Why should they care for Art or other bosh? The daughters think Papa a little coarse, But with well-gloved devotion aid the choir. Where did we meet them? That I scarcely know: At Cannes I think it was they chanced to pass; IX. Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale; Died on the morning of Thursday, Jan. 14, 1892. Bordighera, Jan. 15, 1892. The news of the death of the Duke of Clarence and of Cardinal Manning was received at Bordighera on the morning of Friday, Jan. 15, and caused the deepest regret. All Englishmen alike had learned to reverence the illustrious Cardinal; and loyalty to our royal line, however great at home, yet seems in its intensity to vary rather as the distance than as its inverse square. Comrades in death, the old soldier and the young, To each perchance the Giver of His best Hath preached Christ's Kingdom with unfaltering tongue, In that before life's voyage the highest crest He won safe harbour; and our prayers who clung For her strong sons, who by Divine behest X. Northward Ho! Nervi, Jan. 21, 1892. The Eastern Riviera, the Riviera di Levante, is no less charming and healthful than the Western, and, although unduly neglected by the English, is even more easily accessible by way of the Mont Cenis and Genoa. Nowhere are the blue skies and seas of Italy seen to greater prefection. There can be few who have explored the beauties of the country between Nervi and Chiavari who will not long to revisit it, when duty will permit. O the idle dreaming, Thought and fancy free, • The beautiful and well-known story of the Argive brothers Cleobis and Biton is told in Herodotus Bk i. 31, and is thus given by Rawlinson. "They were two Argive brothers, so strong that they had both gained prizes at the games. There was a great festival in honour of the goddess of their city, to which their mother must needs be taken in a car. The oxen that were to draw the car did not come home in time from the field, so the youths, afraid of being late, put the yoke on their own necks, and themselves drew the car in which their mother rode. Five and forty furlongs did they draw her, and stopped before the temple. Their deed was seen by the whole assembly of worshippers, and then their life closed in the best possible way. Herein God showed most clearly how much better a thing for man death is than life. For the Argive men stood thick around the car, and extolled the vast strength of the youths; and the Argive women extolled the mother who was blessed with such a pair of sons; and the mother herself, overjoyed at the deed and at the praises it had won, besought the goddess to bestow on her sons the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet; after which the two. youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke more, but so passed from the earth." Far around us blending, Air and ocean glow: Blue the vault impending, Blue the wave below. Magic fancies wreathing Perfume from the flowers, Joy to woo the breezes, O'er the Northern Sea! Let who will go worry, Free from care and hurry, Nay! not so the blessing,' Man must do and die. 'None with life may palter Droning drowsy days. 'None may leave his brother Howl then, wintry chorus, Wind and sleet and snow! Duty lies before us, Turn we Northward Ho! W. D. B. BIBLIOTHECA LOQUITUR. "Copie fair what time hath marred." George Herbert. EN the summer of 1888 I was offered the chance of making a new list of books in the Library of St John's College. The Library was not, to me, unknown ground. One of my earliest recollections; as it seems to me, is a visit to its precincts; when, if my memory serves me aright, precious manuscripts filled the western window-case, covered over with an equally interesting green cloth; though now cloth and manuscripts have both vanished and taken up a less perilous position. Equally do I remember the matterof-fact spiral staircase leading down out of the last century into the abode of Modern Science-a construction which no one would care to defend as of beauty, though mathematicians are said to be interested in its vibrations. It serves, however, its purpose, and says as plainly as Doudan's at Broglie "Je suis un escalier; je mène la-haut!"i I was not ignorant of the beauty of our Library, though I did not and could not know it as I have learnt to know it and to love it during the last four "....et l'on vous mène en triomphe dans la bibliothèque, où vous voyez un bel escalier en spirale qui ne déguise pas son existence, qui dit, conformément aux saintes règles de l'architecture: Je suis un escalier; je mènc la-haut!' et là-haut, tous les chefs-d'œuvre de l'esprit humain, l'abbé Fleury, l'abbé F.mery, l'abbé Poulle, l'abbé Bautain, l'abbé Karl, l'abbé Ratisbonne, et dans un coin, tout honteux, Voltaire, Hume, Locke, Kant."-Doudan Lettres ii. 129-130 (ed. 1879). years, during which time it is hardly too much to say that scarce a day has passed without revealing in it some fresh delight; when one could watch it by cold morn or moving noon; in broiling sun; and even, led by guide of hand, in the whole darkness of a winter's night, in quest of some forgotten but necessary paper to which touch could lead, when to have introduced an unguarded light alone would have been a crime. So four years have gone till the place seems to have a soul of its own, which certainly responds to every care that one may bestow upon it.' 3 Vitruvius declares that north and south should be the longitudinal direction of a Library'. The caprice of Archbishop Williams and of the age, rather than necessity, built this one east and west. It has secured for us, at St John's, one of the most exquisite vistas in Cambridge, if not in England. I refer to the viewlet it be for choice at 3 o'clock on a spring or summer afternoon-which is obtained, when the doors of the Library and the Combination-Room are open; from the west end of the one to the east end of the other-about 70 yards. Into this Library on the 1st of October 1888 I was turned with my task to set it in order: given to understand that it had not been revised for about 90 years. This I soon found was very far from being the case. 1 Without wishing to blow the College trumpet, best left in other hands, I may record two events here which are worth mentioning. In the summer of 1890, when a new chapter library was in contemplation at Exeter, Dean Cowie (who catalogued our manuscripts) sent his workman specially to see the library of St John's, because he considered the arrangement of the shelves finer than any elsewhere in England. Dr Sinker of Trinity was obliged to tell me of one feather which we may wear in our cap. He once had the honour of shewing the late Queen of Holland over Trinity Library. But, he said, she would not look at anything: she said she had been to St John's. 2 Vitruvius, De Architectura, Book VI., c. 4. 3 On the positions of college libraries and for a general disquisition on them see Willis and Clark's Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, Vol. iii, pp. 414, 415. |