the bishop's time was completely occupied by literary and domestic
matters, and that no leisure was left for plotting. But Pope, who
was quite unaccustomed to speak in public, lost his head, and, as he
afterwards owned, though he had only ten words to say, made two or three
blunders.

The bill finally passed the Lords by eighty-three votes to forty-three.
The bishops, with a single exception, were in the majority. Their
conduct drew on them a sharp taunt from Lord Bathurst, a warm friend
of Atterbury and a zealous Tory. "The wild Indians," he said, "give
no quarter, because they believe that they shall inherit the skill and
prowess of every adversary whom they destroy. Perhaps the animosity of
the right reverend prelates to their brother may be explained in the
same way."

Atterbury took leave of those whom he loved with a dignity and
tenderness worthy of a better man. Three fine lines of his favourite
poet were often in his mouth:--

"Some natural tears he dropped, but wiped them soon:
The world was all before him, where to chuse
His place of rest, and Providence his guide."

At parting he presented Pope with a Bible, and said, with a
disingenuousness of which no man who had studied the Bible to much
purpose would have been guilty: "If ever you learn that I have any
dealings with the Pretender, I give you leave to say that my punishment
is just." Pope at this time really believed the bishop to be an injured
man. Arbuthnot seems to have been of the same opinion. Swift, a few
months later, ridiculed with great bitterness, in the "Voyage to
Laputa," the evidence which had satisfied the two Houses of Parliament.
Soon, however, the most partial friends of the banished prelate ceased
to assert his innocence, and contented themselves with lamenting and
excusing what they could not defend. After a short stay at Brussels, he
had taken up his abode at Paris, and had become the leading man among
the Jacobite refugees who were assembled there. He was invited to Rome
by the Pretender, who then held his mock court under the immediate
protection of the Pope. But Atterbury felt that a bishop of the Church
of England would be strangely out of place at the Vatican, and declined
the invitation. During some months, however, he might flatter himself
that he stood high in the good graces of James. The correspondence
between the master and the servant was constant. Atterbury's merits were
warmly acknowledged; his advice