cover even half a sheet of this penurious primæval poppsidixious paper this evening. [Three pages follow.]

'I am now (e’en in our ashes live, &c.) working at a set of Palestine drawings and later shall finish Argos and Gwalior. After that, sufficient to the day is the weevil thereof, as the hazelnut said when the caterpillar made a hole in his shell.' . ..

May 24, 1885. * (9thly) Signor Marsaglia, the Brassey of Italy, has long been making acquedux and penitential pipes to bring what he calls " Acqua Potabile” from Badaluco above Taggia to Sanremo, and I who for 3 years have heard of this scheme have always called it

Acqua Probabile.” But now it has really been brought here, and for 51. a year I get a thousand bottles a day, all of which as you may suppose I drink. ...

'12thly. Enlivenment has been greatly kneaded-seeing that since poor Nicola's death-March 4—I have lost my last surviving sister, aged 84, and have now no one of my generation except a brother in Texas, whom I have not seen for 65 years.

16thly. Have you any frogs and snails in your garden? If not, purchase a large number immediately, and place them in a row in a glass case, which will be highly ornamental and abomalous.

17thly. Yours affectionately, Edward Lear.
18thly. Amen. God Save the Queen and confound Mr. C--'

25 Hocktomber (as my servant calls it), 1885. ::I have been and still am grieved about W. E. Forster. There is no finer specimen of an Englishman living, and his advocacy of the interest of the colonies greatly interested me-not but what Lord Rosebery and Lord Dunraven did likewise. . .

'I advise you all to take the Villa Figini at Barzanò where you may "rear a marble slab” to my memory, tho' my Boddy, or what remains of it, will be buried in the Symmetry of Sanremo, where I have already bought a Toomb and have ordered a Toomstone. ...

* Bring up the boy [my eldest son] to be a Chimblysweep rather than an artist. Epitaph really in a churchyard—Isle of Wight.

Forlorn Eliza rears this marble slab

To her dear John. (He died of eating Crab.)” Edward Lear was the youngest of a family of nineteen children, of Danish parents, and he owed what education he had to the loving care of one of his sisters. His name was originally spelt Lör. He

а

first earned a precarious livelihood by drawing animal pictures. Some of these, in a window front in Piccadilly, caught the eye of the 13th Earl of Derby, who, after enquiry, invited the author to reside at Knowsley and draw his zoological specimens there, and in order to amuse his children the Nonsense Rhymes, an entirely new kind of literature, were composed. Now the rest of the acts of Lear, and his drawings, and his travels, and how he gave lessons to Her late Majesty Queen Victoria in 1846, are they not written in the book of Nonsense Songs and Stories,' by himself, in a letter prefixed (1889)

a ' by way of preface'?

His anticipation of death was constant and of some long standing, if not lifelong. He wrote in May 1882 :

* There is No chance of my seeing either Cambridge or Oxford any more-nor England. Ill, and 70 years old, it is useless to shut one's eyes to the inevitable-θάνατος άλυρος, άχορος &c. Just at this moment I am a little better. ..

The Greek characters in the above quotation from Sophocles are written in the style of a true scholar's pen. In thanking me for a copy of Jebb’s ‘Modern Greece,' in 1880, he writes with enthusiasm for ' so much real information on the subject conveyed in so condensed and clear and pleasing a form—so much learning combined with so much poetical appreciation of the landscape beauties of Greece-and-last not least-such complete and remarkable moderation and good taste in treating of a subject which seems to drive many people crazy-or if they are already crazy to make them crazier.' The painter, whom the Laureate had addressed as 'E. L. on his Travels in Greece,' was no incompetent judge of the great scholar's volume.

' As for memory, I remember lots of things before I was born, and quite distinctly being born at Highgate 12 May 1812.' . .

27 April, 1884. On the 29th and 30th of March I did not at all expect to live beyond a few hours, but Dr. Hassall, thank God, skilfully got the inflammation under, and ever since I have been getting-though very slowly-better. Of course at 72 I cannot expect a return of much of my former strength, but it is a great thing to be thankful for that I have not been paralyzed nor have had my sight affected.

'I am now—as far as I am able--arranging matters so that my Executors and friends shall have as little trouble as possible, should it please God that my life end shortly. If the contrary, I intend to

.

endeavour to carry out my old plan of Alfred Tennyson Illustrations—200 in number-by Autotype.'

A letter of his written November 7, 1887, within three months of his decease, shows him still interested in the movements of other persons and their children, still able to laugh at his own increasing infirmities; but this paper shall conclude with something epithalamial and happy of that very March 1884, terminating in what Lear might perchance have called a Eugenious Aram tail. My address was then Dingle Bank, Liverpool.

I am always incapacitated more or less . . . and having worked much in the day, I am Nocktìpp afterwards entirely. I do not know why you congratulate me on “ good health and spirits,” as I have neither; and if I told you I had, I was muffstaken very much. ...

'I wish you a pleasant honeymoon. There are many large black bees here (Sir J. Lubbock writes to me that they are called Xylocopa Violacea), but as they don't make honey, I don't recommend you to take them with you, otherwise I would send a lot. Your idea of boating on the Tems seems to me highly grotesque and bizzerable..

399

THE COLLINGWOOD CENTENARY.

(1810-1910.)

When, four and a half years ago, the British nation waxed enthusiastic over the centenary of the greatest sailor since the world began,' and kindled at the recollection of Trafalgar, perhaps somewhat less than a fitting tribute was paid to that noble fellow Collingwood,' under whom, after Lord Nelson fell, the victory was completed, and to whom a share in the honours thereof was most surely due.

He himself was the last man in the world to thrust himself forward for public recognition. He did not come home, as a survivor of Trafalgar, to flaunt his achievements, and seek advancement for himself and his family. There was nothing of the courtier about this noble fellow Collingwood. During the years that elapsed between the death of Nelson and his own he remained at his post as Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean ; heart-sick, at times, for home, heart-hungry for the sight of those he loved, but quietly, simply, and steadfastly setting his duty to his country first, and giving his life in her service as truly, in the strenuous labours of his long command, as did Lord Nelson himself upon the Victory's deck.

Yet the memory of the one hero, a hundred years after Trafalgar, shines forth with undimmed lustre; while the memory of the other seems somehow to have faded from out the minds of men. Save only in his native North-Countree. There, loyal hearts marked jealously how scant a share was accorded him, by the nation at large, in the glories of the Trafalgar Centenary; there, loyal lips took pride in telling over again the incidents of his career; and loyal hands brought their garlands to the base of his statue, where it stands upon its green mound, guarding the entrance to the Tyne, and begirt with the guns taken from his ship, the Royal Sovereign. And many an eye kindled with enthusiasm as the greatnephew of the Admiral called to remembrance how, on that day, a hundred years before, those very guns were 'flaming away into the open ports of the great Santa Anna, the second largest ship afloat, and, no doubt, bore a share in the terrible opening broadsides which killed and wounded four hundred men, and dismantled fourteen guns, on board the Spanish admiral's ship. . . . Now,' he added, they were silent, silent as the men who manned them ; they had done their work.' True ; but it is not meet that the work should ever be forgotten by our land ; and it is to be hoped that the approaching centenary of the death of one of her noblest sons may find her rendering honour to whom honour is due.

The name of Collingwood, which the Admiral crowned with naval glory, had long been one of note in the North. There is an old rhyme on the subject which somewhat enigmatically sets forth how

The Collingwoods have borne the name
Since in the bush the buck was ta'en ;
But when the bush shall hold the buck,
Then welcome faith, and farewell luck.

The allusion is to the old crest of the family, a stag under a tree, which illustrates the name ; for the stag, in the quaint phraseology of ancient time (still surviving in ‘Jack ’ Daw, ‘ Tom ’ Tit, &c.), was 'Colin,' while the tree represents wood.

The Admiral's father, with a very moderate fortune,' and a wife out of Westmorland, settled at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the tall brick house at the head of the Side, where, on September 26, 1750, his eldest son Cuthbert was born. The latter was sent in due course to the Newcastle Grammar School, the famous headmaster of which, Hugh Moises, had under his rule, during Cuthbert's schooldays, three lads marked out for future renown and well-earned peerages : young Collingwood himself; John Scott, afterwards Lord Chancellor Eldon; and William Scott, who in later life was Lord Stowell, the distinguished judge of the High Court of Admiralty. Their portraits may be seen side by side in the Guildhall to-day; and it is pleasant to record that all three scholars retained affectionate recollections of their master, after they had risen to fame, and paid honour to him in life and in death. Hugh Moises lived to hear of the glories of Trafalgar, and of the consummate valour, judgment and skill' whereby Admiral Collingwood earned his Sovereign's 'entire approbation and admiration. It is to be hoped that there also came to his knowledge the comment, said to have been made by King George, after perusing the Admiral's despatch with details of Trafalgar: 'Where did this sea-captain get his admirable English? Oh! I remember! He was one of Moises' boys.'

In the year following Trafalgar the good man died, and Lord