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cogitations that he decided to take the journey to the other end of the diocese where the Bishop lived. He arrived just in time for five-o'clock tea, a meal to which he was a complete stranger. After tea, the Bishop asked him to accompany him to Evensong. When they returned to the house, the Bishop, remarking that it was quite time they went upstairs, lit a candle and showed his guest to his room. It was then just seven o'clock, and though the old clergyman thought it was rather early to retire, still, admiring the Bishop for such simple habits, he prepared for bed. He had just put out the light and lain down to sleep, wishing he had eaten a little more tea, when a booming noise rang through the house and smote upon his ear. Quick as thought he sprang from his bed, and shouting "Fire!" at the top of his voice, rushed out on to the landing, just in time to meet the Bishop, with a lady on his arm, going down to dinner. The sequel to the story has never been divulged, and, as I have said, this is not a personal reminis

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A rather amusing story is told of another Bishop. A certain layman in the diocese brought a complaint against the clergyman of the parish for various ritualistic practices. making his indictment, he reserved the worst till last,-"And would you believe it, my lord? Mr. kisses his stole." Whether the Bishop approved of the piece of ritual or not, history does not relate, but his sense of humor came to his rescue at at the moment. "Well, Mr. you will be the first to admit that that's a good deal better than if he stole a kiss." That reminds one of the story (is it an old one?) of the reply made by a bishop on a similar occasion. A very just complaint was brought before him that a certain clergyman in the diocese was wearing an Oxford Master's hood, when, as a

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matter of fact, he had no such degree. "I call it, my lord," said the complainant, "wearing a lie on his back." "We need not use quite so strong a word, Mr. Smith," the Bishop replied in his blandest manner, "call it a falsehood."

While dealing with the dangerous subject of bishops, the following is, I believe, a true story. A certain Bishop, in travelling through his dio. cese, had occasion to change at a wayside junction. While waiting for his train, he seized the opportunity of making friends with the station-master. One of the kindest-hearted men, he was very fond of trying to enter into the varied interests of those with whom he came in contact. However, on this occasion he did not find it easy to discover the exact topic in which his new friend was interested. So, reluctantly, he fell back on his particular "shop," i. e., the traffic. "I suppose, with the race meeting taking place to-day, there has been some very heavy traffic on your line?" Inadvertently, the Bishop had indeed touched the station-master's weak point, not the traffic, but racing. So for the next quarter of an hour, he listened, in his kindly way, to the various merits of the horses engaged in the St. Leger, and their chances of success. At last, to the Bishop's great relief, it must be admitted, the train arrived, and, shaking hands with his racing friend, he got into a carriage. He had not travelled very far, however, when, the train having pulled up, he heard the station-master's voice asking if the Bishop of was in the train. Hastily the Bishop declared his presence. Of course, his fellow passengers in the third-class carriage (it was the Bishop's boast that he always travelled third), were on the qui vive to know what the station-master wanted with the Bishop, while quite a little knot of spectators gathered round the carriage window. Up

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comes the official, making a prodigious salute to the great ecclesiastical dignity. "I've just received a wire, my lord, from the station-master at asking me to tell your lordship that Donovan won the Leger." The Bishop's astonishment and chagrin at his friend's kindly thought of him can be better imagined than described, especially when he heard the titter from those assembled on the platform, and noticed the increased interest with which he was regarded by his companions for the rest of the journey. It is said that his lordship is more wary as to the subjects he touches upon in talking to casual acquaintances.

And,

From bishops to vergers is a far cry, but still, in many cathedrals, the verger is a dignitary only less important than the Bishop himself. I remember, as a boy, a verger of one of our northern cathedrals, who was one of its most splendid ornaments. He was fully alive to the importance of his office, and, so long as he had his gown on his back, and his wand in his hand, scarcely deigned to greet his friends, save with the stiffest of bows. so long as he was thus clothed with the robes of office, nothing could extract from him any criticism of either cathedral or chapter, though many were the attempts made. However, on one occasion he was to some extent moved from his attitude of dignified silence. There had recently been erected a marble pulpit, very handsome in itself, but certainly out of keeping with the rest of the building. A visitor, who knew his peculiarity, ventured to sound him on the subject of this new pulpit. "Now, what is your opinion about it, Mr. ?" he asked.

At first there came over his face the old stolid look, but on this one occasion his feelings were too much for him. A compromise was the result. "Speaking, sir, as a verger, I have nothing to say but in praise of the donors; but,

if you ask me as a man, and not as a verger," (and then he fell into colloquial language), "I don't think nothing of it or its art,”—a very pretty distinction, that, between a man and a verger.

Here is the story of a really smart retort given by one who was a wellknown verger in the eastern counties. The church possessed a valuable Bible, which was only used on Sundays. During the week it was kept in a box which rather curiously formed the stand upon which the reader of the lessons stood. On one occasion, when this was being shown to a visitor, the remark was made that it did not seem very reverent for even a clergyman to tread upon the Bible. "Pardon me," the old verger replied; "in this church, sir, we take our stand upon the Scriptures." At a church in one of our northern towns, where I was curate for a time, there was a verger who was very clever at turning his hand to any particular job that wanted doing, and rather prided himself on his powers of decorative art. The church, which was very poor and very ugly, offered him a fine field for the exercise of these powers. One day he asked my vicar to come and see a kind of cardboard erection which he had made to go over the altar. I believe the proper term for it is a baldacchino. The vicar, having duly admired it, and thanked the verger, added, "I am afraid we shall need a faculty to put it up, Mr. P." "Oh, no, sir," was the reply, "it's very light, it'll only need a few tin tacks."

I was glad to see in your "Pages from a Private Diary" some kindly references to the much abused "vicaress" and her blankets. In confirmation of what your amusing contributor says as to the favorable opinion generally held of her by the village matrons, some farm laborers were talking to me on the subject not long ago, while

I was endeavoring to entice the wily pike from his lair in one of the fen "drains." I may say that my fishing costume entirely concealed the fact that I was a parson, so their testimony was unbiassed. It was election time, and evidently the "red van" fraternity had waxed eloquent on squires and squiresses, vicars and vicaresses. My friends' comments were simple in the extreme: "We wish as 'ow there were a few more of them sort 'bout; it's well enough for them to laugh as 'asn't to keep a wife and bairns on fourteen bob a week." There is no doubt that in spite of all the talk, the village folk would have a harder time if there was no hall and no parsonage. Indeed, many are the strange requests made to the parson. Only the other day a message was brought to a friend of mine that "old Mr. Jones would be glad if Mr. I would give him the loan of his trousers, as he wanted to go to the cemetery to a funeral." The fact that Mr. Jones would not want them for more than an hour was made a great point of, as though, in the Cornhill Magazine.

meantime, the curate would have to go to bed till the trousers returned. To thoroughly appreciate the situation, it was necessary to have known Mr. Jones, who had the unenviable reputation of being the dirtiest old man in the parish.

Easter time is a great season for weddings. A friend of mine was joining together in the bonds of matrimony a certain widower and a young lady who was the happy owner of no less than five Christian names. These had to be written on a piece of paper for the bridegroom's assistance at the critical moment of plighting troth. At the conclusion of the ceremony (as the papers always say), the happy couple returned to the vestry for the purpose of signing the register. The clerk was anxious to know by which of the five names the bridegroom intended to recognize his bride. "Weel," said the gay widower, "I shall call 'er the same as I called the last un; she'll be 'the missus' same as t'other",-I suppose as a tender reminiscence of the happy days passed with the "last un." Stewart F. L. Bernays.

IN HASTE.

From far, from eve and morning,
And yon twelve-winded sky,

The stuff of life to knit me
Blew hither; here am I.

Now-for a breath I tarry,
Nor yet disperse apart-
Take my hand quick and tell me,
What have you in your heart?

Speak now, and I will answer;
How shall I help you, say;
Ere to the wind's twelve quarters
I take my endless way?

A. E. Housman.

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When George I. asked Horace Walpole if he was a Freemason and Horace replied, "No, sir; I never was anything," he gave the clue to his character and to his life. When it has been said that he was the third son of the great Sir Robert, born in 1717, educated at Eton and Cambridge, that he travelled in Italy with Gray, the poet, that he built and decorated Strawberry Hill, became the fourth Earl of Orford in 1791, and died in 1797, the essential facts of his history have been given. He wrote, indeed, "The Castle of Otranto," which nobody reads, and "The Mysterious Mother," which no one could act; "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.," of which most people have never even heard, and the "Letters," which are for all time.

Horace is, indeed, as much the king of letter writers, as Shakespeare is the king of poets. What other man or woman ("Letter writing is a province in which women will always shine superiorly," says Horace gallantly, and with a smile in his sleeve perhaps) could have written letters sufficient to fill nine fat volumes, and never a dull page in them all? Who else could have corresponded with that prosy envoy to Tuscany, on whom he had not set eyes "for nine and thirty years," and with whom he had "no acquaintance in common but the Kings and Queens of Europe," and been at all times inimitably gay, light, easy, witty as he was?

The "Letters" are, in fact, the model of what letters should be, and are also, it may be safely said, what letters never will be again. I think they are artificial, and it may be true enough that Horace drew up very careful draughts of them before he sat down to write, and used the very same bon LIVING AGE. 59

VOL. I.

mot to a great many of his correspondents, they are, at least, the perfectiou of art, which is to seem like nature. One subject flows into another with the most perfect spontaneity. It is impossible to say whether Horace is happier when he is writing of the trial for treason of the brave old rebel, Balmerino (where he allows himself to display a little feeling almost) or of the trial for bigamy of the notorious Duchess of Kingston. He glides with an infinitely easy grace from the American War and the very worst prognostications for the future of his own country to a card-party at the Countess of Suffolk's, or to a little story, that shocks even my Lady Ossory, to whom he sends it, and who is in general, it appears, not at all over particular. Now he is describing a "supper after the opera with a set of the most fashionable company," now "Strawberry at lilac tide," and now the bootikins he is trying for the relief of the gout from which, or from the dread of which, he is suffering with a great deal of spirit and cynicism all his life. Now it is the affairs-the very unfortunate affairs--of the mad Lord Orford, his nephew, that he is discussing with Mann, or some particularly dogmatic criticism on books or their authors he is laying down (posterity has refuted most of Horace's literary judgments, and one can fancy his perfectly affable indifference to its degenerate opinions), or the character of a servant for which he is writing to Lord Harcourt. But whatever he describes, and he describes everything, or whatever character he gives of men and their works, he first describes, directly or indirectly, consciously or unconsciously, himself.

Horace is born artificial, one fancies. He is from the first an odd, puny, sickly,

whimsical little being, with none of the coarse robustness of the old Sir Robert, and a fatal accusing likeness instead, say some, to a very different person. My Lady, the flighty mother with Lord Hervey's evil name coupled everywhere with hers, can have no reason to love too well the little boy whose childish face and nature at once accuse and condemn her. Sir Robert has his other sons, and his coarse pleasures, and his great politics to occupy him, and couldn't naturally bother himself much about a weakly child, who will die young, says every one, even if there were no reasons to make him unjust, harsh, and neglectful.

So the boy grows up as solitary children do, odd, precocious, and unnatural, shrinking, terrified perhaps, from his father, when he encounters him by chance on the stairs, or in the passages of the great London house, and clambering to his nursery window to watch his lady mother, very fine, patched and powdered, one may be sure, going to the Drawing Room in her chair. The little Horace is playing at Courts and Kings and Queens when other children are engaged, much more wholesomely, with balls and kites. He experiences at a very early age a queer childish passion to kiss the hand of His Most Gracious and Germanic Majesty George I., and is accordingly taken by his mother (it is one of the few things she is recorded as having done for him, and that quite a doubtful benefit perhaps) to the Mistress, and by the Mistress into the august Presence itself. Years after, Horace tells the story, remembering the details quite faithfully, and dwelling upon it very characteristically as the one supremely important event of his childhood, before which all the other events are dwarfed into nothingness. One can see, as in a picture, that ante-room of Majesty, with the courtiers, who are the courtiers of the Mistress much more than of the King,

talking and laughing among themselves in groups, here my Lady Walpole and there my Lord Hervey, and in the center her great Grace of Kendal, who is perfectly kindly as well as immoral, and calls the little would-becourtier to her knees and pats him on his head with a fat hand to encourage and brace him up, as it were, for the interview. One can see clearer still the little pale, wondering child, suitably awed, and yet so oddly shrewd and observant that even in the Presence itself he looks at Majesty and its surroundings with something of that keenness and sarcasm with which, later on, he regards the whole of life.

After the blazing light of this interview he retires again into the darkness of his solitary childhood and the gloomy London house and daily lessons perhaps (Horace is always busy learning what no lessons can teach him, and has a fine contempt hereafter for the string of facts called knowledge), and is next heard of at Eton, where, as may be supposed, he is not at all popular, not being nearly vigorous enough for games, and having, even as a boy, a pretty turn for cynicism, not at all ap preciated by the robust English youths, his companions. Then he is grown up, and at Cambridge. After this he makes the famous Italian tour with Gray, the poet, who quarrels with him. or with whom he quarrels-it does not matter which-before he returns to England, takes his seat in Parliament (he is such a very dilettante and sarcastic politician as to be in favor with no party), buys the ground near Twickenham, and begins the greatest work and enterprise of his life, the building and decoration of Strawberry Hill.

Horace is now exactly thirty years old. He looks out from his pictures, mostly taken about this period, or a little later, with the frail, slight figure (he is not so very far removed from the "decrepit skeleton" he calls himself),

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