SOCIAL LIFE 183
whom I would more willingly be tried by if I fell into trouble.
I t was to my wife, also, that I owed the friendship of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Hollond of Stanmore. She was exceptionally gifted by nature with grace, sympathy, artistic taste, and many other high qualities. Her portrait, by Scheffer, is in the Tate Gallery. Her face closely corresponded to his imaginary ideal when painting St. Augustine and Monica, so he enjoyed the opportunity of painting Mrs. Hollond's own portrait. She was even more at home in France than in England, and intimate with many distinguished statesmen of the Orleanist party. Her husband's wealth gave her great facilities for cultivating her aesthetic tastes to the full. H e was chiefly known to the public at one time as subsidiser of the " Nassau " balloon, which carried him, Green the famous aeronaut, and, I think, Mr., afterwards Lord Justice, James (who was an old friend of his), and two others. They sailed from London to a town in Nassau ; which was at that time by far and away a record distance for a balloon to drift. Numerous memorial pictures of that adventure were in his house.
I t was in the middle fifties that my friendship
commenced with William Spottiswoode (1825-1883)
one of the most capable and true-hearted of men, who became President of the Royal Society, and now lies buried in Westminster Abbey, "at the request alike of the foremost of his countrymen in Church and State, in Science, Art and Literature, and of his own workmen, to whose best interests his life had been devoted." This is the singularly apt inscription on his tombstone. I asked Dean Bradley, then Dean of
