all in him and was more native to him. Native eloquence, indeed, out of natural simplicities and sympathies, was his patrimony and his God-given endowment. We might be tempted to feel that he was never allowed to become all his natural and proper self, under the discipline and restraints of a more cultured type of religion and ministry. But what he brought with him. into that was not lost, and what he found in it, for himself and his life-work, was no real detriment to either. More and freer mingling of different types would be no small gain to our Christianity. Christianity fails of true catholicity in the proportion in which there is less or no room for the coexistence and mingling of differences in one communion and fellowship.

Ellison Capers was entered as a cadet in the Military Academy of his native State in the year 1854, at the age of seventeen. Four years later he was graduated, without distinction. That is to say, without distinction won by books, or measured by class standing; but very far even then from without distinction of another and an abiding sort, which was to be increasingly his to the end of his days. Intelligence does not all, as we know, come through books. Ellison Capers was constitutionally not a student of books, but he possessed, in a remarkable degree, the quick eye, the ready perceptions, the open mind and heart which do in other ways the work of books. Above all, he was gifted with the most simple, natural, and charming social nature, disposition, and manner. Speech, language, oratory came to him as song to the bird. Self-consciousness, affectation, vanity, pretension or insincerity of any kind he was by nature incapable of. These qualities and qualifications gave him in the literary as well as the social functions and life of the institution from which he was graduated a standing and character which were even then an earnest of what he was to do and be in after days.

For a year or two he remained as instructor in the Military Academy, but his training there during half a dozen years was just in time to prepare him for severer duties and a more trying part in the life and destiny of his native State. At the breaking out of the Civil War his health was delicate and his lungs were seriously affected. Against all medical advice he enlisted at

once and was commissioned Major in the State troops. When it became apparent that war was on, he took part in the organization of the Twenty-fourth Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, of which he was successively Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel. After gallant and distinguished service in the Army of Tennessee he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General.

Any one who had known Ellison Capers would not need to be told what sort of soldier he made. He could not fail to be the idol and inspiration of his men; he could not be other than bright and cheerful in privation, patient and hopeful in disaster, gallant and heroic in action. Human and democratic in feelings and sympathies, he was at the same time elevated and dignified in spirit, appearance, and bearing. A superior in command said of him, that he had never in all his life known a man who could so make his subordinates feel that he was as one with them, without the slightest loss of dignity to himself or his rank. He was several times severely wounded, and was so prevented at the last from actually exercising the high command which he had earned at so youthful an age.

Returning from the war, at its close, with his honorable wounds still unhealed, among many others of his kind there was none who stood higher in the mind or in the eye of his State than General Ellison Capers,-none at least among the younger men, with whom lay the direction and destinies of the future. Many years ago it was written of him: "So many times on account of his graceful oratory has he been called upon to address his fellow citizens, especially upon Confederate occasions, that he might fitly be considered to have earned the title of Orator Laureate of the Confederacy, of which it has been so beautifully said in poetry's phrase

"L 'No nation rose so white and fair,

None fell so pure of crime."

But it was not alone General Capers' graceful oratory that made him thenceforth, what he has been so often called, "the best-beloved man in his State." It was a combination of many deeper graces and more attractive and controlling qualities, some only of which were simplicity, purity, modesty, unselfishness,

faithfulness, spiritual elevation, personal charm.

There was no

man in whom the whole law was more truly fulfilled in the one word Love. Sympathy, service, sacrifice were the air he breathed and the life he lived.

So

In the first reorganization of the State, General Capers was made Secretary of State, and so served for two years. But the deep waters through which he and his people had passed had quickened within him the germ of another life-purpose. There were more of us than he who will be pardoned for having felt just at that time that we had here no abiding city, or country, and were the more moved to seek one elsewhere to come. the ministry to his stricken people, to which a life such as his could not but, at such a time, consecrate and devote itself, naturally sought the most sacred channels of the Church. It is related of him that when he notified his old friend Governor John L. Orr, the most sagacious of our old-time politicians, of his determination to resign his office of Secretary of State in order to enter the ministry of the Church, the reply was, "You will be a fool to do it. A man with your war record, your personal magnetism and genial manners can command anything from the people that they have to give. You can be Governor, Senator, or anything you want. You will be a fool to give up all this to become a preacher."

It was a greater sacrifice than Governor Orr knew that General Capers was making. It would have cost him nothing to have lived upon his popularity and his natural genius for public life. No one could feel more than he did his disqualification and want of preparation for the other life he was choosing. On hearing of his purpose the large and influential Church of Greenville, S.C., invited him to become its Rector. He was no clergyman, he had never studied theology for a day, he had never been and had none of the habits of a student; four years of active service in war lay between him and anything he had ever studied at all. He was conscious of no qualification but the spirit in him of love, service, and sacrifice. On this he accepted the call. It might have been regarded as an instance of the fool stepping in where angels might fear to tread; but those who knew him best, knew that it was not in ignorance or

presumption, but in the veriest humility, self-renunciation, and simplicity of faith that General Capers entered upon his divine calling. He became Rector of Christ Church, Greenville, upon a salary of $600, about one tenth of what he had been receiving from the salary and fees of his civil office. For twenty years, mostly of political unsettlement and distress and of economic privation and poverty, he served his church and community with devoted and self-denying faithfulness and love. Then he was called to the larger centre of the State Capital, and was Rector of Trinity Church, Columbia, until called to go up yet higher in the ranks of the Church's ministry.

In all this time, much of it of humble service and comparative obscurity, he was ever more and more than only the Reverend Ellison Capers. He was always, first of all, himself—the simple, true, pure, modest, unselfish, high, loving and lovable self he had been from the beginning, only chastened, refined, and ennobled. He was still in the heart of the people General Capers, hero and orator of the Confederacy. Above all, he was more and more becoming, and unknowingly fitting and preparing himself to become, the First Citizen, the most honored as well as most beloved man, of his State.

In July, 1893, the then Dr. Capers was consecrated Bishop in the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. That position did not, of course, in itself constitute him First Citizen, but by giving him a jurisdiction coterminous with the State, it enabled him to come to that which was his own by many other titles. Least of all was he ever to arrogate to himself any such honor or place in the mind or heart of his people. It was the more truly his because won by the only method which confers divine right to it, by being not lord over all but servant of all. He was deeply touched and gratified by the universal respect and affection shown him; it never occurred to him that it was himself who was the ground and cause of it.

It was a surprise which his modesty had great hesitation in accepting, when in the summer of 1905 Bishop Capers was unanimously elected by the Board of Trustees, Chancellor of the University of the South, at Sewanee-to succeed Bishop Dudley. He held that position until his death-fully sustaining

its dignity and more than ever impressing his personality upon those who came under its influence in the new and high relation.

The fact is that Bishop Capers felt deficiencies in scholarship and learning. His unconsciousness of the fact that these wants were amply compensated by other and rarer gifts and powers, made him, or cooperated with nature in making him, singularly modest and unpretending among his peers. But they did not impair his efficiency or diminish his influence. His office of Bishop not only gave him a universal and commanding position in his own State with opportunity to make himself known and felt, but it brought him into official relations and at least triennial personal contact with representatives like himself of every other State of the Union. It is almost as difficult as it is necessary to refrain from quoting from the many tributes that have come from every quarter alike to his solid worth and his personal charm. One extract must suffice as a sample of all: Bishop Potter of New York speaks of "the sweet and gracious influence of that rare personality which was incarnated in the late Bishop of South Carolina!" "In Bishop Capers' case," he continues, "it was impossible to believe that he had ever touched. life at any point without drawing from it something which had made his own character, and his high ministry, of greater beauty, dignity, self-sacrifice, and gracious comprehension. Those of us who are Northern men and women felt this perhaps most keenly in connection with his relation to that wider life which is the life of the Republic as distinguished from the life of the family, or the Church, or even the State. Bishop Capers was a born statesman. He had a genius for seeing the other side of thingsthe political problems, the moral emergencies, and other ecclesiastical tasks than his own; and in the House of Bishops illustrated a breadth of vision, a fine serenity of temper, and a most gracious and winning spirit which endeared him to all who knew him. The beautiful quality in his speech, in his every act, in his relations with all sorts and conditions of men, which made one sensible at once that he was truly human in his sympathies and as divine in his standards, will always live as a gracious and benignant inspiration."

The University of the South.

WILLIAM PORCHER DUBOSE.