I stayed a night in London, on my way to Arundel, to hear Lord Hugh Cecil discourse at our Westminster Dining-club, with his usual perfervid rhetoric, on "Some Diseases of the House of Commons." Two of our University Members, Sir William Anson and Professor Butcher, joined in the interesting subsequent discussion. A friend next morning insisted on carrying me off to Selfridge's, the huge new emporium in Oxford Street, and showing me all over it. He amused me by a story of how there, or in some other Brobdingnagian London store, the electric light suddenly went out, just at the busiest hour of the evening. "There they were--thousands of {139} 'em," the narrator of the incident is supposed to have said, "pinching the goods right and left--'aving the time of their lives, with not a light in the 'ole place; and there was _I_--just my blooming luck--where do you think? _in the grand piano department!_" I went for the week-end to Rickmansworth, to stay with Lady Encombe, who had a little party for the laying of the foundation-stone of the new church of the Assumptionists. The Bishop of Kimberley (S.A.) gave a nice address. I preached next day (Sunday) in the old church, and in the evening we all listened to a quaint Franco-English sermonette from good Fr. Julian, the superior. Monday was Jack Encombe's tenth birthday: I gave him _Jorrocks_, with coloured plates, which delighted him; saw him and his brother start hunting on their ponies (their mother following them awheel); and then left for Arundel, where I was very glad to find myself (though not yet fully robust) able to take my share in the solemn Easter services. I found the castle grounds at length "redd up" and in perfect order; the hordes of workmen vanished, and lawns and terraces and shrubberies and flower-beds twinkling in the April sunshine. It was a joy to see the beautiful home of the Howards looking itself again after all these years of reconstruction and upheaval. The Duke had told me that he was determined to get the place shipshape within a year of his second marriage, or (like Trelawny) "know the reason why!" and he had been as good as his word. I heard with pleasure in Easter week that my nephew had got his first in moderations at Balliol; and with sorrow of the death of my kind old friend Bishop {140} Wilkinson, successor of St. Cuthbert as Bishop of Hexham, and a shining example of loyalty and devotion to his Church and his country. I lunched in London, on my way to Oxford, with Lady Maple, at Clarence House, the pretty residence in Regent's Park left to her by Sir Blundell Maple. Telephoning previously to "Clarence House" to inquire the luncheon-hour, I was informed in haughty tones that "their Royal 'Ighnesses were in Egypt, and that nothing was known about any luncheon!" It turned out that I was in communication with the other Clarence House, the St. James's residence of the Duke of Connaught.