My relations with Irving were not so close or so intimate during the later years of his life, and I prefer to think of him now as I knew him best, before the days of discouragement had overtaken him. To a man of his commanding personality and indomitable will, it was difficult to acknowledge, without a reluctance that sometimes bordered on resentment, the need of any resources but his own. The feeling, I think, was natural enough. He had carved out his career with such splendid courage and persistence that it must have been hard for him to realise, even when his powers were no longer at the full, that he had not the needful strength for the conflict. But this feeling of impatience with the position in which he found himself, pardonable enough in itself, made him, I think, sometimes suspicious of his friends. In my own case I know he entirely misconceived the motives with which I had sought to recapture for him his threatened position in the theatre he had made famous; but although such misunderstanding must of necessity at the time cause a measure of pain, it is to the closer friendship of earlier days that my memory now recurs, to the many years during which we were fast friends and staunch allies. The other day I came across a little letter belonging to that happier time which I love to preserve as a touching record of the deeper side of Irving’s nature. Something had occurred, what precisely it was I now forget, which caused me to write to him in warm appreciation of the great services I always felt he had rendered to the stage, and my letter drew from him the following response:-- “Your letter,” he writes, “gave me much happiness. I know our hearts are one in many things, and I often wish we could sometimes be by the still waters and speak of things deeper even than could be spoken of before the best of other friends.” There was a strong emotional element in Irving’s character that could scarcely have been suspected by those who did not know him intimately. Sometimes when he was deeply moved I have seen the tears start suddenly to his eyes, and at such moments his voice would often break and tremble as he sought to express the feeling that stirred him. In the summer of 1886 he invited my wife and myself to accompany him on a visit to Nuremberg. Miss Ellen Terry and her daughter were of the party, and as _Faust_ was to be produced at the end of the year, our holiday had in part a practical purpose. Irving and I made an exhaustive study of the gardens of the old German city in order to find suitable material for the scenery of the play, the greater part of which was to be painted by Mr. Hawes Craven. We even carried our researches as far as Rothenberg-on-the-Tauber, a most beautiful example of a mediæval fortified town; and at the last Irving deemed it wise to summon Craven from London in order that he might make a few preparatory studies on the spot.