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Few people have had more homes than I, and few have resided in those homes for, comparatively speaking, so short a consecutive time. I have often said during a long life that I might lay claim in some measure to the character of a gipsy; but then, in the language of the profession to which I always boast that I belong by taste and inclination, I most assuredly never “looked the part.” The first home I recollect is that of Sheerness Dockyard, when my father was Commissioner, and where, with occasional flittings, we remained until I had attained my eighth year. Remote as that period appears in retrospect, Sheerness and its environs are indelibly impressed on my memory—the frightful town, the hideous chapel, the bustling dockyard with its numerous shipping, the comfortable house, where I can still walk in recollection through every room, the pleasant garden, and the pretty conservatory with a large aviary at the end, which contained our favourite birds.