campanology.  And this word “musical” reminds me of Mr. Haweis’s noble self-sacrifice in giving up his idolised violin that he might concentrate all his energies on religious teaching; when I asked to see his famous “Straduarius,” worth three hundred guineas, and found it unstrung, I expressed my disappointment at not having had the chance of hearing its dulcet tones drawn out by himself, but it lies dumb, though he is eloquent.  Of course I have visited the great Tennyson at Farringford, and remember him showing me the tree overhanging his garden fence, which “Yankees” climb to have a look at him. Browning also, tantum vidi, I met at Moxon’s, a grandly rugged poet; contrasted with the Laureate he seems to me as Wagner is to Mendelssohn. Mortimer Collins has given us “a happy day” at Albury, coming in a pied poudre on one of his dusty walks through Surrey, as recorded in his book; how he enjoyed his tumbler of cool claret and the ramble with my son through the Albury woods as a most genial Bohemian! Dickens I have met several times, and he gave me good hints on my first American visit; a man full of impulsive kindliness and sincerely one’s friend.  His son Charles also I have occasionally met, the worthy successor to his illustrious father:  I may here state that many of the articles and poems in Household Words are from the pen of my youngest daughter. Richard Owen, too, now worthily K.C.B., our most famous comparative anatomist, I am privileged to number among my true friends; he was one of those who stood sponsor to me when I was to receive a civil service pension.  Also I knew for many years my late Surrey neighbour, Godwin Austen, the geologist; and I have met Pengelly, with whom I searched Kent’s Cavern; and Dr. Bowerbank, the great authority as to sponges, and my then hobby choanites; he gave me certain microscopic plates of Bacilli which I was glad to transfer to my worthy and eminent friend, Stephen Mackenzie, Physician and Lecturer to the London Hospital. Matthew Arnold also, with whose celebrated father I was in early youth nearly placed as a pupil, I have sometimes encountered; and Shirley Brooks, Albert Smith, and Mark Lemon, once a chief of Punch, who acted Falstaff without padding; and the genial John Tenniel, our most exquisite limner in outline; the venerable Thomas Cooper also, now in his old age the zealous preacher of a faith he once as zealously attacked:  an excellent man, and vigorous both in prose and verse.  My old friend from boyhood, Owen Blayney Cole, must not be forgotten; year after year for some forty of them he has sent me reams of his poetry. Edmund Yates, than whom a kindlier, cleverer, and better-hearted man does not exist, I have known for years; his father and mother having been frequent guests at our house in Burlington Street; and I sympathised indignantly with him in his recent editorial trouble wherein he