“Next morning there appeared in the New York _Herald_ a paragraph headed, ‘A Dean Behind the Scenes,’ and shortly afterward I was gently rebuked by a brother clergyman as having imperilled the dignity of my office. As counsel for the defence, I made answer, ‘Reverend sir, in the play entitled “The Old Homestead,” two young fellows, who had been making fools of themselves and had gone to the bad, were brought back to a right mind--to their home and duty. They were shown the misery and degradation of vice, and then, in contrast, the happiness and the honor of a righteous life. I went behind the scenes to thank the teacher of that object lesson, and if you, my brother, will prove to me that by one of your sermons you have persuaded two prodigals to get away from the husks of the swine and return to their Father’s house, I shall rejoice to pay my respects to you in the vestry, or wherever we may meet.’” The Bishop of Ripon, Dr. Boyd Carpenter, the Queen’s favorite minister, is regarded as the most eloquent man in the English clergy. I visited him at his palace during 1897. He said he wished to visit America soon, but had three hundred and ten parsons to look after, and did not know just how soon he could arrange to make the trip. [Illustration] His great theme is Dante. A distinguished woman told me that she had heard him deliver a course of five lectures on Dante, and she thought she had never heard a man so intensely interested in his subject or so eloquent. His palace is a sort of public hotel for all members of the clergy, and Mrs. Carpenter told me that though a yearly income of £10,000 seemed enormous for a Bishop, she was often put to it to know how to make both ends meet. She kept count one year, and they entertained more than six thousand persons. The Bishop writes a personal letter to the Queen every month, and receives one in reply. He has a copy of every photograph that Queen Victoria ever had taken, with her autograph written on each one. A warm feeling of personal friendship exists between the Bishop of Ripon and the Dean of Ely, yet the two men are very unlike. The wide difference between their points of view is apparent from these few words in one of Dr. Carpenter’s letters to me: “Dean Stubbs is a man well known for his strong social sympathies. He has been the champion of the agricultural laborer, and in all questions he, as such, has taken _a strangely liberal line_.” The Bishop of Ripon has had invitations to deliver the Noble course of lectures at Harvard University, and the Lowell Institute lectures in Boston. I know that he would be pleased to come to our country, but he is such a very busy man that up to this time he has not found it possible.