In consequence of the honesty, frankness, and consistency of his opinions, Mr. Hearne ran his head in danger when King George came to the throne, which has ever since been happily settled in the possession of the Hanoverian line. A Mr. Urry, a Non-juror, had to warn him, saying, ‘Do you not know that they have a mind to hang you if they can, and that you have many enemies who are very ready to do it?’ In spite of this, Hearne, in his diaries, still calls George I. the Duke of Brunswick, and the Whigs, ‘that fanatical crew.’ John, Duke of Marlborough, he styles ‘that villain the Duke.’ We have had enough, perhaps, of Oxford politics, which were not much more prejudiced in the days of the Duke than in those of Mr. Gladstone. Hearne’s allusions to the contemporary state of buildings and of college manners are often rather instructive. In All Souls the Whigs had a feast on the day of King Charles’s martyrdom. They had a dinner dressed of woodcock, ‘whose heads they cut off, in contempt of the memory of the blessed martyr.’ These men were ‘low Churchmen, more shame to them.’ The All Souls men had already given up the custom of wandering about the College on the night of January 14th, with sticks and poles, in quest of the mallard. That ‘swopping’ bird, still justly respected, was thought, for many ages, to linger in the college of which he is the protector. But now all hope of recovering him alive is lost, and it is reserved for the excavator of the future to marvel over the fossil bones of the ‘swopping, swopping mallard.’ As an example of the paganism of Queen Anne’s reign—quite a different thing from the ‘Neo-paganism’ which now causes so much anxiety to the moral press-man—let us note the affecting instance of Geffery Ammon. ‘He was a merry companion, and his conversation was much courted.’ Geffery had but little sense of religion. He is now buried on the west side of Binsey churchyard, near St. Margaret’s well. Geffery selected Binsey for the place of his sepulchre, because he was partial to the spot, having often shot snipe there. In order to moisten his clay, he desired his friend Will Gardner, a boatman of Oxford, who was accustomed to row him down the river, to put now and then a bottle of ale by his grave when he came that way; an injunction which was punctually complied with.