About thirty-five years ago Dr. Wallace built a house upon a plot of ground adjoining that upon which our house stood. I was at that time an assistant master at Charterhouse School; and Dr. Wallace became acquainted with a few of the masters besides myself. With two or three of them he had regular weekly games of chess; for he was then and for long afterwards very fond of that game; and, I understand, possessed considerable skill at it. A considerable portion of his spare time was spent in his garden, in the management of which Mrs. Wallace, who had much knowledge and experience of gardening, very cordially assisted him. Here his characteristic energy and restlessness were conspicuously displayed. He was always designing some new feature, some alteration in a flower-bed, some special environment for a new plant; and always he was confident that the new schemes would be found to have all the perfections which the old ones lacked. From all parts of the world botanists and collectors sent him, from time to time, rare or newly discovered plants, bulbs, roots or seeds, which he, with the help of Mrs. Wallace's practical skill, would try to acclimatise, and to persuade to grow somewhere or other in his garden or conservatory. Nothing disturbed his cheerful confidence in the future, and nothing made him happier than some plan for reforming the house, the garden, the kitchen-boiler, or the universe. And, truth to say, he displayed great ingenuity in all these enterprises of reformation. Although they were never in effect what they were expected to be by their ingenious author, they were often sufficiently successful; but, successful or not, he was always confident that the next would turn out to be all that he expected of it. With the same confidence he made up his mind upon many a disputable subject; but, be it said, never without a laborious examination of the necessary data, and the acquisition of much knowledge. In argument, of which intellectual exercise he was very fond, he was a formidable antagonist. His power of handling masses of details and facts, of showing their inner meanings and the principles underlying them, and of making them intelligible, was very great; and very few men of his time had it in equal measure.