_Perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world_, _except for those phlegmatic natures_, _who_, _I suspect_, _would in any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking_. _They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope_, _and even in railway carriages_: _what banishes them is the vacuum in gentleman and lady passengers_. _How should all the apparatus of heaven and earth_, _from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us_, _make poetry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness_, _no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant to the near_? GEORGE ELIOT. [Greek verse] ANTIGONE. All is over now; April was just a twelfth-night old when the school departed. Some of our company have lingered on for business, a few from reluctance to have done with it. But to-day the last group has taken wing for the Midlands. Old "Borth," the colley dog, followed them to the station, and poked his nose into the carriage to take his leave. Old Borth--we had almost forgotten him, and that had been deep ingratitude for he was not the least warm-hearted of our friends in Wales. His master lived two miles away; but soon after our arrival, Borth had come down from the hills to attach himself to our fortunes, and henceforth became, as it were, our familiar, the pet of the regiment, like the goat of the "23rd." He knew his position, and was a stickler for formalities; he had a wag of the tail for every boy who wore the image of the venerable schoolmaster upon his cap; but if he met him bare-headed, or, by any chance, in an indistinctive head-gear, he would cut that boy dead, were he never so much the same urchin from whose hand he had yesterday eaten a cheese-cake. That was his official rebuke for the irregularity. By day, Borth would bask in some sunny corner of our quarters; at night, he has been known to venture on a nearer intimacy where doors were left open. We found you once ourselves, Borth, curled up and asleep upon our own bed. You woke up, shook yourself with a modest, but not startled manner, and walked quietly away, like a gentleman. Ah! kind friend, you showed us the sincerest of flatteries, that of imitation. You left a comfortable home for chance quarters and uncertain fare, that you might be one of us, an outcast among outcasts. Now we must part, for our home will spare us no longer, as neither will yours spare you. And so the last good-bye is said, and you are limping away to your hills again, with dejection expressed in every fibre of your frame, from the drooping ears to the last hair on your tail.