Untitled - Electric Scotland

1842-50] DEAN LAKE S REMINISCENCES 139
bitterness, that he had never any influence in the appoint
ments during the Palmerston regime. But the truth is,
he was never in any full sense of the word an Evangelical.
He was a Protestant, if you will, and with a strong dash
of the Presbyterian,
to the end. But, except in the sense
of believing that the early Evangelicals had greatly
revived the spirit of religion in the English Church, and
in a warm sympathy with their best members, he had
very little of the distinct opinions of the Evangelical
*
about him. A good man, but a thorough fanatic,
party
he once said to me of their greatest lay representative.
It was perhaps a part of his inveterate distrust of
enthusiasm. I respect an enthusiast, he used to say,
laughingly, *
and all the more, because I could never
possibly be one myself ; and I never remember his caring
much for the Venns or Cecils, to whom, for a time at
least, many of us were attached. His special hero in
the English Church was for long, perhaps always, Arch
bishop Tillotson.
"
His sudden and almost fatal illness during his last
years at Rugby, which led to a weakness of health lasting
more or less through his whole life, I need not dwell
upon. I had till then looked upon him as, on the whole,
a strong man, and I well remember the horror with which,
in March 1848, I received a very short letter from Mrs.
Tait If you wish to see your friend alive, come at once ;
he was then too ill to be spoken to, though I saw him, and
he only remarked to Mrs. Tait, Surely
that was Lake
whose voice I heard. You will probably have mentioned
that it was long before they could even tell him of the
French Revolution, and others, which had occurred during
his illness. While he was Dean of Carlisle I only saw him
at intervals, and it was in the spring of 1856 that, being
then engaged abroad on a Commission of Education, I