The Dons of my time were a distinguished body enough, brilliant scholars, kindly and sympathetic advisers, and inspiring and ardent teachers. No one could lightly underrate such men as ‘Jimmy’ Riddell, Edwin Palmer, Henry Smith, Green, Newman, and the great Jowett. With the last I was never brought personally much into contact, as, conscious of my deficiencies in the requirements for success as a classical scholar, I took the earliest opportunity of transferring my energies to the Law and History School, in which I saw more prospect of success. But I shall never cease to be grateful to him for a piece of advice which he gave me when looking over those weekly essays which were about the most useful part of our ordinary College education. He smiled rather grimly at some turgid and high-flown sentences of which I was inclined to be particularly proud, and suggested that my composition would be improved if I struck out any passage which I was inclined to think particularly fine. I have ever since taken his advice to heart with great advantage, making it a rule, when revising, to apply the pruning knife unsparingly to ‘purple patches.’ Young authors, please copy! But whatever my gratitude may be to my teachers and masters—and I certainly owe my ‘First’ in the Final Schools to the inspiring History Lectures of Newman; his grasp of essentials and power of connoting the relations of cause and effect, in various movements, historical, political and philosophical, and imparting his views and their reasons to his disciples—there was never the frank companionship and confident and equal intercourse which I admired so much in the Balliol of Strachan-Davidson. Perhaps the difference should be ascribed to the times rather than to the persons. The relations between children and parents, and between husbands and wives, have likewise greatly altered during the half-century.