whose official house he inhabits; and to those elements of agreeableness he adds certain others which his admirable predecessor could scarcely have claimed.  He has all the sensitiveness of genius, with its sympathy, its versatility, its unexpected turns, its rapid transitions from grave to gay, its vivid appreciation of all that is beautiful in art and nature, literature and life.  His temperament is essentially musical, and, indeed, it was from him that I borrowed, in a former paragraph, my description of Jenny Lind and her effect on her hearers.  No man in London, I should think, has so many and such devoted friends in every class and stratum; and those friends acknowledge in him not only the most vivacious and exhilarating of social companions, but one of the moral forces which have done most to quicken their consciences and lift their lives.

Before I have done with the agreeableness of clergymen I must say a word about two academical personages, of whom it was not always easy to remember that they were clergymen, and whose agreeableness struck one in different lights, according as one happened to be the victim or the witness of their jocosity.  If any one wishes to know what the late Master of Balliol was really like in his social aspect, I should refer him, not to the two volumes of his Biography, nor even to the amusing chit-chat of Mr. Lionel Tollemache’s Recollections, but to the cleverest work of a very clever Balliol man—­Mr. W.H.  Mallock’s New Republic.  The description of Mr. Jowett’s appearance, conversation, and social bearing is photographic, and the sermon which Mr. Mallock puts into his mouth is not a parody, but an absolutely faultless reproduction both of substance and of style.  That it excessively irritated the subject of the sketch is the best proof of its accuracy.  For my own part, I must freely admit that I do not write as an admirer of Mr. Jowett; but one saying of his, which I had the advantage of hearing, does much to atone, in my judgment, for the snappish impertinences on which his reputation for wit has been generally based.  The scene was the Master’s own dining-room, and the moment that the ladies had left the room one of the guests began a most outrageous conversation.  Every one sat flabbergasted.  The Master winced with annoyance; and then, bending down the table towards the offender, said in his shrillest tone—­“Shall we continue this conversation in the drawing-room?” and rose from his chair.  It was really a stroke of genius thus both to terminate and to rebuke the impropriety without violating the decorum due from host to guest.

Of the late Master of Trinity—­Dr. Thompson—­it was said:  “He casteth forth his ice like morsels.  Who is able to abide his frost?” The stories of his mordant wit are endless, but an Oxford man can scarcely hope to narrate them with proper accuracy.  He was nothing if not critical.  At Seeley’s Inaugural Lecture as Professor of History his only remark was—­“Well,