DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,--To-day I have read in the paper that the choice of President of the Royal Academy has fallen upon you, and since I am convinced that this distinguished position is both appropriate to your services to art, and also certainly well merited, you must permit an old friend, who remains bound to you in love only, to offer you his dearest and warmest good wishes upon this honour. I pray God, that your position may provide you with great power in your country for good so as to enable you to encourage the noblest things in art. I am convinced that you, dear friend, will make a right and fruitful use of it. I often set my pupils to make enlarged drawings of single groups from your medieval Equipment for the Defence of the Town,[59] and rejoice in the admirable studies which you made for that cartoon. I, dear friend, am in my old age still active and industrious, and would gladly go on learning. Should God grant life, I shall next year complete my work on the Strassburg master, which will demand all my love and strength. Here we have now built a new gallery, on the other side of the river Main, and a new studio. The collections are good, and more suitably accommodated than heretofore, and there is no want of space for future additions. Perhaps one of your journeys will bring you again to the old Main town, and so to the arms of your old friend. My dear President, I repeat my good wishes, and remain with all my heart, your truly devoted, EDW. STEINLE. From his birthplace Leighton received the following announcement:-- BOROUGH OF SCARBOROUGH. At a meeting of the Council of the Borough of Scarborough, in the County of York, held in the Town Hall in the said Borough, on Monday the ninth day of December, 1878,-- Present,-- THE MAYOR (W.C. LAND, Esq.) in the chair,-- It was moved by the Mayor, seconded by Alderman Woodall, and resolved unanimously: "That this Council learns with peculiar satisfaction and pleasure of the election of a native of Scarborough, in the person of SIR FREDERIC LEIGHTON, to the Presidency of the Royal Academy, and respectfully offers to Sir Frederic its warm congratulations, and records its conviction that his great talents as an artist, his attainments as a scholar, and his many striking qualifications, eminently fit him to adorn the high position to which he has been called." W.C. LAND, Mayor. Robert Browning wrote:-- 19 WARWICK CRESCENT, W., _November 14, 1878_.