Such were the materials out of which the new Eton was evolved. All the principal changes took place in my time. I was born under the old dispensation and I lived through the transition stage into the new. Revolutions, even in a school system, are not brought to maturity in a day, and those who read Sir Henry Maxwell Lyte will see that time was needed to make the new machinery work smoothly. Provost Hodgson, as I recollect him, was a short, fat, sturdy little man, almost as broad as he was long, waddling not without a certain web-footed dignity out of the Provost’s Lodge into Weston’s Yard, but how difficult it was to think of him as the cherished friend of the romantic, devil-may-care poet, rebel against all law and convention. Later in life I got to know Lord Broughton. Here again was a contrast with Byron—the reverend, calm, wise and judicious statesman, and the wild, defiant child of genius. Those who cry out so loudly against the unhappy poet might pause and ask themselves whether, since he could inspire undying affection in two such men, he himself could be all bad. * * * * * As I have said, we were in a period of transition. There were here and there a few old gentlemen who, clinging desperately to ancient traditions, refused to exchange their knee-breeches with bunches of ribbons at the knee for the vulgar but comfortable trousers. Knee-breeches were the outward and visible sign of obstruction. Among the Fellows of Eton two of these faithful veterans still lived and hindered—Mr. Bethell and Mr. Plumptre. Mr. Bethell was a fine old dignitary of the Church, handsome and well-nourished, with a glowing face and noble paunch, suggestive of a good cook, an excellent digestion, and a well-stored cellar. He was the hero of the crusty old story of the days when he was a master: “‘Ærati postes’—‘brazen gates’—very good translation; probably so called because they were made of Brass.” He had been a friend of some of my people, so I was sometimes invited to breakfast with him. The rolls were memorable. Mr. Plumptre was famous for sermons of appalling length, preached upon texts that were absolutely grotesque. Lyte quotes several of these, but this I think is better than any that he gives. Being asked once to preach a sermon to the Blue-coat boys, he took for his text: “Moreover his mother made him a little coat and brought it to him from year to year.” As the poor old gentleman had not a tooth left in his head, his sermons, bellowed out at the top of a powerful but very indistinct voice, were exquisitely comic.