taught, with tedious iteration, the things we knew, and need not have
known, before. In my research, I have had only such poor guides as
Punch, or the London Charivari and The Queen, the Lady's Newspaper.
Excavation, which in the East has been productive of rich material for
the archaeologist, was indeed suggested to me. I was told that, just
before Cleopatra's Needle was set upon the Embankment, an iron box,
containing a photograph of Mrs. Langtry, some current coins and other
trifles of the time, was dropped into the foundation. I am sure much
might be done with a spade, here and there, in the neighbourhood of
old Cromwell House. Accursed be the obduracy of vestries! Be not I,
but they, blamed for any error, obscurity or omission in my brief
excursus.

The period of 1880 and of the two successive years should ever be
memorable, for it marks a great change in the constitution of English
society. It would seem that, under the quiet re'gime of the Tory
Cabinet, the upper ten thousand (as they were quaintly called in those
days,) had taken a somewhat more frigid tone. The Prince of Wales had
inclined to be restful after the revels of his youth. The prolonged
seclusion of Queen Victoria, who was then engaged upon that superb
work of introspection and self-analysis, More Leaves from the
Highlands, had begun to tell upon the social system. Balls and other
festivities, both at Court and in the houses of the nobles, were
notably fewer. The vogue of the Opera was passing. Even in the top of
the season, Rotten Row, I read, was not impenetrably crowded. But in
1880 came the tragic fall of Disraeli and the triumph of the Whigs.
How great a change came then upon Westminster must be known to any one
who has studied the annals of Gladstone's incomparable Parliament.
Gladstone himself, with a monstrous majority behind him, revelling in
the old splendour of speech that not seventy summers nor six years'