Bishop of Oxford who addressed me as "My
dear Sir," I wrote back "My dear Sir," and said that I should be very
happy. How Samuel Wilberforce must have chuckled when he read my
epistle. But how is any stranger to know all the intricacies of social
literature, particularly if he is wrongly informed by the highest
authorities. I must confess that even later in life I have often been
puzzled as to the right way of addressing my friends. There is no
difficulty about intimate friends, but as one grows older one knows
so many people more or less intimately, and according to their
different characters and stations in life, one often does not know
whether one offends by too great or too little familiarity. I was once
writing to a very eminent man in London who had been exceedingly
friendly to me at Oxford, and I addressed him as "My dear Professor
H." At the end of his answer he wrote, "Don't call me Professor." All
depends on the tone in which such words are said. I imagined that
living in fashionable society in London, he did not like the somewhat
scholastic title of Professor which, in London particularly, has
always a by-taste of diluted omniscience and conceit. I accordingly
addressed him in my next letter as "My dear Sir," and this, I am sorry
to say, produced quite a coldness and stiffness, as my friend
evidently imagined that I declined to be on more intimate terms with
him, the fact being that through life I have always been one of his
most devoted admirers. I did my best to conform to all the British
institutions, as well as I could, though in the beginning I must no
doubt have made fearful blunders, and possibly given offence to the
truly insular Briton. Bunsen seemed to delight in asking me whenever
he had Princes or other grandees to lunch or dine with him.

One day he took me with him to stay at Hurstmonceux with Archdeacon
Hare, and a delightful time it was. There were books in every room,
on the staircase, and in every corner of the house, and the Archdeacon
knew every one of them, and as soon as a book was mentioned, he went
and fetched it. He generally knew the very place at which the passage
that was being discussed, occurred, and excelled even the famous dog,
which at one of these literary breakfast parties--I believe in
Hallam's house--was ordered on the spur of the moment to fetch the
fifth volume of Gibbon's _History_, and at once climbed up the ladder
and brought down from the shelf the very volume in wh