Excerpt from Basil Wilberforce: A Memoir I deem it to be my greatest boast to be sprung from one who, gifted with the vastest opportunities, with the friendship, the closest friendship, of England's greatest Minister, the highest powers, the most commanding social position, used them all for no personal aggrandise ment, and died a poorer man than when he entered public life, seeing every one Of his contemporaries raised to wealth and hereditary honours; leaving his children no high rank or dignity, according to the notions of this world, but bequeathing to them the perilous inherit ance Of a name which the Christian world venerates. The foregoing words were spoken by Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop successively Of Oxford and Of Winchester, with reference to the great Emancipator, whose third son he was. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.