on record, and an inventive faculty which often did him even better service.  He was the soul of every intellectual enterprise in the school, the best speaker at the Debating Society; the best performer on Speech Day; who knew nothing about [Greek:  ge] and less about [Greek:  men] and [Greek:  de]; who composed satirical choices when he should have been taking notes on Tacitus; edited a School Journal with surprising brilliancy; failed, to conjugate the verbs in [Greek:  mi] during his last fortnight in the school; and won the Balliol Scholarship when he was seventeen.  I trust, if this meets his eye, he will accept it as a tribute of affectionate recollection from one who worked with him, idled with him, and joked with him for five happy years.

Under another face, marked by a more spiritual grace, I find written Requiescat.  None who ever knew them will forget that bright and pure beauty, those eyes of strange, supernatural light, that voice which thrilled and vibrated with an unearthly charm.  All who were his contemporaries remember that dauntless courage, that heroic virtue, that stainless purity of thought and speech, before which all evil things seemed to shrink away abashed.  We remember how the outward beauty of body seemed only the visible symbol of a goodness which dwelt within, and how moral and intellectual excellence grew up together, blending into a perfect whole.  We remember the School Concert, and the enchanting voice, and the words of the song which afterwards sounded like a warning prophecy, and the last walk together in the gloaming of a June holiday, and the loving, trusting companionship, and the tender talk of home.  And then for a day or two we missed the accustomed presence, and dimly caught a word of dangerous illness; and then came the agony of the parting scene, and the clear, hard, pitiless school bell, cutting on our hearts the sense of an irreparable loss, as it thrilled through the sultry darkness of the summer night.

Here I shut the book.  And with the memories which that picture called up I may well bring these Recollections to a close.  It is something to remember, amid the bustle and bitterness of active life, that one once had youth, and hope, and eagerness, and large opportunities, and generous friends.  A tender and regretful sentiment seems to cling to the very walls and trees among which one cherished such bright ambitions and felt the passionate sympathy of such loving hearts.  The innocence and the confidence of boyhood pass away soon enough, and thrice happy is he who has contrived to keep

    “The young lamb’s heart amid the full-grown flocks.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[38] In School and Home Life, by T.G.  Rooper, M.A.

[39] In Eric, by F.W.  Farrar, D.D.

TRAITS DE MOEURS ANGLAISES.

JEAN LA FRETTE.