most delightful of all offices in the
Church of England. His inward nature accorded well with this happy
environment. It was in a singular degree pure, simple, refined,
ingenuous. All the grosser and harsher elements of human character
seemed to have been omitted from his composition. He was naturally good,
naturally graceful, naturally amiable. A sense of humour was, I think,
almost the only intellectual gift with which he was not endowed. Lord
Beaconsfield spoke of his "picturesque sensibility," and the phrase was
happily chosen. He had the keenest sympathy with whatever was graceful
in literature; a style full of flexibility and colour; a rare faculty of
graphic description; and all glorified by something of the poet's
imagination. His conversation was incessant, teeming with information,
and illustrated by familiar acquaintance with all the best that has been
thought and said in the world.

Never was a brighter intellect or a more gallant heart housed in a more
fragile form. His figure, features, bearing, and accent were the very
type of refinement; and as the spare figure, so short yet so full of
dignity, marked out by the decanal dress and the red ribbon of the Order
of the Bath, threaded its way through the crowded saloons of London
society, one felt that the Church, as a civilizing institution, could
not be more appropriately represented.

A lady of Presbyterian antecedents who had conformed to Anglicanism once
said to the present writer, "I dislike the _Episcopal_ Church as much as
ever, but I love the _Decanal_ Church." Her warmest admiration was
reserved for that particular Dean, supreme alike in station and in
charm, whom I have just now been describing; but there were, at the time
of speaking, several other members of the same order who were
conspicuous ornaments of the society in which they moved. There was Dr.
Elliot, Dean of Bristol, a yearly visitor to London; dignified, clever,
agreeable, highly connected; an administrator, a politician, an
admirable talker; and so little trammelled by any ecclesiastical
prejudices or habitudes that he might have been the original of Dr.
Stanhope in _Barchester Towers_. There was Dr. Liddell, Dean of Christ
Church, whose periodical appearances at Court and in society displayed
to the admiring gaze of the world the very handsomest and stateliest
specimen of the old English gentleman that our time has produced. There
was Dr. Church, Dean of St. Paul's, by many competent