As we lay there, in _dolce-far-niente_ fashion, all at once Leech jumped up with a vigorous "Confound that float! can't it leave me at peace?
I've been watching it bobbing these five minutes, and now it's out of sight altogether--hang it!" With that hearty exclamation of disgust pulling up a brilliant two-pound perch, the glory of the day! Next week's _Punch_ had a pleasant comic sketch of this petty incident, thereby immortalised by the famous "bottled leech." It always struck me that Tenniel and he were a well-matched pair, in kindliness, cleverness, and good looks; and I never can think of one without the other--_arcades ambo; par nobile fratrum_.
Thackeray lived to have his full revenge of Dr.Birch, in our day the reigning tyrant of Charterhouse; and Russell well deserved his castigation both by pen and pencil.
Let me also give a brace of home sketches of Longfellow.

I have had two principal interviews with him in his beautiful home at Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the wide interval between those visits of twenty-five years.

Of the first of these I record a few words from my American MS.
journal in 1851, adding some unwritten thoughts and recollections.

On April 16th, then, in the year just named, Longfellow wrote to me cordially, and with much kindly appreciation, and soon after, calling on me at Boston, took me off in his carriage over the flooded lowlands to the ancient (for America) University of Cambridge, where the Queen Anne-like colleges are nestled in fine old elms.

He treated me, of course, most hospitably, and had asked several friends to meet the traveller; but one, a chief guest, was otherwise engaged, and so I missed Lowell, to my great disappointment.