Helps was a most sensible and thoroughly honest man; yet the last years of his life were dreadfully embittered by some ill-advised speculations of his which brought severe losses not only on himself, but, what he felt far more keenly, on several of his friends whom he had induced to share in his undertaking. I missed the pleasure of knowing Lord Lytton. But this illustrious writer, Lord Lytton, or in earlier days, Sir Lytton Bulwer Lytton, whose “Last Days of Pompeii” had been the delight of my youth, paid me a great and quite undeserved compliment by dedicating to me one of his last, if not his very last work, “The Coming Race,” 1871. The book was published anonymously, and as it was dedicated to me, I tried very hard to discover the author of it, but in vain. It was only after his death that Lord Lytton’s authorship became known. The book itself could hardly be called a novel, nor was there anything very striking or sensational in it. Yet, to the honour of the English public be it said, it was discovered at once that it could not be the work of an ordinary writer. It went through edition after edition, and, to the great delight of the anonymous author, was received with universal applause. _Vril_ was the name given by the author to the fluid which in the hands of a _Vrilya_ was raised into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It destroyed like the flash of lightning, yet, differently applied, it replenished or invigorated life. With it a way could be rent through the most solid substances, and from it a light was extracted, steadier, softer, and healthier than from all other inflammable materials. The fire lodged in the hollow of a reed, and directed by the hand of a child, could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. All this reads almost like a prophecy of the electric fluid in its application to engines of war and engines of peace, but its name now survives chiefly in the powerful and invigorating fluid extracted from beef, and advertised on every wall as _Bo-vril_—unless I am quite mistaken in my etymology.