In the summer of 1885, along with many others, I met with a great loss. This was the death at Vichy of my dear old friend, Lord Houghton. No kinder friend than he man ever had. The world was inclined to laugh at his peculiarities, which lay upon the surface, and to ignore the sterling qualities that formed the basis of his character. If it is right to speak of a man as you find him, then I am entitled to say that there never lived a kinder or more generous man, or a truer friend, than Monckton Milnes. To me he was all this. I have told already the story of our first acquaintance in 1870, and of the debt which I very soon owed him. I could fill a volume with reminiscences of his talk, as I used to hear it during my frequent visits to Fryston, and of the warmth of his sympathy with one who had no claim upon him. I have made many friends in the course of my life, and looking back upon the list I am constrained to say that I have made more friends through the mediumship of Lord Houghton than through that of any other man. Among those whom I first met at his house, I must not omit Edward, fourteenth Earl of Derby, better known in his time as the Lord Stanley who served as Foreign Secretary under the premiership of his brilliant father, the thirteenth Earl. Lord Derby--the man of whom I speak--was one of the great misunderstood figures of his generation. Men slandered him as freely as they slandered Mr. Gladstone, and, unlike the great Liberal leader, he did not possess that strong following of ardent adherents who stood by their chief, no matter how sternly Fortune might frown upon him. Lord Derby was one of the shyest of men, and, as a consequence, he was really known, even when he was in the thick of his political work, by only a few men and women. Those who did know him held him, however, in the highest esteem. There was no better judge of character than Lord Houghton, and often he would remark upon the fact that Lord Derby was almost as unpopular as his father had been the reverse. He cited this as a proof of the incapacity of the public for forming correct estimates of character. I had been in confidential correspondence with Lord Derby long before I first met him at Fryston, and in 1879 I wrote an article in _Macmillan's Magazine_ dealing with his career at the Foreign Office, and with his reason for resigning his post in Lord Beaconsfield's Administration. This article was written on information which he supplied, and he himself corrected the proof-sheets. Yet these facts did not prevent some of the cocksure critics of the Press from announcing that I was wholly mistaken in my account of Lord Derby's action and motive. I have found, however, that nothing is so certain to meet with an absolute contradiction in the Press as an indubitable fact which comes as a piece of unexpected news to the ordinary journalist.