same affection! Having gained his friendship in this way, I saw a good deal of him in later years. He kept up the pleasant old custom of asking his students to breakfast with him. In later years I met some of his early friends at that meal, among them, Leonard Horner. I remember one morning having a talk with him about English literature, when he said, ‘I have been all my life fond of poetry, and I find great solace in it still. But I must go back several generations for what really interests and pleases me. There is Tennyson, and another writer, Browning, that I hear people raving about. I have tried to read them, but I confess that I cannot understand much of them, and they give me no real pleasure. When I want to enjoy English verse, I go back to the masterpieces of Dryden and Pope.’ [Sidenote: PROFESSOR BLACKIE] Pillans was one of the early pioneers in the organisation of infant-schools. He energetically combated the system of teaching by rote, and of compelling young children to burden their memories with genealogies and dates. He once remarked to me, ‘I was in an infant-school lately, and you won’t guess what question I heard put to a class of little tots, not more than four or five years old--“How long did Jeroboam reign over Israel?”’ The most perfervidly Scottish professor of my time was undoubtedly John Stuart Blackie, who taught a multifarious range of subjects, including some Greek, of which he was Professor. Although those of his students who really wanted to increase their knowledge of Greek would fain have been spared some of his disquisitions on the current politics or problems of the day, they could not but recognise his boundless enthusiasm, his cheery good nature, and his high ideals of life and conduct. In my time he wore a brown wig, which was so manifestly artificial that we used sometimes to imagine that it was coming off, and speculated on what the professor would be like without it. But in later years he allowed his own white hair to grow long, and with his clean-shaven face, his broad soft felt hat, and his brown plaid over his shoulders, he became by far the most picturesque figure in the Edinburgh of his time. He had been so much in Germany, and was so well versed in German life and literature, that he seemed naturally to assume the manner of a German professor. There was, indeed, a good deal of external resemblance between him and the late venerable historian Mommsen. But Blackie was distinguished from his more typical continental brethren by the boisterous exuberance of his spirits. Even in the class-room this feature could not be wholly repressed, but it reached its climax among friends at a dinner table, more especially at such gatherings as those of the Royal Society Club. After eloquent talk he would eventually be unable to remain seated, but would start up and march round the room, gesticulating and singing a verse of some Scottish song, or one of his own patriotic ditties. [Sidenote: SIR DOUGLAS MACLAGAN]