1805-1872
[Sidenote: F. Maurice’s _Life of F. D. Maurice_.]
“He was distinctly below the middle height, not above five feet seven
inches, but he had a certain dignity of carriage, despite the entire
absence of any self-assertion of manner, which in the pulpit, where
only his head and shoulders were observable, removed the impression of
small stature.... His hair was now of a silvery white, very ample in
quantity, fine and soft as silk. The rush of his start for a walk had
gone. His movements had, like his life, become quiet and measured. At
no time had there been so much beauty about his face and figure. There
was now--partly from manner, partly from face, partly from a character
that seemed expressed in all,--beauty which seemed to shine round
him, and was very commonly observed by those amongst whom he was.
It made undergraduates, not specially impressionable, stop and watch
him.... Servants and poor people whom he visited often spoke of him as
‘beautiful.’”--1866.
[Sidenote: _The Spectator_, 1872.]
“Yet though Mr. Maurice’s voice seemed to be the essential part of
him as a religious teacher, his face, if you ever looked at it, was
quite in keeping with his voice. His eye was full of sweetness, but
fixed, and, as it were, fascinated on some ideal point. His countenance
expressed nervous, high-strung tension, as though all the various play
of feelings in ordinary human nature converged, in him, towards a
single focus, the declaration of the divine purpose. Yet this tension,
this peremptoriness, this convergence of his whole nature on a single
point, never gave the effect of a dictatorial air for a moment. There
was a quiver in his voice, a tremulousness in the strong deep lines
of his face, a tenderness in his eye, which assured you at once that
nothing of the hard crystallising character of a dogmatic belief in
the Absolute had conquered his heart, and most men recognised this,
for the hardest and most business-like voices took a tender and almost
caressing tone in addressing him.”