Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: for many years the critic of a paper more concerned with agriculture than art, and known as Bell's Weekly Messenger. I can hardly describe him as a critic of distinction, but he may have made up for what he lacked in that respect by the very positive character of his opinions. He was on terms of friendship with Michael Costa, and, like Griineison, became one of that musician's most faithful henchmen. It was in this capacity that he figured as an assailant of J. W. Davison under circumstances which I shall have to speak of later on. Griineison, born in 1806, the son of a naturalised Dutchman, spent a long and varied life in the service of London journals. He seems to have been ready to undertake any duties, from those of a war correspondent to the milder work of a musical critic. In his later years, he became secretary of the Conservative Land Society, but his obligations in that capacity did not prevent him from attending concerts, frequenting festivals, and contributing articles to whatsoever newspaper would accept them. He was a blustering man, and, when permitted, an overbearing one, but not unpopular with his associates, to whose enjoyment he would contribute startling stories of adventure by flood and field. Gruneison was fond of relating the circumstances of a narrow escape from death while acting as correspondent during one of the Carlist insurrections in Spain. Having been captured in a skirmish, Gruneison and a numberof combatant prisoners were drawn up in a line for inspection by the officer in command. The sentence was that every tenth man in the rank should be shot, and Griineison's story reached its highest dramatic point as he told how a sergeant came down the line picking out the doomed soldiers, one of whom stood next to the teller of the tale. The unfortunates ...