A saying of Alfred’s at Somerset House reminds one of Charles Lamb in the same building. One day he arrived at the office (he was a Commissioner of Inland Revenue), and said plaintively “I think I must take a little holiday; I have not had one this year!” His colleagues, who knew their Alfred’s ways, looked at him in amazement, until one of them remembered that it was the 1st of January! Alfred Montgomery had been a great friend of Lord Brougham, d’Orsay, Lady Blessington and the Kensington Gore set, and he it was who took the news of Brougham’s death to a party at Lady Blessington’s: a sly trick of the ex-Chancellor to find out what the newspapers would say of him. Clever as he was, Alfred fell into the trap when he received a letter informing him of the sad event! Alfred’s own little dinners in his tiny house in Chesterfield Street were of the choicest—the best of food, the best of wine, the best of welcomes. The setting—a picture for a _dilettante_. I wonder whether there is to-day in London a drawing-room of equal size so dainty and so choice. It would need the pen of an expert from Christie and Manson’s to describe it. To the end of his life he kept his good looks. His features, as finely cut as those in a classic gem, never changed. I went to see him a day or two before his death. He could hardly speak, but he was, as always, beautifully groomed. As he himself once said to someone who chaffed him on his smart appearance, “I can’t help growing old, but there is no reason why I should be dirty.” His bed, his dressing-table and all his belongings were as smart as a bride’s, and as he lay dying, very tired and feeble, his humour was as droll and merry as ever—full of fun to the last. How few men when they go leave a gap in the great world: in their own families some are perhaps missed for a while; but outside their own little surroundings it is only the rarest and choicest who are remembered and lamented. Alfred was one of these. One day Lord Granville, Alfred and I were walking together by the sea at Walmer. Lord Granville stopped short and said, “Now, Alfred, there’s nobody here but Bertie and I—do tell us how old you are.” “Don’t ask me, my dear G-G-G-Granville; I am that most horrible thing, a well p-p-p-preserved man.” As he had been private secretary to Lord Wellesley when he was Viceroy of Ireland, he must then have been pretty well stricken in years. Well preserved he certainly was—he did not look more than sixty. Mr. Henry Reeve, the editor of the _Edinburgh Review_, was another of those agreeable diners-out whom Lord Granville made welcome. As a talker he had not the light playfulness of those whom I have mentioned, but like Delane he had a marvellous memory—a great asset as a corrective in conversation. Perhaps his greatest claim to fame lies in the editing of the memoirs of Charles Greville, who made him his literary executor.