men

fidelity which the devotion of the Scotch members to Dundas never surpassed. Nowhere has the party system, with its blind adherence to "the machine," operated so balefully as in Scotland. It is, of course, responsible for our numberless "carpet - baggers who knew rather less about the country they condescended to misrepresent than they did about the South Sea Islands. Most of these, it is perhaps unnecessary to mention, have been perceptibly inferior in ability and eminence to their great forerunner, Mr Fox. But in point of cheerful readiness to postpone Scottish interests to the exigencies of faction, we doubt if any distinction can be taken between the indigenous and the exotic element in the party. A characteristic illustration of our contention has quite recently been given. The Treasury has taken it into its head wantonly to withhold an addition to the salaries of the Principals of the four Scottish Universities which had been voted for the financial year just expired. The existing salaries are ludicrously inadequate; the anticipated increase could hardly be described as munificent; and the augmented stipends would not have equalled the remuneration granted out of public funds to the heads of certain educational institutions which have been established of late years in the English provinces. Yet not a single Scots Radical member, to the best of our recollection, has raised his voice

to protest against this highhanded and pettifogging action on the part of a Government department. Can any one imagine Mr Asquith's or anybody's ministry treating Ireland in a similar manner? The thing is inconceivable. Well may we exclaim with Sir Walter," Ah! Hal Dundas, there was no such truckling in thy day!"

All systems of government and administration have their drawbacks. The system of one United Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland is not perfect. not perfect. But its superiority over any other possible scheme is so manifest that it is well worth while to attempt to reduce its disadvantages to a minimum. At no period since the Union, as we have endeavoured to indicate, has that attempt been attended with more conspicuous success than during the years of Dundas's dictatorship. Sound common-sense, a knowledge of the world, a wholesome freedom from fanaticism and cant, and a fixed determination to promote the interests of their particular corner of the vineyard, are the qualifications which Scotsmen have a right to expect in their representatives. If the occurrence of this anniversary should induce a little meditation upon his political career, should breathe into them a portion of his spirit, and should stimulate them to follow, however feebly, in his footsteps, their constituents will have good cause once more to bless the name and extol the example of Henry Dundas.

FOR Peroy, as for other dwellers in the Enchanted City, the sense of Time, as we know it in the outer world, practically did not exist. The Seasons, it is true, flitted round him in their accustomed circle, and a very gay dance they made of it, with the help of the nine Muses, the seven-and-seventy Spirits of Delight, Pan and the River Nymphs, Thyrsis and the Dryads: among them too the iridescent wings of Cupid flashed continually in and out. The whirl was unresting, but it never seemed to move: it changed without advancing. As it was last year, so was life to-day, so it would be the next year and the next, as full of mad pursuit and wild ecstasy as the men and maidens on the Grecian Urn, as fixed too in its unfading beauty, the audible and visible beauty of the little town by the river, the forest branches, the songs for ever new, the loves that are always winning near the goal, but always unfulfilled, the beauty of the marble that has no thought for the day when it will wake and pass beyond into the world of attainment and mortality.

Percy, then, and his friends saw nothing of Father Time; but with his daughters they danced merrily enough, one after another, round and round

the magic circle. Soon May, for the second time, was calling them, with blowing of horns through sleepy streets, with singing of psalms on high towers at sunrise, with early wanderings in "the forest ground called Thessaly." One more week and the festival of the Eights was here again.

At this the town filled sud

denly with fresh life and unfamiliar beauties: you saw them everywhere-bright faces, bright frooks, bright parasols, glowing patches of colour, turning old grey streets to the semblance of garden borders newly blossomed; or crossing and recrossing before the set background of cloisters and quadrangles like the lightfooted footed groups which pass over the stage when the curtain rises and the play is just beginning, but hardly even yet begun.

Among them, Percy knew, was to be Althea Donnelly, the sister of whom his friend so often spoke, the cousin of his own silent imaginings, she who had named him "the Twyman of the Future" but she was not among the earlier comers. On the first three days of the races Percy and Edward ran with their respective boats, and afterwards assisted at the tea-parties of various friends. The knowledge

that something more interesting was in store for them, gave a feeling of suspense to their pleasure which heightened it, and, for Percy at any rate, added to it that touch of significance which marks the difference between great occasions and lesser ones. It may perhaps seem unnecessary to suspect youth, which has so many absurdities to answer for, of the supreme absurdity of falling in love by anticipation. But there is evidence that even well-built and lasting strongholds of affection have been founded before dawn: others, if not begun entirely in the dark, have certainly been reared very quickly upon ground strangely well prepared to receive them. If Percy had not been busy with some such unauthorised planning, he would hardly have felt the sense of unanswered expectation which made the longlooked - for meeting, when it came, seem almost like a disillusionment. For, judged by all that could be said of it in words, that Monday was a day of days. True, it was blurred from beginning to end by the continual mist of confusion in Percy's mind, yet that mist was itself fascinating as well as dazzling, full of changing colour as an opal: and the details which it obsoured at the time long afterwards reappeared in memory with minutest clearness. Percy, when he thought of it, was again back in the bright worldwithout-end twenties, again contentedly lounging upon Edward's comfortable window

seat and looking out upon that massive remnant of the ancient oity wall which divides the new buildings of New College from the older portion of the College. Again he saw the heavy round towers as they slumbered in sun and shadow; the smooth turf below them was pied with fresh spring daisies; rooks cawed lazily; the sky was of tender unflecked blue. Opposite to him, like a doorway from the past, was the narrow arch which pierces the old wall, and leads from the inner quadrangle to the outer court: upon this his eyes were fixed in an expectation that was dreamy rather than intense.

Presently from this doorway the expected group emerged: he could always see them more clearly and solidly than one ever sees the hurrying phantoms of the moment that is with us.

First came Edward with a short, stout lady-how the bugles on her black silk flashed in the sun!-then two more short ladies, very young, dark and pretty, dressed exactly alike, and sharing one proud undergraduate between them: lastly their brother, and with him beyond doubt the real Althea-not, after all, much like the image Percy had made for himself. That image vanished for ever as he saw her, but it fled with a kind of remonstrance-an indignant protest, as it were, against the discrepancy-that remained in his mind to trouble it. How came she to look so much older and more experienced than his own sister? They were both,

upper deck of all the brilliant crowd of frocks and parasols were gathered in bunches.

The New College barge was soon reached, the ladder was climbed, and the whole scene lay open to the view. Down the shining waterway boat after boat was disappearing towards the starting point, their eight oars moving with the live precision of an insect's legs-for these were all good boats, the fittest survivors of the past. There goes the Pelican, there goes New; there goes the Head of the River-last of all, you see, because these are bumping races and she starts nearest to the winning-post. Look now at the opposite bank-the towing-path is dense with a very different crowd from ours -one which provides occasion for much astonishment and mirth. Strolling, hurrying, endless, it passes along downstream like the march of a Rabelaisian army, or the chorus of a Greek Pantomime: a procession of athletic bare-legged figures, dressed, so far as they are dressed at all, in garments of grotesque proportions and phantasmagoric colours. Now they too are gone, the bend of the river hiding the mass of them, as it also hides the line of boats that lie waiting for the signal. Then suddenly the deep boom of a gun startles the spectators-they press towards the outer thwarts of their various barges, giving them a decided list to port. The men take out their watches. "No hurry there's a minute yet. There'll be two guns

"Why

when they start." two?" "One might miss fire," says Peroy, still looking at his watch and Althea's face alternately, as if to claim a certain fellowship in the excitement. Yet they are enemies, for his own boat is next behind that of New, and likely to bump it. "Twenty seconds more "-the same words are being called out all down the line on both banks. "Ten seconds more," and they begin to count each second. "Five, four, three, two-" The last word is cut off by the double boom of the guns, and close upon that follows a strange noise, like the discordant elamour of a moving flock of gulls. Nearer and nearer it comes, and changes suddenly to a louder note as the head boat is seen emerging from the jut and crossing into full view. Keeping pace with it upon the bank the Rabelaisian rout reappears, more Rabelaisian now than before, bareheaded, brazen-lunged, running recklessly, with half-turned heads, elbows working, hands grasping bells, rattles, and pistols, ready to give the signal for supreme effort. In the midst of clanging, rattling, and frenzied yells a bump is made: the defeated coxswain holds up his hand, the two boats, conqueror and conquered, fall out of the line, and the remainder of the race goes past them. The leading boats are now abreast of the barges, with the winning-post in sight: the first of them reaches it unbumped, and is once more, for to-night at least, Head of