SOCIAL LIFE 183 



whom I would more willingly be tried by if I fell into 

 trouble. 



It was to my wife, also, that I owed the friendship 

 of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hollond of Stanmore. She 

 was exceptionally gifted by nature with grace, 

 sympathy, artistic taste, and many other high qualities. 

 Her portrait, by Scheffer, is in the Tate Gallery. Her 

 face closely corresponded to his imaginary ideal when 

 painting St. Augustine and Monica, so he enjoyed 

 the opportunity of painting Mrs. Hollond's own por- 

 trait. She was even more at home in France than 

 in England, and intimate with many distinguished 

 statesmen of the Orleanist party. Her husband's 

 wealth gave her great facilities for cultivating her 

 aesthetic tastes to the full. He was chiefly known to 

 the public at one time as subsidiser of the " Nassau " 

 balloon, which carried him, Green the famous 

 aeronaut, and, I think, Mr., afterwards Lord Justice, 

 James (who was an old friend of his), and two others. 

 They sailed from London to a town in Nassau ; 

 which was at that time by far and away a record 

 distance for a balloon to drift. Numerous memorial 

 pictures of that adventure were in his house. 



It was in the middle fifties that my friendship 

 commenced with William Spottiswoode (1825-1883), 

 one of the most capable and true-hearted of men, who 

 became President of the Royal Society, and now lies 

 buried in Westminster Abbey, "at the request alike 

 of the foremost of his countrymen in Church and 

 State, in Science, Art and Literature, and of his own 

 workmen, to whose best interests his life had been 

 devoted." This is the singularly apt inscription on 

 his tombstone. I asked Dean Bradley, then Dean of 



