Sir Charles Dilke in this year has record of meeting with many interesting persons, some of them links with a vanishing past, such as the daughter of Horace Smith, who with his brother wrote _Rejected Addresses_. Miss "Tizy" Smith was, he says, 'the last survivor of that school of noisy, frolicsome, boisterous old ladies given to punning and banging people on the back; but she was very witty, and, for those who had spirits to bear her spirits, most entertaining. She was for many years known as the "Queen of Brighton," but her sway was not despotic.' In February he 'dined with Lady Waldegrave to meet the Duc de Chartres--no better and no worse than the other Princes of his house...., not excepting the Duc d'Aumale, who had, however, the reputation of being brilliant, and who ... was interesting from his great memory of great men. They all grew deaf as they grew old, and the Comte de Paris is now (1890) almost as deaf as the Prince de Joinville, who was put into the navy in his youth, because, not hearing the big guns, he alone of all the family was not frightened by them.' In March, 1878, Gambetta sent to Dilke with an introduction 'Henri Hecht, who was deep in his secrets, and in the habit from this time forward of visiting for him Germany as well as England.' Going backwards and forwards to his house at Toulon, Sir Charles always broke the journey at Paris to see Gambetta. He writes to Ashton Dilke: "Gambetta says that he shall say at Grenoble that MacMahon said: 'J'irai jusqu'au bout,' and that he must--_i.e._, he must complete his term. He won't have him again. 'J'en ai assez d'une fois.'" At Easter Sir Charles was using his influence with Gambetta on behalf of a great artist who had been politically compromised in the troubles of 1871 --Dalou the sculptor, who had done to Dilke's commission a copy in has- relief of Flaxman's "Mercury and Pandora." 'When I was leaving for Paris I had several interviews with Dalou as to getting him leave to return to France without his asking for it. He had been sub-curator of the Louvre under the Commune, and had helped to preserve the collections from destruction; but after he fled the country he had always refused to ask for leave to return, which, had he asked, would at once have been granted to him. Gambetta always insisted, when I spoke to him upon the matter, that Dalou should write some letter, however private and however personal, to ask for leave to return; but this was just what Dalou's pride would never let him do, and although he was willing to ask me verbally, and even to refer to the matter in a private letter to myself, he never would write about it to anyone in France. Dalou was afterwards selected to make the official statues of the Republic, and may be said to have become, after the general amnesty, Sculptor-in-Ordinary to the Government of France.'