An old friend of mine, who was a boy at Rugby under the kindly, orthodox and dignified Dr. Goulburn, told me that on his first evening at that great school, a bewildered and timid little creature, after he had been much catechised and derided by a lot of cheerful youngsters, and with a terrible perspective before him of endless interviews with countless strange and not necessarily amiable mortals, a loud bell rang, and all trooped down to prayers. He sat on a bench in a big bare hall with a timbered roof, a door opened and a grave butler appeared, carrying two wax candles in silver candlesticks, followed by the Headmaster in silk gown and bands, in unimaginable state. The candles were set down on a table. The Headmaster opened a great Bible, and in a sonorous voice read the twelfth chapter of the Book of Joshua, a gloomy enough record, which begins, ‘Now these are the kings of the land, which the Children of Israel smote,’ and ends up with a sinister catalogue, ‘The king of Jericho, one; the king of Ai, one’--and so on for many verses, finishing up with ‘The king of the nations of Gilgal, one; the king of Tirzah, one; all the kings, thirty and one.’ After which pious and edifying exercise, the book was closed, and prayer offered. My old friend was an impressionable boy, and it seemed to him, he said, that there was a fearful and ominous significance in this list of slaughtered monarchs, depicting and emphasizing the darker side of life. But I have often thought that a few words from the Headmaster, on the vanity of human greatness and the triumph of the divine purpose, might have turned these lean and bitter memorials of the dead into an unforgettable parable. What, for instance, could be more profoundly moving in the scene of the ‘Passing of Arthur,’ where the knight steps slowly in the moonlight from the ruined shrine and the place of tombs: ‘Where lay the mighty bones of ancient men, Old knights--and over them the sea-wind sang Shrill, chill, with flakes of foam’? That seems to lend the last touch of mystery and greatness to a scene of human endeavour, that the earth beneath the living feet should cover the bones, the hardy and heroic limbs of those who had lived and fought worthily. As the dying king, with the poignant accent of passion cries aloud: ‘“Such a sleep They sleep--the men I loved!”’