An embassy from the King of Madagascar arrived this year, and was duly presented at Court. I know not what business they transacted, but the fact has a certain interest for me because it was my privilege, about four-and-twenty years ago, to converse with one of the nobles who had formed part of that embassy, and who, after a quarter of a century, was going again on another mission to the Court of St. James. He was, when I saw him, an elderly man, dark of skin, but, being a Hova, most intelligent and well-informed; also, being a Hova, anxious to say the thing which would please his hearers. He recalled many incidents connected with the long journey round the Cape in a sailing vessel, the crowds and noise of London, the venerable appearance of King William, and his general kindness to the ambassadors. When he had told us all he could recollect, he asked us if we should like to hear him sing the song which had beguiled many weary hours of his voyage. We begged him to sing it, expecting to hear something national and fresh, something redolent of the Madagascar soil, a song sung in the streets of its capital, Antananarivo, perhaps with a breakdown or a walk round. Alas! he neither danced a breakdown, nor did he walk round, nor did he sing us a national song at all. He only piped, in a thin sweet tenor, and very correctly, that familiar hymn ‘Rock of Ages,’ to the familiar tune. I have never been able to believe that this nobleman, His Excellency the Right Honourable the Lord Rainiferingalarovo, Knight of the Fifteen Honour, entitled to wear a _lamba_ as highly striped as they are made, commonly reported to be a pagan, with several wives, really comforted his soul, while at sea, with this hymn. But he was with Christians, and this was a missionary’s hymn which he had often heard, and it would doubtless please us to hear it sung. Thereupon he sang it, and a dead silence fell upon us. Behold however, the reason why the record of this simple event, the arrival of the embassy from Madagascar, strikes a chord in the mind of one at least who reads it. There is little else to chronicle in the year. The University of Durham was founded: a truly brilliant success have they made of this learned foundation! And Sir Robert Peel was Rector of Glasgow University. For the rest, boilers burst, coaches were upset, and many books of immense genius were produced, which now repose in the Museum. [Illustration: SIR ROBERT PEEL]