rays of
the setting sun glowed amid the stately pillars and deepened the shadowy
glamour of the solemn aisles. As I gazed on the scene of grandeur I felt
profoundly moved by the picturesque effect, and the following morning
discovered me hard at work upon a most elaborate study of the beautiful
carved figures upon the confessional boxes. I had just laid out my
palette preparatory to painting that picture which would of course make
my name and fortune, when a hoarse and terribly British guffaw at my
elbow startled me, and turning round I encountered some acquaintances to
whom the scene seemed to afford considerable amusement. One of them was
good enough to remark that to have come all the way to Antwerp to find a
caricaturist painting the confessional boxes in the cathedral was
certainly the funniest thing he had ever heard of, and thereupon
insisted upon dragging me off to dine with him, a proposition to which I
immediately assented, feeling far more foolish than I could possibly
have looked. I may add that as the sun that evening dipped beneath the
western horizon, so vanished the visions of high art by which I had been
inspired, and thus it is that Michael Angelo Vandyck Correggio Raphael
Furniss lies buried in Antwerp Cathedral. Strangely enough I came across
the following paragraph some years afterwards: "The guides of Antwerp
Cathedral point out a grotesque in the wood carving of the choir which
resembles almost exactly the head of Mr. Gladstone, as depicted by Harry
Furniss."

[Illustration: MY FATHER.]

My earliest recollections are altogether too modern to be of much
interest. Crimean heroes were veterans when they, as guests at my
father's table, fought their battles o'er again. The _Great Eastern_
steamship was quite an old white elephant of the sea when I, held up in
my nurse's arms, saw Brunel's blunder pass Greenore Point. I was hardly
eligible for "Etons" when our present King was married. When first taken
to church I was most interested, as standing on tiptoe on the seat in
our square family pew, and peering into the next pew, I saw a young
governess, at that moment the most talked-of woman in Great Britain, the
niece of the notorious poisoner Palmer. She had just returned from the
condemned cell, having made that scoundrel confess his crime, and there
was more pleasure in the sight than in listening to the good old Rector
Elgee who had christened me, or in seeing his famous daughter the
poetess "Speran