(_From the Portrait at King's College._)]
We have had the Church, let us come to the State. It is a rich month that claims the birth both of William Ewart Gladstone (December 29th) and of his great rival, Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (December 20th). They began their careers under very different auspices. Eton and Oxford prepared the one for immediate entry, under favouring circumstances, into Parliamentary life. The other was educated privately, designed for the law, and first caught the public eye as an author when he burst upon the world with the novel, "Vivian Grey." Mr. Gladstone survived his rival seventeen years.
There died on December 14th one whom the British nation can only number amongst its own worthies by adoption. The death of the Prince Consort in the prime of life, and just when his very considerable powers and great devotion were beginning to be understood by those who at first regarded him with doubt because he was a foreigner, plunged our Queen into sorrow which long darkened the life of the Court and was felt by the whole nation. The pure, unblemished life of the Prince Consort, his sincere desire to advance the welfare of the people, his ready promotion of the arts and sciences, as well as his tender devotion to the Queen, have long been understood and valued by the nation which he served.
(_From the Miniature by Samuel Cooper._)]
To come to other fields: there was born in London on December 9th, 1608, John Milton. Educated at Cambridge, he early gave free play to the powers which in their issue have made his name familiar wherever the English language is spoken. Few remember him as a writer of polemical treatises on affairs of the State and the Church, or even as Latin Secretary to Cromwell; but he was an old man and blind when he gave the world "Paradise Lost."
On the 12th there died Robert Browning, a poet who spoke to his age as few men have ever done, and spoke of God and the soul, of the here and the hereafter, with a clearness of faith which was as distinct as the robust manliness of his character.
(_From the Portrait by Sir Godfrey Kneller._)]
December 28th is given as the date upon which Westminster Abbey was consecrated in 1065; and on December 2nd that other minster, St. Paul's Cathedral, was opened in 1697. Legend says that the same King Sebert who founded the original St. Paul's also founded the Abbey at Westminster, whilst another story invokes the aid of King Offa. There is, however, clear testimony to the establishment of a Benedictine abbey at Westminster in the time of Edgar; that is antiquity respectable enough to satisfy most of us. A cathedral on this site is mentioned by the Venerable Bede as early as 604; but the actual fabric of St. Paul's has, according to Mr. Loftie, undergone greater vicissitudes than that of any other cathedral in England. The present St. Paul's was begun in 1675 and finished in 1710. Its cost was £736,752. Sir Christopher Wren, its architect, received for his services £200 a year. What were then called "the new ball and cross" on the cathedral were completed in this same month in 1821.