to discharge the duties of the chaplain of Oxford Jail during the Long Vacation.  Unluckily it so fell out that he had to perform the terrible office of preparing a criminal for execution, and it was felt that he said a “Thing one would rather have expressed differently,” when, at the close of his final interview, he left the condemned cell, observing, “Well, at eight o’clock to-morrow morning, then.”

The path of those who inhabit Courts is thickly beset with pitfalls.  There are so many things that must be left unsaid, and so many more that must be expressed differently.  Who does not know the “Copper Horse” at Windsor—­that equestrian statue at the end of the Long Walk to which (and back again) the local flyman always offers to drive the tourist?  Queen Victoria was entertaining a great man, who, in the afternoon, walked from the Castle to Cumberland Lodge.  At dinner her Majesty, full, as always, of gracious solicitude for the comfort of her guests, said, “I hope you were not tired by your long walk?” “Oh, not at all, thank you, ma’am.  I got a lift back as far as the Copper Horse.”  “As far as what?” inquired her Majesty, in palpable astonishment.  “Oh, the Copper Horse, at the end of the Long Walk!” “That’s not a copper horse.  That’s my grandfather!”

A little learning is proverbially dangerous, and often lures vague people into unsuspected perils.  One of the most charming ladies of my acquaintance, remonstrating with her mother for letting the fire go out on a rather chilly day, exclaimed, “O dear mamma, how could you be so careless?  If you had been a Vestal Virgin you would have been bricked up.”  When the London County Council first came into existence, it used to assemble in the Guildhall, and the following dialogue took place between a highly cultured councillor and one of his commercial colleagues.

Cultured Councillor.  “The acoustics of this place seem very bad.”

Commercial Councillor (sniffing).  “Indeed, sir?  I haven’t perceived anything unpleasant.”

A well-known lady had lived for some years in a house in Harley Street which contained some fine ornamentation by Angelica Kauffmann, and, on moving to another quarter of the town, she loudly lamented the loss of her former drawing-room, “for it was so beautifully painted by Fra Angelico.”

Mistakes of idiom are the prolific parents of error, or, as Mrs. Lirriper said, with an admirable confusion of metaphors, breed fruitful hot water for all parties concerned.  “The wines of this hotel leave one nothing to hope for,” was the alluring advertisement of a Swiss innkeeper who thought that his vintages left nothing to be desired.  Lady Dufferin, in her Reminiscences of Viceregal Life, has some excellent instances of the same sort.  “Your Enormity” is a delightful variant on “Your Excellency;” and there is something really pathetic in the Baboo’s benediction, “You have been very good to us, and may Almighty God give you tit for tat.”