It Strikes Me That It May Have Been Erected To The Memory Of A Person Who Introduced Some Valuable Plant Into England."

"Yes, perhaps," he said.

"But who was he?"

"I don't know yet," I returned. "I can only see that his name was Sibthorpe."

"Sibthorpe!" he exclaimed excitedly. "Why, this is the very memorial I've been looking for all over the abbey and had pretty well given up all hopes of finding it." With that he went to it and began studying the inscription, which was in Latin. John Sibthorpe, I found, was a distinguished botanist, author of the Flora Graeca, who died over a century ago.

I asked him why he was interested in Sibthorpe's memorial.

"Well, you see, I'm a great botanist myself," he explained, "and have been familiar with his name and work all my life. Of course," he added, "I don't mean I'm great in the sense that Sibthorpe was. I'm only a little local botanist, quite unknown outside my own circle; I only mean that I'm a great lover of botany."

I left him there, and had the curiosity to look up the great man's life, and found some very curious things in it. He was a son of Humphrey Sibthorpe, also a great botanist, who succeeded the still greater Dillenius as Sherardian Professor of Botany at Oxford, a post which he held for thirty-six years, and during that time he delivered one lecture, which was a failure. John, if he did not suck in botany with his mother's milk, took it quite early from his father, and on leaving the University went abroad to continue his studies. Eventually he went to Greece, inflamed with the ambition to identify all the plants mentioned by Dioscorides. Then he set about writing his Flora Graeca; but he had a rough time of it travelling about in that rude land, and falling ill he had to leave his work undone. When nearing his end he came to Bath, like so many other afflicted ones, only to die, and he was very properly buried in the abbey. In his will he left an estate the proceeds of which were to be devoted to the completion of his work, which was to be in ten folio volumes, with one hundred plates in each. This was done and the work finished forty-four years after his death, when thirty copies were issued to the patient subscribers at two hundred and forty guineas a copy. But the whole cost of the work was set down at 30,000 pounds! A costlier work it would be hard to find; I wonder how many of us have seen it?

But I must go back to my subject. I was not in Bath just to die and lie there, like poor Sibthorpe, with all those strange bedfellows of his, nor was I in search of a vacant space the size of my hand on the walls to bespeak it for my own memorial. On the contrary, I was there, as we have seen, to knock five years off my age. And it was very pleasant, as I have said, so long as I confined my attention to Bath, the stone-built town of old memories and associations - so long as I was satisfied to loiter in the streets and wide green places and in the Pump Room and the abbey. The bitter came in only when, going from places to faces, I began to seek out the friends and acquaintances of former days. The familiar faces seemed not wholly familiar now. A change had been wrought; in some cases a great change, as in that of some weedy girl who had blossomed into fair womanhood. One could not grieve at that; but in the middle-aged and those who were verging on or past that period, it was impossible not to feel saddened at the difference. "I see no change in you," is a lie ready to the lips which would speak some pleasing thing, but it does not quite convince. Men are naturally brutal, and use no compliments to one another; on the contrary, they do not hesitate to make a joke of wrinkles and grey hairs - their own and yours. "But, oh, the difference" when the familiar face, no longer familiar as of old, is a woman's! This is no light thing to her, and her eyes, being preternaturally keen in such matters, see not only the change in you, but what is infinitely sadder, the changed reflection of herself. Your eyes have revealed the shock you have experienced. You cannot hide it; her heart is stabbed with a sudden pain, and she is filled with shame and confusion; and the pain is but greater if her life has glided smoothly - if she cannot appeal to your compassion, finding a melancholy relief in that saddest cry: -

O Grief has changed me since you saw me last!

For not grief, nor sickness, nor want, nor care, nor any misery or calamity which men fear, is her chief enemy. Time alone she hates and fears - insidious Time who has lulled her mind with pleasant flatteries all these years while subtly taking away her most valued possessions, the bloom and colour, the grace, the sparkle, the charm of other years.

Here is a true and pretty little story, which may or may not exactly fit the theme, but is very well worth telling. A lady of fashion, middle-aged or thereabouts, good-looking but pale and with the marks of care and disillusionment on her expressive face, accompanied by her pretty sixteen-years-old daughter, one day called on an artist and asked him to show her his studio. He was a very great artist, the greatest portrait-painter we have ever had and he did not know who she was, but with the sweet courtesy which distinguished him through all his long life - he died recently at a very advanced age - he at once put his work away and took her round his studio to show her everything he thought would interest her. But she was restless and inattentive, and by and by leaving the artist talking to her young daughter she began going round by herself, moving constantly from picture to picture. Presently she made an exclamation, and turning they saw her standing before a picture, a portrait of a girl, staring fixedly at it.

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