object of elucidating the history of early Irish printing; in knowledge of ancient service-books he was probably second to none, and at the time of his death he was writing a preface to the new edition of the Sarum Breviary; and, lastly, he had made considerable progress towards a catalogue of the fifteenth-century books in the University Library. On all these subjects considerable materials exist; but who is fit to take his place and make use of them? _20 February, 1886._ WILLIAM HEPWORTH THOMPSON. The death of the Master of Trinity College has severed almost the last of the links which connect the present life of Cambridge with the past. From 1828 until his death[114] in 1886 his connexion with his college was unbroken; for a brief absence soon after his election to a Fellowship, and the periods of canonical residence at Ely need hardly be taken into account. He was, therefore, up to a certain point, a typical Trinity man of the older school; a firm believer in the greatness of his college, and in the obligation laid upon him personally to increase that greatness by every means in his power. But he did not admire blindly. He could recognize, if he did not welcome, the necessity for changes in the old order from time to time; and he was known throughout the best period of his intellectual life as a Liberal and a reformer. He was a rare combination of a student without pedantry, and a man of the world without foppishness, or want of principle. As an undergraduate he was fortunate in obtaining the friendship of men who afterwards became celebrated in the world of letters, most of them members of that famous coterie of which Tennyson and Hallam were the most notable figures. Indeed it is not impossible that the poet may have intended to include Thompson himself among those who “held debate, a band Of youthful friends, on mind and art And labour, and the changing mart, And all the framework of the land.”