placed by loving hands upon the newly upheaved turf—the offerings of that tender affection which longs for "the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still." Near the east end, under the shade of a yew, is a plain white marble cross, with a small tablet at its base, embedded in the rock, on which is the following inscription:—

Here
Rests
Catherine Stanley
Died March 5 1862, aged 69
The wisdom
That is from above
Is first pure,
Then peaceable, gentle,
Easy to be entreated,
Full of Mercy
And good fruits
Without partiality
And without hypocrisy

It is to the memory of the wife of Bishop Stanley—the mother of the late Dean of Westminster—who entered into the dark valley while her son was accompanying the Prince of Wales on his journey through Egypt and Palestine. That grave has been once reopened—on the 2nd of December, 1879, it received the remains of the Dean's sister, Mary Stanley, a lady whose memory will be gratefully remembered for her heroic efforts to mitigate the sufferings of our soldiers during the Crimean War. The 5th of March, on which Catherine Stanley passed away, was Ash Wednesday, a day that ever after had its saddening associations for her son, who on another Ash Wednesday (March 1st, 1876), had to endure another and more terrible trial, for on that day he stood by the death bed of her who had loved, supported, and comforted him when the spirit of his mother had passed away—his wife.

In another part of the graveyard is an altar-tomb with a Latin inscription perpetuating the name of Thomas Deane, of the Park—a house near Monk's Heath—who endowed the parish school, and who is described as a lover of God, his Church, his King, and of all good deeds. Not far distant is an old disused font that was dug up half a century ago; it has a circular bowl capacious enough to immerse a child in, and, in its general outline, much resembles the one at Prestbury, both being probably of the same age.

From the churchyard we step into the rector's garden. The rectory house presents much the same appearance that it did fifty years ago, when Edward Stanley was its occupant; indeed, so little is it changed that it would require but little stretch of the imagination to picture the kindly-hearted old pastor watching the movements of his feathered friends, or, mounted upon his little black cob, setting out on a mission of mercy to some member of his rustic flock, his pockets the while filled with sweets and gingerbread for the children, with whom he was ever a favourite. The house is the beau-ideal of a country clergyman's home. It has no architectural beauties or peculiarities to boast of, and there is nothing pretentious about it; but it is a roomy, enjoyable sort of place, with an air of comfort and contentment pervading it that suggests the idea of the happy domestic life peculiar to England. A trellis work that forms a kind of verandah extends along the front, with honeysuckles, roses, and creeping plants climbing round the supports, and meeting overhead in a bower of vernal beauty. Of that verandah, which forms a kind of balcony, the Dean's mother thus wrote in one of her letters:—

Give me credit for coming from my balcony, from the sky, the stars, the moon, the heavenly air, to write to you. But it is not quite coming from them; my door is open, and I look now and then to the church tower, standing out so clear from the moonlight sky, which has scarcely yet lost its sunlight tinge—and my summer furniture of mignonette and sweet peas outside, to say nothing of the roses below or the trellis and the honeysuckle above—their united perfume all come streaming in the air. When I think of your imprisonment and your present deprivations of such a day as this, whose healing influences you so well would feel, I rejoice in your power of sympathy with the enjoyments as well as the sufferings of others, which makes me feel that I am refreshing rather than tantalizing you by placing my present position before you.

The door of the house stands invitingly open, and the wide entrance hall into which the visitor is ushered is in itself suggestive of the welcome awaiting the coming guest. The rooms are spacious, and lead one into another in a social sort of way, and the windows, reaching down to the floor and opening on to the lawn, give a bright prospect of the beautiful world without, of the pleasure grounds and the green grass carpet, chequered as we look upon it with the woodland shade and a moving group of laughing, bright-eyed nymphs engaged in a garden game. Oftentimes from those windows, as well as in his walks and rides, did the good old rector pursue his favourite study. "Close before the window of our observation," he says in his "Familiar History of Birds," "a well-mown, short-grassed lawn is spread before him (the starling)—it is his dining-room; there in the spring he is allowed to revel, but seldom molested, on the plentiful supply of worms, which he collects pretty much in the same manner as the thrush, already described. Close at hand, within half-a-stone's throw, stands an ivy-mantled parish church, with its mossy grey tower, from the turreted pinnacle of which rises a flagstaff, crowned by its weathercock; under the eaves and within the hollows and chinks of the masonry of the tower are his nursery establishments. On the battlements and projecting grotesque tracery of its Gothic ornaments he retires to enjoy himself, looking down on the rural world below; while, at other times, a still more elevated party will crowd together on the letters of the weathercock, or, accustomed to its motion, sociably twitter away their chattering song, as the vane creaks slowly round with every change of wind."

But Alderley has other attractions besides its venerable church and its pleasant old-fashioned rectory. We are not now going to speak of the Edge—of the Castle Rock, of the Holy Well, of Stormy Point, of the weather-beaten Beacon and the glorious view over the Cheshire Plain which it commands; nor yet to repeat the legend of the Wizard, the Iron Gates, and the Enchanted Cave in which stand the innumerable milk-white horses with the warriors beside them, all in a profound sleep and so—

The park, the beech woods, and Radnor Mere are well worthy of a passing notice, and the story of the Stanleys deserves to be told, for Alderley, though a small place, has a history behind it, and one which it need not be ashamed to own.

Alderley Park, "the fair domain" of the Stanleys, lies on the opposite side of the road to the church and the rectory. It is not so extensive as Tatton or Lyme, but it is equal to either for sylvan beauty and the charming views it affords. The rising grounds that extend in the direction of the Edge are clothed with a thick umbrage, the tall "patrician trees" mingling with the "plebeian underwood;" many of the older denizens of the wood are curled and distorted into all sorts of weird shapes, and bear the marks of the rough warfare they have had for ages to wage against the elements. Here and there pleasant vistas open out and from the high ground you can look over the fairest portion of the Vale Royal of England, over miles and miles of woodland and pastures and [Pg 63] [Pg 64] [Pg 65] green fields, dotted at intervals with old farm houses and still older churches, a prospect such as no other country but our own can show, and which many a wanderer in distant lands would give a year of his life to see again. It is thoroughly pastoral in character, and imparts an undefinable sensation of quietude and rest, suggesting the idea of eternal tranquillity and peace. The view is charming at all seasons, but never more so than in the spring-time, when the trees have put on their fresh leafage, when the air is laden with the sweet odours of the scented thorn, and the thrush and the blackbird pour forth their melodious notes as if to make perfect the charm and witchery of our English scenery.

From among the time-worn fathers of the grove a little rindle winds its way with many a curve and sinuosity until it empties itself in a broad lake, formerly called Radnor Mere, but now more commonly known as Alderley Mere—a relic, so tradition affirms, of the great lake that in pre-historic times is believed to have extended as far as High Legh, a dozen miles or so away, and of which Tatton Mere, Rostherne Mere, and Mere Mere formed a part. But the glory of the park is the beech wood which reaches down almost to the edge of the mere; it was planted, so the local chroniclers tell us, more than a couple of centuries ago by Sir Thomas Stanley, the first baronet, who obtained a supply of beech mast from his father-in-law's grounds at Kyre, in Worcestershire, the tree being then uncommon in Cheshire. Possibly he was influenced by the advice which John Evelyn about that time had been giving in his "Discourse of Forest Trees," and desired to supply his tenantry with stuffing for their beds. The author of "Sylva" says:—"But there is yet another benefit which this tree (the beech) presents us; its very leaves, which make a natural and most agreeable canopy all the summer, being gathered about the fall, and somewhat before they are much frost-bitten, afford the best and easiest mattresses in the world to lay under our quilts instead of straw, because, besides their tenderness and loose lying together, they continue sweet for seven or eight years, long before which time straw becomes musty and hard." It would be interesting to know if the primitive custom to which Evelyn referred continues in any part of rural England at the present day, or if it has been entirely discarded. More stately trees than the Alderley beeches we have seldom seen in any part of the country; they stand thick in the background, giving a forest-like character to the scene, and the pathways that wind beneath them in a wild and wandering sort of way afford as delightful a sylvan walk as the foot of man can tread. The dead leaves lie the whole year round upon the turf, and overhead the branches meet in a verdant canopy, imparting a mysterious gloom that seems like a perpetual twilight. No one who longs for seclusion needs "fly to a lodge in some vast wilderness," for here he may wander for a day without the sound of a fellow mortal to disturb him or hearing any footfall but his own, and can, if so disposed, realise the full meaning of the words—

Well do we remember a summer evening's saunter through the park and the old beech wood in the pleasant companionship of the worthy rector of Alderley, beguiling the time with cheerful chat.

Entering by a gate near the old corn-mill we struck across the park in an easterly direction and soon reached the edge of the wood, from which there is a good view of the hall and the old deer house, with the mere in front, feathered down almost to the water's edge with stately trees. The wilder parts of the grounds are alive with rabbits, and as we strode over the green sward they started up from the fern and the thick grass and scampered off to their warrens in all directions; but no other sign of life was visible, and, save that now and then we could hear the distant croaking of the corn-crake and the thrush chanting a requiem to the departing day from a neighbouring copse, even the birds seemed to have sunk to rest in their foliaged homes. The woods were in the fulness of their summer verdure, displaying a thousand varied tints of green and yellow; to the right we could see the great plain of Cheshire stretching away towards the Frodsham hills and the estuary of the Dee, the green meadow-breadths looking almost golden in the sunset sheen. A warm aËrial haze suffused itself over the landscape, softening into beauty every object; the breeze which so lately frolicked through the trees had died away, and the wide mere lay spread before us calm, and still, and bright as a mirror, while its surface, unruffled by a single ripple, gave back with wonderful minuteness the outline of the plumy woods, the amber radiance of the sky, and the moving forms of the reeds and water flags that fringe its margin; the effect being heightened as now and then a shaft of ruddy light quivered through the foliage and shed an almost unearthly splendour upon the water.

That scene has been so exquisitely described in the "Journal" of Catherine Stanley that we are tempted to transcribe it:—

The purplish brown of the wood rising above the softened reflection of it in the water, and a few touches of brighter brown in the shrubs and ferns near the edge; the boathouse relieved by the dark wood behind it; a line of yellowish brown reeds breaking the reflection of it in the water, and another still brighter yellow-and-brown island coming immediately before it; the soft blue haze spread over the water and softening the reflected outlines of the wood without weakening the effect, contrasted here and there with the vivid and determinate outline of a few leaves or weeds lying on the surface of the water; the scene enlivened now and then by a wild duck darting from the reeds across the lake, making a flutter and foam before her, and leaving a line of clear light behind her on her path, her wild cry distinctly echoed from the wood and deerhouse together—such a simplicity yet variety of tint, such a force of effect, and such a softness of shade and colour! Artists, one and all, hide your diminished heads!

The home of the Stanleys is a stone building of no great antiquity and very little architectural merit, and, considering the many advantageous sites the park affords, has been placed with a singular disregard for the charms of situation. Until 1779 the family resided at the old hall near the church, but in the spring of that year it was burnt down, and until the present mansion was built they were obliged to take up their abode at the Park House, a tenement formerly part of the estates held in Alderley by the Abbey of Dieulacres, near Leek. The Hon. Miss Stanley, in her description of "Alderley Edge and its Neighbourhood," says: "The old hall of Alderley was burnt down in the spring of the year 1779. Sir John Stanley was absent at the time; he was on the road home, returning from Chester, where he had gone the day before—he arrived when the whole was nearly consumed—very little of the furniture was saved. It was never known how the fire originated. The house stood in the village of Alderley, close to the mill. It was surrounded by a moat spreading out into a large sheet of water on the east side, and on the west filling a channel cut out of the solid rock. When the house was burnt, it consisted of three sides of (comparatively speaking) a modern built mansion, a large hall of an older date occupying the other side, and offices behind the hall. A handsome stone bridge of two arches crossed the moat from the ground entrance and west side to a stone terrace, which commanded views of the Park, the church, and the plain of Cheshire, and by a flight of steps led to a handsome stone arched gateway close to the road, built by Sir Thomas, the first Baronet." The inscription on the tombstone in Alderley church of Sir Thomas Stanley, who died in 1591, says: "He rebuilt the houses of Alderley and Weever," from which it is evident there was a still earlier mansion upon the site; the house he erected was doubtless the "large hall of an older date" referred to by Miss Stanley, the other portions of the building having been added about the beginning of the last century. The two end pillars, bearing the crest of the Stanleys—the eagle and child—with a portion of the wall, may be seen abutting upon the roadside; but, with these exceptions, not a vestige of the old mansion remains.

The connection of the Stanleys with Alderley dates back about four hundred and fifty years or thereabouts, when the estate was acquired by the marriage of John Stanley, a brother of the first Earl of Derby, with Elizabeth, the daughter and heiress of Thomas Weever, of Weever and Alderley. This John's father, Sir Thomas Stanley, of Lathom, after serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, emerged from among the country gentlemen as Lord Stanley, and was made controller of the household of the "meek usurper," Henry VI., when, in consideration of his services, he had granted to him by favour of the King the wardship and marriage of Thomas Weever's heiress, and he, with commendable care for the worldly well-being of his younger son, bestowed the lady and her lands upon him.

The house of Stanley, which ranks among the greatest of our governing families, is one of the most ancient as it is one of the most distinguished in the page of history, comprising at the present day, in addition to the baronetcy enjoyed by the elder line—the Stanleys, of Hooton in Wirral—two peerages, the Earldom of Derby of Knowsley, in Lancashire, and the Barony of Stanley of Alderley, in Cheshire, besides the younger branches in Staffordshire, Sussex, Kent, and Hertfordshire. The first known ancestor was one Adam de Aldithlegh, so named from his paternal estate of Audithlegh, in Normandy, who came over with William the Conqueror. Acquitting himself bravely on the field of Hastings, he was rewarded with large territorial estates in the newly conquered country. He was accompanied in the expedition by his two sons, Lydulph or Lyulph and Adam de Aldithlegh. These sons married, and in due course two grandsons were born to the old Norman warrior, both of whom married into a Saxon family of noble rank and ancient lineage, which had been fortunate enough to retain possession of its estates, while confiscation had been the lot of those around it. The family derived its name from the manor of Stanley or Stoneley, the stony lea or stony field according to the Anglo-Saxon meaning, a little hamlet lying about three miles south-west of the small manufacturing town of Leek, in Staffordshire, a place which, Erdswick, the old topographer, remarks "seems to take its name of the nature of the soil, which, though it be in the moorlands, is yet a rough and stony place, and many craggy rocks are about it." One of the grandsons, Adam, the son of Lyulph de Audithlegh, became in right of his wife lord of Stanley, and was ancestor of the Lord Audley of ancient times, and is represented through the female line by the Touchets, Lords Audley of the present day. The other grandson, William, the son of Adam de Audithlegh, acquired with his wife the lordship of Thalck, better known as Talk o' th' Hill, in the same county. This William seems to have conceived a liking for the stony lea before referred to, and exchanged his lordship of Talk with his cousin for it. Thenceforward he made Stanley his seat, and, as the old chronicles tell us, in honour of his wife and of the great antiquity of her family, assumed her maiden name and became immediate founder of the Stanleys, a race the most illustrious in the country's annals, and associated with the most stirring events of history.

Sir William Stanley, the fourth in descent from the William who first assumed the name, gave an impetus to the fortunes of the family by one of those matrimonial alliances to which the house of Stanley owes so much of its prosperity. He took to himself a wife in the person of Joan, the youthful daughter and co-heir of Sir Philip Bamville, master forester of Wirral, and lord of Storeton, a place some few miles south of Birkenhead.

Associated with this match is a love story that in its romantic incidents is scarcely less interesting than the one related of the fair heiress of Haddon, Dorothy Vernon. The daughter of the house of Storeton had given her heart to young Stanley, and to escape the misery of a forced marriage with one for whom she had no love she determined to elope. While a banquet was being given to her father, she stole unobserved away, and, being joined by young William Stanley, the anxious lovers rode swiftly across the country to Astbury Church, and there, in the presence of Adam Hoton and Dawe Coupelond, plighted their troth to each other. Six hundred years have rolled away since that scene was enacted, but it requires little stretch of the imagination to picture the resolute maiden hastening with tremulous steps from her father's house, the exciting ride across country, and the hurried joining of hands and hearts in the old church at Astbury, and forgetting that all this occurred long ages ago, we wish from our hearts all happiness to the pair. The story is no mere legend, for the facts are to be found in those musty and unromantic records, the Cheshire Inquisitions, which have been unearthed, and their contents made accessible to the world, by the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records. In a return to a writ of enquiry as to the betrothal of William Stanley, the Inquisition sets forth—

That on the Sunday after the Feast of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist, two years ago, viz., on the 27th September, 1282, Philip de Bamville, with his wife and family, was at a banquet given by Master John de Stanley (an ecclesiastic apparently, priests at that time who had an academical degree being entitled to be called master), on which occasion Joan (Bamville), suspecting that her father intended to marry her to her step-mother's son, took means to avoid it by repairing with William de Stanley to Astbury Church, where they uttered the following mutual promise, he saying, "Joan, I plight thee my troth to take and hold thee as my lawful wife until my life's end," and she replying, "I Joan take thee William as my lawful husband." The witnesses were Adam de Hoton and Dawe de Coupelond.

By this marriage William Stanley became owner of one-third of the manor of Storeton (the remaining two-thirds he subsequently acquired), and also the hereditary bailiwick or chief rangership of the Forest of Wirral, which then overspread the peninsula lying between the estuaries of the Mersey and the Dee, and which was so thickly wooded that, according to the old saying:—

After this marriage the Stanleys migrated from the Stony-lea in Staffordshire to their newly acquired home in Cheshire, and at the same time Sir William, in allusion to his office of hereditary forester of Wirral, assumed the arms which have ever since been used by his descendants in place of those borne by his ancestors, viz., argent, on a bend azure, three bucks' heads caboshed or; in other words, over a shield of silver a belt of blue crossed diagonally with three bucks' heads displayed thereon.

Another and still more important addition was made to the patrimonial lands of the Stanleys through the marriage of Sir William de Stanley, the fourth in direct descent from the first of the name who held the forestership of Wirral, with Margery, only daughter and heir of Sir William de Hooton of Hooton, a township midway between Chester and Birkenhead, and occupying one of the most delightful situations which the banks of the estuary can boast, commanding, as Ormerod says, "a peculiarly beautiful view of the Forest Hills, the bend of the Mersey, and the opposite shore of Hale, and shaded with venerable oaks which the Wirral breezes have elsewhere rarely afforded." From this marriage descended the Stanleys of Hooton and their offshoots, among whom may be mentioned that Sir William Stanley who, in the reign of Elizabeth, betrayed the trust committed to him by the English Government in the base surrender of Deventer to the King of Spain.

The younger line of the Stanleys, with whose fortunes we are more immediately concerned, commences properly with a younger brother of Sir William Stanley of Hooton, Sir John Stanley, who married Isabel, the daughter and sole heir of Sir Thomas Lathom, lord of Lathom, whose ancestress had also been heir of Sir Thomas de Knowsley, lord of Knowsley, and who thus, in right of his wife, became master of the extensive estates around which his descendants' princely property has accreted. By the marriage with the heiress of Bamville the Stanleys acquired the three bucks' heads which have continued ever since to be the distinguishing charge on their heraldic coat; and in like manner, by the marriage with the heiress of Lathom, they obtained the remarkable crest which to the present day continues to surmount their arms, the well-known Eagle and Child, in heraldic language described as—on a chapeau gules turned up ermine, an eagle with wings elevated or, preying upon an infant swaddled of the first, banded argent. Many are the stories that are told respecting Sir John's elopement with the heiress of Lathom, and great is the amount of legendary lore that gathers round the crest which he adopted in her honour. The tradition has often been related, and the curious who wish to know more respecting it will find much interesting information in the Miscellanea Palatina (1851) and in a contribution to Nichol's Collectanea by the learned historian of Cheshire. The greatness of the Stanleys may be said to have commenced with Sir John—a cool, shrewd, and efficient man—who in his lifetime raised the family from the rank of simple country gentlemen. We need not recount all the honours and distinctions bestowed, or the steady shower of royal benefactions that descended upon him. A knight sans peur et sans reproche, he was a rare instance of a courtier who could carry himself through four successive reigns with ever increasing prosperity—and without once sustaining a reverse. His eldest son, Sir John Stanley, fully sustained the dignity of the family, and his grandson, Sir Thomas, in whose person the elevation of the Stanleys to the peerage took place, increased it. But it remained for the son of the last-named Sir Thomas to carry the fortunes of the house to heights before unknown. Living in an age when the spirit of chivalry had given place to a policy of subtlety and success depending less on strength of arm than astuteness of head, he ran a career of successful faithlessness that has scarcely a parallel in English history. Looking always to his own interest, fighting always for his own hand, and changing sides at his own discretion, but always changing to the dominant party, he received as the reward of his consummate tact enormous royal grants which went to swell the originally great possessions of his house; and, finally, by the boldest and most adroit stroke of his whole life—when the rival Roses met on the field of Bosworth and he had beguiled both combatants with promises of sympathy, after the fate of the battle was decided he went over to the side of the victor, and completed his services by placing the battered crown of the vanquished Richard upon the brow of the triumphant Richmond, exclaiming—

Thus Thomas Stanley earned for himself and his descendants the Earldom of Derby. Through his eldest son, George Lord Strange, who succeeded to the title, Thomas, Earl of Derby, was progenitor of a race of illustrious men, conspicuous among whom were James, the "Martyr Earl," distinguished for his attachment to the Royal cause during the Civil Wars, and the eminent statesman of more recent times, Edward Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th earl, who died in 1869—the father of the present holder of the title.

The Stanleys of Alderley trace their descent from John, a younger brother of Thomas the first Earl, who became possessed of the manor of Alderley by his marriage with the heiress of Thomas Weever, lord of Weever and Alderley. When Duke William of Normandy parcelled out the land in the newly-conquered country among his faithful followers Alderley fell to the share of William Fitz Nigel, the builder and fortifier of Halton Castle, and was held by him as of his manor of Halton. In 1294 he granted Over Alderley to one Roger Throsle, who in turn gave it as a marriage portion to his daughter Margery when she became the wife of Edmund Downes. Subsequently it passed into the possession of the Ardernes, who held it for two or three generations. Peter de Arderne, the last male representative of this line, had an only surviving daughter, the heiress of all his lands; wishing in his life-time to secure a suitable match for her he, in the reign of Edward III., purchased from Sir John de Arderne, lord of Aldford and the paramount lord of Weever, the wardship and marriage of Richard, son and heir of Thomas de Weever, paying for the same 40 marks (£26 13s. 4d.), an investment he turned to profitable account by marrying his young ward to his daughter. In this way the estates of Weever and Alderley became united, and so they continued until the reign of Henry VI. In 1445 Thomas de Weever, the great-grandson of Richard de Weever and Margaret Arderne his wife, died, leaving an only daughter, Elizabeth, who thus became heiress of the lands in Weever and Alderley. Being under age at the time of her father's death she became a ward of the King, and he, as previously mentioned, gave the disposal of her in marriage to his favourite, Thomas, the first Lord Stanley, who made the most of his opportunity by marrying her to his third son, Thomas Stanley, thus securing for him and his descendants a very handsome patrimony, embracing the manor of Weever and the lands in Over and Nether Alderley, &c.. Weever remained in their possession until 1710, when it passed by sale to the Wilbrahams of Townsend, now represented by George Fortescue Wilbraham, Esq., of Delamere House, but Alderley was retained and still continues the chief residence of the family, who have held it in continuous succession for a period of more than four hundred years.

It is not our purpose to trace the descent of the Stanleys through successive generations, we therefore pass over the history of the ancient house to the time of Sir Thomas Stanley, the sixth in direct descent from John Stanley, who married the heiress of Weever, and the one who added a baronetcy to the honours of the Alderley line—an interval of nearly two centuries, during which time the family estates had been largely increased, partly from the possessions of the dissolved abbey of Dieulacres, and partly from lands acquired at different times through prudent marriages, as evidenced by the Inquisition taken in 1606, after the death of Sir Thomas Stanley, Knight, who had married the heiress of Sir Peter Warburton of Grafton, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, and which shows that at his decease he held the manors of Weever, Over Alderley, Nether Alderley, Clive, Little Meols, and Pulton Launcelyn; and lands in those and the following places: Barretspool, Wimbaldesley, Stanthorne, Spittle, Middlewich, Rushton, Bredbury, Upton near Macclesfield, Chorley, Hough, Warford, Chelford, Astle, Birtles, Mobberley, Ollerton, Torkington, Offerton, Norbury, Occleston, Sutton, &c., all in the county of Chester. This Thomas, who had been knighted by James I. while at Worksop Manor on his progress towards London, after the death of Elizabeth, a journey during which he shed the honours of knighthood on no less than two hundred and thirty-seven gentlemen who were presented to him, was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Stanley, who was only eight years of age at the time of the father's death.

Shortly after he came of age Thomas Stanley married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir James Pytts, of Kyre, in Worcestershire, and in 1634 he was honoured with the shrievalty of his native county. The time was an anxious one. It was the year preceding the arbitrary levy of ship-money, when the storm was gathering that ere long was to break with such disastrous force upon the head of the ill-fated Charles. When the sword was drawn the head of the Alderley Stanleys ranged himself on the side of those who contended for the privileges of Parliament in opposition to Kingly prerogative, and who were resolved upon upholding the bulwark of the national liberties; he does not appear, however, to have engaged in any of the great military enterprises which marked that stirring period, the help he rendered to the cause being limited in a great measure to the discharge of the civil functions which devolved upon him as a magistrate, and in the performance of which he was very zealous and energetic. His name is of frequent occurrence in the church books in his own part of the county, and when, during the time of the Usurpation, marriage, as a religious ceremony, was forbidden by the law, and transformed into a civil contract to be entered into before a justice of the peace, Mr. Stanley appears to have been one of the magistrates most frequently performing the office. Though a staunch Puritan, he can hardly be said to have been a violent supporter of the party, and except in the assiduous discharge of his magisterial office he took little part in the events that were then transpiring. Possibly it was the moderation shown in those exciting times that led to his being one of the Cheshire gentlemen selected for a baronetcy on the occasion of the Restoration of Charles II., and curiously enough his name appears first on the list from the county on whom that dignity was conferred. The hall at Weever had up to this time been the principal residence of the family. Some time before 1640 Thomas Stanley added to his possessions by the purchase of Chorley Hall, an old mansion of the Davenports, in Wilmslow parish; afterwards he greatly improved the ancestral home at Alderley, and erected in front of it a handsome stone-arched gateway, two of the pillars of which may still be seen in the wall bordering the roadside; it is said that he also planted the beech woods bordering upon the Mere, which now form such a pleasant adjunct of the park.

Until the present century the succeeding generations of the Stanleys took little active interest in national affairs, preferring the quieter and less exciting life of country gentlemen, passing much of their time in Cheshire improving their estates, and spending much of their leisure in the indulgence of their literary tastes. Sir Peter Stanley, who succeeded as second baronet on the death of his father, Sir Thomas, in 1672, served the office of sheriff in 1678. He died in 1683, having had by his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Leigh of Northcourt, in the Isle of Wight, two sons and seven daughters. Thomas Stanley, the eldest son, who succeeded to the barony and estates, was born at Alderley on the 25th March, 1652, and baptized there on the 15th April following. He added to the family estates by his marriage with Christiana, daughter and heiress of Sir Stephen Leonard, of West Wickham, Kent, Bart. During his time the old hall of Weever, a half-timbered mansion, pleasantly situated on an acclivity that rises from the banks of the river of the same name, and which had come into the possession of the Stanleys as early as the reign of Henry VI., and been their principal residence until 1660 or thereabouts, was sold, the purchaser being Randle Wilbraham, of Townshend, direct ancestor of the Wilbrahams of Delamere House. Lady Stanley, who died February 16, 1711-12, bore him in addition to two daughters, both of whom died unmarried, two sons, who in turn succeeded to the honours and estates of the family. Sir Thomas Stanley died at West Wickham in 1721, when the eldest of his two sons, James Stanley, succeeded as heir. He married in November, 1740, Frances, youngest daughter of George Butler, of Ballyragget, in the county Kilkenny, in Ireland, but by her had no issue. He seems to have been a somewhat eccentric personage, if we may judge from a remark made by Miss Stanley. She says, quoting from the recollections of John Finlow, an old retainer of the family, that "Sir James used to drive up to the Edge almost daily in his carriage drawn by four black long-tailed mares, always accompanied by a running footman of the name of Critchley." She adds that her informant, Finlow, was a lad then, and used to get up behind the carriage. Notwithstanding his little foibles the old baronet is represented as having been of a remarkably mild and placid temperament, a character that seems to be borne out by some lines he is believed to have written, and which were found among his papers after his death—

Sir James Stanley died March 17th, 1746-7, when the baronetcy as well as the patrimonial lands devolved upon his younger brother, Edward, who succeeded as fifth baronet. He did not, however, long enjoy possession of the estates, for in 1755, while returning from Adlington, where he had been on a visit to Charles Legh, he was suddenly seized with a fit of apoplexy, and died in his carriage before he could be conveyed home. By his marriage with Mary, daughter of Thomas Ward, a wealthy banker, of London, who survived him and died at Bath in 1771, he had two sons, James Stanley, who died in infancy, and John Thomas, born 26th March, 1735, who succeeded as sixth baronet. He was in his twenty-first year at the time of his father's decease, and married in April, 1763, Margaret, daughter and heiress of Hugh Owen, of Penrhos, in Anglesey, a well-wooded estate, about a mile from the town and harbour of Holyhead. When he came into possession of the family estates the steep rocky promontory known as the Edge, and with which every Manchester holiday-maker is familiar, was a wild dreary common, without any sign of cultivation, except the few clumps of hardy fir trees which had been planted by his father and by his uncle, Sir James Stanley, between the years 1745 and 1755. It is recorded that in 1799 he enclosed the Edge, with other waste lands on the estate, and, at the same time repaired or rebuilt the old Beacon which had been in existence from the time of Elizabeth, if not from a still earlier date, and which was then in a state of decay, covering in the square chamber with the pyramidal roof which, until it became obscured by the thick umbrage around, made it one of the chief landmarks in Cheshire.

Sir John Thomas Stanley died in London, November 29th, 1807, and was buried at South Audley. By his wife, who survived him, and died February 1st, 1816, he had a numerous family—two sons and five daughters. Of the sons, the eldest, born November 26th, 1766, and named after himself, succeeded as seventh baronet, and in 1839 was elevated to the peerage by the title of Baron Stanley of Alderley. The other son, Edward, the youngest of seven children, was born at his father's residence in London, January 1st, 1779.

While the baronetcy and the broad lands of Alderley were reserved for the eldest son of Sir John Thomas Stanley, the family living—the rectory and the pleasant old rectory house—was the portion that Edward, the youngest son, could look forward to, for the Stanleys were then, as now, patrons of the church, as well as lords of the manor of Alderley.

The future rector, as we have seen, first saw the light on New Year's Day, 1779. He was born at his father's residence in London, and his birth and baptism are thus recorded in the church register at Alderley:—

1779. Feb. 21.—Edward, son of Sir John Thomas Stanley and Margaret, Lady Stanley, was born in the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, co. Middlesex, the 1st of January, 1779, and baptized on the 31st of the same month (by the Rev. Ralph Carr, rector of Alderley) at Sir John's house, in the said parish of St. George's.

Though born, as it were, to the prospect of taking Holy Orders, Edward Stanley's sanguine temperament, his love of adventure and spirit of enterprise, led him in early years to long for the excitement and the perils of a naval life, a passion that is said to have been inspired by a visit he made, when a child of three or four years, to Weymouth, where he first saw an English man-of-war. Though the boyish fancy was overruled by circumstances beyond his own control, the impression made upon his mind was never eradicated, and his enthusiastic love for a profession from which he was excluded remained and gave a colour to his whole after life. As his son in later years observed, "the sight of a ship, the society of sailors, the embarkation on a voyage, were always sufficient to inspire and delight him wherever he might be."

A bright, happy, eager childhood seems to have been his. Of amiable disposition, with a cheerful flow of animal spirits, fertility of resource, activity of mind and body, and an exuberance of boyish mirth and daring, he carried with him into the active business of life those natural characteristics which enabled him, when he had attained to manhood, to overcome whatever difficulties might beset his path—characteristics that were especially useful to him when he entered upon his University career, for it can hardly be said that up to that time his education and training were such as to specially fit him for the sacred calling in which he was to find his vocation, or such as were ordinarily given to boys destined for the Church. His early life was passed in a succession of removals from one private school or tutor to another; subsequently he was placed in the Grammar School at Macclesfield, under the Rev. Dr. Inglis, whose classical attainments had earned for the school a high reputation in the Universities. In 1798 he entered at St John's College, Cambridge, to find, however, that he had to begin his course of study almost from the very foundation. Dean Stanley, in his "Memoirs," to which we are indebted for many interesting particulars of his life, says: "Of Greek he was entirely, of Latin almost entirely, ignorant; and of mathematics he knew only what he had acquired at one of the private schools where he had been placed when quite a child." His earnest application and indomitable perseverance, however, soon enabled him to make up for these deficiencies, and to make such progress that in 1802 he appeared as 16th Wrangler in the mathematical tripos. Of him it might with truth be said that "he applied his heart to know, and to search, and to seek out wisdom," and we might almost fancy him to have been the subject of the portrait of an English clergyman which a Fellow of his own college, W. Mackworth Praed, drew with such a skilful hand—

He cherished a grateful recollection of the advantages he gained from his academic course at Cambridge, and his affection for his alma mater was shown in the spirited letter he addressed to a local journal when, a generation later, an attack was made upon the University by Mr. Beverley. "I can never," he says, "be sufficiently grateful for the benefits I received within those college walls; and to the last hour of my life I shall feel a deep sense of thankfulness to those tutors and authorities for the effects of that discipline and invaluable course of study which rescued me from ignorance, and infused an abiding thirst for knowledge, the means of intellectual enjoyment, and those habits and principles which have not only been an enduring source of personal gratification, but tended much to qualify me, from the period of my taking orders to the present day, for performing the duties of an extensive parish."

Having taken his B.A., he made a Continental tour, visiting Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. On his return he was admitted to Holy Orders and ordained to the curacy of Windleshaw, in Surrey, where he remained for about three years, when the rectory of Alderley became vacant, by the resignation of the Rev. Ralph Carr, who had held it for the long period of forty-three years, the greater part of which time he had been non-resident. This was in 1805—the year in which he proceeded to his degree of M.A.—and he was then presented by his father to the vacant living and inducted November 15th.

Though little of his early life had been passed at Alderley, the place was endeared to him by many family associations, and from his first entering upon the ministerial office the ardent desire of his heart was to do something for the people, who, through the apathy and long continued absence of his predecessor, had been as sheep having no shepherd.

At that time the religious life of England was at a very low ebb; ministerial neglect was the rule rather than the exception, and the conduct of the clergy generally was not regulated by any very high standard of morality or excellence. Among the changes that have been wrought in our national institutions during the present century none have been more remarkable than those in the Church—not in its abstract constitution, but in the character and conduct of its ministers. The clerical "lights of other days" shone but dimly. Those who resided upon their benefices were content to spend their days in an easy hand-in-glove kind of association with their people, but seldom or never rose above the ordinary routine of the stated services of the Church. With the wise man they believed that "in much study is a weariness of the flesh," and to avoid that "weariness" they were wont to give more time to the foxes than to the Fathers. The typical clergyman of eighty years ago preferred conviviality to controversy; he was more concerned about his pigs than his preaching, and dreaded distemper in his herd a great deal more than he did dissent in his flock. Alderley was no exception to the general condition of the country, and many are the stories of clerical shortcomings that still linger in the memory of the older inhabitants. Rector Carr had made it his boast that he "never set a foot in a sick person's cottage," and it is related that when service was held in the church "the clerk used to go to the churchyard stile to see whether there were any more coming to church, for there were seldom enough to make a congregation."

A parish which had remained so long in a state of spiritual torpor presented many difficulties to a new comer filled with a desire to promote the well-being of his people, and whose creed was—

Surrounded by so much ignorance and indifference the enthusiasm of his fervent spirit was enkindled, and his ardent nature, combined with his strong sense of duty, acted as an incentive, and increased the desire to minister to the wants, both temporal and spiritual, of his flock, and faithfully to fulfil the sacred trust committed to him in his parochial cure. But those among whom he was called to minister were untaught in the first rudiments of the Christian faith, and upon ground so unprepared it was clear that the seed of the Word read and preached in the church, and the services of the liturgy, however reverently said or sung, could profit little, and that it was only by clothing his thoughts in language suited to their capacity—by giving in the plainest words such simple instruction as should touch their hearts, and by a kindly sympathy in all their concerns that he could hope to become "a father and a leader" to his hitherto neglected parishioners, and sustain among them a higher standard of conduct than was then common among an agricultural population. To be, in short—

With him duty seemed to be a delight, and piety an instinct; though among the indolent, easy-going divines of the old school, in whom the true liturgical teaching of the Church had withered down into a mere lifeless form, his unwearying devotion to the charge committed to his care was looked upon as only the fervid zeal of an enthusiastic visionary.

Edward Stanley had nearly completed his twenty-seventh year when he entered upon his ministry at Alderley. In his twenty-ninth year he became engaged to the lady who may with truth be said to have been the sunshine of his heart, who took an unfailing interest and pride in his labours, and who was his constant stay and support through life—Catherine Leycester, the eldest of the two daughters of the Rev. Oswald Leycester, at the time rector of Stoke-upon-Terne, but who, in Edward Stanley's boyhood, had been curate of Alderley, a position he resigned on being presented by his brother, George Leycester, to the living of the neighbouring church of Knutsford. They were married in 1810, as Maria Leycester in her family notes, transcribed in "Memorials of a Quiet Life," thus records: "On the 8th of May, 1810, my sister was married in Stoke Church, to Edward Stanley, Rector of Alderley. Upon her marriage I left Leighton Cottage, and until my mother's death I remained at home. My father gave me lessons in—it must be confessed—bad French and Italian, but it was my sister who still directed my studies by letter, constantly sending me questions on the books which I read, and expecting me to write her the answers.... Edward Stanley was to me the kindest of brothers, and great was the amusement he gave by the playful verses he wrote to please me."

The Leycesters of Toft, of which house Oswald Leycester was a younger son, were an offshoot of the Leycesters of Tabley, now represented by Lord de Tabley. The family held high rank among the Cheshire squirearchy, and between them and the Stanleys a friendship had long existed, the intimacy being increased by near neighbourship, for Toft, their ancestral home—a charmingly situated manor-house, where, before his removal to Stoke, Oswald Leycester resided with his widowed mother—was only a few miles distant, and a continuous intercourse was kept up between the two families. "My great delight," wrote Maria Leycester, "was to go to Alderley Park and play with the 'Miss Stanleys;' and it was a joy when, standing by the breakfast table, I heard it settled that the carriage was to be ordered to go to Alderley, and that I was to be of the party." The Leycesters could boast a lineage as ancient as that of the Stanleys, and through the Tofts, whose estates they had acquired by marriage with a heiress of that family in the reign of Richard II., were able to trace their descent from Gunnora, Duchess of Normandy, the grandmother of William the Conqueror.

Edward Stanley was approaching his thirty-second year at the time of his marriage—his wife had then just passed her nineteenth birthday. But, young as she was, she had, owing to the delicate health of her mother, been taught, almost from the time of leaving school, to think and act for herself, and had had moreover the responsibility cast upon her of educating her younger sister, Maria Leycester. "Hers was a porcelain understanding," said Sydney Smith; her journal and the letters written in her earlier life give a true reflex of her mind, and justify the remark of her son that "there was a quiet wisdom, a rare usefulness, a calm discrimination, a firm decision, which made her judgment and her influence felt through the whole circle in which she lived."

To the old rectory house at Alderley, Edward Stanley took his bride, and in that happy home five children were brought up. Of the every-day life in that household we get many pleasant glimpses in the journal of Maria Leycester, to which reference has already been made. She writes upon one occasion:—

We live here (Alderley Rectory) in such perfect retirement and tranquillity that it is more like Stoke than Alderley, and I enjoy excessively the exemption from all interruption to the happiness of my life here. I believe you will not have any difficulty in imagining how great that happiness is, in the society of two people that one loves excessively, with children that are as interesting to one as if they were one's own, and with all the luxury of delicious spring weather (this was written May 10, 1819) in beech woods and green fields. I would defy you to tantalise me with the greatest temptations London could offer; as far as happiness, real true happiness is concerned, nothing in London could present to me half as much as one perfectly retired uninterrupted day at Alderley.

In one of her letters to Miss Clinton, written from Stoke Rectory in the early summer of 1825, she says:—

That I have not written to you before you will easily understand to have arisen from my unwillingness to lose a single hour of my last days at Alderley. They were indeed very precious to me, and after staying there for four months uninterruptedly you may well imagine how painful it was to me to leave all those who were more than usually endeared to me by the comfort they had offered me during a time when nothing else could have pleased or interested. Certainly, too, altogether, with its inhabitants, its abundance of books, of drawing, liberty unrestrained, beautiful walks and rides and seats, luxuriance of flowers, and, in delicious weather, there cannot on earth be so perfect a paradise. During the hot weather we generally went on the mere—or rode in the evenings. Every morning, before breakfast, Lucy and I met in the wood at the old Moss House, where we spent an hour together, and Owen (Edward Stanley's eldest son) came to ferry me home. With so much around to interest and please me, I put away self as much as possible, and endeavoured as much as I could to enjoy the present. You know how dearly I love all those children, and it was such a pleasure to see them all so happy together. To be sure it would be singular if they were not different from other children, with the advantages they have, when education is made so interesting and amusing as it is to them.... While others of their age are plodding through the dull histories, of which they remember nothing, of unconnected countries and ages, K.'s (Katharine Stanley's) system is to take one particular era, perhaps, and upon the basis of the General History, pick out for them from different books all that bears upon that one subject, whether in memoirs or literature, making it at once an interesting study to herself and them.

The old rectory house at Alderley was not the home of the parson only—it was, in a sense, the home of the parish, and became the resort of all who were in trouble or difficulty, or who needed counsel or assistance. The house was, as it were, thrown open, and every one knew that in it they had a friend ready to listen to their little grievances, and equally ready to remedy them where it was in his power to do so—one who could "weep with them that wept, and rejoice with them that rejoiced"—who had a kindly sympathy in all their concerns, and could enter into their interests with the feelings of a father and a friend. The good man's delight in ministering to the temporal comforts of his people was extreme, and he took an especial pleasure in drawing them around him, in order that he might turn any passing circumstance to profitable account, and speak to them more familiarly and more directly upon matters connected with the parish that might be commented upon or set right. He preferred kneeling by the sick bed in a cottage to the cushioned ease of a mansion, and a serious conversation with the poor to the small talk of the drawing-room. It was this feature in his ministerial career that left a never-fading recollection in the minds of those he ministered to, and many a good deed done in secret only came to light when he was removed to another sphere of duty, and but for that removal would probably never have been disclosed. Mounted upon his little black cob, he might be seen daily going his rounds among his parishioners, advising them in their difficulties, comforting them in their sorrows, and encouraging or reproving them as he saw occasion. The sound of his horse's feet was as music in the ears of the rustic cottagers, who would hasten to their doors to greet his approach, while their children, with bobbing courtesies, would stand in eager expectation of the "goodies" that were sure to be the reward of those who were clean and tidy. "When he entered a sick chamber," it was said, "he never failed to express the joy which order and neatness gave him, or to reprove where he found it otherwise," and whatever was proposed for the general good was sure to receive his active support; he took so much trouble, the people said, in whatever he did—never sparing himself in whatever he took in hand. He felt that he was in a measure a temporal as well as a spiritual guide, a leader and encourager of sobriety, good order, and peacefulness, as well as a teacher of sound doctrine and an example of Christian practice, and that his mission was rather to raise the rude and uncultivated to his own level than to lower himself to theirs.

In those days pastoral life was not so charmingly innocent, nor the Colins and Phoebes nearly so amiable and virtuous, as imaginative poets and painters have pictured them to us. In Alderley, as in many other places, drunkenness was the besetting sin; immorality, as a matter of course, followed in its train; and what should have been a kind of Arcadia was oftentimes the scene of riotous disorder. The good rector spared no pains to repress the evil, and whenever he heard of any drunken fight in the village he would, with the dash and daring of an English sailor, hurry off to put a stop to it. It is related that on one occasion word was brought to him that a riotous crowd had assembled on the confines of his parish to witness a desperate prize fight. "The whole field," so a rustic spectator described it, "was filled, and all the trees round about, when in about a quarter of an hour I saw the rector coming up the road on his little black horse as quick as lightning, and I trembled for fear they should harm him. He rode into the field, and just looked quick round (as if he thought the same) to see who there was that would be on his side. But it was not needed—he rode into the midst of the crowd, and in one moment it was all over; there was a great calm; the blows stopped; it was as if they would all have wished to cover themselves up in the earth—all from the trees they dropped down directly—no one said a word, and all went away humble." The following day he sent for the two men, but instead of scolding he reasoned with them, and sent each away with a Bible in his hand.

He was the centre from which whatever there was of spiritual life in the parish emanated. Self-reliant, resolute and unwearied, but kind and conciliatory, and withal cautious and discreet in his operations, he exhibited a thoroughness of character that enabled him to exercise a controlling influence over his charge, and his self-devotedness was often gladdened by the sympathy and encouraged by the affection of those whom he had won from the slavery of sin to the freedom of Christian life. When he settled down with his young wife among the scattered units that in the aggregate constituted his flock, he found them for the most part sunk in ignorance, mental and moral; and the parents, indifferent themselves, had allowed their children to grow up in the same indifference. To reclaim the young, he set about gathering them into the village schools, in the successful working of which he ever manifested the deepest interest. Public elementary education had then made but little progress, and the proverbial three R's, with perhaps a dash of unintelligible geography and history, made up the total of the knowledge usually imparted. Edward Stanley was far in advance of many of his clerical brethren in the desire to place the means of instruction within the reach of even the poorest classes of society, as well as to improve the methods of conveying it; and his zeal in this direction has been testified to by a former Chancellor of the diocese of Chester, the Rev. Henry Raikes.

"He was the first," said the Chancellor, "who distinctly saw and boldly advocated the advantages of general education for the lower classes. Schools had been founded; he had borne his part—and a most active part—in the first movement, but I think that he first set the example of the extent to which general knowledge might be communicated—and beneficially communicated—in a parochial school. I well remember the appearance," he says, "of the school at Alderley, where, in addition to the usual range of desks and books, the apparatus for gymnastic exercises was seen suspended from the roof. I remember the admiration excited at a lecture which he delivered in Chester, where he exhibited a 'hortus siccus' of the plants found in the parish, made by one of the girls in the school; and, though few or none did more than wonder at what was accomplished at Alderley, an impression was created that a large amount of useful secular knowledge might be added without any deduction from what would be considered the proper objects of a school."

His love of learning manifested itself in other ways. When half a century ago the British Association had sprung into existence, causing a flutter among Church dignitaries, who failed to see that Christianity had everything to hope and nothing to fear from the advancement of science, and very reverend deans were addressing letters of remonstrance to its promoters on the "Dangers of Peripatetic Philosophy," Edward Stanley courageously came forward as its advocate, and was enrolled as one of its early vice-presidents. A one-sided development of the mind was then the characteristic of the older universities, and men often-times left college without a single idea concerning the common things of every-day life or the slightest knowledge of any of God's works. The rector of Alderley was in many respects self-educated; dependent in a great measure upon his own resources, he had discovered that dead literature could not be made the parent of living science or active industry, and was one of the first clergymen to direct popular attention to the wondrous history of the stones of the field, the birds of the air, and the "gnats above the summer stream." "The perversions of men," he was wont to say, "would have made an infidel of him but for the counteracting impressions of Divine Providence in the works of nature." Like Gilbert White, at Selborne, he devoted much of his leisure in noting the instincts of animals and the phenomena of ever-changing nature. Ornithology was his favourite subject of study, and the staircases and corridors of his rectory house, adorned as they were with cuttings from "Bewick," bore testimony to his love of birds, while their habits and peculiarities formed a constant source of interest and amusement to him in his rambles through the fields and along the rural lanes of his parish. The result of his labours he embodied in a pleasantly-written work, published by the Christian Knowledge Society—"A Familiar History of Birds: their Nature, Habits, and Instincts"—a work that has passed through several editions—in which are recorded many of the observations made at Alderley.

On the 13th of June, 1811, the rector's heart was gladdened by the birth of a son, who, in compliment to his grandmother, was named Owen. Owen Stanley inherited his father's passionate desire for the naval profession, and the wish was indulged from a recollection of the painful effort it cost the father in his boyhood to overcome the same impulse. Another child, a daughter, was born on the 14th December, 1813, Mary Stanley, and his happiness was added to by the birth of a second son, on the 13th December, 1815—Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, the future Dean of Westminster. Of the home life in the pleasant old parsonage house many glimpses are given us in that tribute of filial affection from the pen of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley to which reference has previously been made, as well as in that delightful chronicle of English domestic life—its comfort, its quiet, and its innocence, written by Arthur Stanley's kinsman—"Memorials of a Quiet Life." Writing to her sister in May, 1818, Mrs. Stanley remarks:—

How I have enjoyed these fine days—and one's pleasure is doubled, or rather, I should say, trebled, in the enjoyment of the three little children basking in the sunshine on the lawns, and picking up daisies, and finding new flowers every day—and in seeing Arthur expand like one of the flowers in the fine weather. Owen trots away to school at nine o'clock every morning, with his Latin grammar under his arm, leaving Mary (his sister) with strict charge to unfurl his flag, which he leaves carefully furled, through the little Gothic gate, as soon as the clock strikes twelve. So Mary unfurls the flag and then watches till Owen comes in sight, and as soon as he spies her signal he sets off full gallop towards it, and Mary creeps through the gate to meet him, and then comes with as much joy to announce Owen's being come back as if he was returned from the North Pole. Meanwhile I am sitting with the doors open into the trellice, so that I can see and hear all that passes.

Two years later the fond mother writes:—

I have been taking a domestic walk with the three children and the pony to Owen's favourite cavern, Mary and Arthur taking it in turns to ride. Arthur was sorely puzzled between his fear and his curiosity. Owen and Mary, full of adventurous spirit, went with Mademoiselle to explore. Arthur stayed with me and the pony, but when I said I would go, he said, colouring, he would go, he thought. "But, mamma, do you think there are any wild dogs in the cavern?" Then we picked up various specimens of cobalt, &c., and we carried them in a basket, and we called at Mrs. Barber's, and we got some string, and we tied the basket to the pony with some trouble, and we got home very safe, and I finished the delights of the evening by reading Paul and Virginia to Owen and Mary, with which they were much delighted and so was I. You would have given a good deal for a peep at Arthur this evening, making hay with all his little strength—such a beautiful colour, and such soft animation in his blue eyes.

Among the letters of Mrs. Stanley is one that has more than a local or domestic interest. She was one of the spectators on the occasion of the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway on that memorable 15th September, 1830, when the Duke of Wellington, who was then Prime Minister, came down to preside at the ceremony, and poor William Huskisson, who had been such a strenuous and eager supporter of the enterprise, met his death. After a vivid account of the scene and the incident that gave such a mournful interest to it, she describes a visit she made a year or two after to High Legh. She says:—

We are a party of twenty-six in the house. There are so many that one's presence or absence is perfectly immaterial and unremarked. There is one person who interests me very much—Mrs. Tom Blackburne, "the Vicaress" of Eccles, who received poor Mrs. Huskisson, and immortalised herself by her activity, sense, and conduct all through. She made one ashamed of the ease and idleness of one's own life, compared with hers. They have to deal with such a population—25,000 souls. She has been the ruling spirit evidently; and under her guidance, and the help of a sound head and heart her husband has become the very man for the place, with quickness and presence of mind for any sudden emergency: and she describes the people—all Manchester weavers—as grateful and sensitive, far beyond our agricultural experience. He is in general at home to parishioners from 8 till 12 and from 4 to 6 every day, and often fully occupied all the time; but during the four days Mrs. Huskisson was in the house, none of them entered the gates. She asked afterwards why it was, and one of them said, "Eh, we knowed what you were at, and so we did without."

I made her give me the details of those days. She said the most painful thing she had to do was waking Mrs. Huskisson out of her sound heavy sleep the morning after. She went three times into the room before she had resolution to wake her outright, as was necessary. Mrs. H. went into the most violent hysterics the moment she opened her eyes and saw Mrs. Blackburne. Lord Granville, hearing her screams, came to Mrs. Blackburne's assistance. He and his valet were her chief assistants all through. She said the advantage of having such people to deal with was great. Many would have thought it an additional trouble to have great people in such circumstances—she found it just the reverse; the high breeding and true gentlemanliness that come out smooths over every difficulty and awkwardness of strangers in such close quarters. Lord Granville, in particular, entered into every feeling with a woman's delicacy. Poor Mrs. Huskisson was alternately in paroxysms of grief and a still more dreadful calmness, especially the day after, when it was wished to relieve her of all business, and she insisted on doing everything herself.

Just before she left the house, she locked herself into the room, and after violent hysterics, during which Mrs. Blackburne tried in vain to get to her assistance, she heard her praying for her and her husband, and all connected with them.

She desired Mrs. Blackburne to remember her to Lady Elizabeth Belgrave, and to hope she had not suffered from the shock (she was near her confinement). "What should I have felt if you had been in her situation?" This she said to Mrs. Blackburne, who was at the moment within three months of her time. Of course Mrs. Blackburne said nothing, but wrote to her after her confinement, and Mrs. Huskisson answered her that it was the first ray of sunshine that had come to her, for she had afterwards found it out, and it had weighed heavily upon her.

Some months afterwards she sent Mr. Blackburne a Bible with gold clasps, and in the purple silk lining inside, these words in gilt letters:—"I was a stranger and ye took me in." Both last Christmas and this she sent also £20 to him to distribute amongst his poor, well knowing that she could not make him a more acceptable present.

For thirty-two years Edward Stanley continued to minister to the wants—temporal as well as spiritual—of the population of his pleasant little rural parish, looked up to by the cottage as a father and a friend, and endeared to all by his earnestness, his simplicity, and his geniality; his faithful coadjutor during the whole of that long period being the Rev. Isaac Bell, his curate, the father of the present worthy rector of Alderley, the Rev. Edward John Bell. For a time (1824 to 1829) he enjoyed the friendly co-operation of the rector of the adjoining parish of Wilmslow—the Rev. J. Mathias Turner,[10] who afterwards became Bishop of Calcutta, and many were the schemes of parochial improvement then formed, and which, doubtless, afterwards influenced in no small degree the Church work in the dioceses to which the two rectors were respectively appointed. Stanley could never find happiness in repose; his intervals of leisure, as we have said, were mainly devoted to the study of ornithology, but he also found time for literary pursuits. In addition to the pamphlets which he issued from time to time in the form of addresses to his people—"A Few Words on behalf of our Roman Catholic Brethren," "A Few Observations on Religion and Education in Ireland," and "A Country Rector's Address to his Parishioners"—he contributed to the "British Magazine," to "Blackwood," and to other periodicals, the results of his studies and the records of his brief holiday excursions; one of these latter, an account of an adventure in the Alps, on the "Mauvais Pas," is believed to have suggested to Sir Walter Scott the opening scene in his novel of "Anne of Geierstein." Among the results of his scientific and antiquarian investigations is a history of the parish of Alderley, still preserved in MS., which it is hoped will at no distant day be given to the world.

But the time came when the literary occupations and the scientific investigations with which he had so pleasantly beguiled his leisure hours at Alderley were to be laid aside—when he was to be wrenched out of his rural surroundings to undertake the episcopal supervision of an important diocese. When it was proposed to erect Manchester into a see the rector of Alderley declined the invitation to become its first bishop, but in 1837, at the instance of the then Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, he was, after much deliberation and a severe struggle which almost broke down his health, induced to accept the nomination to the bishopric of Norwich. To leave the quiet, peaceful parsonage where so many happy years had been passed, and where all his children had been born and reared—to part from those among whom he had so long laboured—was a sore trial, and the news of the preferment which was to sever the tie that had so long bound pastor and people was received by the parishioners amidst an uncontrollable outburst of grief.

It is not our purpose to dwell at any length upon the labours of Edward Stanley as a bishop of the Church of England; suffice it to say that on leaving Alderley, where so many years of his useful life had been spent, and which was endeared to him by so many ties of affection and sympathy, he turned with alacrity to the work which lay before him, and with the same spirit of energy, and the same dauntless courage, applied himself to the development of those schemes of practical usefulness that lay within his grasp, in order that his cathedral city might become the centre of the moral and religious life of the diocese. Broad in his sympathies, courageous in his outspeaking, and impetuous in his temperament, he oftentimes brought himself in conflict with those who were content with things as they had been, and in the earlier years of his episcopate he found his diocese anything but a bed of roses, for during the closing years of the long rule of his predecessor, Bishop Bathurst, Norwich had been a byword for laxity among the sees of the English Church, a condition of things the new prelate could not endure. Stanley's whole life had been a protest against the lethargy and inactivity which was then only too common a characteristic of the clergy, yet his broad liberality, his fatherly sympathy, and his geniality and simplicity enabled him, while correcting abuses, always to leave peace behind. His personal kindness won the hearts of the clergy of his diocese as thoroughly as it had previously won those of the cottagers in his parish. "I felt," said one of them, after a visit from the bishop, "as if a sunbeam had passed through my parish, and had left me to rejoice in its genial and cheerful warmth. From that day I would have died to serve him; and I believe that not a few of my humble flock were animated in a greater or less degree by the same kind of feeling."

Amid the cares inseparable from the active supervision of an important diocese, he never forgot his old parish of Alderley, and his attachment for the scene of his early labours continued unshaken. "It would be vain and useless," he said, on commencing his primary visitation, "to speak to others of what none could feel so deeply as myself. What it cost me to leave Alderley, it is for myself alone to feel." On parting with his parishioners he had given a sacred pledge that he would visit them every year, and the annual recurrence of the time when he could again make the familiar round of visits to those he had known and loved during his long ministerial intercourse, and who themselves looked forward to his coming as the greatest pleasure of their lives, was anticipated with fond delight. "I have been," he wrote to a friend, a few months before his death, "in various directions over the parish, visiting many welcome faces, laughing with the living, weeping over the dying. It is gratifying to see the cordial familiarity with which they receive me; and Norwich clergy would scarcely know me sitting by cottage firesides, talking over old times, with their hands clasped in mine, as an old and dear friend."

On the last day of December, 1848, the eve of his seventieth birthday, he wrote in his Journal:—

In a few hours I shall have attained the threescore years and ten and closed the eleventh year of my episcopal life ... and though these latter years have been accompanied with much labour and pain and sorrow, more and more alive as I am to the difficulties presenting themselves, still I feel satisfaction in what I have been instrumental in doing. How many parishes have been supplied with resident clergy, in which no pastoral care had been for years manifested? How many churches have had the full measure of services prescribed, in which from time immemorial the most scanty administration had sufficed? And how many schools have been established for the benefit of the thousands who had been, with the most culpable negligence, permitted to remain brutalised and uncivilised and perishing for lack of knowledge?

Before another year had passed away, the good prelate was numbered among those who "fell asleep and were laid unto their fathers." During the summer the state of his health had been such as to cause anxiety to his family; his overtaxed faculties needed rest, and, after an ordination at Norwich, he was induced to start with his wife and daughters on a short tour in Scotland. While at Brahan Castle, in Ross-shire, a change for the worse occurred; this was on the 3rd of September; on the following day he rallied a little, and expressed a desire to go down to the warm sunshine of the bright autumnal morning which lay on the greensward under his window, and rose to attempt it, but the effort was more than his strength would bear, and he sank down upon the bed never in life to rise again. For two days the struggle with nature continued, and on the evening of the 6th, in the presence of his wife and daughters and his son, Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, calmly and unconsciously, as if in a dream, he passed into his rest.

In life he had expressed a desire to be buried in the churchyard of Alderley, among those with whom he had so long lived, unless that "circumstances and the wishes and judgment" of those on whom he most confided "might decide upon the spot which had been the last scene of his ministerial labours." Their decision was that he should rest within the precincts of his own cathedral; and there, on the 21st of September, his remains were interred, a vast multitude attending to pay the last tribute of respect to his memory. "I can give you the facts," wrote one who was present, "but I can give you no notion of how impressive it was, nor how affecting. There were such sobs and tears from the school children, and from the clergy who so loved their dear bishop. A beautiful sunshine lit up everything, shining into the cathedral just at the time. Arthur was quite calm, and looked like an angel, with a sister on each side."

In the centre of the nave of Norwich Cathedral, where the warm rays of the setting sun as they steal through the great west window which he had desired should be restored as a memorial of him, dye the pavement with rainbow hues, a plain black marble tablet marks the spot where his ashes lie. It is inscribed:—

Installed Aug. 17, 1837
——
Born Jan. 1, 1779.
——
In the faith of Christ
Here rests from his labours
Edward Stanley
32 years Rector of Alderley,
12 years Bishop of Norwich;
Buried amidst the mourning
of the diocese which he had animated,
the city which he had served,
the poor whom he had visited,
the schools which he had fostered,
the family which he had loved,
and of all Christian people
with whom, howsoever divided, he had joined
in whatever things were true, and honest,
and just, and pure,
and lovely, and of good report.
——
Died Sept. 6, 1849, aged 70.
——
Interred Sept. 21, 1849

While the solemn sound from the great bell-tower of the cathedral announced to the citizens of Norwich that the mortal frame of him who had won the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men was being committed to the tomb, a mournful knell echoed from the grey tower of the quiet old church of Alderley, cleaving the silent air with its funereal tone—the tongue of death with mournful accents laden—conveying

that awoke a feeling of sorrow as touching and unfeigned as that more openly manifested at Norwich; for though twelve years had gone by since Edward Stanley had been withdrawn from the parish, and many changes had taken place, the feeling of affection which had gathered round him during the thirty-two years of his ministry was fresh and green in the hearts of the people, and the tidings of his death were received with a burst of grief that was all the more affecting from the simple language in which it found utterance; a sorrowful gloom spread over the parish, many a cottage was darkened, and many an eye was dimmed with tears at the consciousness that the same hand which had deprived the Church of one of her worthiest sons had reft them of a sincere and devoted friend. When the bishop's papers came to be examined, it was found he had not forgotten those who held him in such loving regard. Among the documents were two addresses, one to the parishioners and the other to the school children of Alderley, with a request that a copy of each might be sent to every house in the parish.

Bishop Stanley was spared one affliction. His youngest son, Charles Edward Stanley, who had entered the service of the Royal Engineers, and was afterwards appointed private secretary to Sir William Denison, Governor of Van Diemen's Land, was suddenly cut off by fever at his official post in Tasmania on the 13th of August, 1849. The news had not reached England at the time of the prelate's decease, and it was not until December that the widowed mother became acquainted with the fact of her son's death. To add to her sorrow, intelligence was received in the course of the following summer that the eldest son, Captain Owen Stanley, had been found dead in his cabin on board ship at Sydney, a few days after receiving the tidings of his father's and his brother's death. The two brothers remain in those distant regions, one in St. George's churchyard, Hobart Town; the other in a secluded spot in the graveyard of St. Leonard's, which Owen Stanley had chosen as his resting-place in the event of his dying in Australia.

Thus, of the three sons of Edward Stanley, only one survived to be a stay and comfort to the widowed mother—Arthur Penhryn Stanley, the profound scholar and the earnest and fearless thinker, who afterwards became Dean of Westminster. Born and brought up in his father's rectory, he to the last retained an affectionate interest in the place where his boyhood was passed; when he had attained to manhood he was in the habit of regularly visiting his old nurse, Ellen Baskerville, and when she died, only a few years ago, he came down from Westminster to read the burial service over her body.

A brief notice of Arthur Stanley's early days may fittingly conclude our notice of Alderley and the Stanleys. The letters already quoted have given us a side glance into the happy home in which his boyhood was passed. Unlike his brothers, who were strong, robust, and full of spirit and adventure, the little Arthur was weak and delicate, thoughtful and reserved in his manner, with a shyness in his disposition that caused him to shun the companionship of other boys of his own age. Mrs. Stanley's happy method of imparting instruction had awakened in his young mind a passion for poetry and romance, and his imagination was stirred by the many weird legends and quaint traditions that gathered around the neighbourhood of his home, and which, though now fast dying from the memories of the inhabitants, were then implicitly believed. His ideas frequently found vent in rhyme, and at the early age of twelve he is said to have written some verses on the occasion of his watching the sun rise from the tower of Alderley church. When nine years of age he was sent to a private school at Seaforth, near Liverpool. Twelve months after his aunt, Maria Leycester, who was on a visit at his father's rectory, wrote to one of the family:—

July, 1825.—You know how dearly I love all these children and it has been such a pleasure to see them all so happy together. Owen, the hero upon whom all their little eyes were fixed, and the delicate Arthur, able to take his own share of boyish amusements with them, and telling out his little store of literary wonders to Charlie and Catherine. School has not transformed him into a rough boy yet. He is a little less shy, but not much. He brought back from school a beautiful prize book for history, of which he is not a little proud; and Mr. Rawson has told several people, unconnected with the Stanleys, that he never had a more amiable, attentive, or clever boy than Arthur Stanley, and that he never has had to find fault with him since he came. My sister finds in examining him, that he not only knows what he has learnt himself, but that he picks up all the knowledge gained by the other boys in their lessons, and can tell what each boy in the school has read, &c. His delight in reading Madoc and Thalaba is excessive.

Again, writing from her father's rectory at Stoke-upon-Terne, under date August 26, 1826, Maria Leycester remarks:—

My Alderley children are more interesting than ever. Arthur is giving Mary quite a literary taste, and is the greatest advantage to her possible, for they are now quite inseparable companions, reading, drawing, and writing together. Arthur has written a poem on the Life of a Peacock Butterfly in the Spenserian stanza, with all the old words, with references to Chaucer, &c., at the bottom of the page.... I never saw anything equal to Arthur's memory and quickness in picking up knowledge; seeming to have just the sort of intuitive sense of everything relating to books that Owen had in ships—and then there is such affection and sweetness of disposition in him.... You will not be tired of all this detail of those so near my heart. It is always such a pleasure to me to write of the rectory, and I can always do it better when I am away from it and it rises before my mental vision.

At the age of thirteen, that is in 1828, Arthur Stanley had his first experience of foreign travel, having in that year accompanied his parents and some other relatives in a tour to Bordeaux and the Pyrenees. The sight of the snow-tipped peaks rising above the masses of cloud filled his mind with wonder, and in a thrill of childish delight he exclaimed, "What shall I do? What shall I do?" In the spring of the following year he was sent to Rugby, where Dr. Arnold had, only a few months before, been appointed to the head-mastership. It was an anxious time for all at the rectory, for the weak, timid, bashful boy, accustomed only to the peaceful seclusion of his native village and the quietude of the private school at Seaforth, was but ill-fitted to cope with the active, strong-limbed youths he would be sure to encounter in a large public school, where might oftentimes takes the place of right, to say nothing of the terrors of prepostors and fagging. Under the judicious training of Dr. Arnold, however, his native diffidence was in a great degree overcome; he began to take his part in the manly exercises in which all Rugbeians were expected to perfect themselves, and made for himself many friends, among them being one who in after life became associated with him by closer ties—the Rev. Charles J. Vaughan, D.D., Master of the Temple, who in 1850 married his youngest sister, Catherine Maria Stanley. We get a glimpse of him during his school life from one of his mother's letters written in February, 1831. She says:—

Charlie writes word from school, "I am very miserable, not that I want anything, except to be at home." Arthur does not mind going half so much. He says he does not know why, but all the boys seem fond of him, and he never gets plagued in any way like the others; his study is left untouched, his things unbroke, his books undisturbed. Charlie is so fond of him and deservedly so. You would have been so pleased one night, when Charlie all of a sudden burst into violent distress at not having finished his French task for the holydays, by Arthur's judicious good nature in showing him how to help himself, entirely leaving what he was about of his own employment.

From a child he had manifested a tender spirit of piety, and it is related on good authority that he was the original Arthur who won the heart of Tom Brown at Rugby, by kneeling down at his little bed in the presence of a rough crowd of boys, and saying his prayers before retiring, the practical effect of which was that several of his schoolfellows who from shame had given up all habit of prayer were emboldened to begin the practice again.

For five years Arthur Stanley was the favourite pupil of Dr. Arnold, but the friendship then formed continued until the great schoolmaster's sudden and memorable death on the eve of his birthday in 1842. In 1834 Stanley entered at University College, Oxford, and was elected a scholar on that foundation in 1837, the year in which his father removed from Alderley to Norwich. On the 7th of June in the same year he recited in the Sheldonian Theatre his Newdegate prize poem, "The gipsies;" his father was a listener, and when he beheld the tumult of applause with which it was received, he burst into tears. In the following year he graduated B.A.; shortly after he proceeded to the higher degree of M.A., and in the Autumn of 1839 was ordained.

It does not come within the scope of this brief sketch to relate in detail his progress at the University, or his career as a divine of the Church of England—they are familiar to everyone. As was truly remarked in a sermon preached in the old church of Alderley by the present rector on the occasion of his death, he "combined in a singular degree not only the excellences of his father and the virtues of his accomplished mother, but he inherited also their combined intellects. It was not, however, so much his high and refined intellect or his graphic writings which endeared him to those who knew him, as the more genial and gentle virtues of his private life." He had the widest sympathies, and he manifested them with remarkable tact and delicacy; indeed, the great work of his life seemed not so much the writing of books or the preaching of sermons as the broadening of the foundations of Christian charity, and the furthering of a spirit of Christian union. Few men were less influenced by theological dogma. He was always ready to draw moral lessons from Christian doctrines, but it is doubtful if he had any very definite conception regarding those doctrines, or subjected them to any serious sifting. It was this loose hold on theology—this indifferentism in regard to inspiration that, while it made him popular among laymen, created a feeling of irritation among those of his brethren who had definite ideas on the most momentous of subjects. To him such questions served mainly as a background to a high morality and wide charity.

After a brief illness, which was not at first regarded as serious, erysipelas supervened, and shortly before midnight, on Monday, the 18th of July, 1881, in the Deanery House, at Westminster, quietly and without suffering, the spirit winged its flight from earth. On the Monday following his body was deposited in the grave in Henry VII. Chapel, Westminster, where, on the 9th of March, 1876, his wife, Lady Augusta Stanley, had been laid to rest.

Dean Stanley's visits to Alderley were frequent. The last time he occupied the pulpit of the old church was on the 5th of May, 1878, when he preached before a crowded congregation in aid of the fund for restoring the church. On a more recent visit, though pressed for time, he stopped by the way at the cottage of a suffering parishioner, offered words of comfort and prayer by his bedside—"the same prayer," as he afterwards remarked, "that he had used by the bedside of his own dear wife." His final visit was in the autumn of 1880, on his return from a short sojourn in the Isle of Man, when he visited the rectory and his mother's and sister's grave, accompanied by his friend, the Bishop of Manchester.

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