The death of Dr Okes, though he had reached the mature age of ninety-one, has taken the University by surprise[117]. He had become an institution of the place. While everything around him changed, and old things became new, his venerable figure remained unaltered, like a monument of an older faith which has survived the attacks of successive iconoclasts, to tell the younger generation what manner of men the Dons of the past had been. He was fond of saying that the first public event he could distinctly remember was the battle of Trafalgar. He had been a Master at Eton when Goodall was Provost and Keate Head-master, and he had begun to rule over King’s College when the University of Cambridge differed as widely from what it is now as the Europe of Napoleon from its present condition. Still, his load of years sat so lightly upon him, his interest in what was going forward was still so keen, that there seemed to be no reason why he should not complete his century of life. The slight infirmities from which he suffered did not prevent him, until quite lately, from attending service in chapel, at least on Sundays; his hearing was but little affected; his sight was good; and he could still enjoy the society of his friends. Only a few days before his death he was reading Miss Burney’s _Evelina_ to his daughters. When it became known on Sunday last that he had really passed away, it was hard to believe that the sad news could possibly be true. Richard Okes was born in Cambridge, 15 December, 1797. His father, Thomas Verney Okes, was a surgeon in extensive practice. Tradition is silent respecting the future Provost’s childhood and early education; but, as in those days boys began their lives at Eton at a very early age, it is probable that when he was little older than a child he was sent to fight his battles among the collegers, in what even devoted Etonians have called ‘a proverb and a reproach’—Long Chamber. In 1816, when he was rather more than eighteen, he obtained a scholarship at King’s College; but it appears from the University records that he did not formally matriculate until November in the following year. In those days, be it remembered, King’s College was a very different place from what it is now, both structurally and educationally. The magnificent site, on which Henry VI. intended to place an equally magnificent college, was occupied by no structures of importance except the Chapel, and the Fellows’ Building, part of a second grand design which, like the first, was never completed. The scholars, or at all events the greater part of them, were packed into Old Court—the small, irregular quadrangle west of the University Library, to which the founder intended originally to limit his college. It must have been a curious structure—picturesque and interesting from an archeological point of view, but unwholesome and uncomfortable as a place of residence. The very nicknames given to some