Several of those who were in the Foreign Office at the same time with me reached great distinction. Lord Vivian became Ambassador at Rome, Philip Currie, so long private secretary to the great Lord Salisbury, and one of the staunchest of my friends, was raised to the peerage, having been Ambassador successively at Constantinople and Rome. Lord Sanderson, after being for a long time Under-Secretary of State, was also raised to the peerage. Sir Francis Bertie, some years junior to me, ought to be leaving the Embassy at Paris, after a most brilliant career, under the age limit, but such a man cannot be spared at a critical moment, and so he is staying on with the due reward of a peerage. Robert Meade went to the Colonial Office, earned the highest distinction under many chiefs, including Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, who knew the value of a good man. Drummond Wolf also went to the Colonial Office as private secretary to Lord Lytton in 1858; then was sent as Colonial Secretary to the Ionian Islands, and when they were given up (_proh pudor!_) was offered his choice between a C.B. and a K.C.M.G. Not without an eye to its financial value he chose the latter; but he was afterwards promoted into far higher regions, as G.C.B., Minister to Persia, where it is said his rather risky stories delighted the Shah, and finally as Ambassador to Spain. All these and others whom I have not mentioned have played their part in the world, contributing their quota to its advancement. And after all, that is what makes life worth the living—that is what distinguishes man from a possible ancestral jelly-fish. 1860.—Those were days of freedom, when men might sit up and feast and amuse themselves as late as they pleased. Grandmotherly legislation had not yet set its canon by which, when the clock strikes the curfew the lights in all hostelries must be extinguished, the grandchildren must fly from bar and refreshment room, and be sent virtuously, even if supperless, to bed. On the night of the 16th-17th of April, 1860, the inns and public houses in London remained open all night; some twelve thousand persons did not go to bed at all, for on the morning of the 17th the great fight for the championship of the world was to take place—somewhere—between Tom Sayers and Heenan, the great American fighter known as the Benicia Boy. The whereabouts was kept so dark that it was not until the last moment that we who had taken tickets were even allowed to know from what station we were to go. The whole affair was shrouded in mystery. The two principals were being closely watched by the police, and Tom Sayers only made good his escape from Newmarket in a horse-box in the disguise of a stableman in charge of one of the horses belonging to Sam Rogers, the trainer. As for us, we had to hang about Ben Caunt and Nat Langham’s public-houses waiting, until we received our sailing orders and rushed off to London Bridge, the start having been fixed for four in the morning.