LEAVES THEY HAVE TOtJCHED. BOB 



iiaVe a little talk about music, and hundreds of tilings ; but IVe 

 some friends with me whom I must really do the best I can for out 

 of doors when the sun shines j and it looks half-promising to-day. I 

 will stay at home myself at all events to-mon^ovj, if you will promise 

 to come.- — ^Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin." The note is dated 

 from. Bx'antwood, Coniston, Lancashire. The anxiety to do his best; 

 out of doors, for his visitors, while the sun shines, doubtless for the 

 sake of the effects on the landscape, is characteristic of Ruskin. 



I regret that I have nothing more to show of Mr. Gladstone's late 

 Chancellor of the Exchequer, than a plain unpretending aiitograph 

 signature — Robeet Lowe. Mr. Lowe from his youth has been 

 regarded at Oxford as one of her eminent sons, although familiarly 

 he is spoken of there, but among the juniors only possibly, as " Bob 

 Lowe." Before attaining distinction as a statesman, he, like our 

 Sir Edmund Head, had been an Oxford Fellow and tutor. He has 

 also tasted of Colonial life, having passed about nine years in Aus" 

 tralia, where he practised law and became a member of one of the 

 legislatures. — To make up for the absence of a sentence from the pen 

 of Mr. Lowe, I transcribe a few words from a note in the rather 

 carelessly formed handwriting of his colleague Mr. Forster, whose 

 name will be associated in history with English legislation in favour 

 of popular education. " I am come down for my re-election, and for 

 Cliristmas," he says, writing from Burley-in-Wharfedale, Leeds, Dec, 

 20, 1868, "but I shall be at the Council office on Tuesday or 

 Wednesday week, and I shall be settled in London by the end of the 

 first week in January. — Yours faithfully, W. E. Forster." Mr. F- 

 however is neither an Oxonian nor a Cambridge man. 



Of Sir George Cornwall Lewis, an eminent Oxford statesman I have 

 a slight representative. He was a member of Christ Church, and like 

 Mr. Gladstone, he won laurels in literature as well as in the public 

 service. He wrote on the Romance Languages, on the Incredibility 

 of the Early Roman History, on the Influence of Authority in Matters 

 of Opinion. My MS. relic of Sir George shows him like other public 

 men embarrassed by his engagements : He writes to a friend in a 

 clear but rather slovenly hand : — " I am much obliged to you for 

 your kind invitation to Headingley for the 27 th instant, on 

 the occasion of a meeting of the Leeds Mechanics' Institute. I 

 regret however to say that my engagements at that time render 

 it impossible for me to avail myself of your kindness. — Yours &e,; 

 G. C. Lewis," 



