LEA.VES THEY HAVE TOUCHED. 625 



The day then droopt : the chapel bells 



Call'd us ; we left the walks : we mixt with those 



Six hundred maidens clad in purest white, 



Before two streams of light from wall to wall, 



While the great organ almost burst his pipes, 



Groaning for power, and rolling through the court 



A long melodious thunder to the sound 



Of solemn psalms, and silver litanies. 



The work of Ida, to call down from Heaven 



A blessing on her labours for the world. 



Wordsworth was of St. John's, where a portrait of him hangs, near 

 one of William Wilberforce, also a foi*mer member of this college. 

 In his poem entitled the Prelude, Wordsworth speaks largely of St. 

 John's, and of his own life there. He describes particularly the 

 well-remembered " twin-clock " as he calls it, which strikes the hours 

 and quarters t-svice, first in a low key and then in a high. On 

 examination days, when time is exceedingly precious, a very limited 

 portion of it being allowed for each paper, the hours and quarters, as 

 reported by this clock, used to fly with frightful rapidity. Coleridge 

 was of Jesus College, which he speaks of with afiection in his 

 writings. Bulwer was of Truiity Hall.— I now show a relic of 

 Julius Charles Hare. It is a copy of the " Epistolse Ho-Elianse, or 

 Familiar Letters, Domestic and Foreign, by James Howell ; " who 

 having been repeatedly dispatched to the Continent on commercial 

 business, became an accomplished modern linguist. He lived 1594- 

 1666. I have not lighted on any stray allusion to Howell in the 

 " Guesses at Truth," but I have no doubt the little tome which I 

 possess has often been ui Hare's hands. It contains his book-plate 

 and engraved name, and it treats here and there of matters of special 

 interest to a connoisseur in orthogra.phy. My own interest in Julius 

 Charles Hare was first awakened in 1833 at Cambridge. Everyone 

 in 1833, and for several years later, was urged to study a work on 

 the title-page of which appeared his name. This was Connop Thirl- 

 wall and Julius Charles Hare's joint trai^slation of Mebuhr's Eome. 

 It was a book, we were told, which was about to revolutionize men's 

 ideas in i-egard to history in general ; and we must read it ; must get 

 it up, as the phrase was : and I doubt not that with many, now well 

 on in life, the examination of that first English translation of 

 Niebuhr formed an epoch in their mental history. Both Thirlwall 

 and Hare were then, or had been quite lately, Fellows of Trinity. 



