Since my young days the prices of many things have changed very considerably indeed. On the whole the necessities of life have certainly become cheaper, and its minor luxuries have been brought well within the reach of those boasting but a slender purse. When I was a child we used to burn mutton-fat candles in our nursery, and it was only in 1835, as I find from a letter of my dear old governess, that we abandoned this form of illumination for a little lamp trimmed with the best sperm oil. In still older days candles made of deer-fat used, I believe, to be burnt in country houses, where the whole problem of lighting was no easy matter. The cumbersome oil lamps of pre-electric light days were a great source of trouble and expense, apart from the danger of fire which they sometimes caused owing to careless handling. In large houses men had to be specially told off to attend to the lamps. I remember the uncle of the present Duke of Rutland showing me the lamp-room at Belvoir full of gigantic barrels of oil; at the same time he told me that no less than six men were kept constantly employed at nothing else but looking after the lamps. This Duke of Rutland was very much devoted to hunting and had several very severe falls. My husband and myself used often to go to Belvoir, and I remember that on two occasions, when going to visit there, we turned back at Grantham, it being there reported to us that the Duke, having had a terrible fall, was hovering between life and death; nevertheless he survived both these accidents. The late Duke (Lord John Manners) I always considered one of the most high-bred-looking men I ever saw in my life. I knew him in youth and in old age, and in both he was ever the typical English aristocrat; his polished and courteous address—the heritage of his race still preserved in the present generation—will always linger pleasantly in my memory. There was naturally something much more picturesque about old country life than is the case to-day, when, owing to railways and motor cars, people are kept in constant and close touch with town. The poacher, perhaps, is now the sole anachronism, and even he, I fancy, has discarded his old-world raiding ways in favour of more calculating and scientific methods. Poaching in old days was regarded by the country-folk much as smuggling had been by their forebears—that is, with a certain sneaking feeling of sympathetic toleration.