to be carried away by a fashion, should be vanquished by Byron, is
as genuine a testimony as any I know to the reality of his
greatness. Up to 1849 or thereabouts, my father in religion was
Independent and Calvinist, the creed which, as he thought then, best
suited him. But a change was at hand. His political opinions
remained unaltered to his death, but in 1851 he had completed his
discovery that the "simple gospel" which Calvinism preached was by
no means simple, but remarkably abstruse. It was the Heroes and
Hero Worship and the Sartor Resartus which drew him away from the
meeting-house. There is nothing in these two books directly hostile
either to church or dissent, but they laid hold on him as no books
had ever held, and the expansion they wrought in him could not
possibly tolerate the limitations of orthodoxy. He was not
converted to any other religion. He did not run for help to those
who he knew could not give it. His portrait; erect,
straightforward-looking, firmly standing, one foot a little in
advance, helps me and decides me when I look at it. Of all types of
humanity the one which he represents would be the most serviceable
to the world at the present day. He was generous, open-hearted, and
if he had a temper, a trifle explosive at times, nobody for whom he
cared ever really suffered from it, and occasionally it did him good
service. The chief obituary notice of him declared with truth that
he was the best public speaker Bedford ever had, and the committee
of the well-known public library resolved unanimously "That this
institution records with regret the death of Mr. W. White, formerly
and for many years an active and most valuable member of the
committee, whose special and extensive knowledge of books was always
at its service, and to whom the library is indebted for the
acquisition of its most rare and valuable books." The first event
in my own life is the attack by the mob upon our house, at the