est
appropriately and wittily enough with "Here we are, Durham, all
mustered!" the "we" being besides others, Camilla Toulmin, George
Godwin, and Francis Bennoch? Do I not remember how much surprised we
were at the melodies whereof an old piano was capable when touched by
Otto Goldsmidt? Can I forget, also, how marvellously a young Canadian,
Joseph Macdougall, of Ottawa, extemporised on the same piano as only a
genius can (Mr. Assher was another), and sent me afterwards, as a
memory, a vast volume of American photographs, whereof he had
munificently prepaid the enormous sum of L6, 18s. for postage? And was
not our village stirred to its depths by the visit to Albury House of
two black gentlemen and a blue,--all in evening dress?

It was President Roberts of Monrovia, attended by his secretary and
chief minister; for they came cordially to return thanks to one who had
helped a little in slave emancipation, under the influences of Elliott
Cresson, Dr. Hodgkin Garrison, and others,--and, moreover, had given a
gold medal for African literature, biennially to be competed for by
emancipated slaves;--whereof I have heard very little, since (by the
volunteered assistance of Mr. Taylor, the seal engraver) I gave it many
years ago: the medal was as large as a crown piece. President Benson,
also of Liberia, a magnificent ebon specimen of humanity, visited me
with his staff, not long before his lamented death--it was said, by
murder.

Let me add now a word of kindly memory for some good friends long gone
to a better world, but once welcome guests at Albury. There was Benjamin
Nightingale, the enthusiastic antiquary; there was his _fidus Achates_,
Akerman, secretary to the Numismatic, whom I greatly pleased by enabling
him to catch a trout near my carriage gate; there was Chief Baron
Pollok, head of the Noviomagians: the eloquent Edwards Lester of
America, whose speech at a Literary Fund dinner to which I had treated
him was hailed by Hallam, Dickens, and others on the spot as _the_
speech of the Society: and the Warrens of Troy, N.Y., about whose casual
visit this singular thing happened. For the first and only time in life
I had had the strange luck to catch at Netley Pond three perch of nearly
a pound each, and a fine trout of about two: I little knew then the
final cause thereof: in those days we could not easily get fish in the
country, unless indeed we caught it: now my eminent Transatlantic
stranger friends came on a Friday