'MY DUTY AND RESPECT!

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Hook's 'Lives of the Archbishops,' but with the addition of some interesting matter from other sources. I could not omit, had I even wished it, sending a copy to Morton's living successor in the primacy, but I took care to accompany it with nothing more than 'my duty and respect.'. It was most kindly acknowledged.

CHAPTER VI.

ARCHBISHOP TAIT AT POWDERHAM CASTLE.

FOUR years ago the late Primate, having recently lost his son and his wife, and, it may be added, his health and his strength, was taking a holiday in the west of England. To my surprise, and not less pleasure, I received an invitation from the Earl of Devon to meet him at Powderham Castle. It was almost exclusively a family party, Mr. Sadler, Vicar of Honiton, being the only exception besides myself. The Primate, attended by his daughter, now his only secretary, was a touching spectacle. Lady Anne Wood did the honours of the well-known historic pile which occupies so high a place in Devon story and Devon affections. It was Friday, if I remember right, and I was asked to remain over the Sunday. As I had a clerical friend staying with me and taking most of my duty, I could easily accept the invitation. The Primate and his devoted secretary had work all the day, and showed little.

One evening Lady Anne planted me on a sofa near the Primate, who at once began on Oxford acquaintances and Oxford doings. Of everybody and everything he spoke with a bright and tender kindness. His gentle and admiring allusions to Ward made me feel a little ashamed of the budget of grievances my soul still harbours with that gentleman. He talked most pleasantly of the Newmans, and reminded me of an incident I had long forgotten. While the Cardinal that now is was standing at the north side of the Altar at the old Margaret Street Chapel, a black cat suddenly descending, nobody knew whence, lighted on his shoulder and bounded off, nobody could see whither. Three or four years difference of age make much difference in mental recollections, and I was flattered to find the Primate had a distinct recollection of me in Oriel Common Room.

He thanked me much for my book on Cardinal Morton. I had sent Lord Devon a copy also, and he very kindly had it laid on the drawing-room table. It had made the Primate acquainted with the very remarkable and utterly forgotten fact that his predecessor Morton had done the honours of Rome to the French King Charles VIII. and his army, on their return from the so-called conquest of Naples, when the Pope (Borgia) and all his own cardinals found it. expedient to be out of the way at Orvieto. Morton had been present, with thirteen other cardinals, at the state reception of the king by the Pope, on the former's first passage through Rome, and had witnessed the succession of expedients by which each struggled to assert his pre-eminence.

CANTERBURY AT ROME.

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In regard to another matter, it was on his second visit that Charles VIII. laid the first stone of the Trinità di Monte, the first church in Rome with that dedication, on the site of the temporary church used by his soldiers on their previous month's sojourn at Rome.

The Primate kindly invited me to call at Lambeth the ensuing February, when he would take me over the Palace and show me what Morton had done there. I accepted the invitation, but when February came there was not a day I could have spared for so happy a pilgrimage. I was rural dean. I had to visit twenty churches, some near twenty miles off, and very inaccessible. I had to prepare candidates for Confirmation. I had to accompany the Bishop in his little tour of the rural deanery. So I had to break my engagement. Calling at Lambeth later in the year, I found the Primate had left special directions that I was to be shown everything and receive all possible assistance.

Having had to write to Golightly a few days before my visit to Powderham, I thought to amuse him by mentioning it. He wrote to me, enclosing a note addressed to the Primate, with a particular injunction to deliver it with my own hand. This I did, though not quite liking the job. The note would not contain dynamite, but there are degrees of explosiveness. The Primate opened the note, glanced at its contents, and, with a pleasant smile, put it in his pocket.

Going the round of our contemporaries, he took for granted I must have been well acquainted with his brother-in-law Spooner, whose influence had told so much on Mrs. Tait. I certainly remembered him

very well as a mild and amiable member of our Oriel circle; but he was several years my junior, and when I saw anything of him he was rather the recipient than the medium of impressions, and not even receiving impressions in a demonstrative manner. It must have been in after years that he acquired force of character and of manner to impress his sister, indeed his brother-in-law too, as he appears to have done. But everybody who compares his early contemporaries with their life careers will have been struck by the frequent discrepancy between the promise and the fulfilment, most apparent when really there had been no promise at all.

I cannot for the life of me recall what led to my next move. It could not be any question as to my place in the Class List; nor was it any allusion to my inconsistencies. I blurted out that most of the time I was at school, all the time I was at college, and for many years after, I had been under a very strange, if not absolutely evil, possession, a philosophy begotten in me, somehow or other, by my frequent conversation with an early instructor, the father of Mr. Herbert Spencer.

The Primate was astonished and amused. Opening his eyes and his mouth, he awaited further revelations. I cannot have said a word on the matter for forty years, and how I came now to select the Primate of all England for my father confessor I can't conceive. I had to go on, and as I attempted to make things intelligible he asked me some pertinent questions. Had I published anything on the subject? How had it affected my writings generally? In what respect did the process I had aimed at differ

PHILOSOPHY AND LEGEND.

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from the natural growth of all minds-that is, all that do grow? Of course he observed on the utter antagonism of such a method as that I tried to describe with the principles of the Oxford school. Though I wished to explain myself further, it was a happy deliverance when Lady Anne came up, proposed to introduce me to some one else in the room, took me off, and planted some one else tête-à-tête with the Archbishop.

ances.

My monopoly of his presence had been long enough in all conscience, for I now remember I had favoured him with one of the derivations which experience has taught me to inflict sparingly on old acquaintHe alluded to my pictured chancel screen. What other figures were there? These I enumerated. One I dwelt upon, either wholly forgetting what the Archbishop would have to say to it, or upon some latent suggestion. This was St. Sidwell. As painted on my chancel screen she carries a scythe over her shoulder, and her own head in her hands, a glory taking its place. The legend, I believe, is that upon some trial of her faith she fled across the corn-fields, and was pursued by the reapers, one of whom cut her head off with a sweep of his scythe. I derived the legend from its root, which I supposed to be the river Sid in my rural deanery. It is so called, I said, from its sinking or settling down into the shingle and sand before it reaches the sea. The Sid would have a source, which would be called Sidwell, as in the case of Clyst Wellham, corrupted into Clystwilliam in my own village. The locality of Sidwell would give a name to a family. This would be latinised into Sativola, the name of the saint. But Sativola if