As the Prince of Wales comes this afternoon to open the Town Hall, I went round to the Deanery to invite them to come through my rooms upon the roof, to see the procession arrive....  A party of about twenty were on my roof in the afternoon, including Mrs. Moberly, Mrs. Driver, and Mrs. Baynes, and most, if not all, of the children in Christ Church.  Dinner in Hall at eight.  The Dean had the Prince on his right, and Lord Salisbury on his left.  My place was almost vis-a-vis with the Prince.  He and the Dean were the only speakers.  We did not get out of Hall till nearly ten.

In June he bought a “Whiteley Exerciser,” and fixed it up in his rooms.  One would have thought that he would have found his long walks sufficient exercise (an eighteen-mile round was, as we have seen, no unusual thing for him to undertake), but apparently it was not so.  He was so pleased with the “Exerciser,” that he bought several more of them, and made presents of them to his friends.

As an instance of his broad-mindedness, the following extract from his Diary for June 20th is interesting.  It must be premised that E—­was a young friend of his who had recently become a member of the Roman Catholic Church, and that their place of worship in Oxford is dedicated to S. Aloysius.

I went with E—­ to S. Aloysius.  There was much beauty in the service, part of which consisted in a procession, with banner, all round the church, carrying the Host, preceded by a number of girls in white, with veils (who had all had their first communion that morning), strewing flowers.  Many of them were quite little things of about seven.  The sermon (by Father Richardson) was good and interesting, and in a very loyal tone about the Queen.

A letter he wrote some years before to a friend who had asked him about his religious opinions reveals the same catholicity of mind:—­

I am a member of the English Church, and have taken Deacon’s Orders, but did not think fit (for reasons I need not go into) to take Priest’s Orders.  My dear father was what is called a “High Churchman,” and I naturally adopted those views, but have always felt repelled by the yet higher development called “Ritualism.”

But I doubt if I am fully a “High Churchman” now.  I find that as life slips away (I am over fifty now), and the life on the other side of the great river becomes more and more the reality, of which this is only a shadow, that the petty distinctions of the many creeds of Christendom tend to slip away as well—­leaving only the great truths which all Christians believe alike.  More and more, as I read of the Christian religion, as Christ preached it, I stand amazed at the forms men have given to it, and the fictitious barriers they have built up between themselves and their brethren.  I believe that when you and I come to lie down for the last time, if only we can keep firm hold of the great truths Christ