seer, his easel and colours and his sheep were all
transferred to the garden.

On another occasion there was some talk about a savage bull. Landseer,
muttering, "Bulls! bulls! bulls!" snatched up an album of my sister's,
and finding a blank page in it, made an exquisite little drawing of a
charging bull. The disordered brain repeating "Bulls! bulls! bulls!" he
then drew a bulldog, a pair of bullfinches surrounded by bulrushes, and
a hooked bull trout fighting furiously for freedom. That page has been
cut out and framed for fifty years.

CHAPTER II

The "swells" of the "sixties"--Old Lord Claud Hamilton--My first
presentation to Queen Victoria--Scandalous behaviour of a
brother--Queen Victoria's letters--Her character and strong common
sense--My mother's recollections of George III. and George IV.--Carlton
House, and the Brighton Pavilion--Queen Alexandra--The Fairchild
Family--Dr. Cumming and his church--A clerical Jazz--First visit to
Paris--General de Flahault's account of Napoleon's campaign of
1812--Another curious link with the past--"Something
French"--Attraction of Paris--Cinderella's glass slipper--A glimpse of
Napoleon III.--The Rue de Rivoli The Riviera in 1865--A novel Tricolor
flag--Jenny Lind--The championship of the Mediterranean--My father's
boat and crew--The race--The Abercorn wins the championship.

Every one familiar with John Leech's Pictures from Punch must have an
excellent idea of the outward appearance of "swells" of the "sixties."

As a child I had an immense admiration for these gorgeous beings,
though, between ourselves, they must have been abominably loud
dressers. They affected rather vulgar sealskin waistcoats, with the
festoons of a long watch-chain meandering over them, above which they
exhibited a huge expanse of black or blue satin, secured by two
scarf-pins of the same design, linked together, like Siamese twins, by
a little chain.

A reference to Leech's drawings will show the flamboyant checked
"pegtop" trousers in which they delighted. Their principal adornment
lay in their immense "Dundreary" whiskers, usually at least eight
inches long. In a high wind these immensely long whiskers blew back
over their owners' shoulders in the most comical fashion, and they must
have been horribly inconvenient. I determined early in life to affect,
when grown-up, longer whiskers than any one else--if possible down to
my waist; but alas for human aspirations! By the time that I had