destruction of Shelley's house on the Bay of Spezia; now Mr. Brett, A.R.A., pleading for the retention of the house in which Turner the painter executed his best known work. Sentimental grievances cannot be allowed to interfere with the requirements of a city like London, the inhabitants of which increase at so marvellous a rate that enlargement of streets is continually necessary. It is obviously impossible, moreover, to keep all the houses tenanted by men of highest eminence, since by mere processes of decay the building occupied by a Chaucer or a Gower will fall to pieces. In the plan I previously proposed of fixing up mural tablets to indicate the residence of great men-a system which, I am happy to find, has received warm support-is to be found the best if not the only way of preserving such memories of departed greatness as satisfy our instincts of heroworship. The only objection I see to the scheme is that it will put an end to the occupation of the most amiable of modern humourists. I will not further indicate one whose practice it has always been to cheer his companion, in a walk through any district of London, by associating with that especial quarter all historical and biographical souvenirs his memory could recall. In my more youthful days, I was a privileged companion of this amiable, if not always trustworthy, chronicler. As such, I found seven different houses pointed out as the scene of the death of Chatterton, before I became absolutely sceptical.

R

NOISE AND STUDY.

ETURNING the other day from Malvern, I broke my journey, as I always love to do, at Oxford. But few hours had I in the most attractive and picturesque of English cities. They were enough, however, to intensify a feeling of astonishment, not unmixed with indignation, I had experienced at my last visit. While resting a couple of years ago beneath the hospitable roof of St. John's, I found my slumbers regularly broken at daylight by a steam horn, loud enough to awaken the "seven sleepers." Bad enough anywhere, unbearable in a town supposedly devoted to study, was this noise. It was as nothing to what I experienced on my last visit. At the present time, every vendor of a newspaper patrols the .streets of Oxford armed with a bell of portentous dimensions which he rings incessantly. As there are at times as many as half-a-dozen of these demons in the same street at the same time, and as the bells are all in different keys, the clangour is simply indescribable. Vainly did I take refuge in the Clarendon, with the hope of solacing myself with dinner in that eminent and most respectable hostelry.

For the reason, I suppose, that strangers are believed to be in especial need of newspapers, the hotel was the subject of a perpetual siege. In the end I simply gave up the combat, abandoning my intention of remaining in Oxford until the following morning, and came to town to sleep. Harrowing enough to the jaded Londoners are muffin bells, tramway bells, and church bells. Such a discord as prevails in that venerable abode of learning, Oxford, is I think elsewhere unknown.

OXFORD, THE RINGING ISLAND OF RABELAIS.

WEET city with the dreaming spires," Mr. Arnold, in an inspired

has known its shelter is bound to love. Sound indeed must be the sleep of the spires if they can dream through such hubbub as now exists. Had things in the sixteenth century been as they now are, I could have believed that Rabelais had taken from Oxford his idea of the "Ile sonnante." It would be easy still to find traces remaining of the Siticines, who were translated into birds, and became clerghawks, priesthawks, bishhawks, &c. Very unlike-so far as regards the sources of information at his command-Braguibus, the petit bon homme, natif de Glenay, who instructed Pantagruel and his comrades as to the significance of the clamour in Ringing Island, was the hotel waiter a petit bon homme natif, apparemment, de Cork-to whom alone I could apply; and the meaning of the indecency of such illegal noises being allowed in a city like Oxford I could not learn. All but omnipotent is in a University town the rule of the college dignitaries over civic affairs. What has come over the "Dons " I know not, but, altering Byron, I feel inclined to ask

Are their ears grown deaf or their hearts grown cold?

All I know is, that a place less fit for the residence of a student than Oxford now is cannot easily be found.

I

A HIGHLAND TOUR.

HAVE frequently been struck by the large number of Englishmen who, familiar with almost every nook and corner of the Continent, know little of England itself, and still less of Scotland. It is a hackneyed remark (originating probably in the north) that many Londoners derive their only ideas of the "Scotch natives either from the oysters of that name, or from the wooden and kilted figures one occasionally sees, in the attitude of snuff-offertory, at tobacconists' shop-doors. Yet, a trip down the Caledonian Canal

which is really a chain of [lovely lakes-or a sail up Loch Lomond (an hour's ride by rail from Glasgow), a drive through the Trossachs, or the sail on Loch Katrine, will show the tourist that within the boundaries of Britain there is scenery which, as I heard an outspoken American remark last year, "licks the Rhine into fits." To those of my readers who are in any wise hesitating about the selection of a summer holiday-tour, let me recommend the "Royal Route " to the Scotch Highlands, carried out by Mr. David Macbrayne of Glasgow. If my itinerant friends will take the mail from Euston at 8.50 P.M., they will be landed in Greenock next morning in time to step on board as magnificent a steamer as they have ever seen. This is the "Columba." Away from Greenock at a rate of 20 miles an hour, they will cleave the waters of the Clyde, first breakfasting on boardfor the Macbrayne cuisine is everywhere perfection, and the salmon would alone have sent Mrs. Gamp into an ecstasy. Through the Kyles of Bute to Ardrishaig we pass, and then another Macbrayne steamer, with funnel red below and black above, takes us through the Crinan Canal, where the "Iona" will bear us to Oban, redolent of William Black and of John Stuart Blackie. Oban is a kind of Macbrayne centre. One day you can go in a Macbrayne steamer to Iona, Staffa, and back, and see the old Cathedral and the wondrous "Clam-shell” cave. Another day you will take boat for Banavie, and then away you fly up the Caledonian Canal to Inverness. Thence, if so minded, you may take train to Aberdeen and return to your "own place" by sea or rail, as you please. Or if you care not for this circular tour, Mr. Macbrayne will board and lodge you for as long as you please on one or other of his nice red-funnelled steamers sailing to Stornoway, and calling at Portree, Tobermory, and goodness knows where besides. You will live like a prince (I speak from experience), and you will inhale ozone enough to clear away the mental fogs and cobwebs of all the rest of the year. I can't help thinking that the name of Macbrayne must be better known in the "Hielands" than even that of the Prince of Wales; and I know that all the Gaels swear by "Muster Macbrayne," and the red funnels that bring them into contact with civilisation and likewise with the "wherewithal" of the Southron and Sassenach.

UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM.

F it is curious to see how history repeats itself, it is no less

intentionally no doubt, but still with amazing accuracy.

all heard of the recent case of alleged plagiarism of the story of a

novel in the manufacture of a play, and it is difficult to pronounce any opinion on the merits of such a case, simply because outsiders are forced to take the statements of the two sides, and to endeavour to strike a balance of probability between them. But those cases of resemblance which are the most interesting, are decidedly those in which it is to be presumed there has been merely an unconscious following in the footsteps of another. Such a case I have recently stumbled across. There is a little-known poem of Robert Burns, called "Let not woman e'er complain," which certainly might have formed a model for a song of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's in his "Trial by Jury." Here is the Scottish bard's song

Let not woman e'er complain

Of inconstancy in love;

Let not woman e'er complain

Fickle man is apt to rove.
Look abroad through nature's range,
Nature's mighty law is change;
Ladies, would it not be strange

Man should then a monster prove?

Mark the winds and mark the skies,
Ocean's ebb and ocean's flow;
Sun and moon but set to rise,
Round and round the seasons go.
Why, then, ask, of silly man

To oppose great nature's plan?
We'll be constant while we can-
You can be no more, you know.

Now, for the sake of comparison, here is the verse of Mr. Gilbert-addressed, of course, to the unsympathising jury—

O! Gentlemen, listen, I pray,

Though I own that my heart has been ranging,

Of nature the laws I obey,

For nature is constantly changing;

The moon in her phases is found,

The time and the wind and the weather,

The months in succession come round,

And you don't find two Mondays together.

(Chorus.)

It seems quite evident that, without necessarily the slightest acquaintance with Burns's poem, Mr. Gilbert has written a song which in spirit is simply a reproduction of the sentiment in the Scottish bard-opinions which, alas, he acted up to, with what grievous success let anyone who wishes to learn read Mr. R. Louis Stevenson's last volume of essays, "Familiar Studies of Men and Books." As Mr. Stevenson hails from the "Land of Cakes," and is therefore "a brither Scot," it will not be presumed that he sees the peccadilloes of "rantin', rovin' Robin" through prejudiced spectacles.

SYLVANUS URBAN.

THE

GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE

W

AUGUST 1882.

DUST: A NOVEL.

BY JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

Only the actions of the Just

Smell sweet and blossom in the Dust.

CHAPTER XVII.

HEN Mr. Grant got to the door of the building, he found Sir Francis Bendibow awaiting him there in a small but stylish turn-out with two horses. He took his 'seat beside Sir Francis on the box, and the footman sat behind, with his arms folded. In this fashion they drove westward.

The baronet knew how to make himself an entertaining companion, and he made himself one on this occasion. He talked volubly and genially, giving his companion all the gossip of the society of that day, which, somehow, seems to have been more amusing and eventful, and to have possessed more character and variety, than is the case in our times. The footman with folded arms had often listened to his master's conversational sallies, but had never heard him so agreeable as on the present occasion, and inferred that the gentleman, his companion, who said very little, but whose manner was courteous and attentive, must either be a particular friend of his master's, or else some one from whom he had received or was anticipating a favour. "We should see more of each other, you know, Grant," the baronet observed with heartiness. "A man makes a lot of acquaintances as he moves on in the world; but, damme, there are no friends like the friends of one's youth, after all. No friend has been more often in my thoughts during the last twenty years than you have been; and good reason, too!" To which, and to much more of the same tendency, Mr. Grant responded by a few words of grave and composed politeness. Altogether it was a very VOL. CCLIII. NO. 1820.

K