I have never seen Mendelssohn, but there is a fresco of him on the
terrace, or open-air dining-room, of an inn at Chiavenna. He is not
called Mendelssohn, but I knew him by his legs. He is in the
costume of a dandy of some five-and-forty years ago, is smoking a
cigar, and appears to be making an offer of marriage to his cook.
Beethoven both my friend Mr. H. Festing Jones and I have had the
good fortune to meet; he is an engineer now, and does not know one
note from another; he has quite lost his deafness, is married, and
is, of course, a little squat man with the same refractory hair that
he always had. It was very interesting to watch him, and Jones
remarked that before the end of dinner he had become positively
posthumous. One morning I was told the Beethovens were going away,
and before long I met their two heavy boxes being carried down the
stairs. The boxes were so squab and like their owners, that I half
thought for a moment that they were inside, and should hardly have
been surprised to see them spring up like a couple of Jacks-in-the-
box. "Sono indentro?" said I, with a frown of wonder, pointing to
the boxes. The porters knew what I meant, and laughed. But there
is no end to the list of people whom I have been able to recognise,
and before I had got through it myself, I found I had walked some
distance, and had involuntarily paused in front of a second-hand
bookstall.

I do not like books. I believe I have the smallest library of any
literary man in London, and I have no wish to increase it. I keep
my books at the British Museum and at Mudie's, and it makes me very
angry if any one gives me one for my private library. I once heard
two ladies disputing in a railway carriage as to whether one of them
had or had not been wasting money. "I spent it in books," said the