His preference for a foreign holiday--unless one in his own country, could be allied to fishing or shooting--did not, as will be understood from stray remarks in his correspondence, extend to Germany. He always disliked the race, and I can recollect a journey in our young days during which we had made a halt at Munich with Beatty Kingston. I am afraid Joe’s description of the place and the people included such scathing epithets as “The Burial-place of the Peto-Baptists” and “The Suburb of the World.” For his excuse I must note that it was the bad season for the Opera, although we did once hear “The Flying Dutchman,” which he particularly admired; also that the old Pinacotek, with its riches in Paintings by Old Masters, was closed, as if to spite him; naturally he could not be consoled by “the collection of middle-aged articles” offered him as a salve--declaring that he saw plenty of these in the streets of the town. He was always just as hard on the German “frau” as on her husband, and his description of them on the mountain paths at Gastein, with skirts looped up like window blinds and waterproofs strapped across their shoulders in case of a storm, could only be equalled by the whimsical words he had for the red necks of the men bulging over their collars. He was not a Central Europe man; the French or the Italians were always first with him after his own people. _Romance_ for him lay in the North; I have often heard him insist that those most deeply possess it who dwell in the mist and dream of the sun, and he would cite “The Wizard of the North” and the Scottish Land in proof of his theory: yet the South stood for gaiety with him, and he sighed for the sun even as I did who had been bred in it. It is curious that Rome he only saw for the first time late in life, upon being chosen to write the introduction to the British Section of the International Exhibition there, and afterwards appointed England’s representative on the Art Congress. I shall quote a private appreciation of the written part of his work from that acute and sympathetic critic, Edward Russell of the _Liverpool Post_. NAPLES, _April 28th, 1911_. “DEAR COMYNS CARR, I cannot refrain from congratulating you on your Introduction to the Roman Catalogue of British Paintings, etc. Not only its literary felicity, but its fine and illuminating judgment; the choiceness of the language; and the apt biographical illustrations; the humane diplomacy of occasional gentle, but searching suggestions of censure; the insight of the aperçus; and the contribution of several original maxims to the sterling floating currency of criticism, make it one of the most memorable of such pieces. Yours, EDWARD RUSSELL.”