long, Coriolanus, v., 3.; stroy, Antony and Cleopatra, III., 2. ; haviour, Cymbeline 111., 4.

The following passage is interesting, as the original of a common saying, used in quite a different sense. Julius Cæsar, 11., 2:

Cæsar, I never stood on ceremonies,

Yet now they fright me,

where ceremonies are prodigies, portents.

I may note, by the way, another proverb often quoted, but commonly misunderstood. A man walking on a straight road, will often say, "Well it's a long lane that has no turning; we must come to a turn soon:" whereas, the proverb simply means that the absence of a turn in the road makes it seem so much more tedious and long.

I will close this paper after Dean Alford's example, by giving you as a bonne bouche a few specimens of modern English.

The following appeared in the same number of Good Words in which the Doctor's first paper was published, to act, I suppose, like the Helots, as a "horrid example."

"In 1806, Carlo Brioschi, Astronomer Royal at Naples, in endeavouring to ascend higher than Gay-Lussac, the balloon burst, but its remnant happily checked the rapidity of the descent, and falling in an open space, his life was saved; but he contracted a complaint which brought him to the grave."

"The processes of expansion and contraction are constantly going on, and varies with every variation in the height of the balloon."

"When all the ballast, instruments, and every thing else are placed in the car, with the grapnel attached outside, so as to be readily detached, and these amount to 4000 pounds, the balloon is brought to a nice and even balance, so that the addition of 20 pounds would prevent it from rising, but if removed would give it the required ascending power."

The following is taken from the Memoir of Lord Lyndhurst, in the Times of Tuesday, October 13. "He acted in perfect harmony with Canning until Canning's death, in the following August; who in fact, caught at Wimbledon the feverish cold which killed him, on visiting, as distinguished from his candid,' his cordial friend the Lord Chancellor."

But it is time for me to bring this medley to a close

These notes have been very hastily put together, and I have not the time to revise them as carefully as I could wish. It is very possible that I am mistaken in some of the views I have expressed; I shall be well satisfied if I further the objects for which the Eagle was started, by inducing others to take up the subject from their own point of view, and to let us have that interchange of opinion which the Editors have so often looked for in vain. There are many reasons why men here should think more of the principles of sound English; the moral benefit of striving to attain to a lofty standard; the danger of going on from slipshod writing and speaking to slipshod thinking: and the fact that the English of the pulpit is the great, nay, in some cases the only model of English to the lower classes. Let us have some protest against the hasty writing of the newspaper press, and where are we to look for it, if not in the young men of our Universities?

The papers which I have passed in review may have on the whole, a good effect, and are evidently prompted by a desire to maintain the purity of English. I only regret that the standard of pure English is put so low, and that the Dean of Canterbury, while defending the coin of the realm in its sterling purity, has no protest to enter against a debased coinage, so long as it has currency.

R. W. TAYLOR.

• Good Words for March, p. 197.

0000

MEDITATIONS OF A CLASSICAL MAN ON A MATHEMATICAL PAPER DURING A LATE FELLOWSHIP EXAMINATION.

WOE, woe is me! ah! whither can I fly?
Where hide me from Mathesis' fearful eye?
Where'er I turn the Goddess haunts my path,
Like grim Megoera in revengeful wrath:
In accents wild, that would awake the dead,
Bids me perplexing problems to unthread;
Bids me the laws of x and y to unfold,
And with dry eyes' dread mysteries behold.
Not thus, when blood maternal he had shed,
The Furies' fangs Orestes wildly fled;
Not thus Ixion fears the falling stone,
Tisiphone's red lash, or dark Cocytus' moan.
Spare me, Mathesis, though thy foe 1 be,
Though at thy altar ne'er I bend the knee,
Though o'er thy "Asses' Bridge" I never pass,
And ne'er in this respect will prove an ass;
Still let mild mercy thy fierce anger quell! oh
Let, let me live to be a Johnian fellow !

She hears me not! with heart as hard as lead,
She hurls a Rhombus at my luckless head.
Lo where her myrmidons, a wrangling crew,
With howls and yells rise darkling to the view.
There Algebra, a maiden old and pale,

Drinks "double x," enough to drown a whale.
There Euclid, 'mid a troop of "Riders" passes,
Riding a Rhomboid o'er the Bridge of Asses:
And shouts to Newton, who seems rather deaf,
I've crossed the Bridge in safety Q.E.F.
There black Mechanics, innocent of soap,
Lift the long lever, pull the pulley's rope,
Coil the coy cylinder, explain the fear

Which makes the nurse lean slightly to her rear;

Else, equilibrium lost, to earth she 'll fall,
Down will come child, nurse, crinoline and all!
Put why describe the rest? a motley crew,
Of every figure, magnitude, and hue:

Now circles they describe; now form in square;
Now cut ellipses in the ambient air:

Then in my ear with one accord they bellow,

"Fly wretch! thou ne'er shall be a Johnian Fellow!"

Must I then bid a long farewell to "John's,"
Its stately courts, its wisdom-wooing Dons,
Its antique towers, its labyrinthine maze,
Its nights of study, and its pleasant days?
O learned Synod, whose decree I wait,
Whose just decision makes, or mars my fate;
If in your gardens I have loved to roam,
And found within your courts a second home;
If I have loved the elm trees' quivering shade,
Since on your banks my freshman limbs I laid;
If rustling reeds make music unto me
More soft, more sweet than mortal melody;
If I have loved "to urge the flying ball"
Against your Racquet Court's re echoing wall;
If, for the honour of the Johnian red,
I've gladly spurned the matutinal bed,
And though at rowing, woe is me! no dab,
I've rowed my best, and seldom caught a crab;
If classic Camus flow to me more dear

Than yellow Tiber, or Ilissus clear;

If fairer seem to me that fragrant stream,
Than Cupid's kiss, or Poet's pictured dream;
If I have loved to linger o'er the page
Of Roman Bard, and Academian sage:
If all your grave pursuits, your pastimes gay,
Have been my care by night, my joy by day;
Still let me roam, unworthy tho' I be,

By Cam's slow stream, beneath the old elm tree;
Still let me lie in Alma Mater's arms,

Far from the wild world's troubles and alarms:
Hear me, nor in stern wrath my prayer repel! oh
Let, let me live to be a Johnian Fellow!

CYLINDON.

OUR LIBRARY STAIRCASE.

(By the Author of "Our College Friends.")

“And yet on earth these men were not happy, not all happy in the outward circumstances of their lives. They were in want, and in pain, and familiar with prison bars, and the damp weeping walls of dungeons. I have looked with wonder upon those who, in sorrow and privation, and in bodily discomfort, and sickness which is the shadow of death, have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes; toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much; and then, with shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down in the grave, and slept the sleep of death :-and the world talks of them while they sleep."-LONGFELLOW's "Hyperion."

§. I.

NOT only in the May-term is there beauty in the gardens of St. John's, which Mat Prior planted in Cathedral form. We can be happy therein, even when the last days of November are upon us; when the trees of lighter foliage are stript to their branches, and the grand avenues of limes and horse-chestnuts have ceased to "wear their leafy honours thick upon them." But not when the wind is howling bitterly, and the sky is overcast with drifts of rain, and chilly damps more penetrating than the rain; for all these combine to warn us that the Autumn has bidden farewell, and make us draw closer to the fireside at evening, after closing the study window. At such times the Fireside is the pleasantest of bowers. When the twilight fades, the curtains are drawn, and the moderator lamp is lighted (a luxurious application of "the midnight oil," proverbially associated with students, who are Slaves of the Lamp, in other sense than Aladdin's familiars), with the hearth swept cosily, our toes in slippers, the kettle singing on the bars, although no cat is purring on the hearth-rug; why, it is no bad substitute for the sweet Summer-time.

Resting quietly thus, at close of day, and gazing into that