LEAVES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 615 



.selves. "There is no name," the note says, "more honoured by- 

 good men in England, among Anglo-American bishops, than that of 

 Bishop Strachan of Toronto." — Dr. Wordsworth, the Master of 

 Trinity, was a Conservative of a strict type. Many of his Fellows 

 were known to be advanced Whigs, and to be in confidential com- 

 munication with Earl Grey and other members of the Government. 

 Peacock, Snowball, and one or two other Fellows of the Conservative 

 College of St. John's, were also of the advanced school. The period 

 of 1832 and onwards, was an agitated one. The air was full of 

 Reform, which, to the minds of not a few, meant Revolution. We, 

 youthful onlookers, too unwotting at the time, of the grave issues at 

 stake in Church and Commonwealth, used occasionally to amuse our- 

 selves by marking the countenances of our superiors, detecting, as 

 we would fancy, the interchange, now and then, of unamiable glances 

 between groups known to be politically opposed ; between the Master 

 of Trinity, for example, and his friends, and Whewell, or Sedgwick, 

 or Thirlwall, and their friends, as they passed and repassed each other 

 when pacing round and round, for exercise, on a rainy day, the three 

 sides of the cloisters in ISTeville's Court. There, dons of the highest 

 grade, used to be seen intermingled with the ordinary ruck of M.A's, 

 B.A's, questionists, three-year men, and other undergraduates, down 

 even to freshmen, all in rapid circulation, but in non-interfering 

 streams, — the whole Court resounding with animated talk heard 

 above the quick, energetic patter of stout-soled shoes on the stone 

 pavement of the cloisters. — On a lesser scale, a like curious scene of 

 collected notabilities, passing and repassing one another in groups, at 

 ,a modest pace however now, was to be beheld in the ante-chapel of 

 Trinity on Sunday afternoons, just before Divine service began, while 

 the men and others were assembling. Here, again, we detected 

 glances, slightly defiant, interchanged, intensified by the glare given 

 to the eyes by the intervention of spectacles worn in many instances? 

 the lenses in some of them being of the old-fashioned large circular 

 kind, seen in the portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Bishop 

 Home, requiring the countenance to be brought round, sometimes in 

 a sudden and startling manner, for the purpose of fairly confronting 

 the object. — From an autograph letter of Dr. Wordsworth's I now 

 transcribe a brief passage. Again we have a glimpse into a busy 

 English life. " I must be in Cambridge," he says to his correspon- 

 dent, "on Thursday at the latest, as we have much important 



