“On Hurstley Down yesterday I was out with Jack Woodburn” (this was another minor canon of the cathedral, but not one of our chaplains).... “Sehon king of the Amorites: for his mercy endureth for ever.” “My black bitch Juno put up a covey almost at our feet.” “And gave away their land for an heritage: for his mercy endureth for ever.” “I blazed away with both barrels and brought down a brace.” “Who remembered us when we were in trouble: for his mercy endureth for ever.” “But Jack fired too soon and never touched a feather.” And so on. Now there would be no sort of interest in recording that we unfortunately chanced to have at one time a very graceless chaplain, if such had been the case, which it was not. The interest lies in the fact that the gentleman in question was a worthy and excellent man in all the relations of life; that he was absolutely innocent of intentional impropriety; and that, as far as I can remember, we had none of us the faintest idea that we ought to have been shocked or scandalised. Such was the state of things and men’s minds “sixty years since.” The brother of this chaplain was the manciple of the college, and was known among us as “Damme Hopkins,” from the following circumstance. His manner was a quaint mixture of pomposity and _bonhomie_, which made a conversation with him a rather favourite amusement with some of us. Now the manciple was a very well-to-do man, and was rather fond of letting it be known that his independent circumstances made the emoluments of the place he held a matter of no importance to him. “Indeed,” he would say, “I spoke to the Bishop [the Warden] a few months ago of resigning, but the Bishop says to me, ‘No, no, Damme Hopkins, you must keep the place.’” And I have no doubt that the deficiency of dramatic instinct which thus led the worthy manciple to transfer his own phraseology to his right reverend interlocutor rendered him quite unconscious of any inaccuracy in his narration. We used to go twice every Sunday, as I have said, to the cathedral. But we did not attend the whole morning service. We timed our arrival there so as to reach the cathedral at the beginning of the Communion service, and to be present at that and at the sermon which followed it. We had no sermons in college chapel, save on certain special occasions, such as 5th of November, “Founder’s commemoration,” or “Founder’s obit.” On the former of these occasions a sermon used to be preached with which we had become familiar by the annual repetition of it during a succession of years. I wonder how many there are left who will remember the words, “A letter was sent, couched in the most ambiguous terms, and who so likely to detect it as the King himself?”