ugly, gloomy house, and its uglier and gloomier garden, but I have
no remembrance of "Old Brown Bread" himself, or of what he said to
me, which, considering his notorious dislike to children, is
perhaps quite as well.

Of a very different type was another constant and always welcome
visitor to our house, Sir Edwin Landseer, the painter. He was one
of my father and mother's oldest friends, and had been an equally
close friend of my grandparents, the Duke and Duchess of Bedford.
He had painted three portraits of my father, and five of my
mother. Two of the latter had been engraved, and, under the titles
of "Cottage Industry" and "The Mask," had a very large sale in
mid-Victorian days. His large picture of my two eldest sisters,
which hung over our dining-room chimney-piece, had also been
engraved, and was a great favourite, under the title of "The
Abercorn Children." Landseer was a most delightful person, and the
best company that can be imagined. My father and mother were quite
devoted to him, and both of them always addressed him as "Lanny."
My mother going to call on him at his St. John's Wood house, found
"Lanny" in the garden, working from a ladder on a gigantic mass of
clay. Turning the corner, she was somewhat alarmed at finding a
full-grown lion stretched out on the lawn. Landseer had been
commissioned by the Government to model the four lions for the
base of Nelson's pillar in Trafalgar Square. He had made some
studies in the Zoological Gardens, but as he always preferred
working from the live model, he arranged that an elderly and
peculiarly docile lion should be brought to his house from the Zoo
in a furniture van attended by two keepers. Should any one wish to
know what that particular lion looked like, they have only to
glance at the base of the Nelson pillar. On paying an afternoon