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 sam