There was, for instance, Mrs. Norton (who is still remembered on account of her remarkable cleverness and graceful gift of versification), and her sister, the beautiful Duchess of Somerset, who had been Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton Tournament. I knew the latter very well, a most original woman, possessed of a great deal of the Sheridan cleverness and wit. Meeting her one day at an exhibition of pictures, one of the principal features of which was a portrait of Mr. Gladstone, she led me up to it and, pointing to the picture, a most execrable piece of painting, said, “At last we Conservatives are avenged.” At one time she was very much taken with the idea of utilising guinea-pigs as a new sort of dish, declaring that they were most excellent when cooked, and actually induced me to try them. I must candidly admit that they really were not at all bad; she got me a little cookery book entirely filled with recipes for preparing the curious little creatures for the table. There does not now exist, I fancy, any brilliant little circle of people such as in the ’sixties started that curious sheet the _Owl_, though from time to time attempts at something of the sort have been made. There was, for instance, the little coterie the members of which called themselves “the Souls.” These, I believe, had more or less regular meetings for mental communion and improvement, and at one time they attracted a good deal of attention. There were certainly several clever people amongst them, as well as some exceedingly attractive and good-looking ladies, whose mental aspirations (so they declared) lay in the direction of a higher intellectual life than the one led by ordinary mortals. The late Sir William Harcourt, whose keen and incisive wit was ever very quick at summing up things at a true valuation, is said, when asked what he thought of “the Souls,” to have replied, “All I know about ‘the Souls’ is that some of them have very beautiful bodies.”