for chronology or dates. Excepting as regards the mere sequent order of my professional "Moves," no regularity has been observed, beyond a distinct classification of subjects under separate heads.

During my residence at Plymouth, several " to-morrows" came, which found the breathing friends of "yesterday" awaiting their consignment to the bed of "dusty death ;" and, among them the two, who have been mentioned as the "bright particular stars" of the Plymouth Athenæum -the Reverends John Herricke Macaulay and Dr. Thomas Byrth; both prematurely deceased and abundantly lamented. The former and younger died first; his rising progress suddenly stopped, like the arrested frustrum of a Greek column, whose crowning capital was destined, through time, to remain undetached from the eternal quarry which had yielded the admired shaft. An old simile this, but not always so applicable as to the abridged years and fame of the Master of Repton School. He died in 1840; and is commemorated both at Repton and Plymouth by sculptured marble and laudatory epitaph, not more than worthy of his ministerial eloquence in the pulpit, his scholastic acquirements, his Christian worth, and his social genialities.

The reader may remember the circumstances of my first meeting with Dr. Byrth in the arena of the Plymouth Athenæum, when the aspect of things did not seem very favourable to the cordial feeling which was subsequently to exist between the doctor and myself. After that "misunderstanding" we did not meet for years; but on his revisiting Plymouth, I instantly called upon him. No reference was made to the cause of York Minster and Shakspeare versus the Parthenon and Æschylus; but, far more than a merely ceremonious courtesy was manifested; and an earnest expression of desire that I might visit him at his living of Wallasey, near Liverpool, was most flattering to me. An opportunity soon offered. The secretary of the Liverpool Collegiate Institution wrote me to deliver a course of lectures there, a request which was affirmatively replied to, the more for the learned doctor's sake-or rather for my own in regard to him. Immediately the printed advertisements announced my coming, a letter arrived from my friend insisting on my making his house my home; and, on reaching Liverpool, I was visited by him to learn when my arrangements would allow of my joining his family on the other side of the river Mersey. It was "a raw and gusty day," most unfit for one of such delicate health as himself to cross the water; but he affected to make light of the effort, replying to my remarks on his apparent fragility, by saying that he was well, saving only in reference to the malady which all men of studious habits must be liable to-dyspepsia. This was on the Friday. I had resolved on going to York the next morning, to return to Liverpool on the following Monday, and to be with him the day following. It was curious that York Minster, which I was now going to see for the first time, should still be the theme between us; though nothing was said in reference to the matter it must have awakened in both our minds: but how different from the manner of our first encounter in the Plymouth Athenæum was the gentle cordiality with which we now met, and parted with the pleasing prospect of maturing an intimacy which I had indeed reason to regard as most valuable.

* See p. 200 of this volume.

Well, York Minster is not a Parthenon-even in its own way; for the latter is a perfection of unity and entirely congruous simplicity; while the former is a superb combination of associating, but not harmonising, varieties; like all the rest of our cathedrals, saving only Salisbury-it is a chronological history, in stone, of the progress of Gothic art from its Norman beginning onward.

I returned to Liverpool on the Monday. The waiter of the hotel asked me if I had heard the news? "Nothing in particular," was my reply. "Nothing, sir, about the gentleman who called upon you on Saturday?" "Nothing." "Dr. Byrth, sir, is dead!"

*

"Oh, God," thought I, "that he were back again to expose my ignorance and lash my presumption! What should such fellows as I do, crawling between heaven and earth;' when such fine eagle spirits' as he, can but flap their clipped wings, and die' or e'er they sicken!'

Thus, as is said by the Rev. G. R. Moncreiff, in his Memoirs of this lamented man, I " enjoy the melancholy distinction of having been the last of his Plymouth friends to see his face on earth."

I avail myself of Mr. Moncreiff's record of his last hours. It will be remembered he parted from me on the Friday. On the following Sunday (28th October, 1849) "he preached two sermons, which those who heard them will never forget. . . . . His texts (Jude iii.; Job xlii. 5), though suggested by the services of the day, seemed chosen as words of farewell; and nothing, I suppose, in the whole course of his preaching, ever equalled the fervour and impressiveness of those dying discourses. Many retired from the church with a vague feeling they could hardly understand, till-almost before they reached their homes the rumour spread through the parish that the preacher was gone to his rest. Immediately on his return from the afternoon service, while one or two of his children were about him, he was seized with what appeared to be one of his usual spasmodic attacks. Mrs. Byrth was instantly called; but, though still conscious, he was unable to speak. In two or three minutes-within a quarter of an hour from the time of his leaving the pulpit—the spirit had returned to God who gave it!"

On the Tuesday I crossed over to the rectory at Wallasey-not to intrude myself within the house of mourning-but merely to inquire concerning Mrs. Byrth, and learn the circumstances of the sad event: but the bereft lady insisted on seeing me; and instead of the ordinary abandonment to woe, which too usually in such cases contradicts the assertions of a faith in Heaven's mercy, it was her part to show, as well as to speak of, the spiritual strength she had obtained from the teachings of her departed husband. On the succeeding Saturday she accompanied a considerable body of the clergy to the grave, where I witnessed the last dues to the body of this remarkable man, who died, aged fifty-six.

Still, as I am penning this page, many of the more important of the Plymouth elders are living; but Henry Woollcombe-the Athenæum president, with the Reverends R. Lampen and S. Rowe, J. Norman, the two brothers Eastlake, and John Collier, the first member of parliament for the borough under the Reform Act-these live no more, save in the memories of the many who deeply regarded them.

"OUR EIGHT-OAR."

YES, I can call it confidently "Our Eight-Oar," inasmuch as I was formerly one of its crew, and, as I (and some others also, for I am not ambitious of playing a trumpet solo) imagined, not the least worthy; and although I am now no longer a member, at least a rowing member, of the Lazy Barquelette Boat Club, yet I feel that I may well be excusedby all those readers certainly who have grown old at the end of an oar as I have-if I describe some of my feelings on being again brought accidentally into contact with some of those who were still the living ornaments of that successful department of the great public school of rowing.

This was how it happened. Sitting one morning at breakfast in my little curate's parlour at Z- I received a letter soliciting a small subscription to defray the expenses of an eight-oar of the Lazy Barquelette Boat Club, to go to the great regatta at Thamesley, "as it devolved," said the secretary, "upon her to extend her triumphs over a wider extent of water than that which was bounded by the reedy banks of her own classic stream." Well, I had almost forgotten that there existed such a place as Thamesley, and yet I had no business to forget; I had been often to Thamesley, as an envious spectator, as a patronising admirer, as a successful and as a disappointed competitor; I knew that lovely reach which was bounded at one end by the stone bridge of the little town, and at the other by a wooded eyot, crowned with a ghastly white wedding-cakeornament sort of structure, which always seemed to follow you as you rowed away from it, as if you were towing it after you, and which was inhabited by one lonely female (as a punishment for what breach of criminal law I know not), whose existence was spent in feeding chickens (mayhap in eating them also), and in counting bottles of ginger-beer, which she always had on sale, but only sold, to my knowledge, on one occasion, when R. and I tried how many of them two little boys could empty. Again, how could I ever forget the wooded hills which surrounded the prospect from the windows of the Cherub Inn? Ay, and that one particular hill, up which the high road went so boldly and directly-none of your compromising zigzags-that it makes my legs ache even now to think of how we used to run up it before breakfast. All these scenes, as well as others more in the background of the picture, were brought vividly before my mind by the receipt of that letter, and I determined to comply with its modestly proffered request.

Was it not still "Our Eight-Öar?" Could I not speak of it as such to my cousin parsons, the children of the sister university? and if fortune favoured it, triumph over them as if they and I were still, as of yore, competing with one another in establishing the superiority of our respective aquatic reputations, and say, "Our eight-oar has beaten yours at Thamesley?" And did I not, moreover, feel a pride in thinking that I was still remembered there? that any wearisome days or weeks I might have spent in training with an inferior crew, any discouragement given by men who would not go to bed, by men who would not get out of bed, men who would drink a clandestine pint of beer after rowing, men who felt themselves physically qualified for more indulgences than the rest, who tried to overthrow the old conventional systems founded on long

years of experience, by their own abnormal notions-that all these trials were remembered by those who were left, and who were now undergoing the same ordeal of bearing office in the dear old club that I had undergone, and had thus appealed to me to contribute once again to the probability of their success?

So I did contribute; and I received in return a letter of warm thanks, accompanied by an offer of a dinner on the evening of the regatta, if my duties would permit me the liberty of coming to see it. "Well," thought I, "why should I not go?" And the end of it was that I did go, and found everything exactly the same as it used to be in my time; the whole place wearing a kind of imitation, or (if I may be allowed the expression) diluted, Derby-day aspect--the same obstruction at the end of the bridge of crowds practising at knock-'em-downs-the same concourse of ragged, shoeless men and boys, begging one with their hoarse voices to "Take a caarrrd, my noble sportsman-captain, take a caarrrd!”—the same rich picturesque colours of gipsies' shawls and handkerchiefs dotted about the bright green fields, giving a warmth and tone to the colder summer muslins of the ladies and the grey dust-coats of the gentlemen, among whom they were threading their way-the same fresh breeze, which I always remembered at Thamesley, stirring the bright flags, and breaking up their reflected hues upon the sparkling ripple of the river, and whispering in the tall poplars, whose leaves quivered in the sunlightthe same bustle and hum of active life along the bank, where sisters and mothers were eagerly waiting, with feelings of pride, to see the race in which brothers or sons were to distinguish themselves, with their new bonnets trimmed with the red or blue that would flutter in the bows of the boat they came to see-the same groups of carriages on the bridge, with their fair occupants adjusting their race-glasses, or making preparations for the consumption of the lobster-salad and champagne which was to support them through the heat and fatigue of the day-with the bells pealing from the old church tower, and the military band playing the last new set of quadrilles. Everything was glowing with life, animation, excitement. Thamesley was as it always has been on those occasions, and as I hope it may ever be.

I am roused from my contemplation of the beautiful scene by the banging of a gun, which gives notice for the boats engaged in the first race to drop down and take up their stations. I buy a card, and see that my old friends are competitors in this race with Keep-it-Long College, Oxbridge, for the Grand Challenge Cup; and my heart throbs with excitement as I see what to me is the prettiest sight of all, the object of my visit. Yes, there they go! amidst the confused Babel of sounds; the gipsies, minstrels, wandering Jews and Ethiopians, tumblers, jugglers, card-sharpers, flute-players, harp-players, sackbut-players, allkinds-of-music-players, all turn to have one look at them. There they go! there is the swing of those eight red jerseys, and the sweep of those eight black oars, as steady and regular as if accomplished by a machine that had no sense of hearing, and could not be distracted from its uniformity of motion by any external object. Whilst they get to their stations, I look in the card to see who are the competitors in the other races. Perhaps some of "Our Eight-Oar" are engaged in one or more contests. For the Emerald Sculls there is the name of Cashranger, I remember, and Littlerite is entered against him-the latter is one of the

Lazy Barquelette B.C. I inquire about him from a red-rosette wearer standing by me, who says he is rowing stroke of "Our Eight-Oar". "a tall man, without whiskers-won the Cockatoo Sculls last autumnbut," says my informant, "Cashranger always wins; he is sure to nobble it somehow." I feel sorry for this, although not quite certain of the meaning of the word "nobble," and continue my inspection of the card.

The Huguenots, of London, seem to be still in great force: the names of Playton and Ditford are familiar to me. But the increased bustle on the bank warns me that I am losing sight of the race. They are coming. "Our Eight-Oar" is taking the Keep-it-Long's water round the point. Hark to the shouts of the red-rosette wearers! Look at the eagerness with which the umpire, steering his crew of picked watermen, watches for the chance of his decision being called for, as one boat dashes across the bows of the other; and how all his crew look round to see the exciting struggle! Surely I know the umpire's face! Yes, I thought so. It is Tom Selgan, in the same old pea-jacket and glazed hat, his constant and unvaried costume. What a host of recollections the sight of his face calls up within me, when I remember how many different opinions there used to be about him, and about that peculiar sharp look he would put on when he said anything which he did not mean his hearers to know whether to believe or not, or when he uttered any of those peculiar sentences which he used to call jokes! There were many who believed implicitly in all that he said; who would value no one's opinion, not even their own convictions, so highly as his "Don't you think so-and-so would be better?" If he pointed out a fault which he descried in a boat, the builder of that boat was forthwith denounced in the eyes of the Selganists as a scoundrel and a cheat. If he said such and such oars were too long or too short in-board or out-board, or too thick or too thin in the loom, or too narrow or too broad in the blade, firewood was too good a fate for them, and so the second crew were permitted to have the use of them. But what a different opinion was that of the anti-Selganists! They declared that his reputation for correctness of judgment and general infallibility had only been established by a false interpretation of the air of mystery with which he seemed to avoid delivering a decided opinion; and that this mysterious behaviour was not assumed on account of the pleasure he took in holding his devotees in suspense by assimilating himself to the enigmatic oracles of antiquity, but merely as a plausible cloak beneath which his real ignorance might remain unobserved. Both parties, however, agreed in one thing-that if a crew chose to give themselves up entirely and unconditionally to him, he did take great pains with, and make the most of, them. And surely this was what was required to further their ultimate object.

Well, I have been led to say somewhat too much about Tom Selgan. But I was carried away by the recollections of youthful arguments, and was thinking of all these uninteresting matters some time after "Our Eight-Oar" had glided, like a swallow, under the bridge, the crew waving their red-ribboned hats, and cheering their vanquished oppoI went round to the garden where I knew the boats were kept, and made myself known to the crew, and congratulated them on their How glad they were to see me! They pointed to the Grand

nents.

success.