RICHARD COPLEY CHRISTIE.
[TO VIZ EDITOR OP THE "spscrresna."] should like to write a few lines about an old friend, who was for many years a contributor to the Spectator, Richard Copley Christie. I knew him first at Oxford, where he was two years my junior. He was, indeed, my first pupil, a relation which seems strange to me when I estimate his sum of knowledge and mine; but I happened to know more Latin and Greek, and he was nervous, quite needlessly, I am inclined to think, about Moderations. He took first-class honours in the School of Modern History and Law,—the subjects were then united. His work impressed Henry Hallam, who had consented to act as Examiner, by way of giving the new school a good "send off." This led to the Professorship of History in the newly founded Owens College. To this post was afterwards joined the Chair of Political Economy. R. C. Christie was a remarkable combination of qualities not often found together. His intellectual tastes were those of a Humanist. Sometimes I used to think that he was better suited to the times of the Renaissance than to the nine- teenth century. He was a book-collector; he had a fine taste for masterpieces of typography and binding; his magnum opus was a Life of the great French printer, Dolet. Yet he was a man of great business ability. Bishop Fraser, of Manchester, made him Chancellor, and found him eminently helpful. He was chairman for ten years of the Whitworth Arms Company. He was a useful member of the Governing Bodies of Owens College and of Holloway College. How generous he was, not of money only, but of what some find it harder to give, time, marry know. For some time before his death, increasing weakness had constrained him to a life of seclusion, and his friends had learnt, perforce, to reconcile themselves to the loss. Yet there are a few, and more than a few, even in the thinned ranks of those who can look back to the first half of the past century, who will have felt a shock at the news of his death.---I am, Sir, &c.,
ALFRED CM:TECH.
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