I spent Easter, as usual, at Arundel, where a gathering of Maxwells (the Duchess's young relatives) made the big house cheerful and homelike. The summer term at Oxford was an uneventful one, the most interesting event that I recall being our annual Canning and Chatham dinner, with a more distinguished gathering than usual. Lord Milner made a remarkable and interesting speech in reply to the toast of "The Empire," and "Smith of Wadham," M.P. (the future Lord Chancellor), was also very eloquent. The Duke of Leinster (then up at Balliol), who sat next me, spoke of the hereditary good relations between his family and Maynooth College, and amused me by saying that he thought it must be "much more interesting" to be a Catholic in England than in Ireland! I motored some of my young Benedictines over to Blenheim one day; and we were, with other sight-seers, escorted over the show-part of the palace. The little Duke burst in on us in one state-room, and retired precipitately, banging the door with an audible "D--n!" "His Grace the Dook of Marlborough!" announced, without turning a hair, the solemn butler who was acting as showman; and our party was, of course, duly impressed. {66} I was summoned this summer to three weddings, all of interest to me, the first being that of my nephew Kelburn, a pretty country function in Surrey. The Bishop of Worcester tied the knot--"impressively," as the reporters say (but why cannot an Anglican dignitary read the Bible without "mouthing" it?), and I afterwards found in his wife, Lady Barbara Yeatman-Biggs, an old friend of my childhood.[12] Many relatives, of course, were present here, and also, ten days later, in the Chelsea church where Archdeacon Sinclair ("genial and impressive," the newspapers called _him_) united my younger sister, _en secondes noces_, to Captain Cracroft Jarvis. I spent the evening of her wedding in the House of Commons, where I had a mind to see our famous new Radical Parliament-men gathered together. A very "scratch lot" they seemed to me to be; and Archbishop Walsh of Dublin, whom I found beside me in the D.S.G., seemed as little impressed as myself by their "carryings-on." His Grace was so pleased with Carlyle's definition, or description, of the House, which I quoted to him (he was apparently unfamiliar with it), that he promptly copied it down in his note-book: "a high-soaring, hopelessly-floundering, ever-babbling, inarticulate, dumb dark entity!"