ᎪᎡᎢ . Page 2. Histoire populaire de M. A. Thiers. Par Alexandre 4. Histoire complète de M. A. Thiers. Illustrée, etc. 5. Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot, and other VII.-1. Correspondence between the Employers' Association 443 · 485 VIII-1. The Church Quarterly Review. For July 1877, 2. Is the Church of England Protestant? A Historical 3. Household Theology. By J. H. Blunt, M.A. New 4. Principles at Stake. Essays, &c. Edited by G. H. 5. A History of the Christian Church during the Re- 1874. 6. A History of the Articles of Religion. By Charles 7. Apostolical Succession not a Doctrine of the Church 8. The present Movement a true Phase of Anglo-Catholic 2. Transcaucasia and Ararat: being Notes of a Vacation - 549 THE QUARTERLY REVIEW. ART. I.-1. Platonis Euthydemus et Gorgias: recensuit, vertit, notasque suas adjecit Martinus Josephus Routh, A.M., 1784. 2. Tres breves Tractatus. Ab eodem, 1854. THI HREE-AND-TWENTY years have run their course since the grave closed over a venerable member of the University of Oxford, who, more than any other person within academic memory, formed a connecting link between the Present and the Past. In a place of such perpetual flux as Oxford, the stationary figures attract unusual attention. When a man has been seen to go in and out of the same college-portal for thirty or forty years, he gets reckoned as much a part of the place as the dome of the Radcliffe or the spire of St. Mary's. But here was one who had presided over a famous College long enough to admit 183 fellows, 234 demies, and 162 choristers. The interval which his single memory bridged over seemed fabulous. He was personally familiar with names which to every one else seemed to belong to history. William Penn's grandson had been his intimate friend. A contemporary of Addison (Dr. Theophilus Leigh, Master of Balliol) had pointed out to him the situation of Addison's rooms. He had seen Dr. Johnson, in his brown wig, scrambling up the steps of University College. A lady told him that her mother remembered seeing King Charles II. walking with his dogs round" the Parks" at Oxford (when the Parliament was held there during the plague in London); and, at the approach of the Heads of Houses, who tried to fall in with him, " dodging' by the cross path to the other side. (His Majesty's dogs, by the way, were highly offensive to the Heads.) It seemed no exaggeration when, in the dedication prefixed to a volume of Lectures, published in 1838, Dr. Newman described Martin Joseph Routh, D.D., President of Magdalen College,' as one 'who had been reserved to report to a forgetful generation what was the Theology of their fathers.' He was every way a marvel. Spared to fulfil a century of years of honourable life, he enjoyed the use of his remarkable faculties to the very last. His Vol. 146.-No. 291. B memory memory was unimpaired; his 'eye was not dim.' More than that, he retained till his death his relish for those studies of which he had announced the first-fruits for publication in 1788. The sentiment of reverence with which he was regarded was not unmixed with wonder. He had become an historical personage long before the time of his departure. When at last it became known that he had gone the way of all flesh, it was felt that with the President of Magdalen College had vanished such an amount of tradition as had probably never been centred in any single member of the University before. No detailed memoir of this remarkable man has yet been attempted, and such a work is no longer likely to appear-which is to be regretted. Thirty years hence it will be impossible to produce any memoir of him at all: and the question we have ourselves often complainingly asked concerning other ancient worthies will be repeated concerning Dr. Routh-Why did no one give us at least an outline of his history, describe his person, preserve a few specimens of his talk,-in short, leave us a sketch? Antiquarian Biography is at once the most laborious and the most unreadable kind of writing. Bristling with dates, it never for an instant exhibits the man. We would exchange all our Lives' of Shakspeare for such an account of him as almost any of his friends could have furnished in a single evening. Ben Jonson's incidental notice of his conversation is our one actual glimpse of the poet in society. In like manner, Dr. John Byrom's description of a scene at which Bishop Butler was present, is the only personal acquaintance we enjoy with the great philosophic divine of the last century. And this shall suffice in the way of apology for what follows. Not far from Beverley, in the East Riding, is a village which, early in the twelfth century, gave its name to the knightly family of Routhe or De Ruda, lords of the manor in 1192. A cross-legged warrior in Routh Church is supposed to represent Sir John de Routhe, who joined the Crusades in 1319. A brass within the chancel certainly commemorates his namesake who died in 1557 ('strenuus vir Johannes Routh de Routh chevalier, et nobilis conthoralis ejus Domina Agnes'). The President's immediate ancestors resided at Thorpefield, a hamlet of Thirsk, where his grandfather was born. Peter Routh (1726-1802), a man of piety and learning (educated at Caius College, Cambridge, and instituted in 1753 to the consolidated rectories of St. Peter and St. Margaret, South Elmham, Suffolk), became the father of thirteen children (six sons and seven daughters), of whom the subject of this memoir was the eldest. 'I was born' (he says of himself) at St. Margaret's, South Elmham, Elmham, in Suffolk, September 18th, 1755.' Strange to relate, although throughout the eighteenth century he kept his birthday on the 18th, he ever after kept it on the nineteenth day of September. Martin Joseph was named after his great-uncles and godfathers, the Rev. Martin Baylie, D.D., of Wicklewood, in Norfolk (his mother's maternal uncle), and the Rev. Joseph Bokenham, M.A., the learned Rector of Stoke Ash, who stood to him in the same relation on his father's side. Like the rest of his brothers and sisters, he was baptized immediately after his birth.* His mother, Mary, daughter of Mr. Robert Reynolds of Harleston, was the granddaughter of Mr. Christopher Baylie, of the same place, a descendant from Dr. Richard Baylie, President of St. John's College, Oxford, in 1660, who married a niece of Archbishop Laud. Her first cousin and namesake died in giving birth to Richard Heber, who represented the University of Oxford in Parliament from 1821 to 1826. When elected to the headship of his College in 1791, it appears, from some memoranda in his hand (written on the back of a letter of congratulation), that the event set him on recalling the dates of the chief incidents in his thirty-six previous years of life. The second entry is: 1758. Removed to Beccles.' So that Peter Routh transferred his family thither when Martin was but three years old; and at Beccles eight out of the nine brothers and sisters born subsequently to 1758 were baptized. The reason of this change of residence does not appear; for Peter Routh only held the living of Beccles for 'old Bence' (as the Rev. Bence Sparrow was familiarly called) from 1764 to 1774; and it was not till the last-named year that he became master of the Beccles School. At Beccles, at all events, Martin spent all his studious boyhood, being educated by his learned father until he was nearly fifteen years of age (1770), when he went up to Oxford, and became (31st of May) a commoner of Queen's College: the Provost at that time being Dr. Thomas Fothergill, who in 1773-4 was Vice-Chancellor. Oxford a hundred and eight years ago! What a different place it must have been! The boy of fifteen, weary of his long journey by execrable roads rendered perilous by highwaymen, at last to his delight catches sight of Magdalen tower, and is convinced that he has indeed reached Oxford. It is May, and all is beautiful. He comes rolling over old Magdalen Bridge (a crazy structure which fell down in 1772); looks up with awe * One of Peter Routh's children was baptized on the fifth day; two on the fourth; four (Martin being of the number) on the third day; one on the second day; three on the first day after birth. as he enters the city by the ancient gate which spans the High Street (East Gate,' demolished in 1771), and finally alights from the 'flying machine' (as the stage-coach of those days was called) at John Kemp's, over against Queen's College,' i.e. at the Angel Tavern, where coffee was first tasted in Oxford in 1650. President Routh could never effectually disentangle himself from the memory of the days when he first made acquaintance with Oxford. Sir,' said one of the tutors in 1850, or thereabouts, 'Mr. Such-an-one has only just made his appearance in college' (he came out of Suffolk, and a fortnight of the October term had elapsed); 'I suppose you will send him down?' Ah, sir,' said the old man thoughtfully, 'the roads in Suffolk-the roads, sir-are very bad at this time of the year.' 'But, Mr. President, he didn't come by the road!' 'The roads, sir' (catching at the last word), 'the roads, in winter, I do assure you, sir, are very bad for travelling.' he didn't come by the road, sir, he came by rail!' Eh, sir? The-what did you say? I don't know anything about that!' waving his hand as if the tutor had been talking to him of something in the moon. 'But To return to the Oxford of May 1770, and to the Routh of fifteen. When he sallied forth next day to reconnoitre the place of his future abode, he beheld tenements of a far more picturesque type than-except in a few rare instances—now meet the eye. In front of those projecting, grotesque, and irregular houses there was as yet no foot-pavement, the only specimen of that convenience being before St. Mary's Church. The streets were paved with small pebbles, a depressed gutter in the middle of each serving to collect the rain. At the western extremity of High Street rose Otho Nicholson's famous conduit (removed to Nuneham in 1787), surmounted by figures of David and Alexander the Great, Godfrey of Boulogne and King Arthur, Charlemagne and James I., Hector of Troy and Julius Cæsar. Behind it a vastly different Carfax Church from the present came to view, where curfew rang every night at 8 o'clock, and two giants struck the hours on a bell. Passengers up Cornmarket (just behind St. Michael's Church), as they glided through the ancient city gate called 'Bocardo'-once the prison of Cranmer, Ridley and Latimer, and till 1771 a place of confinement for debtors-were solicited to deposit a dole in the hat let down by a string from the window overhead. As yet neither the Radcliffe Infirmary nor the Observatory was built. The way to Worcester College lay through a network of narrow passages, and was pronounced undiscoverable. St. Giles's, on the other hand, was deemed a 'rus in urbe, having all the advantages of town |