And it was strange, too—in its way—that, when the debate was set down for hearing, I, a member of the Pelican Club, should have been deputed by the editor of an evening paper to attend Convocation, and write a more or less graphic description of the historic debate. My experience of the Upper House of Convocation, while assuring me that its members possessed quite a respectable amount of debating power, also convinced me that their deliberations were academic merely, and that the Bishops were terribly out of touch with actualities. The conditions under which the “House” sat were not conducive to those illusions which the laity should cherish regarding the episcopacy. Their lordships met in a dining-room on the first-floor of a house in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. A striped wall-paper was adorned at gaping intervals with engravings from Millais and Landseer. The furniture was mid-Victorian. A long telescope-table filled the middle of the room. Round this board sat the Bishops, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who took his place at the top of the table. Had their lordships not been robed in billowing white, with lawn sleeves, doctors’ hoods, and decorated with episcopal signets, the idea conveyed to the mind of the casual observer would have been that of a group of commercial travellers assembled in the commercial room of a country hotel waiting for the one o’clock ordinary. In the embrasure of a window looking out on to Dean’s Yard a table was placed for the reporters. The general public was, of course, rigorously excluded. Arrangements were made only for a certain number of reporters—six, I think, was the limit. And it had been necessary to arrange for the absence of one of these gentlemen, so that I, who unfortunately have never mastered shorthand, might be present. From my coign of vantage in the embrasure I could see some Westminster schoolboys playing in the enclosure. Their shrilling shouts punctuated the earlier deliberations of their lordships. Besides ourselves of the Press and the members of the Upper House of Convocation, the only other person present was Sir John Hassard, the courteous Registrar. His chief duty seemed to be that of ushering the gentlemen of the Press in and out of this hopelessly bourgeois Upper Chamber. And this was a ceremony of frequent occurrence. When their lordships considered that the trend of the debate made it desirable that strangers should retire, the Archbishop looked over to us, smiled benevolently, and observed: “If you please, gentlemen.” It reminded me of Ponsford’s early morning admonition to customers supping late at the Albion. We rose. Sir John preceded us to the door, opened it, and bowed us out. Presently—their lordships having concluded their private colloquy—he came out to us in the passage, and ushered us in again.