word-painter was ill. At a dinner,
however, at Arch-Deacon Farrar's, he spent some time with Sir John
Millais and Prof. John Tyndall. Of course, he saw Gladstone, Tennyson,
Robert Browning, Chief Justice Coleridge, Du Maurier, the illustrator
of _Punch_, Prof. James Bryce who wrote "The American Commonwealth,"
"Lord Wolseley," Britain's "Only General," "His Grace of Argyll,"
"Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise,"--one of the best amateur
painters and sculptors in England,--and many others. Of all these
noted ones, he has something bright and entertaining to say. The
universities laid their highest honors at his feet. Edinburgh gave him
the degree of LL.D., Cambridge that of Doctor of Letters, and Oxford
conferred upon him her D. C. L., his companion on the last occasion
being John Bright. It was at Oxford that he met Vice-Chancellor
Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Prof. Max Mueller, Lord
and Lady Herschell, and Prof. James Russell Lowell, his old and
unvarying friend. The account of his visit to Europe is told with most
engaging directness and simplicity, and though the book has no
permanent value, it affords much entertainment for the time.

The reader will experience a feeling of sadness, when he takes up Dr.
Holmes' last book, "Over the Tea-cups," for there are indications in
the work which warn the public that the genial pen will write
hereafter less frequently than usual. It is a witty and delightful
book, recalling the Autocrat, the Professor, and the Poet, and yet
presenting features not to be found in either. The author dwells on
his advancing years, but this he does not do in a querulous fashion.
He speaks of his contemporaries, and compares the ages of old trees,
and over the tea-cups a thousand quaint, curious, and splendid things
are said. The work takes a wide range, but there is more sunshine than
anything else, and that indefinable charm, peculiar to the author,
enriches every page. One might wish that he would never grow old. As
Lowell said, a few years ago, in a birthday verse to the doctor:--

"You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs,
Whose gaunt line my horizon hems,
Though twilight all the lowland blurs,
Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.

* * * * *

"Master alike in speech and song
Of fame's great anti-septic--style,
You with the classic few belong
Who tempered wisdom with a smile.

Outlive us all