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422 had neither head nor heart for strict denominational studies. Not to be in living touch with the immense phenomena of Catholicity, with the teaching of Wiseman, as with that of Guizot or Heine, would have seemed to him a lapse into ancestral sectarianism or national insulation. At Paris he would visit the veteran Chouan Rio, who was affectionately attached to him, and then go straight to another Breton, Renan. He was as intimate with Montalembert as with any foreigner ; but he resented his attitude towards the coup d'etat, and repeated the malicious stories spread from the Elysee. Neither Thirlwall nor Aubrey de Vere took his theological demonstrations very seriously, and he himself, when he was asked, used to say that he was a professed crypto-Catholic.

Without being a recluse, or even a strict economist of time, he had read widely, and possessed a very unusual knowledge of unusual things in literature and history. His studious curiosity and zeal in collecting rare books blossomed into a society of literary Epicureans called the Philobiblion Club, which was an enlarged edition of Monckton Milnes. He wished it to be looked upon as a society of idle men — of men so indifferent to the shortness of time that they would go out breakfasting, not only at each other's town houses, but, by preference, at Twickenham or Wimbledon, at Highgate or at least at St. Dunstan's. They were the owners of unique copies, of bindings bright with the arms of Mazarin, and titlepages defaced by priceless signatures. Though reputed enemies of profitable knowledge, in a luxurious way they issued volumes of recondite and exquisite matter ; but when one of them published a mere life of Shakespeare, stiff with the solidity of facts and dates, others felt like an epicure invited to dine on condensed egg. The unwritten law forbids profane intrusion into the life of clubs, but the Philobiblion exists no more, and Mr. Wemyss Reid was justified in pleasantly describing an association peculiarly characteristic of Lord Houghton's tastes, in which he spent many of his happiest hours, and where those who had the privilege of meeting him found him at