However, all went well—for that time then present—but when I survey the group which now surmounts that unhappy arch, I feel as if we had escaped from the frying-pan into the fire. A motherly female of vast proportions stands in a car which might have served her baby’s doll. In one hand she carries a palm branch, in the other a fragment of some mystic vegetable, possibly intended for an olive branch. The arms are placed in the position adopted by the American barman when he performs his great feat of pouring a cocktail from one goblet into another. Her car is drawn by four Iceland ponies, guided by a charioteer, apparently modelled from one of the pygmies of the Aruwhimi forest, so skilfully concealed in the carefully muddled group that only from one or two points on the further side of Piccadilly is the onlooker aware of his puny existence. And this must remain for future ages as the last word of British sculpture at the beginning of the twentieth century! As regards the place itself, which has been severely criticized, and no doubt with some show of reason, the difficulties have been forgotten, but I still think that the best was done that could have been effected in the circumstances, and I would remind the cavillers of the lines written in defence of General Wade’s roads in Scotland. “If you’d known these roads before they were made You’d see good cause to bless General Wade.” A few weeks later the Prince of Wales took me with him to Aldershot to select a site for the old statue—and there it now stands. The year 1884 was fraught with many emotions for Mr. Gladstone’s Government, and there was further trouble ahead. Egypt was the chief anxiety. On the 6th of November Henry Fawcett, the blind Postmaster-General, who, with superhuman courage, had defied fate and raised himself to the front rank among men, died. An opportunity occurred for adding much needed strength to the Cabinet of which Mr. Fawcett, no doubt on account of his infirmity, had not been a member. Lord Rosebery, who had two years earlier resigned the Under-secretaryship of State for Home Affairs—an office which, I am not singular in thinking, ought never to have been offered to a man of his worth—rejoined the Government as First Commissioner of Works, with a seat in the Cabinet. In order to balance the numbers of Peers and Commoners in that mysterious body which rules England without being known to the Constitution, Mr. Shaw Lefevre was appointed Postmaster-General and raised to Cabinet rank. I shall not easily forget the pleasure with which I received a note from Lord Rosebery, whom I had known for many years, announcing his appointment and asking me to meet him at Euston Square and talk over matters during the drive to Whitehall. Equally difficult is it to record the many acts of kindness and consideration which I received during the few months that I served under him.