"I like

to her once, speaking of the Grotes. him, he is so ladylike; and I like her, she is such a perfect gentleman." Volumes could not describe their personality better. At their country home, where they entertained many distinguished guests, Mrs. Grote often appeared with a stick in her hand, a man's hat on her head and a coachman's box coat or drab cloth with many capes over her shoulders, and she stalked about the house and grounds alternately superintending the domestic economy and discussing with ner visitors questions of music and art with great knowledge and discrimination.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Grote were passionately fond of music and both played on the violoncello with rare taste and expression. Once when a discussion of Gluck's music engaged the interest of some of her guests Mrs. Grote shouted out to her servant to bring her the big fiddle from the hall. Taking it between her knees she played with great taste and expression several of Gluck's masterpieces.

Mrs. Grote was fond of entertaining artistic and musical notables. When Fannie Ellsler appeared in London Mrs. Grote did much for her and did all she could to make her a respectable person. During Fanny's absence in America

Mrs. Grote took charge of her child and so educated her that she grew up to be a noble

woman.

Mendelssohn and Jenny Lind were great favorites with the Grotes and they did much to assist the great Swedish cantatrice when she first appeared in London. Their friendship was lifelong. Mrs. Grote was as ready at repartee as Sydney Smith himself, and she possessed the faculty of describing people in the pithiest way, for she had a vocabulary of her own, often very homely but always forcible. Certain of her lady acquaintances were "good adjectives" to their husbands or "good doormats," and another was a "porcelain woman." She was a fine converser and was also a good listener. She was loath to loan books from their library, but when she did she would exact from the borrower a sovereign as a deposit for the return of the book. Many a book lender has mourned because he did not do some such thing.

Her finest repartee was made to Louis Napoleon. When that prince was a mere adventurer in London he lived for a time on terms of considerable intimacy with the Grotes. When he was President of the French Republic Mrs. Grote happened to be in Paris, but he ignored her.

One day, however, when the Bois de Boulogne was crowded their carriages came so close together that he could not avoid speaking to her. Ah, madame, vous êtes ici ! Restez-vous longtemps à Paris?" "Pas longtemps, monseigneur ; Ah, madame, you are here? Do you remain long in Paris?" "Not long, sir ; and you?"

et vous?"

The coup d'état shortly followed and Napoleon remained for twenty years.

The poet Rogers, with Fanny Kemble, once visited Mrs. Grote at her country house, which she had recently enlarged by an addition. The external appearance of the house was not improved by it, and Mr. Rogers gave utterance to some characteristic sneers to Fanny. Just then Mrs. Grote appeared and Rogers turned to her with a sardonic smile and said: "I was just remarking that in whatever part of the world I had seen this building I should have guessed to whose taste I might attribute its erection." Without an instant's hesitation she replied: "Ah! 'tis a beastly thing, to be sure! The confounded workmen played the devil with the place while I was away." And then she led the way into the house.

Taken altogether they are a noteworthy couple

and well deserving of remembrance. Mrs. Grote's life of her husband is a remarkably interesting book. It tells much of the literary and social life in England in the Victorian era.

•EOTHEN,"

BY

ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGLAKE.

"EOTHEN," by Alexander William Kinglake, first appeared in 1844, and its original title was "Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East." In his preface the author expressed the hope that the name "Eothen" would be the only hard word found in the book. It is Greek, signifying "from the early dawn," "from the east." A more delightful book was never written, and, while it is nominally a book of travel, it is rather the record of the impressions of the author than of outward facts. By its style and method it is more like Sterne's "Sentimental Journey," without its coarseness, than any ordinary book of travel. One edition of the volume has an introduction by James Bryce, the wellknown author of "The American Commonwealth," who says that Kinglake "is as distinctly in the front rank of authors of his own kind as