I remember a most pleasant day spent with him about the fishponds and cascades of Wotton,—­and I noted how skilfully he threw the fly some five-and-twenty feet under the bushes, to the wonder of a gaping trout, soon to find its lodging in the creel:  and our kind host may still recollect, as I do, how charming was our intercourse that day with the genial author of “Yeast,” “Alton Lock,” “Hypatia,” “Westward ho!” and other of our favourites.  I have met Kingsley later, in his cloistered nest, as Canon of Westminster, and remember how heartily he expressed his abundant charity for all sorts of miserable sinners, especially about one of whom I came to speak, for there never lived a more universal excuser of human imperfection than Charles Kingsley.  His bust, very like him, is in a side chapel of the Abbey, near the west door.  With the learned and eloquent Canon Farrar, too, I have held converse in the same Broad Sanctuary, though but briefly.  Harrison Ainsworth has often crossed my orbit.  In particular, as a very early contributor to his magazine (wherein, by the way, my “Flight upon Flying” originally appeared, to be afterwards reproduced at the Royal Aquarium a year or two ago), I was among his invited guests at Kensal Manor house, for the inauguration of his magazine, meeting Douglas Jerrold, Blanchard, Albert Smith, and others of like note.  Also, at Lord Mayor’s feasts we have periodically met, and at Literary Fund dinners.  I may mention that when we came near one another a few years since, at the Mansion-House, an American friend with me was startled at the resemblance between Ainsworth and myself:  in fact, our photographic portraits have often been mutually sold for each other, and I remember in a shop window seeing my name written under a photo clearly not myself, however like; and my daughter with me said “It must be a mistake, for you never had such a waistcoat as that,” it being a brilliant plaid:  so we went in to set matters right, and the shopman, in correcting the mistake, observed he didn’t wonder, we were so alike:  furthermore, on the outside cover of a cheap edition of Ainsworth’s “James II.,” his portrait is the very counterpart of one painted, by Rochard, long years ago, of myself.

I was well acquainted, fifty-five years ago, with three eminent men, who afterwards became viceroys, as their fellow classman and collegian at Christ Church.  At that time two of them were only younger sons in their “pupa” or pupil phases of Ramsay and Bruce, and wore the same commoner’s gown as myself; the third, though a “tuft” by courtesy, had not yet come to his heritage.  All these three succeeded one another in the high position of a Governor-General of India, and were famous architects of our imperial greatness.  I remember on either side of me in Biscoe’s memorable Aristotle class before mentioned, the young Ramsay, afterwards Dalhousie, that great pro-consul who annexed a third of our Indian Empire; and the young Bruce, afterwards Elgin, famous