Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/401

 1864 337 twitched, and a little flush came into his cheek. It was a matter of common knowlege that he knew little more of it than the alphabet. That achieved, he bade me go to Ripon for examination ; he further informed me that the Ordination would take place on Whit-Sunday. The candidates would be required to lodge in the city of Ripon. His examining chaplain would furnish a list of respectable lodging-houses. Every morning they (the candidates, not the lodging-houses) would walk out to the palace, where the examination would begin at 11 a.m. Accordingly to Ripon I went, and at the appointed hour on the appointed day made my appearance at the Cockney-Gothic palace a mile and a half or two miles from the town. Of Bishop Bickersteth I say as little as possible. One thing is certain, that the family was profoundly pious, and wholly sincere. It has turned out such good and valuable men since the days of the Bishop of Ripon that I would not say anything to hurt their feelings. Our examining chaplain, Canon Fawcett, interested me greatly. His face and the shape of his head would have qualified him for the Chamber of Horrors at Mme Tussaud's Waxworks. One of the greatest trials in life is to have anything to do with a stupid man, whom nothing could induce to conceive the possibility that he was stupid, or with a good man to whom it never has occurred that he was other than good. The type of Evangelicals who surrounded Bishop Bickersteth could not fail to make me recall the words of Touchstone : " When a man's verses cannot be understood, nor a man's good wit seconded with the forward child, Understanding, it strikes a man more dead than a great reckoning in a little room." At this period the Evangelical leaders were not men of more than mediocre intelligence, and were neither well-read nor broad-minded. They had sopped up Lutheran Justification by Faith only, and nothing else, and entertained a veneration for the Reformers little short of that due to the Apostles. The study of the human face has ever had for me a special interest. Certain avocations stamp their character on the countenance. There is no mistaking the face of an ostler, groom and huntsman : the exercise of control over the horse gives a firmness