contemporary and fellow-worker, Gifford Palgrave, I also reckoned among my friends. He was a classical Englishman, first belonging to the Anglican and afterwards to the Roman Catholic Church. For some time he was in the service of the Society of Jesus, as teacher in the mission school at Beyrût; and as he was quite at home in the Arabic language, he under-took a journey into the then unknown country of Nedjd, the chief resort of the Wahâbis, about whom his book of travels contains many interesting new data. Being a classical orator, he used to fascinate his audience with his choice language, and what Spurgeon has been in the pulpit and Gladstone in Parliament, that was Palgrave in the hall of the Geographical Society. I liked the man fairly well, only a peculiar twinkle of the eye constantly reminded me of his former Jesuitism. In David Livingstone, the great African explorer, I found a congenial fellow-labourer, whose words of appreciation, "What a pity you did not make Africa the scene of your activity!" sounded pleasant in my ears. Other travellers, such as Speke, Grant, Kirk and others, I was also proud to reckon among my friends; and in the field of literature I would mention in the first place Charles Dickens, whose acquaintance I made at the Athenæum Club, and who often asked me to have dinner at the same table with him. Dickens was not particularly talkative, but he was very much interested in my adventures, and when once I declined his invitation for the following evening with the apology that I had to dine at Wimbledon with my publisher, John Murray, he remarked, "So you are going to venture into the 'Brain Castle,' for of course you know," he continued, "that Murray's house is not built of brick but of human brains." Among politicians, artists, actors, financiers, generals--in fact in all classes and ranks of society--I had friends and acquaintances. I had no cause to complain of loneliness or neglect; any one else would no doubt have been supremely happy in my place, and would have made better use also of the general complaisance. But I was as yet absolutely new to this Western world; I was as it were still wrapped in the folds of Asiatic thought, and, in spite of my enthusiasm for modern culture, I had great difficulty in making myself familiar with the principal conditions of this phase of life, with its everlasting rushing and hurrying, the unremitting efforts to get higher up, and the cold discretion of the combatants. In fact, my first visit to England made me feel gloomy and discouraged.