Page:Memoir of Edward Lord Bishop of Salisbury.djvu/18

14 of a college, nor when I was incumbent of a small benefice in the country, have I found it so impossible, or have I been so little willing, to spend money in the gratification of personal tastes. Were I to die to-morrow, my family would have no other provision than that arising from my and their very small private means, and such moderate addition thereto as I have felt it my duty to make by insurance on my life. My son will inherit only this patrimony; but I hope that I may add, that in spite of calumnies such as these, he will have also that which I trust he will value above hoarded wealth—the inheritance of a father's unblemished name."

It seemed as if he died shortly afterwards to demonstrate the sincerity of this affecting and Christian statement. He left no accumulated funds, nothing but the small fortune of which he had spoken, to his widow and his children; and after his death it was discovered that his charities had amounted in fourteen years to £17,040.

His habits of life were characterised by the greatest simplicity. His knowledge of mineralogy, geology, and generally of natural history, was accurate and profound. His taste for horticulture was very refined—witness the palace garden at Salisbury, which now forms the most beautiful of foregrounds to the cathedral and its precincts. That cathedral he dearly loved, and from it he was rarely, and never willingly, absent for any length of time.