estate the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the
completion of his work, which was to be in ten folio volumes,
with one hundred plates in each. This was done and the work
finished forty-four years after his death, when thirty copies
were issued to the patient subscribers at two hundred and
forty guineas a copy. But the whole cost of the work was set
down at 30,000 pounds! A costlier work it would be hard to
find; I wonder how many of us have seen it?

But I must go back to my subject. I was not in Bath just to
die and lie there, like poor Sibthorpe, with all those strange
bedfellows of his, nor was I in search of a vacant space the
size of my hand on the walls to bespeak it for my own
memorial. On the contrary, I was there, as we have seen, to
knock five years off my age. And it was very pleasant, as I
have said, so long as I confined my attention to Bath, the
stone-built town of old memories and associations--so long as
I was satisfied to loiter in the streets and wide green places
and in the Pump Room and the abbey. The bitter came in only
when, going from places to faces, I began to seek out the
friends and acquaintances of former days. The familiar faces
seemed not wholly familiar now. A change had been wrought; in
some cases a great change, as in that of some weedy girl who
had blossomed into fair womanhood. One could not grieve at
that; but in the middle-aged and those who were verging on or
past that period, it was impossible not to feel saddened at
the difference. "I see no change in you," is a lie ready to
the lips which would speak some pleasing thing, but it does
not quite convince. Men are naturally brutal, and use no
compliments to one another; on the contrary, they do not