tone and manner of any
discussion in which he was expected to participate. He was incapable of
asperity.

In the House of Lords there was conceded to him by universal courtesy a
special seat which he occupied independently of the change of parties, a
tribute of respect to his unique and distinguished position which as far
as I am aware has at any rate in recent years been paid to no one else.

He was a survival of the times when rank more recognised its duties and
received more homage than in the present day; for when I was young it was
still possible for the public to believe that peerages were only
conferred on men for serious and meritorious services to the country, and
that those who succeeded to them by inheritance were trained to recognise
the large obligations of their station.

He lived in a great house on the west side of Grosvenor Square, tempering
his august surroundings with a personal austerity. There he was easily
accessible to anyone who came to him for good counsel and not to waste
his own or his host's time.

Every cabman and costermonger in London knew him by sight and would take
off his cap to him if he saw him in the streets, and the poor in the East
End knew his tall figure and distinguished countenance better than did
the men in the club windows in the West.

The beautiful monument to his memory in Regent Circus records that he was
"an example to his order," and yet better than this stately panegyric is
the happy accident, if it be one, that the poor flower girls of London
have pitched their camp upon the steps, and have successfully defied all
the efforts of Mr. Bumble to remove them.

CHAPTER II: MISS FRANCES POWER COBBE

Miss Frances Power Cobbe was the original organiser and founder in
December, 1875, of the National Anti-Vivisection Society which until 1898
bore the Title of the Victoria Street Society for the protection of
animals from vivisection.

Many years before, in 1863, there lived at Florence a man who trafficked
in torture named Schiff; "among the inferior professors of medical
knowledge," says Dr. Johnson, "is a race of wretches, whose lives are
only varied by varieties of cruelty," and such an one was this miscreant.

Miss Cobbe was then resident at Florence and was the correspondent of the
_Daily News_, and in that paper she denounced the tortures inflicted on
animals by this dreadful man, which so affected her generous heart that
for the rest of her life her