When I had settled in England in 1847, my literary acquaintances began afresh. I have had the good fortune of being on more or less intimate terms with such poets as Kingsley, Clough, Matthew Arnold, Tennyson, Browning, and with poets in prose such as Froude, Ruskin, Carlyle, and I may add, in spite of the Atlantic, Emerson, Lowell, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. I knew other writers such as Macaulay, Arthur Helps, Arthur Stanley, Frederick Maurice, Dr. Martineau; I may add even the names of Faraday, Lyall, Sedgwick, Thirlwall, Grote, Whewell, Richard Owen, Darwin, Huxley, among my personal acquaintances or friends. Kingsley was married to one of my wife’s aunts. She was one of six most remarkable sisters, all married except the eldest and, I believe, the most gifted, who had devoted her life to the education of her younger sisters. Besides Charles Kingsley, the husbands of the other sisters were Froude, the historian; Lord Wolverton, of high standing in the financial world as the head of the house of Glyn, and the valued adviser of Mr. Gladstone in his earlier financial reforms; R. Mertyns Bird, an illustrious name in the history of India as the organiser of the North-Western Provinces; and “S. G. O.” How soon popularity vanishes! There was a time when everybody knew and spoke of “S. G. O.” He was Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, an influential writer on political and social subjects, a frequent contributor to _The Times_ during the Crimean War, a man of great force and independence of character. He was a giant in stature, and extremely attractive by his varied knowledge in different branches of physical science. He was a well-known microscopist, and when it was wanted, a doctor, a nurse, a surgeon, a dentist. However, he was not a poet, like his two brothers-in-law. He was an active clergyman, a sanitary reformer, a ready helper wherever poor people were ready to be helped. These five men, the husbands of five remarkable sisters—of whom one, Mrs. Bird, is still living at the age of ninety-six (she died this year), and not only living, but alive to all that is interesting in the world, and full of good works—represented a power in England. “S. G. O.” moved in a sphere of his own, and seldom came to Oxford. But Kingsley and Froude soon became my intimate friends.