He gives most of us the feeling of a very able man of business, an ideal family solicitor; but there is a quite different side to this character.  He is by no means a mystic, as that word is usually understood, but he is a man who deeply believes in the chief instrument of the mystic’s spiritual life, that is to say, in prayer.  He is not a saint, in the general acceptance of that term, but his whole life is devoted with an undeviating singleness of aim to effecting the chief ambition of the saint—­a knowledge of God in the hearts and minds of men.  Because he believes that the best method of achieving that consummation, having regard to the present level of human intelligence, is by moderate courses, one must not think that he is lukewarm in the cause of religion.  With all the force of his clear and able mind, he believes in moderation.  Anything that in the least degree savours of extravagance seems to him impolitic.  He does not believe in sudden bursts of emotional energy; he believes in constant pressure.

In my intercourse with him I have found him eminently sane and judicial, cold towards excessive fervour, but not cold at all towards ardent faith, inclined perhaps to miss the cause of spiritual impatience, constitutionally averse from any understanding sympathy with religious ecstasy, but never self-satisfied, intolerant, or in the remotest fashion cynical.  Always he expresses his views with modesty, and sometimes with healthy good-humour, disposed to take life cheerfully, never moved to mistake a molehill for a mountain, always quietly certain that he is on the right road, whatever critics may care to say about his pace.

It is perhaps unreasonable to expect height and depth where there is excessive breadth.  The Archbishop might make a bad captain, but he could have few rivals as an umpire.  He is an admirable judge if an indifferent advocate.

His grave earnestness is balanced by a conviction that humour is not without a serious purpose.  He looks upon life in the average, avoiding all abnormality, and he sees the average with a genial smile.  He thoroughly appreciates the oddities of English character, and would ask with Gladstone, “In what country except ours (as I know to have happened) would a Parish Ball have been got up in order to supply funds for a Parish Hearse?”

His attitude to the excitements and sensations of the passing day may be gathered from a simple incident.  During the most heady days of the War, that is to say, days when people made least use of their heads, I encountered him at the country-house of a well-known statesman.  One morning, while we were being lined up for a photograph, the boar-hound of our host came and forced himself between the Archbishop and myself.  “What would the newspapers say,” exclaimed the Archbishop in my ear, “if they knew that his name is—­Kaiser!”