Those were the palmy days of the Monday Popular Concerts. They were a great weekly pleasure. Every Monday evening my wife and I found ourselves among the crowd of real lovers of music listening to the masterpieces of the great composers, given out by such artists as Joachim, Madame Norman Neruda, Piatti, Lazarus, Hallé, Clara Schumann. The audiences were always the same and in the same groups; there were even familiar figures amongst the unreserved shilling seats that regularly occupied their own particular places—did they come hours beforehand to secure them or was there some such law of courtesy as governs the reservation of certain seats in the House of Commons? Close to us sat Mrs. Sartoris, Leighton and Robert Browning and scores of other devotees of lesser note. It was the perfection of Chamber Music, but it was even better heard at those delightful concerts which Sir Frederic Leighton used to give in his studio in Holland Park. There we had the same artists and met the pick of their admirers; but the space was just what the music was suited to, and not the most delicate shade, not the tenderest phrasing was lost, as it sometimes was in the huge concert hall. And then Leighton himself was such an admirable host, so instinct with that finest of all courtesy which springs from kindliness of heart and the honest delight in giving pleasure. I first made Leighton’s acquaintance in 1855, the year in which the picture which made him famous, the procession of Cimabue’s Madonna, was exhibited. He was then a young man of twenty-five—handsome, accomplished, a musician, speaking French, German and Italian in great perfection, with what probably was a unique mastery of the different Italian patois from Venetian to Neapolitan. One great charm that he possessed and retained to the end, save only under the paroxysms by which his heart was being tortured, was the look of happiness—a rare gift; whether he were painting a picture, listening to music, or presiding in his royal way, lounging in the great armchair at an Academy dinner, he seemed to radiate happiness. To his friends he always gave a glad and genial welcome, to young artists a helpful hand and sound advice. His charity was boundless, and it may rightly be said of him that he obeyed the precept of the sermon on the mount, “When thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”