poor old father himself was not at his ease with his changed son.

Turning over a new leaf in life, you know how misty the old life soon grows. One forgets, as a reality, the former way of life, entering upon the new. It must be a strange feeling, I think, for a man to find himself Primate of the Anglican Church, who was born and brought up in another communion. Does Archbishop Tait cherish any distinct recollection of his years in the Church of Scotland, which he indeed left, but in which his fathers lived and died? Does he not find it awkward to speak (if English people do so speak) of the Church of our fathers? Does he remember, seated in state on the throne in Canterbury Cathedral, the hideous but costly St. Stephen's at Edinburgh where he used to go as boy and lad? It is curious for one who is himself a Scotchman to look at the good prelate, and listen to him; and track out the old thing whence he rose: the occasional breaking forth of the abandoned Scotch accent; and manifold further traces of Scotch training in his youth. A Scot, no matter how denationalised, no matter how Anglified, can never escape detection by a fellowcountryman. And it is very amusing when one finds a Scot, speaking by terrible effort with a much more English accent than any Englishman, here and there betray the old Adam, by some awfully Doric word. Easily could the writer give wonderful examples of

what he describes. But it would not do. And it shall not be done.

My friend Smith recently related to me certain facts, indicating how far he was alienated from the associations of his youth. He informed me that he sat next his old sweetheart in a railway-carriage for a hundred miles, and did not know her at all. He saw a fat middle-aged matron, with a red face: but nothing remained there of the airy sylph of dancingschool days. He did not find out who she was, till some one told him at the journey's end. Smith was no more than thirty-nine. But as he communicated this information, his visage was rueful, and he shook his head from side to side several times as though there were something in it to shake. He plainly thought that he was very old.

Most readers will know how they have forgot old school companions, and even old College friends. At school, many boys sort themselves in pairs, by elective affinity. Two boys are chums: always together in the playground standing shoulder to shoulder against the world. At least it used to be so. Do we sometimes wonder, in graver years, if an old friend. remembers us if he is living yet? At College, one is so far sophisticated, that there is rarely the warm attachment of schoolboy days. Yet there were great friends too twenty, five and twenty years ago! But young men are bad letter-writers: they are set in life far apart letters gradually cease: there is a kind

thought now and then; but the rift has grown a river. People grow worldly of spirit, too: and frightened. If one had the chance to go and call for an old friend, unseen for a quarter of a century, whose home is six hundred miles off; should not one hesitate whether to go? One does not know what reception one might meet. A sharp face might look at you, not without the suspicion that you designed to borrow money. Which you would not get.

It is a touching proof how not many years may sever old and fast friends, which you may find in Keble's Life in the record how Newman and he met at Keble's door, and neither recognised the other. Newman tells us he did not know Keble, and Keble asked Newman who he was; which question he answered by presenting his card. I think it was not since they last had met.

ten years strange.

It is very sad and

There are many more things one would wish to say but in treating such a subject there is a temptation to go too much to personal experience. And that must not be. So let me tear up some notes I had made, of other things to be said, and behold them consume away in this little fire. Let it be said, summing up matters, that looking at even a hale wellpreserved gray-headed old individual, the thing I cannot help thinking of him just at present is, how time and change have gradually alienated him from old things and old associates: self-concentred him: left

a great chasm all around him: isolated him left no one really near him: left him alone. If his wife is dead, or if he were never married, he is lonely as though in the midst of the great Atlantic. His professional friends and his club friends may like him. well enough but who is fool enough to fancy that club friends and professional friends will care much when he dies? There is in truth a gulf between you and such. His children are remote, even though dwelling in the same house. His own youth, and early manhood, and the main toils and interests of his life, have receded into dim distance, and look. spectral there. Life tends to converge upon himself, and his own physical comforts and it is : very wretched to come to that. Wherefore, my friends, let us keep close together! It is a blessing to have some one so near you, that you may tell (sure of attentive sympathy) all you do, all you wish and fear, all you think, in so far as words suffice to tell that. And from such a one you will hear the same. It is not selfishness or egotism that prompts such confidence it is the desire to counter-work that increasing alienation, which in the latter years tends to estrange us from others, to throw us in upon ourselves, to make us quite alone. Keep as near as you will, there is still an inevitable space between a certain distance between you and your best friends in this world.

CHAPTER IX.

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS MAKING BETTER OF IT.

THIS is the last forenoon of 1872. The morning was rainy, but now the day has brightened. The soaked College which is before me whenever I look up from the page I am writing, is getting dry in patches: the somewhat starved Jacobean Gothic is spotty black and gray. Two large crosses, surmounting gables, look very black against an opal sky. The weathercock of the severely-simple spire across the quadrangle which has stood there for four hundred years points to the south-east. For many days and weeks there has been all but ceaseless rain. We have not here the wide plains of central England, traversed by great rivers we are entirely safe from the floods which have there converted vast tracts into a turbid inland sea. But here too it has been dreary enough when the light was failing on these gloomy afternoons, and all the world seemed soaked with wet, cheerless and miserable. One was glad to get into shelter, and shut out the dismal day.

Yet there were advantages about that dishearten