"When genius from the furthest West, Sierra's Wilds and Poker Flat, Can seek our shores with filial zest, Why not the genial Autocrat? "Why is this burden on us laid, That friendly London never greets The peer of Locker, Moore, and Praed From Boston's almost neighbor streets? "His earlier and maturer powers His own dear land might well engage; We only ask a few kind hours Of his serene and vigorous age. "Oh, for a glimpse of glorious Poe! His raven grimly answers 'never!' Will Holmes's milder muse say 'no,' And keep our hands apart forever?" But he was not destined to see his friend. When Holmes arrived in England, Lord Houghton was in his grave, and so was Dean Stanley, whose sweetness of disposition had so charmed the autocrat, when the two men had met in Boston a few years before. Ruskin he failed to meet also, for the distinguished word-painter was ill. At a dinner, however, at Arch-Deacon Farrar's, he spent some time with Sir John Millais and Prof. John Tyndall. Of course, he saw Gladstone, Tennyson, Robert Browning, Chief Justice Coleridge, Du Maurier, the illustrator of _Punch_, Prof. James Bryce who wrote "The American Commonwealth," "Lord Wolseley," Britain's "Only General," "His Grace of Argyll," "Lord Lorne and the Princess Louise,"--one of the best amateur painters and sculptors in England,--and many others. Of all these noted ones, he has something bright and entertaining to say. The universities laid their highest honors at his feet. Edinburgh gave him the degree of LL.D., Cambridge that of Doctor of Letters, and Oxford conferred upon him her D. C. L., his companion on the last occasion being John Bright. It was at Oxford that he met Vice-Chancellor Benjamin Jowett, the Master of Balliol College, Prof. Max Mueller, Lord and Lady Herschell, and Prof. James Russell Lowell, his old and unvarying friend. The account of his visit to Europe is told with most engaging directness and simplicity, and though the book has no permanent value, it affords much entertainment for the time.