s I am.

Not but what there has been a solemn and sad side to it. As the old
scenes became living, and the actors in them became living, too, many
a grave in the Crimea and distant India, as well as in the quiet
church-yards of our dear old country, seemed to open and send forth
their dead, and their voices, and looks, and ways were again in one's
ears and eyes, as in the old school-days. But this was not sad; how
should it be, if we believe as our Lord has taught us? How should it
be, when one more turn of the wheel, and we shall be by their sides
again, learning from them again, perhaps, as we did when we were new
boys?

Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once, who had
somehow or another just gone clean out of sight--are they dead or
living? We know not, but the thought of them brings no sadness with
it. Wherever they are, we can well believe they are doing God's work,
and getting His wages.

SCHOOL MEMORIES.

But are there not some, whom we still see sometimes in the streets,
whose haunts and homes we know, whom we could probably find almost any
day in the week if we were set to do it, yet from whom we are really
further than we are from the dead, and from those who have gone out of
our ken?[1] Yes, there are and must be such; and therein lies the
sadness of old school memories. Yet of these our old comrades, from
whom more than time and space separate us, there are some by whose
sides we can feel sure that we shall stand again when time shall be no
more. We may think of one another now as dangerous fanatics or narrow
bigots, with whom no truce is possible, from whom we shall only sever
more and more to the end of our lives, whom it would be our respective
duties to imprison or hang, if we had the power. We must go our way,
and they theirs, as long as flesh and spirit hold together; but let
our own Rugby poet speak words of healing for this trial:--

"To veer how vain! on, onward strain,
Brave barks! in light, in darkness, too;
Through winds and tides one compass guides,--
To that, and your own selves, be true.

"But, O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er, that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.

"One port, methought, alike they sought,
One purpose hold where'er they fare,
O bounding breeze! O rushing seas!
At last, at last, unite them there!"--_Clough._[2]

This is not mere longin