HENRY ACLA_ND : A MEMOIR.*
MATERIALS are gradually accumulating for the history of English society during the Victorian era. It would be pre- mature at present to anticipate the final verdict of the historian. That it will be favourable as regards the earlier period, especially when contrasted with the preceding reigns, is hardly open to doubt. That a scrutiny of the latter half of the period will reveal an equal progress in nobility of purpose and strenuousness of life is by no means so certain. The increase of the passion for amusement in every form makes one fear an adverse verdict. The picture of Oxford society for more than half-a-century in Mr. Atlay's Memoir of Sir Henry Acland will, however, supply matter to the counsel for the defence for the earlier as well as for the later period. Some blots there are on the fair picture, but the general impression left on the mind is that the leaders of Oxford society were men of genuine refinement, and, like all men of true refine- ment, simple in their way of life, and devoted to the service of their fellow-men as they understood it. Sir Henry Acland was born in the year 1815. He was a younger son of Sir Thomas Acland of Columb—John, the representative of one of the oldest families in Devonshire. Mankind, according to a West Country saying, consists of men, women, and Aclands,—a saying which shows in what estimate the Aclands were held, and perhaps suggests that they were themselves not un- conscious of their worth. After passing through Harrow, Acland was sent to Christ Church, Oxford, where his tutor was Mr. Liddell, afterwards Dean of Christ Church, who remained through life his dearest friend and truest counsellor. He also formed a lifelong friendship with an undergraduate, junior to himself, who was destined to greater fame. John Ruskin, in Pneterita, has acknowledged what he owed to Acland's fiiendship :— "Acland," he writes, "took me up in my first and foolishest days, and with pretty irony and loving insight—or rather, sym- pathy with what was best, and blindness to what was worst in me—gave me the great good of seeing a noble young English life in its purity, sagacity, honour, reckless daring, and happy piety ; its English pride shining prettily through all, like a girl's in her beauty."
After taking his degree Acland was elected a Fellow of All Souls', but he was full of enthusiasm, and did not feel at home in a circle where nil admirari was the prevailing note. As continuous residence was not required from a Fellow of All Souls', he went up to London to study for the medical pro- fession at St. George's Hospital. Refined, deeply religious, and perhaps a little fastidious, he was so repelled by what he saw and heard in the hospital that he seriously thought of abandoning medicine for the Church. He migrated, however, to Edinburgh, and under Professor Alison, Allen Thomson, especially under the great anatomist, John Goodsir, be learned to love his profession and to feel proud of it. In 1846 he was appointed by the Dean of Christ Church Lee Reader in Anatomy in Oxford. Filled with scientific enthusiasm, he returned to Oxford with the fixed
• Sir If enry Wentworth Aciand, Bart., K.C.B., Regius Professor in the University of Orford a Memoir. By J. B. Atlay, late Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. [ilo. net.]
resolve to win for natural science its rightful place among the studies •:)f the University. While it was being zealously pursued in the great Continental Universities, it was treated with neglect, almost with contempt, in Oxford. In a letter to Dr. James Andrews, written at a somewhat later period, Acland compla.ned that the interests of Oxford at this time were wholly theological. It was theological, however, in a limited way. It was not, he writes, an open fight for those deepest questions which agitated men in the time of Bishop
Butler, or stir men now throughout the world of human thought. It took in large measure the form of a struggle between thinkers and Christian historians on questions vital, without doubt, to the forms and history of Christianity, but which left compare- ively on one aide the pressing questions which belong to the unfolding knowledge of the nature and origin of organic heings, and the unity of the material universe.
Not only were the ordinary forces of obstruction arrayed against Acland, but some who were as desirous as himself to promote the highest interests of the University hesitated to encourage the teaching of natural science. Among these was Dr. Pusey, a member of the Chapter of Christ Church and one of the Lee Trustees, by whom Acland had been appointed Reader. How he conquered this formidable but estimable enemy must be told in his own words :—
"I see the scene as yesterday—now forty-six years ago. The great man sat, as I have since seen him a hundred times and more, in an armchair to the west of the fireplace. After a very few words, explaining what I have written above, I said : I am come, Dr. Pusey, to ask you two questions if you will kindly allow me. First, is it true that you, Mr. Keble, and your friends seriously discourage the study of natural science ? I am told that this is certainly the case.' After a little pause 'It is so. We notice that it engenders in those we know a temper of irreverence, and often of arrogance, inconsistent with the truly Christian character. You must allow that, for instance, this is so with A., B., and C., and others.' I was silent—we sat on the chairs known to all who have entered the study of the great and good man. Presently I con- tinued: 'Then, am I to understand that in proportion as I devote my life with earnestness to discharge the duties to which you, under Providence, have appointed me, I am to be held up as a dangerous and mischievous member of society?' Dr. Pusey, as most great men, had a certain, even keen, sense of humour. He threw himself back in his chair in a fit of laughter ; soon he recovered himself, and sitting straight upright, he slowly said in the solemn and almost stern way which to many seemed his chief expression The desire to possess such knowledge and the power to attain to it are alike the gift of God. They are to be used as such While you discharge your duties in that spirit you may count on my assistance whenever you need it."
Mr. Atlay gives an interesting account of Acland's early struggles for science in Oxford, to which we must refer our readers. As the income of the Lee Readership was only £200 a year, Acland engaged in private practice. He soon had a large practice in the city, and the largest consulting practice in Oxfordshire. Among the county families, we are told, who desired a "second opinion" he stood practically without a rival. "As it was put only the other day, 'No one of any respectability thought of dying without seeing Dr. Acland '- a double-edged compliment which the Doctor would have been the first to appreciate." During the cholera visitation of 1854 he gained the admiration of the whole community by his courage and devotion : the memoir he afterwards wrote on The Cholera in Oxford in the Year 1854 led to sanitary im- provements which were a permanent gain to the city. He did not, however, forget his early plan for the advancement of science teaching in Oxford. How his hopes were fulfilled Mr. Atlay tells in the chapter entitled "The Fight for the Museum." After a long struggle, a large sum of money derived from the profits of the Clarendon Press was voted by Convocation for the erection of a museum as a common home for the sciences. As the money had been derived from "a very sacred source, the profits upon the privilege of print- ing God's Word," the High Churchmen hesitated to support the vote. The scale was turned in its favour by Pusey and Marriott, who let it be known that they were in its favour. As Mr. Atlay says with truth, if any other man but Acland had been the originator of the scheme, it would have met, not
merely with neutrality, but with active opposition on the part of Dr. Pusey.
In 1858 Acland was appointed Regius Professor of Medicine in the University. From that time his life, if not less laborious, had less of uphill struggle in it. Recognitions of various 1:inds came to him. In the year 1858 he might have left Oxford for London to become the personal physician of the Queen and the Prince Consort, in succession to Sir James Clark. But by the advice of friends he remained in Oxford, where he continued to reside until his death in 1901.
One of the most interesting features in Mr. Atlay's excellent biography of his friend is the picture given of Acland's many- sided friendships. In a society in which party spirit ran high
Adana was on terms of affectionate friendship with quite a number of men of the most diverse views. Max Muller and Goldwin Smith, Professors H. J. Smith and Rolleston, were his familiar friends and allies, while he was a close personal friend of Dr. Pusey and other High Churchmen. His position as a physician and his personal charm helped to this. He had, moreover, sympathy with the ideals of both parties. As a man of science he was the natural ally of the progressive party. He was, however, a deeply religious man, a believer in the truths of Christianity, and was a careful observer of all the outward duties of religion, and he felt no sympathy with those who aimed at a complete secularisation of the English Univer- sities. He gave a cold welcome, therefore, to the Bills for the abolition of tests. In connection with this controversy a letter is printed by the editor from the Marquis of Salisbury, then Lord Cranborne, which sheds a curious light on the somewhat mediaeval view of the late Prime Minister about safeguarding religion, and on his feeling of despair regarding his own political party, "too feeble and too shattered to hope fot anything on any subject but favourable terms of capitulation.'
On the other hand, Acland deprecated and resented the attacks made on scientific teachers and teaching by imper- fectly informed Bishops and clergymen. In a letter to his old Harrow Head-Master and friend, Archbishop Longley, he begs him to use his influence with the clergy to hinder them from taking sides in scientific disputes for which they were not thoroughly grounded by training and practical knowledge. His position as a physician gave him opportunities of under- standing men, and enabled him to act the part of a reconciler between those who differed in opinions. He attended Dr_ Pusey on his deathbed. He received after his death a picture of the Crucifixion which had been much valued by him. For the rest of Acland's life this picture hung above his bed's head. It was joined later by a picture of the Madonna which had belonged to Jowett, whom Acland attended during his dangerous illness in 1891. Jowett and he had always been friends, but not until near the end of Jowett's life did they come into complete sympathy. Acland has thus put on record what he learned from his patient in his last days :— " I then first felt I knew the man. We seldom spoke, and in many weeks never on anything that could be controversial. I would sit by him feeling that I sat by the side of a borer of God and a lover of man, whose life was not of this world, teeming, as it was, with its interests of every kind, and sympathetic with all good, wherever good could be found or made, and with a sense of humour which sparkled, though in silence."
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