I was far more sincerely moved (although I did not dare to say so) by some works of our own time--for instance, by the "Vale of Rest," the "Autumn Leaves," "The Huguenot" of young Mr. Millais--just as I found such poems as _Maud_ and _In Memoriam_, by Mr. Alfred Tennyson, infinitely more precious and dear to me than Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Spenser's _Faerie Queene_. Indeed, I was hopelessly modern in those days--quite an every-day young man; the names I held in the warmest and deepest regard were those of then living men and women. Darwin, Browning, and George Eliot did not, it is true, exist for me as yet; but Tennyson, Thackeray, Dickens, Millais, John Leech, George Sand, Balzac, the old Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Alfred de Musset! I have never beheld them in the flesh; but, like all the world, I know their outer aspect well, and could stand a pretty stiff examination in most they have ever written, drawn, or painted. Other stars of magnitude have risen since, but of the old galaxy four at least still shine out of the past with their ancient lustre undimmed in my eyes--Thackeray; dear John Leech, who still has power to make me laugh as I like to laugh; and for the two others it is plain that the Queen, the world, and I are of a like mind as to their deserts, for one of them is now an ornament to the British peerage, the other a baronet and a millionaire; only I would have made dukes of them straight off, with precedence over the Archbishop of Canterbury, if they would care to have it so. It is with a full but humble heart that I thus venture to record my long indebtedness, and pay this poor tribute, still fresh from the days of my unquestioning hero-worship. It will serve, at least, to show my reader (should I ever have one sufficiently interested to care) in what mental latitudes and longitudes I dwelt, who was destined to such singular experience--a kind of reference, so to speak--that he may be able to place me at a glance, according to the estimation in which he holds these famous and perhaps deathless names. It will be admitted, at least, that my tastes were normal, and shared by a large majority--the tastes of an every-day young man at that particular period of the nineteenth century--one much given to athletics and cold tubs, and light reading and cheap tobacco, and endowed with the usual discontent; the last person for whom or from whom or by whom to expect anything out of the common. * * * * * But the splendor of the Elgin Marbles! I understood that at once--perhaps because there is not so much to understand. Mere physically beautiful people appeal to us all, whether they be in flesh or marble. By some strange intuition, or natural instinct, I _knew_ that people ought to be built like that, before I had ever seen a single statue in that wondrous room. I had divined them--so completely did they realize an aesthetic ideal I had always felt.