It was a great success. The Rector wrote to me, expressing his sincere regret that I could not come; but thanking me for sending so excellent a substitute: it was rare, he remarked, in these days to meet a man whose conversation gave such ample proof of a liberal education. I think I never saw him again: his death occurred soon afterwards, and I trust his nephew “carved his epitaph aright.” Like Browning’s Bishop he would have liked Latin; but he would not have cared whether it were Tully or Ulpian, so long as it was familiar; and he would have given a preference to examples from the Latin Grammar. It would have sufficed, I think, to begin with “_Hic jacet_,” and to wind up with “_Multis ille bonis flebilis occidit_”; and I should heartily have appended “_Nulli flebilior quam_ MIHI.” FOOTNOTES: [32] “Hoo,” or more properly “oo,” in the Counties Palatine stands for “she” or “her.” CHAPTER XXI R.C.s “A single life doth well with churchmen, for charity will hardly water the ground, where it must first fill a pool.”--Bacon. I think I have already said that one of the charms of our life, seemingly so monotonous, was its infinite variety. There were no days in the year that provided such varied entertainment as those set apart for the Roman Catholic schools. Technically we knew them only as R.C.s. It should be premised that, as a general rule, in the north-west of England (in French idiom) “who says Roman Catholic says also Irish.” This is not the case in some villages in Lancashire where the Reformation has not yet penetrated; and in such towns as Liverpool and Manchester there is a large admixture of the Latin race, besides Belgians and Hollanders; but in Cheshire with very few exceptions the priests are Irish, and the school-teachers and children are Irish. There is a sprinkling of English priests, but by dint of living almost wholly with Irish co-religionists they nearly always have a noticeable brogue. They study their business so diligently and so skilfully that I can quite imagine they would cultivate the brogue, if it were not self-sowing, as the key to the hearts of their flocks. Assume a virtue if you have it not. On the other hand I have known some Irish priests whose families have lived so long in the land of the silent H, that, if on such a theme I may be allowed a bull, they have added the absent H to their brogue, making themselves all things to all men.