He died on an evening of July, while the scent of hay in passing waggons filled and pleased his nostrils, lying in his half-monastic, half-manorial home, not far from Oxford. How often had he celebrated the sweetness of the dead grass as an emblem of comely human death! For a little while he spoke of his friends, of the “beautiful gate” of St. Mary’s, of his columbines (the older sort), and of a copy of Virgil newly come from Italy. We listened silently. Life was still an eloquent poet on his lips. But Death was a strong sculptor already at work upon his face and hands. The last waggon passed below his window as he lay dead, and the friendly carter shouted “Good-night.” Now, we three were ashamed that we could find no tears for the loss of such a man; and again, that we should suffer any alteration of our joy, at having seen what we had seen. We recalled the past through half the night. As we sat, none of us looked more alive than he, amidst the old gloomy furniture, refashioned by the moon. We were but the toys of night, of the smooth perfumes and the sounds of nothing known, and of the presence which was like a great thought in the room. Then as the coming day mingled with the passing night, a cold pale beam--ῶ φάος ἁγνὸν--came to the four. As often a symbol becomes an image, so the beam of light seemed to be the very spirit of which it was a messenger, hailed by our eyes and hearts. It was beautiful as the Grail with many angels about it,--awful as the woman of stern aspect and burning eyes that visited the dream of Boethius. It was worthy to have ushered visions yet more august. Ah! the awful purity of the dawn. The light grew; our fancies were unbuilt; we became aware of a holy excellence in the light itself, and enjoyed an almost sensual [Illustration: THE CLARENDON BUILDING, LOOKING EAST On the right stand those grotesque thermes partly surrounding and forming an entrance to the enclosure of the Sheldonian Theatre, the old Ashmolean, and the Schools. They are a quaint and conspicuous feature in Broad Street. Above them towers the Clarendon Building, with its worn and richly coloured surface, the columns of the portico relieved against the sky. A portion of the Indian Museum appears in the centre of the picture, the old houses forming picturesque foreground objects to the left. ] melancholy repose. The owls were silent. The nightingales joined their songs to the larks’. And I went out and walked and remembered his epitaph--_Vita dulcis, sed dulcior mors_--and another July day, when Philip Amberley was alive.