was never a man who changed places so much and
habits so little. He was always methodical and regular; and passed his
life from day to day, divided for the most part between working and
walking, the same wherever he was. The only exception was when special
or infrequent visitors were with him. When such friends as Longfellow
and his daughters, or Charles Eliot Norton and his wife, came, or when
Mr. Fields brought his wife and Professor Lowell's daughter, or when he
received other Americans to whom he owed special courtesy, he would
compress into infinitely few days an enormous amount of sight seeing and
country enjoyment, castles, cathedrals, and fortified lines, lunches and
picnics among cherry orchards and hop-gardens, excursions to Canterbury
or Maidstone and their beautiful neighbourhoods, Druid-stone and Blue
Bell Hill. "All the neighbouring country that could be shown in so short
a time," he wrote of the Longfellow visit, "they saw. I turned out a
couple of postilions in the old red jackets of the old red royal Dover
road for our ride, and it was like a holiday ride in England fifty years
ago." For Lord Lytton he did the same, for the Emerson Tennents, for Mr.
Layard and Mr. Helps, for Lady Molesworth and the Higginses (Jacob
Omnium), and such other less frequent visitors.

Excepting on such particular occasions however, and not always even
then, his mornings were reserved wholly to himself; and he would
generally preface his morning work (such was his love of order in
everything around him) by seeing that all was in its place in the
several rooms, visiting also the dogs, stables, and kitchen garden, and
closing, unless the weather was very bad indeed, with a turn or two
round the meadow before settling to his desk. His dogs were a great
enjoyment to him;[226] and, with his high road traversed as frequently
as any in England by tramps and wayfarers of a singularly undesirable
description, they were also a necessity. There were always two, of the
mastiff kind, but latterly the number increased. His own favourite was
Turk, a noble animal, full of affection and intelligence, whose death by
a railway-accident, shortly after the Staplehurst catastrophe, caused
him great grief. Turk's sole companion up to that date was Linda, puppy
of a great St. Bernard brought over by Mr. Albert Smith, and grown into
a superbly beautiful creature. After Turk there was an interval of an
Irish dog, Sultan, given by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald;