Gaskell extremely unwise, and objectionable, "and yet," he said to Lord Houghton, "of course a peculiar sanctity attaches, itself to dying wishes. What would you do in such a situation as mine?" For a little while Lord Houghton reflected, and then answered, with an air of grave detachment, "I always tell my family totally to disregard everything I say during the last six months of my life." Of his social philosophy otherwise he gave me in the days of my youth many pithy expositions, with hints as to what I should do when I entered the world myself. One of his pieces of advice was especially appropriate to Torquay. This was to make the acquaintance of old Mr. Bevan, a lifelong intimate of his own. Accordingly my introduction to this mysterious personage was accomplished. Mr. Bevan lived in a large villa close to that which was occupied by Miss Burdett-Coutts. Its discreetly shuttered windows, like so many half-closed eyelids, gave, when viewed externally, the impression that it was asleep or tenantless; but to ring the front-door bell was to dissipate this impression immediately. The portals seemed to open by clockwork. Heavy curtains were withdrawn by servitors half seen in the twilight, and the visitors were committed to the care of an Austrian groom of the chambers, who, wearing the aspect of a king who had stepped out of the Almanach de Gotha, led the way over soundless carpets to a library. This was furnished with a number of deep armchairs; and I recollect how, on the first occasion of my entering it, each of these chairs was monopolized by a drowsy Persian cat. For a moment, the light being dim, these cats, so it seemed to me, were the sole living things present; but a second later I was aware that a recumbent figure was slowly lifting itself from a sofa. This was Mr. Bevan. His attire was a blue silk dressing-gown, a youthfully smart pair of black-and-white check trousers, varnished boots, and a necktie with a huge pearl pin in it, the pearl itself representing the forehead of a human skull. His hands were like ivory, his face was like a clear-cut cameo. With the aid of a gold-headed cane that had once belonged to Voltaire he gently evicted a cat, so that I might occupy the chair next to him, and said, in the language of Brummell's time, that he was "monstrous glad to see me." He pointed to objects of interest which adorned his walls and tables, such as old French fashion-plates of ladies in very scanty raiment; to musical clocks, of which several were presents from crowned heads; to sketches by d'Orsay, and to framed tickets for Almack's. "Whenever the dear lady next door," he said, with a glance at the seminudities of the French fashion-plates, and alluding to Miss Burdett-Coutts, "comes to have a dish of tea with me, I have to lock those things up. I fear," he said, presently, "I'm in a shocking bad odor with her now." Only last night, he explained, he had received from