It seems to me that the State encouragement of Russian studies will be of high value as promoting facility of intercourse—especially in the case of the Services, naval, military and civil. A far higher, even world-wide importance attaches to the establishment of schools of modern languages all over Russia. It is of less moment that the literature of Russia, in its present condition, should travel westward than that the literature of the West should gradually influence the mind of the Slav. Just as in music the wild barbaric outbursts of his gayer moods, the tender sadness of his dirges, have been enshrined in the harmonies of his own classic masters without losing one spark of their fire, one sob of their pathos, so the untutored writer of to-day, chastened by study, will be able to give us the freshness and zest of a life which is not ours, shorn of all its crudities, not to give them a worse name. Let me not be misunderstood. What I think is of consequence is that the startling audacity, the rough ore of the Slav mind, should be passed through the purifying furnace of the higher education it was in Pushkin’s case—all honour to him—and then you will have something worthy of the praise which is being rained upon the shameless translations by ladies, themselves ill-equipped by classic culture, of the cubism of literary art. VERBA COMPOSITA In the first volume of my “Memories” there is a print of a drawing by William Evans, of the inglenook in the picturesque dining-hall of his house at Eton. Above the stone screen in which it was held was a legend in Gothic letters: “Favus mellis verba composita.” The words had disappeared for many years when I went to place my son with Miss Evans—so long that she had even forgotten their existence when I asked the reason why. To us old boys it seemed a pity, for the inscription had derived a certain sanctity from the scholastic storm which raged round it. The learned would not accept the legend. No one could say whence the quotation or proverb came. Dr. Hawtrey, to whom the pure well of Latin undefiled was almost a religion with which to tamper was little short of sacrilege, declared that it was a barbarism, a piece of dog, or, what was perhaps to him as bad, monkish Latin. He maintained that it was untranslatable; but we, audacious monkeys, rushing in where scholars feared to tread, declared that if the words were obscure, the meaning was clear as crystal: “Sweet as the honeycomb is the talk of friends in council.” Here I would fain break off for a moment to pay a slight tribute to the memory of that most generous of men, William Evans, drawing-master and, though one of the most masculine of mortals, technically a “dame.” He was a big, burly man, of a jovial and rubicund aspect, a combination which earned for him the nickname of Beeves. He was a vigorous painter in water-colours, a member of the old water-colour society, and one of the best of good fellows.