THE LATE DR BENSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5739, 5 December 1896, Page 7

THE LATE DR BENSON.

_ » Of all the public notices" of the career of the late Archbishop of Canterbury, there have been none more critical and perhaps none juster than that of the Saturday Re.yip.xv. On the whole the Archbishop was not one who impressed his personality so forcibly on the ago as did some of his predecessors, and as a, consequence the notices in the London papers, though as a rule kindly and well meaning 1 , have borne traces of being "faked up " at short notice and without much knowledge. A Saturday Revi&iver, however, ha 3 succeeded in putting together some interesting arid littleknown partictilars of the Archbishop's early career. As the master of Wellington College, he was eminently successful, raising it in fourteen years from a new foundation to the rank of one of the great public schools of England, but his methods were occasionally a little pedagogic. If the reviewer is to he believed, they sometimes savoured of the Turkish pasha. He once caned a boy until he confessed what he had not done ; and on another occasion he, in defiance of the constitution of the school, flogged a prefect secretly. A culprit whom he threatened to expel once, whined out something about "his people" being- distressed. "Your people, Sir," roarod the future Archbishop, " are you a king that you have people?" Once, when the Sixth were stumbling sleepily over their Vigil, Dr Benson got very excited, and toldthera of "the energy of the Birmingham mechanics, "whilst you, the sons of gentlemen, sit here -with lack lustre, oyster-like eyes." But these "flashes on the surface " were not the real man ; he was almost as great a schoolmaster as he was afterwards a churchman. The secret of his advancement and success lay more in his private and personal merits than in his public appearances. It is generally agreed that he yjas not remarkable for his rhetorical power. "He trembled and stammered before the House of Lords as the Wellington boys used to tremble and stammer before him." But he had a wonderful faculty for getting people to do what he wanted, of driving on a scheme, and he had an almost intuitive in&ight into the strength and weakness of the men with whom he had to deal. He was one of the great organisers of the time, and the way in which he worked up the opposition to the Welsh Disestablishment Bill just before the general election of 1895 was marvellous. To his other qualifications he added those of an imposing presence and an impeccable tact in dealing with public affairs, and lih owed a good deal to both for the dignity and success with which he filled the duties of . his high