"_Dec. 15, 1859._--At the Haringtons' I met Sir George and Lady
Grey. I was very anxious to make acquaintance, but much afraid that
I should not have an opportunity of doing so, as I was never
introduced. As they were going away, I expressed regret at having
missed them before, and he hoped that we should meet another time.
I suppose I looked very really sorry for not seeing more of him,
for, after a consultation in the passage, he came back, and asked
if I would walk part of the way with him. I walked with him all the
way to Windmill Hill, where he was staying: he walked home with me:
I walked home with him; and he home with me for the third time,
when I was truly sorry to take leave, so very interesting was he,
and so easy to talk to. We began about Polynesian Mythology--then
poetry--then Murray, who, he said, had just paid Dr. Livingstone
£10,000 as _his_ share of the profits on his book--then of Lord
Dillon, who, he said, had led them the most jovial rollicking life
when he went to Ditchley to look over MSS., so that he had done
nothing.
"Then he talked of the Church in the Colonies. He said that High
Churchism had penetrated to the Cape to the greatest extent, and
that the two or three churches where it was carried out were
thronged as fashionable: that one of the views preached was, that
religion was a belief in whatever you fancied was for your good, so
that if you fancied that, our Lord being one with God, it would be
well for you to have a mediator between yourself and Him, you ought
then to believe in that mediator, and to invoke your guardian angel
as the mediator most natural. Another tenet was that prayer was
only 'a tracter' to draw down the blessings of God--that, as there
were three kinds of prayer, so there were three kinds of
tracters--that individual prayer would draw down a blessing on the
individual, family prayer on a family, but that public prayer, as
proceeding from the mouth of a priest, could draw down a blessing
on the whole state. Sir George had heard a sermon on 'It is needful
for you that I go away from you,' &c., proving that it _was_
needful, because if not, Christ would have to have remained as an
earthly king, have had to negotiate with other kings, meddle in
affairs of state, &c.--also because he would have been made 'a
lion' of--perhaps have become an object of pilgrimage, &c.
"Sir George said that the Wesleyan Methodists lived a holier, more
spiritual life in the Colonies, but then it was because religion
was there so easy to them; in London it would not be so; that
London, the place in the world most unsuited to Christianity, lived
on a great world of gambling-houses, brothels, &c., as if there
were no God; no one seemed to care. He said what a grand thing it
would be if, in one of the great public services in St. Paul's or
Westminster Abbey, the preacher were to shout out as his awful
text--'Where art thou, Adam?'--and show how the Lord would look in
vain for _His_ in most parts of London--where, _where_ had they
hidden themselves?
"Sir George told me an anecdote of a dog in New Zealand--that two
officers were walking by the shore, and that one of them said, 'You
declare your dog will do everything. I'll bet you he does not fetch
that if you tell him,' and he threw his walking-stick into a canoe
lying out at some distance in the shallow water, where the natives
wade up to their waists to get into them, and where they are
secured by strong hempen cords. The dog, when told, instantly swam
out, but, as the man who made the bet had foreseen, whenever he
tried to scramble into the canoe to get the stick, it almost upset,
and at length, after repeated struggles, he was obliged to swim to
shore again and lie down to rest. Once rested, however, without a
second bidding, he swam out again, and this time gnawed through the
cord, pulled the canoe on shore, and then got the stick out, and
brought it to his master."[178]
I told Arthur Stanley much of this conversation with Sir George Grey.
Some time after, he was very anxious that I should go to hear Dr.
Vaughan preach in a great public service under the dome of St. Paul's. I
went, and was startled by the text--"Where art thou, Adam?"
In January 1860 I paid a delightful visit to Sir John Shaw-Lefevre at
Sutton Place, near Guildford, a beautiful old brick house with
terra-cotta ornaments, which once belonged to Sir Francis Weston, Anne
Boleyn's reputed lover. Besides the large pleasant family of the house,
Lord Eversley and his daughter were there, and Sophia, daughter of Henry
Lefevre, with Mr. Wickham, whom she soon afterwards married.