xxn LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL 273 



spring of this year, the publishers had written 

 to him saying that they must print another 

 edition of two thousand, as the first was already 

 sold out ! There was only one paper, as he 

 observes, that was sarcastic at all in its criticism, 

 and, he adds, " the passage on which they are 

 most severe is not mine at all, but a quotation 

 from Plato ! " 



On his birthday, April 30, the Liberal members 

 of the County Council sent him a round robin, 

 wishing him many happy returns. 



In the beginning of June he and Lady Lubbock 

 went off, as usual, for one of those Swiss tours 

 which enabled him later to write the Scenery 

 of Switzerland. They went over the Ghemmi to 

 Visp, Zermatt, Lausanne, Geneva, Macon, Paris, 

 and home to High Elms on the 22nd. 



A week afterwards he writes : " Dr. Nansen, 

 the Greenland explorer, came to breakfast. We 

 had also Aberdare, Herschell, Flower, F. Galton, 

 Lyell, Roscoe, Sir H. Maxwell, and Bates." I 

 quote this entry because it indicates how Sir 

 John kept up, almost to a later date than any one 

 else, the breakfast-party habit. It is a form of 

 hospitality on which opinions will vary much, 

 perhaps somewhat with the eupepsia or the 

 reverse of the breakfasters. To Sir John, who 

 regarded himself as guilty of something rather 

 like slothful indulgence if he did not begin the 

 day as early in the morning as half- past six, 

 the half-past nine breakfast came at an hour 

 at which he was very ready both for refreshment 

 and for conversation. There were others of a 

 different habit of life who did not find their 



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