Then I might mention Wardle, who was the chief of one of the divisions of the Country Department, and a man of such varied mind that, while very skillful in his profession of insurance, he yet found leisure to develop the art of music to the very highest pitch. He was, in fact, a professional organist on Sundays; and not contented with this, actually composed music in the loftiest Gregorian manner, and played it on his organ before the congregation. His way of work was a great revelation to me, for while Tomlinson might be calculating the proper weights for a handicap, or taking down names for a sweepstake, Wardle, with a piece of music paper before him, which it always was in his spare moments, would be arranging triumphs of thorough bass and counterpoint and so on—all to delight his congregation some day, when the composition was finished. He did not like Wagner, and told me that he was a charlatan and would soon vanish forever; but Mozart he considered his own master, and said that Mozart was the very spirit and essence and soul of religious music. He spoke bitterly, but quite patiently, about the vicar of the church where he played and said that the man, though a well-meaning and honourable man, had never grasped the powers of music in religion. “If he had,” said Wardle, “I should have had a new organ to play upon long ago. Our instrument is very inferior and our choir a thing of nought. As it is, the people come to hear me and not him.” But one of his pieces of music had been played by a friend on the organ of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Wardle had heard it and been a good deal moved to find how his composition came out amid the solemn and glorious architecture of that sacred edifice. He hoped it would be played at Westminster Abbey, when the regular organist was taking his holiday and his locum tenens, as they call it, was in his place. Because this locum tenens was known to Mr. Wardle and believed in his powers of composition.