He calls these lads [students who reside with the bishop] (and I can imagine worse things to feel myself, for the nonce, one of them) his family, and they treat him as frank, ingeneous gentlemen's sons would treat their father. He is accessible to their difficulties and their doubts, if they have any; but, a thing more remarkable, he is open to all their kittenhood of mirth and fun. To hear him alone with them is to feel you are on the edge of a circle, which tempts you almost to stand on tiptoe and look over and wish you were inside. It is a searching trial of true homeliness, to observe how it comports itself when there are strangers present. But I assert my coming in has not bated one jot of all this family joy. Last evening after prayers, they were poking fun at the bishop. One man was asked how he was getting on with Hebrew. The fellow boldly turned the weapon round by asking whether his lordship was prepared to teach him. Dr. Lightfoot was gently demuring, when someone else burst in, as if with a child's impateince and fear of some older uncompleted promise: "No, not before we have these lectures on botany.." Then, assuming the air of someone to whom that study was even as his necessary foot, he went on to report his observations, taken daily on his walks to and from the district, of two interesting weeds. It sounded like a clver parody upon Darwin and his climbing plants trained up the bed-post.