has not set in that burst of animal growth and spirits that often
seems to swamp the deeper nature throughout boyhood. By this age
Coley was able to read, and on his birthday he received from his
father the Bible which was used at his consecration as Bishop twenty-
seven years later.

He had an earnest wish to be a clergyman, because he thought saying
the Absolution to people must make them so happy, 'a belief he must
have gleaned from his Prayer-book for himself, since the doctrine was
not in those days made prominent.' The purpose was fostered by his
mother. 'She delighted in it, and encouraged it in him. No thought
of a family being to be made, and of Coley being the eldest son, ever
interfered for a moment. That he should be a good servant at God's
altar was to her above all price.'

Of course, however, this was without pressing the thought on him. He
grew on, with the purpose accepted but not discussed, except from
time to time a half-playful, half-grave reference to himself as a
future clergyman.

Reverence was strongly implanted in him. His old nurse (still his
sister's valued servant) remembers the little seven years old boy,
after saying his own prayers at her knee, standing opposite to his
little brother, admonishing him to attention with 'Think, Jemmy;
think.' In fact, devoutness seems to have been natural to him. It
appears to have been the first strongly traceable feature in him, and
to have gradually subdued his faults one by one.

Who can tell how far this was fostered by those old-fashioned habits
of strictness which it is the present habit to view as repellent?