On the appointed day I examined the school, and, when the afternoon work was done, strolled up to the Rectory, to wait for the arrival of the exhausted clerics. There were seven or eight of them at dinner: the rest went empty away. It would be easy to describe the guests individually, but all the clergy between the North Sea and the Irish Channel, between Carlisle and the borders of Salop, would waste their precious time in hunting for the lineaments of themselves, or their neighbours. I need mention only two: first, the Archdeacon, who had views about the Burials Bill (which was the burning question of that day), the Revised Version, and the Unity of Christendom. He was full of goodness; rather lacking in humour, and rather hostile to inspectors, whom he regarded as a lay and inferior form of archdeacon. There were two Archdeacons in the diocese, both worthy, and both wooden; so that Canon Miller had said, in his epigrammatic way, “The Archdeacon is the _oculus episcopi_, and our Bishop suffers from that form of ophthalmia which is known to the faculty as _amaurosis_, or dullness of sight.” The other notable was the Rev. O. Goodfellow. He was the butt of the Rural Deanery. For five tedious years he had toiled at Oxford for his degree; his college had ejected him at the end of his fourth year, and he had taken refuge in a Hall. There he exhausted the pass-coaches of Oxford, and he might have exhausted his father’s patience, but a soft-hearted examiner took pity on him, and his fate was like that of Augustus Smalls of old: “Men said he made strange answers In his Divinity; And that strange words were in his Prose Canine to a degree: But they called his vivâ voce ‘Fair,’ And they said his books would do; And native cheek, where facts were weak, Brought him in triumph through.” Possibly he might have done better in the schools if he had not devoted the October term to football, the Lent term to the Torpids, and the summer term to cricket. There is little time for reading, if a man really tries to do his duty by his college in these three branches of industry. In his parochial work his athletics helped him greatly; for the rest he was the most good-natured of men, and his wife was charming. Every one laughed at him, and everybody liked him. Also he was known to all men as Robin. The dinner was simple and good; the conversation was varied, except in two directions: the Canon announced at the outset that if any one mentioned the Burials Bill or the word “education” he should be sconced. This, as my neighbour on the left remarked _sotto voce_, trumped the Archdeacon’s best trick, and left me without a card to lead.