was generally regarded as the most brilliant of an exceptionally able set, and in 1854 obtained a fellowship at Oriel College. His constitutional weakness and bad eyesight forced him to abandon medicine, which he had adopted as a career, and in 1855 he returned to King’s College as lecturer in English language and literature, a post which he almost immediately quitted for the professorship of modern history. He made numerous journeys abroad, the most important being his visit to Russia in 1858, his account of which was published anonymously in 1859 under the title of Russia, by a Recent Traveller; an adventurous journey through Poland during the insurrection of 1863, of which he gave a sympathetic and much praised account in the Spectator; and a visit to the United States in 1868, where he gathered materials for his subsequent discussion of the negro problem in his National Life and Character. In the meantime, besides contributing regularly, first to the Saturday Review and then to the Spectator, and editing the National Review, he wrote the first volume of The Early and Middle Ages of England (1861). The work was bitterly attacked by Freeman, whose “extravagant Saxonism” Pearson had been unable to adopt. It appeared in 1868 in a revised form with the title of History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, accompanied by a second volume which met with general recognition. Still better was the reception of his admirable Maps of England in the First Thirteen Centuries (1870). But as the result of these labours he was threatened with total blindness; and, disappointed of receiving a professorship at Oxford, in 1871 he emigrated to Australia. Here he married and settled down to the life of a sheep-farmer; but finding his health and eyesight greatly improved, he came to Melbourne as lecturer on history at the university. Soon afterwards he became head master of the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, and in this position practically organized the whole system of higher education for women in Victoria. On his election in 1878 to the Legislative Assembly he definitely adopted politics as his career. His views on the land question and secular education aroused the bitter hostility of the rich squatters and the clergy; but his singular nobility of character, no less than his powers of mind, made him one of the most influential men in the Assembly. He was minister without portfolio in the Berry cabinet (1880–1881), and as minister of education in the coalition government of 1886 to 1890 he was able to pass into law many of the recommendations of his report. His reforms entirely remodelled state education in Victoria. In 1892 a fresh attack of illness decided him to return to England. Here he published in 1893 the best known of his works, National Life and Character. It is an attempt to show that the white man can flourish only in the temperate zones, that the yellow and black races must increase out of all proportion to the white, and must in time crush out his civilization. He died in London on the 29th of May 1894.
A volume of his Reviews and Critical Essays was published in 1896, and was followed in 1900 by his autobiography, a work of great interest.
PEARSON, JOHN (1612–1686), English divine and scholar, was born at Great Snoring, Norfolk, on the 28th of February 1612. From Eton he passed to Queen’s College, Cambridge, and was elected a scholar of King’s in April 1632, and a fellow in 1634. On taking orders in 1639 he was collated to the Salisbury prebend of Nether-Avon. In 1640 he was appointed chaplain to the lord-keeper Finch, by whom he was presented to the living of Thorington in Suffolk In the Civil War he acted as chaplain to George Goring’s forces in the west. In 1654 he was made weekly preacher at St Clement’s, Eastcheap, in London. With Peter Gunning he disputed against two Roman Catholics on the subject of schism, a one-sided account of which was printed in Paris by one of the Roman Catholic disputants, under the title Scisme Unmask’t (1658). Pearson also argued against the Puritan party, and was much interested in Brian Walton’s polyglot Bible. In 1659 he published in London his celebrated Exposition of the Creed, dedicated to his parishioners of St Clement’s, Eastcheap, to whom the substance of the work had been preached several years before. In the same year he published the Golden Remains of the ever-memorable Mr John Hales of Eton, with an interesting memoir. Soon after the Restoration he was presented by Juxon, bishop of London, to the rectory of St Christopher-le-Stocks; and in 1660 he was created doctor of divinity at Cambridge, appointed a royal chaplain, prebendary of Ely, archdeacon of Surrey, and master of Jesus College, Cambridge. In 1661 he was appointed Lady Margaret professor of divinity; and on the first day of the ensuing year he was nominated one of the commissioners for the review of the liturgy in the conference held at the Savoy. There he won the esteem of his opponents and high praise from Richard Baxter. On the 14th of April 1662 he was made master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1667 he was admitted a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1672 he published at Cambridge Vindiciae epistolarum S. Ignatii, in 4to, in answer to Jean Daillé. His defence of the authenticity of the letters of Ignatius has been confirmed by J. B. Lightfoot and other recent scholars. Upon the death of John Wilkins in 1672, Pearson was appointed to the bishopric of Chester. In 1682 his Annales cyprianici were published at Oxford, with John Fell’s edition of that father’s works. He died at Chester on the 16th of July 1686. His last work, the Two Dissertations on the Succession and Times of the First Bishops of Rome, formed with the Annales Paulini the principal part of his Opera posthuma, edited by Henry Dodwell in 1688.
See the memoir in Biographia Britannica, and another by Edward Churton, prefixed to the edition of Pearson’s Minor Theological Works (2 vols., Oxford, 1844). Churton also edited almost the whole of the theological writings.
PEARSON, JOHN LOUGHBOROUGH (1817–1897), English architect, son of William Pearson, etcher, of Durham, was born in Brussels on the 5th of July 1817. He was articled at the age of fourteen to Ignatius Bonomi, architect, of Durham, but soon removed to London, and worked under the elder Hardwicke. He revived and practised largely the art of vaulting, and acquired in it a proficiency unrivalled in his generation. He was, however, by no means a Gothic purist, and was also fond of Renaissance and thoroughly grounded in classical architecture. From the erection of his first church of Ellerker, in Yorkshire, in 1843, to that of St Peter’s, Vauxhall, in 1864, his buildings are Geometrical in manner and exhibit a close adherence to precedent, but elegance of proportion and refinement of detail lift them out of the commonplace of mere imitation. Holy Trinity, Westminster (1848), and St Mary’s, Dalton Holme (1858), are notable examples of this phase. St Peter’s, Vauxhall (1864), his first groined church, was also the first of a series of buildings which brought Pearson to the forefront among his contemporaries. In these he applied the Early English style to modern needs and modern economy with unrivalled success. St Augustine’s, Kilburn (1871), St John’s, Red Lion Square, London (1874), St Alban’s, Birmingham (1880), St Michael’s, Croydon (1880), St John’s, Norwood (1881), St Stephen’s, Bournemouth (1889), and All Saints', Hove (1889), are characteristic examples of his matured work. He is best known by Truro Cathedral (1880), which has a special interest in its apt incorporation of the south aisle of the ancient church. Pearson’s conservative spirit fitted him for the reparation of ancient edifices, and among cathedrals and other historical buildings placed under his care were Lincoln, Chichester, Peterborough, Bristol and Exeter Cathedrals, St George’s Chapel, Windsor, Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey, in the surveyor ship of which last he succeeded Sir G. G. Scott. Except as to the porches, the work of Scott, he re-faced the north transept of Westminster Abbey, and also designed the vigorous organ cases. In his handling of ancient buildings he was repeatedly opposed by the ultra. anti-restorers (as in the case of the west front of Peterborough Cathedral in 1896), but he generally proved the soundness of his judgment by his executed work. Pearson’s practice was not confined to church building. Treberfydd House (1850), Quar Wood (1858), Lechlade Manor, an Elizabethan house (1873), Westwood House, Sydenham, in the French Renaissance style (1880), the Astor estate offices (1892) upon the Victoria
