INTRODUCTION 



WE visit the homes and wander amid the haunts of famous 

 men with whom it has. been our privilege to associate as 

 friends, "whom we have loved long since, and lost awhile," 

 with pathetic alternations of joy and grief, of sweet re- 

 membrance and of sad regret. As the old surroundings 

 suggest to the imagination the living presence, the tone 

 of the voice, and the happy hours which we have spent 

 together, they constrain us at the same time to mourn 

 for the tender grace of a day that is dead, and we pass 

 and return, as in the streets of an Italian city, from the 

 chill shadow to the hot glare of sunshine, from gloom 

 to mirth. I go to the house of Charles Dickens at Gads- 

 hill (the present owner being always my kind host) and 

 in the rooms in which he lived, and on the spot where 

 he suddenly sank to die, in the rose garden designed by 

 his friend Sir Joseph Paxton, or in the chalet which 

 was given to him by Fechter, in which he wrote many 

 of his wonderful books, and which was bought by the 

 late Lord Darnley, and is now in the grounds at Cobham, 

 I have a vision of bright smiles on his handsome face, 

 and words which he spoke to me, wise and witty, seem to 

 echo in mine ears. 



I stand by the graves of Thackeray, Leech, and Millais, 



" And a flood of thoughts comes gushing, 

 And fills mine eyes with tears." 



I go to the tomb of Archbishop Benson in the cathedral 

 at Canterbury, and no pilgrim approaches a shrine with a 



