After all, youth may round the world away, as Charles Kingsley wrote; but when the wheels are run down, to find at home the face I loved when all was young is the blessing of life, and when, at our golden wedding, our children called us Darby and Joan, I am sure my wife and I were quite willing to answer to the names.

This was happiness very different to that of George IV., who, when the death of Napoleon was announced to him in the words:—­

‘Sir, your great enemy is dead,’ exclaimed:—­

‘Is she?  By Gad!’ thinking it was his wife.

I remember an amusing case that occurred in our own family.  One of my kith and kin, who had been married in the year of the battle of Waterloo, died at the ripe old age of a hundred and three.

There was a faithful old fellow on the estate who was much attached to her, and this was his view, just before her end:—­

’I am sorry to hear the old mistress is dying, very sorry indeed, for she’s been a good mistress to us all.  Maybe if she had taken snuff she’d have lived to a good old age,’ which suggests wonder as to what his conception of longevity really was.  Probably the famous Countess of Desmond, who died from the effects of a fall from a cherry-tree in her one hundred and fortieth year, would have satisfied him.

I have already observed that much of my later years has been spent, much against my will, in London, and no portion of this period was so satisfactory to me as my friendship with Mr. J.A.  Froude, which I regard as one of the privileges of my life.

My first acquaintance with him was in consequence of reading his English in Ireland, which I found so accurate and informative that I wrote to ask him for an interview.  I came to like him very much, not only because he was the most gifted writer I have met, but also because he understood Ireland better than any other Englishman.

My first conversation with him was in his house in Onslow Gardens, and there I very frequently sat for hours with him, and he also presented me with copies of all his books, with an autograph letter on the fly-leaf of each.  I think the recent Land Purchase Act, having been followed by increased agitation for Home Rule in Ireland, bears out what he said about the folly of trying to reconcile the irreconcilables, and also bears out what Lord Morris called the ‘criminal idiotcy’ of attempting to satisfy eighty Irish members, forty of whom would have to starve directly they were satisfied.

So far as I am aware, Mr. Froude never contemplated standing for Parliament, which would not have been a congenial atmosphere for him, though I am convinced he would have made more mark at Westminster than his friend Mr. Lecky, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting.