He had no pretensions to scholarship, but he had the instinct of good nervous English, which, combined with a sound knowledge of law and of affairs, made him an excellent writer of pamphlets, leading articles, and political skits. To be a regular contributor to the _Owl_, which Laurence Oliphant edited, was a feather in any man’s cap, and he was one of the seven original signatories of the Primrose League. It is pretty certain that had he lived he would have made his mark in the political world. _Dîs aliter visum est_—he died at the moment when life seemed to be dangling its choicest prizes before him. * * * * * In 1858, immediately after leaving Oxford, I was pressed into the Amateur Musical Society by Henry Leslie, who was then its conductor, and made to play first cornet. In that year was held the first rehearsal for the Handel Festival at the Crystal Palace. The “Dictionary of National Biography” (Article Costa) gives the date as 1857, which is wrong. The object was to test the capabilities of the place for a vast orchestra and chorus. Our Society was invited to join the band, and so it came to pass that I played at the first cornet’s desk at the rehearsal in 1858, and afterwards at the Festivals of 1859, 1862, and at the opening of the great Exhibition in London in the latter year. Costa, afterwards Sir Michael, conducted. The people who witnessed the failure of the young Neapolitan baritone at Birmingham in 1829 could have had no suspicion that they were rejecting a man who was destined to become a dominant influence in the music of this country. Costa’s voice was weak and unattractive, but he had already been deeply schooled in the science of his art by Zingarelli, and had made some mark as a composer. It was Clementi who recognized his true vocation as conductor: if the story be true that after his first appearance as leader, the members of the band, who were not inclined to receive him with favour, presented him with a box of razors as a way of twitting him with his youth, there were good judges who at once formed the highest opinion of his power.