Thomas Bland worked at art for its own sake, cared nothing for fame, and would have hated notoriety. He had at least one excellent chance of becoming known to London art circles, for David Cox (the younger), who had seen some of his drawings, was interested, and wished to introduce him to his friends. He gave Mr. Bland several of his own water-colour paintings, and some correspondence passed between them; but the introduction fell through. He had, of course, many visitors, some of whom came to see him only from idle curiosity. These he could not endure. For their benefit he had a large oleograph of Garibaldi set up in his studio. If they fell into the trap, and admired it, they were summarily dealt with, for he could be brusque to those whom he did not care about. The Garden Beautiful was free to all; but he would not sacrifice time or convenience to a bore--least of all, an admiring bore. There is one story told of a trick which was played upon him: about 1855 he went to Kendal to hear a lecture on electricity. He was sceptical of the marvellous powers claimed for it, and refused to believe that it would be impossible for him to let go the handles of the battery when the current was turned on. Having the courage of his disbelief, he went upon the platform to try, and unsuspectingly put his top hat between his knees. Then the operator turned the current on strong, and it was only after that top hat was fairly flattened in his struggles that he was released, amid the roars of the audience; whereupon he fled from the room and back to Reagill, a wiser man--with a ruined hat. He seems to have been credited with a certain amount of eccentricity, though this may have been due to a commonplace reading of unusual gifts and vigorous originality; but it is certainly the case that he was highly esteemed as a man of warm heart and kindly disposition, which attracted all with whom he came in contact; and in his own neighbourhood his death was greatly deplored. He died on September 18th, 1865, in his sixty-seventh year, unmarried. But John Bland's work, good as it is, has an additional value, because there was at the time no systematic effort in this field of research. The Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society held its inaugural meeting on September 11th, 1866, only four months before he died, and for some six years not much was done. Thus he was the first to plan the important stone circle at Gunnerskeld. This, like its neighbour at Oddendale, belongs to a class, rare in Britain, which consists of concentric rings of stone. Mr. C. W. Dymond, F.S.A., in publishing a plan of Gunnerskeld circle, says:--"So far as my researches have extended, no plan of this megalithic group has ever been published, nor, save in a local guide book, have I ever seen it mentioned." The book contains a drawing, a ground plan and a description of each of these remains.