Italy. There is scarcely a town or village, a point of view, a
building, statue or picture in all this country with which he was not
familiar. In 1878 he happened to be on the Sacro Monte above Varese
at the time I took my holiday; there I joined him, and nearly every
year afterwards we were in Italy together.

He was always a delightful companion, and perhaps at his gayest on
these occasions. "A man's holiday," he would say, "is his garden,"
and he set out to enjoy himself and to make everyone about him enjoy
themselves too. I told him the old schoolboy muddle about Sir Walter
Raleigh introducing tobacco and saying: "We shall this day light up
such a fire in England as I trust shall never be put out." He had
not heard it before and, though amused, appeared preoccupied, and
perhaps a little jealous, during the rest of the evening. Next
morning, while he was pouring out his coffee, his eyes twinkled and
he said, with assumed carelessness:

"By the by, do you remember?--wasn't it Columbus who bashed the egg
down on the table and said 'Eppur non si muove'?"

He was welcome wherever he went, full of fun and ready to play while
doing the honours of the country. Many of the peasants were old
friends, and every day we were sure to meet someone who remembered
him. Perhaps it would be an old woman labouring along under a
burden; she would smile and stop, take his hand and tell him how
happy she was to meet him again and repeat her thanks for the empty
wine bottle he had given her after an out-of-door luncheon in her
neighbourhood four or five years before. There was another who had
rowed him many times across the Lago di Orta and had never been in a
train but once in her life, when she went to Novara to her son's