Pleasant indeed is the fine old house, with emerald lawn and stately trees, wherein he resides.

Not Horace in his Sabine farm, nor Catullus at Tiburs, had a more poetic retreat than the author of "Proverbial Philosophy" at Albury.

But, like Catullus, the advent of May had set the poet longing for a flight far away: "'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores, Jam coeli furor aequinoctialis Jucundis Zephyri silescit auris; Jam mens praetrepidans avet vagari Jam laeti studio pedes vigescunt.' And he was about to take wing for sea-side resorts, and the soft cyclades of the Channel, beloved by Victor Hugo.
"Right hospitable was he; a bottle of cool claret cheered the dusty wayfarer, and an hour's pleasant talk was even more cheering.

Hence I walked through Albury Park towards Gomshall." The exquisite bit from Catullus will best excuse my otherwise egotistical quotation.
A few more anecdotes about literary men and things may here find place.
Take these respecting _Thackeray_, and _Leech_, both of which immortal humorists were my schoolfellows at the Charterhouse; but, as I have said, they having the misfortune to be merely lower-form boys, and your present scribe ranging as a dignified Emeritus, of course there was then a great gulf between us, pleasantly to be bridged over in after life.
Thackeray's career has long been fully detailed in public, and I can have little to add of much consequence; but I call to mind how that quiet small cynic--so gigantic in all senses afterwards--used to caricature Bob Watki and the other masters on the fly-leaves of his classbooks, to the scandal of myself and other responsible monitors; these illustrated classics having since been sold by auction at high prices.

But "My School-Days" have recorded all that.
As to Leech, who probably adorned his books similarly, he, being a day-boy and allowed for safety to scuttle out of the playground before school broke up, came not equally under our surveillance in those days; but long years after, when that genial and witty friend and true gentleman was my guest at Albury, I had great delight in his company, and he helped cleverly to illustrate (along with divers other artists) my "Crock of Gold" and "Proverbial Philosophy," and in part "The Anglo-Saxon." I remember a characteristic little anecdote about him, as thus:-- We went angling together to Postford Pond, on a fine hot day, thinking less of possible sport than of sandwiches and sherry, and an idle lounge on a sloping bank in the shade, and haply (though for myself I am no smoker) the calmly contemplative cigar.