1883-92 DECLINING YEARS 261 



always ready for a game in the evenings, and 

 until very recent years played exceedingly well. 

 His chief relaxation, however, was music, of which 

 he had always been passionately fond. He was 

 never tired of listening to his favourite composi- 

 tions, although as he grew older his taste in music 

 became much narrower, and he could only listen 

 with pleasure to the music admitted to be ' clas- 

 sical ' in his younger days. Wagner, Grieg, and 

 more modern composers were to his mind ' toler- 

 able and not to be endured.' The keys of his little 

 old-fashioned piano had been touched by many of 

 his musical friends— Moscheles, John Ella, and 

 Halle, and had served many a time to accompany 

 Jenny Lind and his own famous 'cello by Forster. 

 The love of his home and of his beautiful 

 garden only grew stronger with his declining 

 years. Every day he would go round his garden 

 — no small distance — supported by his favourite 

 curiously-carved stick ; then he would generally 

 make his way to an extraordinary specimen of a 

 garden-seat, made out of the vertebra of a whale, 

 which he himself had put up. There are many 

 such curiosities to be seen in that picturesque 

 piece of ground. The skull of a huge crocodile, 

 most of whose teeth are missing, owing to dental 

 experiments made with champagne-nippers by 

 certain small grandchildren, grins out of a rockery. 

 The plaster cast of a seated Egyptian figure rests 

 on a pedestal at the end of the ' west walk,' and a 



