e the briefest and the
justest, was made by "the gorgeous Lady Blessington" to Napoleon III.
When Prince Louis Napoleon was living in impecunious exile in London he
had been a constant guest at Lady Blessington's hospitable and brilliant
but Bohemian house. And she, when visiting Paris after the _coup d'etat_
naturally expected to receive at the Tuileries some return for the
unbounded hospitalities of Gore House. Weeks passed, no invitation
arrived, and the Imperial Court took no notice of Lady Blessington's
presence. At length she encountered the Emperor at a great reception. As
he passed through the bowing and curtsying crowd, the Emperor caught
sight of his former hostess. "Ah, Miladi Blessington! Restez-vous
longtemps a Paris?" "Et vous, Sire?" History does not record the
usurper's reply.

Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter from 1830 to 1869, lived at a
beautiful villa near Torquay, and an enthusiastic lady who visited him
there burst into dithyrambics and cried, "What a lovely spot this is,
Bishop! It is so Swiss." "Yes, ma'am," blandly replied old Harry of
Exeter, "it is very Swiss; only there is no sea in Switzerland, and
there are no mountains here." To one of his clergy desiring to renew a
lease of some episcopal property, the Bishop named a preposterous sum as
the fine on renewal. The poor parson, consenting with reluctance, said,
"Well, I suppose it is better than endangering the lease, but certainly
your lordship has got the lion's share." "But, my dear sir, I am sure
you would not wish me to have that of the other creature."

Still, after all, for a bishop to score off a clergyman is an
inglorious victory; it is like the triumph of a magistrate over a
prisoner or of a don over an undergraduate. Bishop Wilberforce, whose
powers of repartee were among his most conspicuous gifts, was always
ready to use them where retaliation was possible--not in the safe
enclosure of the episcopal study, but on the open battlefield of the
platform and the House of Lords. At the great meeting in St. James's
Hall in the summer of 1868 to protest against the Disestablishment of
the Irish Church, some Orange enthusiast, in the hope of disturbing the
Bishop, kept interrupting his honeyed eloquence with inopportune shouts
of "Speak up, my lord." "I am already speaking up," replied the Bishop
in his most dulcet tone; "I always speak up; and I decline to speak down
to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery." Every one w