As to Leech, who probably adorned his books similarly, he, being a day-boy and allowed for safety to scuttle out of the playground before school broke up, came not equally under our surveillance in those days; but long years after, when that genial and witty friend and true gentleman was my guest at Albury, I had great delight in his company, and he helped cleverly to illustrate (along with divers other artists) my “Crock of Gold” and “Proverbial Philosophy,” and in part “The Anglo-Saxon.”  I remember a characteristic little anecdote about him, as thus:—­

We went angling together to Postford Pond, on a fine hot day, thinking less of possible sport than of sandwiches and sherry, and an idle lounge on a sloping bank in the shade, and haply (though for myself I am no smoker) the calmly contemplative cigar.  As we lay there, in dolce-far-niente fashion, all at once Leech jumped up with a vigorous “Confound that float! can’t it leave me at peace?  I’ve been watching it bobbing these five minutes, and now it’s out of sight altogether—­hang it!” With that hearty exclamation of disgust pulling up a brilliant two-pound perch, the glory of the day!  Next week’s Punch had a pleasant comic sketch of this petty incident, thereby immortalised by the famous “bottled leech.”

It always struck me that Tenniel and he were a well-matched pair, in kindliness, cleverness, and good looks; and I never can think of one without the other—­arcades ambo; par nobile fratrum.

Thackeray lived to have his full revenge of Dr. Birch, in our day the reigning tyrant of Charterhouse; and Russell well deserved his castigation both by pen and pencil.

Let me also give a brace of home sketches of Longfellow.  I have had two principal interviews with him in his beautiful home at Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the wide interval between those visits of twenty-five years.  Of the first of these I record a few words from my American MS. journal in 1851, adding some unwritten thoughts and recollections.  On April 16th, then, in the year just named, Longfellow wrote to me cordially, and with much kindly appreciation, and soon after, calling on me at Boston, took me off in his carriage over the flooded lowlands to the ancient (for America) University of Cambridge, where the Queen Anne-like colleges are nestled in fine old elms.  He treated me, of course, most hospitably, and had asked several friends to meet the traveller; but one, a chief guest, was otherwise engaged, and so I missed Lowell, to my great disappointment.  It is not my “form” to detail private conversation, nor to describe the Lares and Penates of sacred domesticity; but I may reveal generally that I spent several golden hours of intellectual communion with the Abbott Laurences, Ticknor, Fields, Prescott, and Everett—­illustrious names, which will sufficiently indicate the reception they gave me.  At this time of day I cannot remember the thousand “winged speeches” that flew