There is, finally, a branch of priestly employment upon which I am peculiarly well qualified to speak: this is the hospitality department: and herein they excel all denominations. Their traditions are partly Irish, partly collegiate, or monastic; a good stock on both sides, if it’s dining you want. There were still remaining in my earlier inspecting days a few country rectories where, before the fall in the value of tithe and glebe, H.M.I. was royally received, and the neighbouring gentry assembled to do him honour. As a rule these dinners were magnificent, but not festive. A modest man (like the present chronicler) soon gets weary of being stared at and listened to. Moreover, the tedium was prolonged beyond the grave of dessert, for there was the drawing-room, and it was always possible that some one would sing. Far different were the R.C. nights. Clear in the memory is the recollection of that Chester south window looking over the Vale Royal, and the fresh green of the April meadows; the cheerful room where the Provost, newly recovered from the horrors of Lent, made all things smooth; and the well-beloved Canon paced restlessly up and down his quarter-deck, smoking his unfailing cigarette, and bringing out of his treasures things new and old. And never to be forgotten are those wild February nights in the City of the Future, when Monsignore dispensed carnival hospitality, ending in the long, well-stocked library, where we discoursed _de iis quae melius sine ulla solennitate tradi possunt_--the phrase is academical--till near the midnight hour. Well remembered, too, are the other Presbyteries in that hospitable town, and the genial welcome that began with the smiling parlour-maid at the door--who “remimbered the ould man, when I was in Standard IV. meself, and he pulled me hur, and called me Biddy”--and ended much later at night. To many other places--Manchester and Salford alone had more than thirty R.C. schools--my duty took me; and in all the welcome was the same. To their credit, moreover, be it said, the priests are singularly free from that professional, unreal manner affected by some clergymen, and by nearly all Dissenting ministers. A good bed-side manner is esteemed in doctors, but a good grave-side manner is abominable in any one but an undertaker. “Where is that barty now?” Few indeed of my old hosts survive: “And I the last go forth companionless, And the days darken round me, and the years, Among new men, strange faces, other minds.” It must not be supposed that the company on these occasions was exclusively clerical. Poor was the mission that could not produce a festive layman, or two, to give variety to the conversation; and also, if by any remote chance some one demanded a rubber, to prevent the possibility of being counted out in consequence of an epidemic of sick-calls.