Pointing to one disreputable-looking ruffian about to mount, he observed:—­

‘That fellow has no pretensions to be a gentleman-rider.’

The farmer caught him by the collar of his coat and the seat of his breeches, and shook him as a mastiff would a rat.

‘Mind yourself, small man,’ said he, ’that’s a recognised gentleman in these parts.’

There was a mighty shindy, and when the farmer was told his victim was a prominent English peer, he retorted:—­

‘Well, that won’t make him a judge of an Irish gentleman.’

In the last chapter I mentioned that the preacher I most admired was Archbishop Magee.  I had the privilege of frequently hearing him in Cork, where he drew crowded congregations to a temporary church—­the cathedral being under repair.

I never heard any one who so magnetised me from the pulpit, and I am by no means prone to admire sermons.  There was a sort of mesmerism in the very eloquence of Magee which kept my eyes riveted on his lips—­rather big, bulgy lips in an expressive, sensitive face.  An hour beneath him sped marvellously fast, and more than once in Cork I have heard him preach for that length.  The impression he made on me has never been effaced, and it was with no surprise I learnt in due course that he became Archbishop of York.

The late Lord Derby said that the most eloquent speech he ever heard in or out of the House of Lords was Magee’s speech on the Church Act, the peroration of which—­quoting from memory after many years—­ran:—­’My Lords, I will not, I cannot, and I dare not vote for that most unhallowed bill which lies on your Lordships’ table.’

Have all Magee stories been told?

I am afraid so.  Yet in the hope that a few may be new to some, though old to others—­who are invited to skip them—­here are just a small batch.

When he was a dean, he one day attended a debate on tithes in the House of Commons, and was subsequently putting on his overcoat, when a Radical Member courteously assisted him, whereupon he remarked:—­

’I am very much obliged to you, sir, for reversing the policy of your friends inside, who are taking the coats off our backs.’

This was equalled by the wife of an Irish landlord who lost her purse in the Ladies’ Gallery of the House of Commons.

Mrs. Gladstone, who had been sitting next her, after kindly assisting in the ineffectual search, observed:—­

‘I hope there was not much in it.’

’No, it was a nice little purse I had had for a long time, but thanks to your husband there was nothing in it.’

An Irish story of Magee’s concerns an Orange clergyman in Fermanagh, who asked leave to preach a sermon by Magee.  Now, this clergyman, who was an ambitious man, was rather ashamed of his mother, and would not let her live at the parsonage, but had taken lodgings for her in the town.  Magee, moreover, always a moderate man, did not like Orange sermons, and most certainly had never composed one.  As he good naturedly did not want to offend the other, he said he would give him a capital sermon to deliver if he—­Magee—­might select the text.