Lambkin was almost the first of that great band of Oxford Fellows who go as special correspondents for Newspapers to places of difficulty and even of danger. On the advantages of this system he would often dilate, and he was glad to see, as he grew to be an older, a wealthier, and a wiser man, that others were treading in his footsteps. “The younger men,” he would say, “have noticed what perhaps I was the first to see, that the Press is a Power, and that men who are paid to educate should not be ashamed to be paid for any form of education.” He was, however, astonished to see how rapidly the letters of a correspondent could now be issued as a book, and on finding that such publications were arranged for separately with the publishers, and were not the property of the Newspapers, he expressed himself with a just warmth in condemnation of such a trick. “Sir” (said he to the Chaplain), “in my young days we should have scorned to have faked up work, well done for a particular object, in a new suit for the sake of wealth”; and I owe it to Lambkin’s memory to say that he did not make a penny by his “Diary on the Deep,”[46] in which he collected towards the end of his life his various letters written to the Newspapers, and mostly composed at sea. The occasion which produced the following letter was the abominable suppression by Italian troops of the Catholic Riots at Rome in 1873. Englishmen of all parties had been stirred to a great indignation at the news of the atrocities. “As a nation” (to quote my dear friend) “we are slow to anger, but our anger is terrible.” And such was indeed the case. A great meeting was held at Hampstead, in which Mr. Ram made his famous speech. “This is not a question of religion or of nationality but of manhood (he had said), and if we do not give our sympathy freely, if we do not send out correspondents to inform us of the truth, if we do not meet in public and protest, if we do not write and speak and read till our strength be exhausted, then is England no longer the England of Cromwell and of Peel.” Such public emotion could not fail to reach Lambkin. I remember his coming to me one night into my rooms and saying “George (for my name is George), I had to-day a letter from Mr. Solomon’s paper--_The Sunday Englishman_. They want me to go and report on this infamous matter, and I will go. Do not attempt to dissuade me. I shall return--if God spares my life--before the end of the vacation. The offer is most advantageous in every way: I mean to England, to the cause of justice, and to that freedom of thought without which there is no true religion. For, understand me, that though these poor wretches are Roman Catholics, I hold that every man should have justice, and my blood boils within me.” He left me with a parting grip of the hand, promising to bring me back photographs from the Museum at Naples.