Dr Roget was a most cultivated man, with the exquisite polish and stately bearing of that now wholly extinct species, the gentlemen of the old school. He was one of the many tourists from England who, happening to be in France after the break-up of the short-lived Peace of Amiens, were detained in that country by Napoleon. Though a foreigner, Dr Roget had lived so long in England, and, as his book proves, knew our language so well, that he could easily have passed for a native of these isles; and thus readily fell a victim to the Corsican's unjustifiable action. Happily for himself, Dr Roget remembered that Napoleon had recently annexed Geneva to France; and he therefore, as a Genevese, protested against his detention on the ground that the annexation had made of him a French subject. The plea was allowed; he returned to England, and finally settled here; but the friend who had accompanied him on the tour, together with the many other _détenus_, remained in France for several years. Political friends were also numerous, some of whom will be mentioned in later pages. Of others, our most frequent visitors were the brilliant talker Roebuck, once known as “Dog Tear 'Em” of the House of Commons; the two Forsters, father and son, who, in turn and for many years, represented Berwick-upon-Tweed; J. B. Smith (Stockport); and Benjamin Smith (Norwich), at whose house we met some of the arctic explorers of the mid-nineteenth century, congenial friends of a descendant of the discoverer of Smith's Sound, and with whose clever daughters, Madame Bodichon being the eldest, we of the younger generation were intimate. At one time we saw a good deal also of Sir Benjamin Hawes, who, when appointed Under-Secretary to the Colonies in Lord John Russell's Administration of 1846, said to my parents: “Heaven help the Colonies, for I know nothing at all about them!”—an ignorance shared by many other people in those days of seldom distant travel. My father's legal friends included Denman, Wilde, Mellor, Manning, Brougham, and others; and racy was the talk when some of these gathered round “the mahogany tree,” for the extremely small jokes which to-day produce “roars of laughter” in Court were then little in favour, or failed to reach the honour of reproduction in print.