years later passed by purchase into the hands of George Murray Smith, of the firm of Smith, Elder & Co., the publishers.

It was at Daylesford that Hastings spent the afternoon and evening of his long and eventful life. He wrote poetry, and doubtless would have written, had he, instead of Browning, thought of it,

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be. The last

Of life, for which the first was made.

Hastings said that the purchase of Daylesford entailed a longer negotiation than would have served for the acquisition of a province. It became a passion with him to build and plant, and Daylesford House was erected in a park of some six hundred acres. It was a large and comfortable mansion, furnished with the gifts and acquisitions of a long and distinguished life.

At the close of the trial Hastings, as has been said, was, to all intents and purposes, a ruined man financially. The government did nothing for him, but the East India Company, which he had served so loyally, came to his aid, and advanced him large sums, to be repaid at his convenience, without interest; and these debts were subsequently canceled. He declined, with proper acknowledgments, the offer of a pension of two thousand pounds per annum from an Indian potentate; but he felt that he need have no scruples in accepting from the Company such sums as he required to enable him to live in

what seemed to him a fitting manner. In a communication to the Directors, he confessed that he had lived beyond his means, adding that strict "œconomy" could not be expected from one who had devoted his entire life to public affairs. It is indeed curious that, at a time when pensions were freely paid to the sisters and the cousins and the aunts of departed statesmen, as well as living politicians, nothing could be spared from the public or privy purse for such a man as Hastings. Whatever was needed, however, he had, and he continued to live, dispensing hospitality accompanied by sleep-inducing poetry, for many years-years that were probably the happiest of his life.

Every man is to a greater or less extent a dual personality. Hastings was a dreamer as well as a man of action. As a lad, to muse was, he says, his favorite recreation. "One summer's day, when I was scarcely seven years old, I well remember that I first formed the determination to buy back Daylesford. I was then literally dependent upon those whose condition scarcely raised them above the pressure of absolute want; yet somehow, as it did not appear unreasonable at the moment, so in after years it never faded away. God knows there were periods in my career when to accomplish that, or any other object of honorable ambition, seemed impossible, but I have lived to accomplish it. And though, perhaps, few public men have had more right than I to complain of the world's usage, I can never express sufficient gratitude to the kind Providence which

permits me to pass the evening of a long, and I trust not a useless life, amid scenes that are endeared to me by so many personal as well as traditional associations.'

At what time he dreamed of England's greatness in India, he does not tell us; but he lived to see that dream, too, come true; and forceful, nay, brutal, as he undoubtedly was in India, so kindly and gentle was he to his wife, by whom he was survived for twenty years years devoted to his memory.

With Daylesford in Pennsylvania, I am much at home. Life in our little hamlet is not unduly stimulating. Such local happenings as occasionally find their way into the newspapers are generally occasioned by a sharp and dangerous turn in the muchtraveled Lancaster Pike, an old post-road, now taking the grander name of the Lincoln Highway. This road, plunging under the railway bridge just at the station, appears to be going in one direction, whereas it is actually going in another. Not all automobilists know this, and two or more of them trying to occupy the same space at the same time afford all the excitement we seem to require. Twenty-five years' residence has made few changes other than that, speaking to our trees and to our children, we can truthfully say, "How you have grown!"

Daylesford in Worcestershire I visited when I was last in England, and I had the pleasure of being shown over the entire estate by its present owner, Squire Young, a kindly gentleman much resembling