ial and
delightful hospitality. I had the pleasure of meeting at
his house at dinner M. Ribot, then Prime Minister of France
and afterward President of the French Republic, and several
others of the leading men in their public life. But I spoke
French very imperfectly indeed, and understood it much less,
when spoken by a Parisian. The conversation was, in general,
in French. So I got very little knowledge of them by being
in their society.

My visit in England gave me a good deal more to remember.
Mr. Lincoln also received me with great cordiality. He gave
a dinner at which several of the leaders of the Liberal Party
were present; among them, Sir William Vernon Harcourt. I
had letters to Sir William Vernon Harcourt, and to Lord Rosebery,
and to Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England. Sir
William Vernon Harcourt and Lord Rosebery each called on me,
and spent an hour at my room. But Parliament was dissolved
just at that time, so the Liberal leaders had at once to begin
the campaign which resulted in Mr. Gladstone's victory. So
I had no opportunity to make an intimate acquaintance with
either of them. I owed to Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes an introduction
to John Bellows, a Quaker, a most delightful gentleman, the
first authority in his time on the Roman antiquities of Great
Britain, a fine classical scholar and learned in old English
literature and in the languages from which came the roots
of our English tongue. I formed with him a close friendship
which ended only with his death, in 1902. A year before he
died he visited me in my home at Worcester, and received the
degree of Master of Arts from Harvard. Mr. Bellows is the
author of the wonderful French Dictionary.

I spent a few days with Lord Coleridge in Devon. His house
at Ottery St. Mary's is close to the spot where Samuel Taylor
Coleridge was born. I met there several of the race. I do
not know whether they were living in the neighborhood or happened
to be there on a visit.

I found in the church, close by, the tomb of John Sherman,
one of my own kindred, I have no doubt, of the race which
came from Colchester and Dedham in Essex, and Yaxley in Suffolk.

The Lord Chief Justice was much distressed lest he had done
wrong in complying with General Butler's invitation to visit
him at Lowell. He said that many of his American friends
had treated him coldly afterward, and that his friend Richard
Dana, whom he highly esteemed, had refused to