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opening. The alarm was great among the domestics ; but 
the Dean's sons were delighted at the discovery, and, having 
first ascertained that the air was pure by letting down a 
lighted candle, one of them descended by a rope and found 
a worm-eaten wooden bedstead and table, both in a state 
of crumbling decay. It was said to have been one of Dean 
Atterbury’s hiding-places. Another of these hiding-places 
was in the wall of the library, a fine old room of sixty feet 
in length over the south cloisters. The drawing-room 
extends over the entrance to the Deanery from the cloisters 
and over the college kitchen. Under the floor of these 
rooms the rats had taken up their quarters, and when the 
house was quiet would run riot in all directions. These 
invisible guests, for none were ever seen, were the horror 
of the servants ; but the Dean, to prevent his children 
from being frightened, told them stories of the rats’ clever 
doings, and how on one occasion they emptied a small cask 
of choice apricot wine, which his aunt had made for him 
in his college days, by dipping their tails into a hole that 
they had gnawed. 
Buckland may be said to have kept open house at the 
Deanery. Friends were always coming to breakfast or to 
luncheon ; and this continuous stream of visitors served to 
fill his home with life and movement. The house was the 
centre also to which men of science resorted, and where 
many of their discoveries were explained or illustrated. 
The following note to Professor Faraday, written on 
June 13th, 1849, will serve as an example:— 
“ My dear Professor, —If you can give us the pleasure 
of your company at lunch to-morrow at two, or any time 
