I remember--when my husband and I were sitting with him one afternoon after his return home that autumn--his saying, "I feel distinctly I have dropped one step down off of the ladder," and it was truly about that time that his doctor, Doctor Roberts, discerned the beginning of the disease which proved fatal. Already in 1888 he wrote:-- "The reasons which have now for a good many years impelled me to decline any 'public utterances' outside Burlington House have increased in weight and force as life and strength wanes, and as demands on me grow in every direction. I am sometimes asked to speak in public, not only in London, but all over the country, and in all cases the demand is grounded on strong claims in so far as I am an 'official' artist. Assent once is assent always--assent in half the cases would mean the _gravest_ injury to my _work_, and I am a workman first and an official afterwards. Things have their humorous side, for those who press me most are sometimes those who on other occasions most earnestly assure me that I '_do too much_.' How tired I am of hearing it." The speeches at the yearly banquets of the Royal Academy were extraordinary _tours de force_. Wherever Leighton took the lead--and he was seldom anywhere when he did not take the lead,[64]--he raised the tone of the proceedings, and convinced the outside world, no less than those taking a part in them, that the matter in hand was important and essentially worth doing. Personally I have always felt that the finished form of Leighton's diction tended rather to hide than to explain the real nature of the power which had this vitalising, elevating influence. This influence emanated, I believe, from the greatness of his "magnificent intellect" (to use Watts' words) being united with extraordinary will-force invariably employed in the service of the principles in which he had a profound faith. It was his persistent loyalty to these principles--backed by this abnormal will-force, giving it extra weight--which lifted Leighton's work in all directions on to so distinguished a level--and not--in the case of his speeches--his rounded periods, or his power over words, or his gift of facility in grasping a subject, though the Banquet speeches are also remarkable on account of the versatility he displayed in grasping many subjects from the point of view of the expert. Whether it was the Army, the Navy, Politics, Music--whatever, in fact, was the affair of the moment, he proposed the toast from what might be called the inside of the question, not merely treating his text as a matter of form.[65] On asking Gladstone to the Banquet of 1880, Leighton received the following characteristic answer:--