none of him, ciphering zero, voluminous series expanding pitched back on nought-nay! falling abysmally, clutched shameless the void. Of alternative wing-rayed perplexities, Rumour seized full on the Keepsake. 'Was it not hers? Why should she

A. Lg.

The objectionable practice of 9 o'clock lectures is still, we believe, pursued at the Cambridge University. Probably like most of our ceremonial customs it dates back to savage and primeval times. The natives of the Lundamun islands gather in groups shortly after daybreak, to wait for the sun-rising; and the warrior who catches the first glimpse executes a light step-dance, whirls his spear seven times round his head, and mentions, in an improvised song, those of his deeds which he considers will be chiefly valuable to the future historian. Nothing is more remarkable than the fact that the keen-sighted one is generally the most notable warrior present; and the resignation of the others is as delightful, only more certain, than that of Mr Gladstone: while it is well recognised that all attempts to check the singing warrior would be as futile as that gentleman's Homeric hypotheses.

A point of some importance, to which the attention of a certain philological school might be directed, is that, though in other respects, as unlike as a niblick and a bunker-iron, yet 9 o'clock in Cambridge exactly answers to the time of sunrise in the Lundamuns during the Summer Solstice. From which we see that the Dawn

R. L. S―n.

One such motive I remember, one such memory, fleeting and full of boyish grace, I sorrowfully recall. But the hopes and promptings of that time and its eager expectation, half-wayward in its luxury, yet half-Stoic in its hardy endurance and persistent forcethat, all that, is as though it had never been. For

they play strange pranks with us, these fitful memories, these flashes of returning youth, illuminating the tired wanderer on the dusty road. And there is, to me, in the following sketch, something of this inexplicable charm, of this confiding mystery, though I know too well, never can I convey it to another in its entirety and fullness:

"In the year of grace 17- I, being baillie to his Honour, and shipmaster to the brig Rupert, was sitting on the sands, as was my custom, with my copy of Virgil, which I had just opened, when

B. O. H. N.

"Come in and take a seat."

Old Play.

Thrice, nay four times Welcome! Come thou within my portals, Oh friendly one! with bright and waving hair, and stand upon the floor of knotted pines from far Canadian forest, overlaid with tapestry from thy revolving looms, Oh distant Kidderminster! And above thy erst-while blackly-square bedeckéd head shall stand my roofing beams, now hidden in the hardened paste cemented to their under side, and covered with that wash of lime, which beareth, even yet, the mellowed semblance of its brightness in the springing time. Now, bend the knotted knees and let the gravitating power draw down the shapely rounded limbs, to seek repose on this fair quadruplesupported seat of oaken work and well tanned hides, I ween. Backward recline thy shoulders broad within its ample costly depths; for there is room and luxury, in truth, within-as beseems the upholstery work of Chuffins. And I too will stay beside thee, in the purpose yet to hear once more the honeyed accents of thy golden mouth.

ENOREMME.

1808-1893.

The constellation of 'persons of distinguished merit,' formed by the Honorary Fellows of the College, has lately lost several of its most conspicuous stars. Our astronomers, Adams and Pritchard, our classical scholars, Kennedy and Churchill Babington, have been taken from us; and we miss in Sir Patrick Colquhoun the genial presence of the late Chief Justice of the Ionian Islands, whose name is inseparably connected with the

annals of the Lady Margaret Boat Club. And now we lament the loss of one who rowed in the first University boat-race against Oxford, and was famous in the world of letters as the author of the History of the Romans under the Empire. It was nine years ago in last June that the College added the names of Adams and Todhunter and Merivale to its distinguished list of Honorary Fellows, and now the last survivor of the three has passed away.

Charles Merivale, who was born on March 8, 1808, came of a family of Huguenot origin, which first settled in Northamptonshire, and in the last century found its way to the west of England. He was the son of Mr John Herman Merivale of Barton Place, Devon, who was born at Exeter in 1779, was educated at St John's College, and was called to the Bar in 1805. Loyalty to the cause of Queen Caroline is said to have impaired his prospects of professional advancement, even as it delayed the distinction of his friend and fellow-student at St John's, Thomas Denman, who was ultimately Lord Chief Justice of England, and is duly enshrined in our gallery of College portraits in the smaller Combination Room. J. H. Merivale, however, was appointed a Commissioner in Bankruptcy in 1826, and held that office till his death in 1844. He edited the volumes of Chancery Reports for the years 1814 to 1817, and was also a tasteful cultivator of poetry, being particularly successful in translations from the Greek Anthology, and from the poems of Pulci and Fortiguerra, and of Dante and Schiller.

Charles Merivale's mother was a daughter of Dr Drury (1750-1834), Head-master of Harrow.* He was accordingly sent to that school, where he proved himself a keen cricketer,

The Rev Dr Joseph Drury succeeded Dr Heath as Head-master in 1785, having in 1775 married Dr Heath's youngest sister Louisa, daughter of Benjamin Heath, D.C.L., of Exeter. He resigned his mastership in 1805. His eldest son, the Rev Henry Joseph Thomas Drury (1778—1841), who was Lord Byron's tutor, was for 41 years an Assistant-master at Harrow, and was held in high repute as a scholar. It was doubtless mainly owing to his being on the staff at Harrow that Merivale was sent to that School. It was his only sister (Louisa Heath Drury) who was Merivale's mother. His eldest son, the Rev Henry Drury, was the editor of Arundines Cami, to which his cousin Merivale contributed some excellent compositions, all in Latin Verse; while one of his younger sons is the Rev Benjamin Heath Drury, formerly Assistant-master at Harrow, and now President of Caius College.

playing in the first match against Eton in 1824. He was also an eager student of Roman history and of Latin literature, having imbibed from his uncle Henry Drury a special love of Lucan. In after years he used to express his thankfulness that he had been at a school which induced him to read Gibbon and Lucan; and, on presenting a copy of his History of the Romans under the Empire to the Harrow library, he inscribed in it a tribute of gratitude to that school as the Alma Mater, cuius in gremio delicatius iacens Gibbonum perlegit, Lucanum edidicit. This inscription is recorded in a letter to the Times, dated Dec. 28, 1893, bearing the unmistakeable initials of the Master of Trinity, formerly Head-master of Harrow, who further says of Merivale: "He has often spoken to me in his pleasant way of this youthful feat, adding that he supposed the gift of learning Latin poetry by heart must be in the family,' for that his uncle Harry Drury-the 'Old Harry' of Harrow fame-knew Lucan perfectly by heart, and once said the whole of the Pharsalia to himself while walking over from Harrow to Eton." His own recollections of his time at school are the theme of a passage in the Commemoration Sermon preached at Harrow in 1872:

I have now before me in my mind's eye, in the bright recollection of my early boyhood, a vision of Harrow School-house, as it was erected, I believe, about three centuries ago, and as it stood unchanged, in its unadorned simplicity, in the year 1818. Grim it was, hard featured it was, and mean it was, but it was thoroughly business-like, and to the purpose. It seemed to declare its object unmistakeably, and to hold out the assurance that it would perform what it promised, and that all that came forth from it, all that breathed its tone, or was impressed with the stamp of its influence, should be solid, substantial and true. A portion of the old building still, as you know, remains; but this too has received certain touches of ornament, and even of elegance, which are foreign to the original design, and, perhaps, impertinent to it. But there it stood, as I remember it, growing in solitary power upon a rock, and seeming, like a tor on the Dartmoor hills, to be a part of the rock on which it stood (p. 15).

From Harrow he went to the East India College at Haileybury, and won a prize for Persian, with other distinctions, but, after two years, it was determined that he should stay in England instead of accepting a writership in Bengal. It was in this way that, as he humorously assured one of his nephews, he 'saved India': his change of plan caused a vacancy, and they sent Lawrence out to India instead.'*

Chr. Wordsworth in Cambridge Review, Jan. 18, 1894. p. 162a.

VOL. XVIII.

BB