in science and art like Owen and Millais. How any minister could consider himself entitled to disregard an appeal so supported is hard to understand, but nothing came of it. His hope was kept alive by rumours from time to time that the thing was about to be done, which he generally reported to me. "Robert Browning," he wrote to me, "being on a visit at Alton Towers, it so befell that Gladstone came there also for a few days. Being together in the library next morning Browning began to speak about me, when suddenly Lady Marion Alford (a visitor likewise) darted from behind one of the reading niches and backed what R. B. was saying with strongest terms. Gladstone thanked them frankly, and at once made a memo, in his note-book. So R. B. wrote to me of this, adding that he supposed the deed was all but done." But it never was done, and Home spent valiantly and cheerfully an old age of penury.
When I passed over to Dublin, there seemed as little chance of the dolce far niente. Among my earliest visitors was an old acquaintance and old antagonist. When I established the Nation in 1842, I made the acquaintance of a man very notable in that day, the Reverend Tresham Gregg, Grand Chaplain of the Orangemen of Ireland, whom I relieved of a vacant newspaper office which was an embarrassment to him. Afterwards, whenever we met in the streets, or such neutral places as public exhibitions, we commonly exchanged a little banter and maintained not unfriendly relations as of persons who agreed to differ. One morning during this visit to Dublin, Mr. Gregg, whom I had not seen for a dozen years, was announced as a visitor, and after the ordinary civilities he burst on me with a question. "Tell me, my old friend, would you like to live for ever? "
"By no means," I replied, "unless in the sense I have always been taught that I shall live for ever, whether I like it or not.'
"Oh," he replied, "you are speaking of spiritual life. But what I propose to you is the life of both body and soul; life for endless centuries on this globe, in this good city of Dublin, if you choose, in health, strength, and peace of mind. From the earliest times, from the beginning of this world indeed, the inestimable gift of immortality without
