My mother little guessed what sort of person it was whom she had asked into her family. So much, however, she had understood from Miss Wesley--that Mrs. Lee was a bold thinker; and that, for a woman, she had an astonishing command of theological learning. This it was that suggested the clerical invitations, as in such a case likely to furnish the most appropriate society. But this led to a painful result. It might easily have happened that a very learned clergyman should not specially have qualified himself for the service of a theological tournament; and my mother's range of acquaintance was not very extensive amongst the clerical body. But of these the two leaders, as regarded public consideration, were Mr. H----, my guardian, and Mr. Clowes, who for more than fifty years officiated as rector of St. John's Church in Manchester. In fact, the _golden_ [2] jubilee of his pastoral connection with St. John's was celebrated many years after with much demonstrative expression of public sympathy on the part of universal Manchester--the most important city in the island next after London. No men could have been found who were less fitted to act as champions in a duel on behalf of Christianity. Mr. H---- was dreadfully commonplace; dull, dreadfully dull; and, by the necessity of his nature, incapable of being in deadly earnest, which his splendid antagonist at all times was. His encounter, therefore, with Mrs. Lee presented the distressing spectacle of an old, toothless, mumbling mastiff, fighting for the household to which he owed allegiance against a young leopardess fresh from the forests. Every touch from _her_, every velvety pat, drew blood. And something comic mingled with what my mother felt to be paramount tragedy. Far different was Mr. Clowes: holy, visionary, apostolic, he could not be treated disrespectfully. No man could deny him a qualified homage. But for any polemic service he wanted the taste, the training, and the particular sort of erudition required. Neither would such advantages, if he had happened to possess them, have at all availed him in a case like this. Horror, blank horror, seized him upon seeing a woman, a young woman, a woman of captivating beauty, whom God had adorned so eminently with gifts of person and of mind, breathing sentiments that to him seemed fresh from the mintage of hell. He could have apostrophized her (as long afterwards he himself told me) in the words of Shakspeare's Juliet-- "Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!" for he was one of those who never think of Christianity as the subject of defence. Could sunshine, could light, could the glories of the dawn call for defence? Not as a thing to be defended, but as a thing to be interpreted, as a thing to be illuminated, did Christianity exist for _him_. He, therefore, was even more unserviceable as a champion against the deliberate impeacher of Christian evidences than my reverend guardian.