ng chimney-sweeps--The story of Mrs.
Montagu's son--The sweeps' carnival--Disraeli--Lord John Russell--A
child's ideas about the Whigs--The Earl of Aberdeen--"Old Brown
Bread"--Sir Edwin Landseer, a great family friend--A live lion at a
tea-party--Landseer as an artist--Some of his vagaries--His frescoes at
Ardverikie--His latter days--A devoted friend--His last Academy picture.

I was born the thirteenth child of a family of fourteen, on the
thirteenth day of the month, and I have for many years resided at No.
13 in a certain street in Westminster. In spite of the popular
prejudice attached to this numeral, I am not conscious of having
derived any particular ill-fortune from my accidental association with
it.

Owing to my sequence in the family procession, I found myself on my
entry into the world already equipped with seven sisters and four
surviving brothers. I was also in the unusual position of being born an
uncle, finding myself furnished with four ready-made nephews--the
present Lord Durham, his two brothers, Mr. Frederick Lambton and
Admiral-of-the-Fleet Sir Hedworth Meux, and the late Lord Lichfield.

Looking down the long vista of sixty years with eyes that have already
lost their keen vision, the most vivid impression that remains of my
early childhood is the nightly ordeal of the journey down "The Passage
of Many Terrors" in our Irish home. It had been decreed that, as I had
reached the mature age of six, I was quite old enough to come
downstairs in the evening by myself without the escort of a maid, but
no one seemed to realise what this entailed on the small boy
immediately concerned. The house had evidently been built by some
malevolent architect with the sole object of terrifying little boys.
Never, surely, had such a prodigious length of twisting, winding
passages and such a superfluity of staircases been crammed into one
building, and as in the early "sixties" electric light had not been
thought of, and there was no gas in the house, these endless passages
were only sparingly lit with dim colza-oil lamps. From his nursery the
little boy had to make his way alone through a passage and up some
steps. These were brightly lit, and concealed no terrors. The staircase
that had to be negotiated was also reassuringly bright, but at its base
came the "Terrible Passage." It was interminably long, and only lit by
an oil lamp at its far end. Almost at once a long corridor running at
right angles to the main o