They had also been seen by Sir Coutts Lindsay and Mr. Hallé, and these gentlemen invited me to associate myself with them in the future conduct of the Grosvenor. This new vocation, however, in no way interrupted my career as an Art Critic. Already established on the _Pall Mall Gazette_, I began at the same time to widen the range of my writings on the subject of art, and in this way, at the invitation of Mr. Samuel Carter Hall, became a regular contributor to the _Art Journal_. At the same time I was offered and accepted the post of Art Critic on the _Manchester Guardian_, and in the year 1875 I was appointed as the English editor of _L’Art_, a periodical so luxuriously produced that it could not be destined ever to win a very large public. Mr. S. C. Hall was a quaint and curious figure of the time, whose acquaintance never ceased to afford me a certain humorous enjoyment. He was supposed to be the model upon which Dickens has based his superb creation of Mr. Pecksniff, and there were points in his character which readily lent themselves for exploitation at the hands of such a master of humour. For a time our relations on the _Art Journal_ were friendly and undisturbed, and Mr. Hall was good enough to express in unstinted terms his appreciation of my work. But it was impossible, even at that time, in personal converse with the man, not to be haunted by the suspicion that his constant assertion of the most ideal aims in life were consistent with an occasional reference to more mundane considerations. Both he and Mrs. Hall must have sometimes laid themselves open to the charge of taking themselves too seriously, for I remember Edmund Yates telling me that he had once asked Charles Dickens whether he thought they were ever conscious of playing a part, to which Dickens had replied, “I think once a year they exchange a wink, possibly on Carter’s birthday.” Purnell used to relate an anecdote of the gravity of their entertainments having once been broken up by an unintentional flash of humour on the part of Mrs. Hall herself. At one end of the dinner-table Mr. Hall, in his most solemn tones, was announcing to the company his unswerving faith in a future life, and in conclusion expressed the hope that in that other and happier world he should rejoin his dear wife; upon which Mrs. Hall, from her place at the end of the board, interjected, in strong Irish accents, the somewhat disconcerting answer, “No, Carter; I shall go to Jesus.” Mr. Hall’s appearance, with his wealth of white hair and dark eyebrows, seemed to give a certain stamp of authority to the unctuous platitudes in which he was wont to indulge. He used constantly to say to me, “My object, my dear sir, is to do as much good in the world as I can,” and in such utterances as this there was never, I am sure, even the lurking suspicion on his part that he was exposing himself to the shafts of ridicule.