Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/339

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1857-1862 279 The great day at Hurstpierpoint was May 6, S. John ante Portam Latinam, when the Apostle was said to have been cast into a caldron of boiling oil before the Latin gate in the walls of Rome. There was a great procession with banners, the choir singing, Dr. Lowe in his Doctoral scarlet and black, and a bishop or two. Now, on one memorable occasion, there were actually three bishops present, and for their accommodation three Glastonbury chairs had been placed in the apse. There were no desks before them, and when, in the service we arrived at the Prayers, round on their heels twirled the three prelates, burying their heads in the seats of their chairs, and presenting to the congregation an aspect the reverse of dignified. And the dear creatures were innocent of the absurd appearance they presented, as viewed by the congregation. We had a good many visitors at Hurst. One was Dr. Joseph Wolff, the Oriental traveller, whose Journal in a series of letters to Sir Thomas Baring from the East has been printed, and is of fresh and perennial charm. He was a converted Jew. How it was that he induced Lady Georgiana Mary, sixth daughter of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford, to marry him, is a marvel. By her he had a son, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff. She died in January, 1859, and then he married Louisa Diana, voungest daughter of James King, rector of S. Peter-le-Poer, London. He was a man of extraordinary linguistic knowledge and facility, but his English was not always grammatical, nor his pronunciation correct. He was a German Jew by birth, and when quite a little fellow had posed his father, a Rabbi, with the same question as that propounded to Philip by the treasurer of Queen Candace. Said Wolff to his father, " Tell me, of whom does the prophet speak here ? " His father stared at him, and made no reply. " And Wolff dared not to ask him a second time, but went into another room, and wept. And there he heard his father say to his mother, who was also weeping, ' God have mercy upon us, our son will not remain a Jew.' " He became convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, but he got no satisfaction from the Evangelical pastors and university professors, who were nearly all Rationalists, and little more than either Deists or Pantheists. So he went to Munich and Vienna, -and after that to Rome to