A somewhat remarkable coincidence is that George Canning, Gladstone, and the late Lord Salisbury in turn boarded at the same house. In Canning’s time the dame was Mrs. Harrington, in Gladstone’s Mrs. Shurey, whilst in Lord Robert Cecil’s day the Rev. G. Cookesley was in control. Amongst modern politicians Lord Rosebery boarded at Vidal’s, Mr. Balfour at Miss Evans’s, Lord Curzon at Mr. Oscar Browning’s, and Mr. Lewis Harcourt at the Rev. A. C. Ainger’s. The room of the present Colonial Secretary was celebrated as being the best decorated in Eton. The writer has a vivid recollection of being impressed by the number of well-arranged pictures which he saw when, as a small boy, he enjoyed the honour of being asked to breakfast there. The whole place was full of evidences of the artistic taste which admittedly distinguished Mr. Harcourt as First Commissioner of Public Works. FOOTNOTE: [3] See Chapter VI. * * * * * [Illustration: Herbert Stockhore, the “Montem Poet,” going to Salt Hill in 1823.] V MONTEM Though even to-day a few old Etonians survive who took part in the last Eton Montem, the memory and the recollection of the quaint glories of this ancient and unique festival will soon have become totally obscured by the sordid dust of modern life. Whilst the lover of old customs may lament that the merry voices of Montem are drowned for ever, it is absolutely certain that even had the famous triennial pageant been allowed to continue after 1844, its celebration could never have been prolonged up to the present day in its ancient form; for, besides being utterly out of accord with modern ideas and ways, the ceremony would have brought such crowds to Eton as to have rendered any procession to Salt Hill more or less impossible. To some, however, it may be a matter for regret that no attempt was made to perpetuate the memory of Montem by holding a modified festival in the playing fields. It is all very well to denounce old customs as merely useless relics of a bygone age. The individual who carries such a view to an extreme is in reality even more unreasonable than he who delights in contemplating the past alone. Both in their different ways are in the wrong: the fanatical worshipper of ancient ways being apt to lose sight of the improvements wrought by progress, whilst he who despises antiquity forgets that the state of society in which we live, and the institutions of the country itself, are all derived from preceding ages. Do or think what we will, our ancestors are far more necessary to us than posterity.