feel the
tenderness in his tone, as of a positive love for her whose voice seems
still ringing through him as he talks. I have noticed exactly the same
phenomenon when people who knew Mr. Brookfield hear his name mentioned
in casual conversation. "Ah! Brookfield! Yes; there never was any one
quite like him!" And off they go, with visible pleasure and genuine
emotion, to describe the inimitable charm, the touch of genius which
brought humorous delight out of the commonest incidents, the tinge of
brooding melancholy which threw the flashing fun into such high relief.

Not soon will fade from the memory of any who ever heard it the history
of the examination at the ladies' school, where Brookfield, who had
thought that he was only expected to examine in languages and
literature, found himself required to set a paper in physical science.
"What was I to do? I know nothing about hydrogen or oxygen or any other
'gen.' So I set them a paper in common sense, or what I called 'Applied
Science.' One of my questions was, 'What would you do to cure a cold in
the head?' One young lady answered, 'I should put _my_ feet in hot
mustard and water till _you_ were in a profuse perspiration.' Another
said, 'I should put him to bed, give him a soothing drink, and sit by
him till he was better.' But, on reconsideration, she ran her pen
through all the 'him's' and 'he's,' and substituted 'her' and 'she.'"

Mr. Brookfield was during the greater part of his life a hard-working
servant of the public, and his friends could only obtain his delightful
company in the rare and scanty intervals of school-inspecting--a
profession of which not even the leisure is leisurely. The type of the
French abbe, whose sacerdotal avocations lay completely in the
background and who could give the best hours of the day and night to the
pleasures or duties of society, was best represented in our day by the
Rev. William Harness and the Rev. Henry White. Mr. Harness was a
diner-out of the first water; an author and a critic; perhaps the best
Shakespearean scholar of his time; and a recognized and even dreaded
authority on all matters connected with the art and literature of the
drama. Mr. White, burdened only with the sinecure chaplaincies of the
Savoy and the House of Commons, took the Theatre as his parish, mediated
with the happiest tact between the Church and the Stage, and pronounced
a genial benediction over the famous suppers in Stratton Street at which
an enth