in the company of these radicals, and he could call them forth out of their trickiest hiding-places. In the midst of his chalky toil, he would turn round with radiant glee as if to say, "This is a merry and exciting trade: it is my fun and is as good as poaching or golf." But woe betide the youth who showed levity. Soon would there be weeping and wailing and tingling of palms. His reputation for strap-wielding made roots respected. Another teacher of the school of Porteous was Thomas Taylor, whose death I saw announced a few weeks ago. Where has all _his_ Greek lore gone to, so assiduously cultivated, so continuously added to? If Taylor's soul is ever re-incarnated in a mortal body, it is absurd to suppose that he must begin to learn the Greek alphabet just like a novice. His clay is indeed mixed with the clay of common men, but I love to think of him dwelling on the other side of the River in the meads of asphodel, discussing with kindred shades, the topics he delighted to handle when he was here. With tearful eye I pen these doleful decasyllabics to his memory:-- What chums Tom Taylor and Charles Lamb had been O'er bottled porter and the _Fairy Queen_! In youth, one day, seeking forbidden fruit Tom tumbled from the branches with his loot, And broken bones compelled the lad to go On straddling crutches, warily and slow, Counting the pebbles on his path below. The noisy pleasures of the open air, The football kicked exuberant here and there. Cricket, beloved of sinewy juvenals, And golf with all its hazards, clubs and balls, Were not in Taylor's province: so he turned To calmer pastimes where the ingle burned, And when the whole world turned to _goals_ and _tees_ He took to _Iliads_ and to _Odysseys_. He'd croon like one possessed the magic strain Of heroes tossed along the unvintaged main, And, crutch aloft in air, would fondly beat Time to the rushing of the poet's feet. Poetry was all his solace: those bright dames That old Dan Chaucer in his rapture names, And those in Villon's pages that appear As dazzling-white as snows of yester-year, Trooped past his eye in long procession fair. O, Sovereign Virgin, what a crowd was there! Helen, alas! with Paris by her side, On the high deck crossing the sunny tide, Circé, bright-moving in her godlike bloom Before the throbbing music of the loom. The love-lorn heroines of Shakespeare's plays, The red-cheeked country girls of Burns's lays, Would to his raptured eye the tear-drop bring, And set his crazy quill a-sonnetting. VOGUE OF LATIN IN FORMER TIMES.