BEST'S MEMS.
Dr. George Horne was a man of unaffected piety, cheerful temper, great learning, and, notwithstanding his propensity to jesting, dignified manners. He was much beloved in Magdalen College, of which he was president; the chief complaint against him being, that he did not reside the whole of the time in every year that the statutes required. He resigned his headship on being promoted from the Deanery of Canterbury to the See of Norwich; the alleged reason was, the incompatibility of the duties; though other heads of houses, when made bishops, have retained their academical situations. He never manifested the least ill-humour himself, and repressed it, but with gentleness, in others. Having engaged in a party at whist, merely because he was wanted to make up the number, and playing indifferently ill, as he forewarned his partner would be the case, he replied to the angry question, "What reason could you possibly have, Mr. President, for playing that card?" "None upon earth, I assure you." On the morning when news was received in college of the death of one of the fellows, a good companion, a bon vivant, Horne met with another fellow, an especial friend of the defunct, and began to condole with him: "We have lost poor L——." "Ah! Mr. President, I may well say I could have better spared a better man." "Meaning me, I suppose?" said Horne, with an air that, by its pleasantry, put to flight the other's grief. I was talking with Henry James Pye, late poet-laureate, when he happened to mention the name of Mr. P., a gentleman of Berkshire, and M.P. I think, for Reading; "That is the man," said I, "who damned the king's wig in the very presence of his majesty; with great credit, however, to his own loyalty, and very much to the amusement of the king." "I do not well see how that could be." "You shall hear a story which our president (Pye had been a gentleman commoner of Magdalen College) told at his own table. The king was out a hunting; P—— was in, and of, the field; the king's horse fell; the king was thrown from the saddle, and his hat and wig were thrown to a little distance from him: he got on his feet again immediately, and began to look about for the hat and wig, which he did not readily see, being, as we all know, short-sighted. P——, very much alarmed by the accident, rides up in great haste and arrives at the moment when the king is peering about and saying to the attendants, 'Where's my wig? where's my wig?' P—— cries out, 'D—n your wig! is your majesty safe?'"