of St. George's Hall. He was about
twenty-four years of age, yet he captured 1,500 guineas, being the three
premiums offered for designs for St. George's Hall, the New Law Courts,
and the New Collegiate Institute. We often met and talked together. I
assisted him in getting out the plan for the foundation, and I laid the
first brick of St. George's Hall. Elmes was consumptive. He went for a
time to the Isle of Wight. He became worse, and the doctors ordered him
to winter in Kingston, Jamaica. One day, before leaving England, he sent
for me.

"'Rawlinson,' he said, 'if anything would give me a chance of coming
back with my life, it would be to see my building in your hands!'

"What could I say? I undertook the task until I handed it over to the
great London architect, Mr. Cockerel, who completed it."

Now came an important epoch in Mr. Rawlinson's career. In 1848 the
Public Health Act was passed and he was appointed the first engineer
superintendent inspector. He made the first inquiry and wrote the first
report on Dover--he subsequently inspected and reported on the state and
condition of towns and villages from Berwick-on-Tweed to Land's End,
from Liverpool to Hull.

[Illustration: THE DINING-ROOM.

_From a Photo. by Elliott & Fry._]

"The Commission of Inquiry lived until 1854," continued Sir Robert. "It
met with such violent opposition in Parliament that it had to be broken
up, though it was immediately revived by Lord Palmerston, under the
chairmanship of Sir Benjamin Hall. I was at this time engineer to the
Birmingham and Wolverhampton Waterworks." The lad who had been
stone-mason and bricklayer, sawyer and carpenter, was earning L5,000 a
year. It was at this point in our conversation that Sir Robert referred
to the Duke of Wellington.

"I used to see him," he said, "walking down from Apsley House to the
Chapel Royal, St. James's, in white trousers and blue frock-coat with
brass buttons. Whenever he was in London on a Sunday he used to attend
the early morning eight o'clock service at St. James's, and when I had
any friends who wanted to see the great Duke, I used to take them to
church. Frequently he, with myself and friends sitting at a good point
of vantage, would be the only people there. But this by the way. Now
came the winter of '54 and '55--the time of Crimea. In the spring of
1855 I was sent out as Engineering Sanitary Commissioner to the East.
There is a portrait hanging there of Dr. Sutherland an