Though the door was the door of a bishop and we had the text in our favour, 'Knock and it shall be opened,' yet Enoch, no doubt remembering his own good breeding, was too cautious to ask if his lordship were at home. He bade the servant say that a clergyman of the church of England and a young gentleman from Oxford, bringing letters from the president of ---- college and other dignitaries of the university, requested an audience. The message was delivered, and we were ushered into a parlour, the walls of which were decorated with the heads of the English archbishops, surrounding Hogarth's modern midnight conversation. There was not a book in the room; but there were six or eight newspapers. With these we amused ourselves for some time, till the approach of the bishop was announced by the creaking of his shoes, the rustling of his silk apron, and the repeated hems with which he collected his dignity. The moment I saw him, his presence reminded me of my old acquaintance, the high-fed brawny doctors of Oxford. His legs were the pillars of Hercules, his body a brewer's butt, his face the sun rising in a red mist. We have been told that magnitude is a powerful cause of the sublime; and if this be true, the dimensions of his lordship certainly had a copious and indisputable claim to sublimity. He seemed born to bear the whole hierarchy. His mighty belly heaved and his cheeks swelled with the spiritual inflations of church power. He fixed his open eyes upon me and surveyed me from top to toe. I too made my remarks. 'He is a true son of the church,' said I.--The libertine sarcasm was instantly repelled, and my train of ideas was purified from such irreverend heresy--'He is an orthodox divine! A pillar of truth! A Christian Bishop!' Thought is swift, and man assents and recants before his eye can twinkle. I delivered my credentials and he seated himself in a capacious chair, substantially fitted to receive and sustain its burden of divinity, and began to read. My letters were from men high in authority, purple-robed and rotund supporters of our good _Alma Mater_, and met with all due respect. Clearing his sonorous throat of the obstructing phlegm, with which there seemed to be danger that he should sometime or other be suffocated, he welcomed me to London, rejoiced to hear that his good friends of the university were well, and professed a desire to oblige them by serving me. I briefly explained to him my intention of devoting myself to the church, which he highly commended; and Enoch, who far from being idle all this time had been acting over his agreeable arts, soon found an opportunity of informing the right reverend father in God what powerful connexions I had, how well skilled I was in classical learning, how deeply I was read in theology, how orthodox my opinions were, and to give a climax which most delighted me added that, young as I was, I had already obtained the character of a prodigious fine writer!