whom one is a scholar, and the other helped the Four to win the Wyfold at the Henley Regatta of 1909. In 1877, being then Captain of the College, he wrote asking me to come up and stroke the Eight. They were a fine crew, and the temptation was strong, but it had to be resisted.

Among other "sons of the cedar, sons of the pine"-as poor Fred Dowding (scholar, poet, and stroke of the Oxford Eight) called them in his spirited verse-up at Balliol with me were two Blues, W. D. Benson, now a county court judge, and Edwards Moss (now Sir John Edwards Moss), who has shown that he can ply the pen as effectively as the oar; W. Farrer, father of the Oxford Blue of later years; J. S. Davy, now General Inspector in the Local Government Board; Julian Sturgis, the novelist, and Andrew Mulholland (both now dead), Elliott (now Sir Francis Elliott), Harry Wedderburn, and P. J. Hornby. Sturgis was a man of delightful manners, but with a tinge of indolence about them which may have tended to obscure his real abilities. He just missed his First in Greats, which was a grievous disappointment to himself and his friends. There was a curious little creature called Belt, whose business it was to brush the clothes of the College. He was usually to be seen staggering across the Quad under a load of clothes as big as himself. An occupation like this is perhaps dehumanising, and the little man

was quite an oddity. Sturgis one day suggested that perhaps he really belonged to an obsolete past, and was the lost positive of βελτίων-βέλτιστος.

Of the cricket I cannot say much, as my interests were wholly on the water. It was under the charge of the present Lord Elgin when I first went up, and subsequently, I fancy, of Cecil Chapman, the magistrate. I do not think, however, that we turned out any Blues. Football, in those days, had not attained its present importance.

Saturday was an important morning in the College, for we all had to appear in Hall and render the tribute of an essay to the Master. In default of presenting this our food would be gradually cut off. First the offender would be "crossed in Buttery"-i.e., he would be precluded from obtaining any bread, butter, cheese, milk, &c., from the College. If still contumacious he would be "crossed in Kitchen" also, which would stop his supply of any meat, &o. But long before this climax was reached the culprit was usually reduced to submission. On these occasions one practically saw all the College together, and I pick out a few individuals from the throng: Sinclair, tall, fair, statuesque, and rather impressive; Gore, rosy and cheerful; W. D. Benson, "the Skipper, with his fine determined face; W. H. Mallock, something of a dandy, who even in those early days was beginning the brilliant literary work which has since made him famous. That

loose-limbed figure, with blue eyes and a pleasant voice, is Loch, now the presiding genius of the Charity Organisation Society. He is talking to poor Charles Reiss, one of Balliol's most devoted sons, whose premature death was a sorrow to all who knew him. Close by stands C. P. Lucas, now Sir Charles Lucas, head of the Dominions Department of the Colonial Office, a talented Winchester man. Somewhat apart is Rowland Prothero, imperturbably good - tempered, but with a very pretty wit. After gaining him a Fellowship at All Souls, his versatile abilities have won him success as a writer, an editor, and an estate agent. Walter Sichel, with a mind too large for his body, sparkling, energetic, voluble, is busily conversing with his firm friend, Robert Findlay, a gigantic Scotsman, and one of the best fellows who ever breathed. W. P. Ker, in those days an ardent toiler at the oar, has since bartered away its strenuous joys for the Capuan luxury of an All Souls Fellowship and a Professorship of English Literature at London University. Philip Gell, plump and cheery, in spite of his load of historical learning. Dundas (now Lord Dundas), elegant and interesting, and all unconscious of the legal honours which the future had in store for him. Alexander MacEwen, still guiltless of any professorships. John Annan Bryce, older than most of us, but as young in heart as the youngest. C. A. Whitmore, for many years member for Chelsea, with

his bright quizzical face, and Hozier (now Lord Newlands, a munificent benefactor to his old College), forming with R. H. Benson, the famous runner, an Old Etonian group. Percy Kidd-"the fleet foot Kidd"-another great runner, now administers medical aid to some of his College friends whom gout at times prevents from walking. Many others, too, less known to fame, live none the less securely in the memories of their old comrades.

Balliol was then, as it now is, pre-eminently the reading College; but it had, and I fancy still has, its lucid intervals. In my young days the "rag" was an impromptu amateurish affair, not the frigid and calculated performance it has now grown to be. My own small experience, therefore, I pass over as unworthy of mention. Moreover, I confess that I have not much sympathy with a mere rag; and, at any rate, as an object for literary enthusiasm it leaves me cold. Pranks, which are just the outcome of high spirits, are a different matter. I still possess several letters describing a battle-royal which took place in Hall, some fiveand-thirty years ago, between the crews of the first and the second Torpids. I seem to remember a "first ascent of the Chapel roof, made under cover of night by some ardent mountaineers. And, indeed, coming to much later times, tales have reached me of a rabbit - hunt in the Garden Quad, as to which silence is

perhaps discreet. But occasional ebullitions of this kind leave no permanent mark on the College character, and certainly do not affect its intellectual triumphs. I am told on unimpeachable authority that nowadays at Balliol about one man out of three gets a First Class of some sort, and there is not much amiss with a College which can show a record like this. Her roll of great men is a long one, and I shall not attempt to set it out. But I may epitomise it in a fashion by pointing out that it includes Mr Asquith, Lord Lansdowne, Lord Loreburn, the Archbishop of York, and the manager of the Midland Railway. One of the chief characteristics of Balliol, now as in the past, is a certain intellectual alertness, a sensitiveness to what is in the air, a ready apprehension of new ideas. An atmosphere of this kind tends to broaden a man's outlook, to familiarise him with new lines of thought, to clarify his judgment, and to stimulate his enthusiasms. A distinguished relative of mine, the late Charles Henry Pearson, told me that in the college to which he belonged as an un

dergraduate, the college song proudly declared that "our aim is mediocrity." Not a very inspiriting ideal, perhaps, this deliberate cult of the commonplace; but I quote it only to point out that it is the very antithesis of the Balliol ideal. Jowett used to say that every man ought to be " very something: in other words, that every man should in some one respect at least rise above the mediocrity which, if it be the fate of most of us, need not be our aim. Jowett's maxim still, I think, animates the College, and contributes not a little to her greatness.

But my memories have carried me from the past into the present, and it is time that I should bring them to a close. This only will I add. The lifetime of a generation has passed since the days to which they date back-a generation which has seen many a struggle and many a change. But, amid them all, the intellectual renown of Balliol has remained undimmed, and among the colleges of Oxford she stands yet, as she stood then-an unchallenged first.

NORMAN PEARSON.

IN Bengal the plains are so vast and so monotonous that you may ride straight ahead for a week, as we had done, and still, for all that the country has changed, fancy yourself to be in the place that you started from. On either side still stretches the illimitable grey ploughed land, marked off with the low grey ridges that are the only boundary marks. And the same tiny cattle stand about in the same hot glare. Or else it is an unploughed scene, and the jungle grass grows stiff and high, shutting off the runs of pig and leopard, and those tarns and lost watercourses that are thronged with wildfowl of every sort, from the humble dhobie bird to the bulky, magnificent pelican.

We had kept for the most part to the great road that runs north to the hills. Through all our long ride it, too, had preserved its unchanging character. I wondered what the Tommies used to think of it in the days they marched that way-hundreds and hundreds of miles through the dust that is inches deep on the sides of the road, and thickly powdered to the tops of the trees that aisle it. The road is always at the same level, a few feet above the rest of the plains, so that it may not be flooded in the rains. Were the Tommies fascinated by the endless, hazy, golden sameness? Or did the sand

in their boots and in their throats and the eternal heat that beats down through the trees and gets trapped in the shade monopolise their attention and their curses? They go by train now, and the road is left to the natives on foot or on little shambling tats or in bullock - carts that seem mere pillars of cloud, so much dust do the patient beasts kick up, or on camels that are driven down from the dry north to be sold to Mahometan dwellers on the plains, to be sacrificed at one of their festivals. Poor camels, they make but thin offerings when they come to the end of their journey.

The road had also been left to us-that is to say, the Collector and myself,-and I had seen many things of interest upon it, including a day-old elephant that a zemindar in one of the villages called us in to look at, if it so pleased us. The zemindar himself was & thin, splendid old man, Mahometan, with the mien and manner of a Hebrew patriarch, but he was famed chiefly for his dacoities and his oppression of the poor. He looked supremely beneficent as he showed off his absurd embryo

a mammoth, staggering against its mother's legs and staring painfully, with large blue eyes, at the crowd that squatted to admire it. It seemed to think Bengal a curious place, and it is. It

was on the following day that we came in the afternoon to the rising ground. We saw it before us quite suddenly, on our left-land that climbed, and it gave us quite a thrill.

"By Jove, do you see that?" said the Collector.

"I do," I said, "it's a hill," and had to soothe my mare, who was as excited as I. If horses have fancies, I think she was feeling herself like Alice after she had got through the looking-glass. That is the way I felt when we rode on for a mile and the hill on our left did not vanish, but continued-not growing much higher, it is true, but maintaining its slope and revealing upon its side patches of dogrose that grew thicker and thicker till they closed into a tree-jungle. Presently a side track appeared, also on the left and rising, and the Collector said: "I shouldn't be surprised if the dak bungalow were up there somewhere. Let's see."

We turned our horses into it, and they, tickled by the resistance so strangely presented to their feet, broke into a gallop and took us in less than a minute to the top. There, sure enough, was a dak bungalow, and a view as fine as from a mountain. For the hill-it was only a great sand-hill clothed at the back with jungle -in front gave sheer on to the great valley of the Naharuhda, -a sacred river, which, like so many Bengal rivers, is ever pouring the sand before it as it goes, so that even while it

digs its channel it is silting it up, and wastes itself in crystal shallows, and bends to the least obstruction. Bengal rivers are not unlike Bengal men, and if the Englishman wishes either to keep to one channel, he must dig it for them, removing all hindrances from start to finish. But this is to moralise, even as a Babu might.

Up on the hill a little wind was blowing, so that one might almost have fancied oneself on some sea - cliff at home, overlooking the sand at the low tide. The illusion was dispelled by the appearance of a subinspector of police, of whom the Collector proceeded to make inquiries, official and otherwise. He was one of the subinspectors who believe in knowing very little, and keeping that to himself. I do not know what he said about dacoities, but I do know that the closest cross-examination could not extract from him either that there were any chickens to be had for our dinner or that he knew anything about shikar in the neighbourhood.

"But there must be some,' said the Collector. "Think. Are there not duck or teal?"

We could quite plainly from the hill behold two Brahminy ducks, floating fat and yellow on the limpid stream. Not that Brahminy ducks count.

"I do not think it, your Honour," said the sub-inspector.

"And no bagh-panther or tiger?"

"I do not think it, your Honour.

"Does nobody go shooting