1883-92 DECLINING YEARS 261 
always ready for a game in the evenings, and 
until very recent years played exceedingly well. 
Mischief 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 j 
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 gc 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 
