on the principle which may best be expressed in the family motto of a former Editor (Mr Graves), Aquila non captat muscas. In an extract from Punch in the Johniana of last Term, I am accredited with the remark, 'I think it best to wind up with a poetical quotation.' What then shall it be? What can be better than those admirable verses of a poet of our own, bearing the title quoted in our menu, nunc te, Bacche, canam'? If my memory fails me at any point, perhaps some of the Editors on whose behalf I am responding will help me to remember them.

Dr Sandys then recited the last forty lines of the poem in question (which may be found reprinted in Mr Bowling's Sagittulae, pp. 48–51); adding in conclusion: 'On behalf of the Editors of the past, I challenge the Editors of the present to match that poem in the future.'

The rest of the evening was spent in a manner that not Arculus himself could have described as either 'pipeless' or 'friendless,' and it was past midnight when the guests parted, promising to meet again on the Eagle's fortieth birthday.

OUR FIRST FLIGHT.

HE Eagle has now reached the respectable age of 30 years and more, and I am asked for reminiscences of its origin to be placed at the disposal of its present Editors.

It was the product of a certain Shakespeare Society consisting of five members, all of us undergraduates of St John's. They were W. G. Adams, now Professor of Natural Philosophy in King's College, London; T. H. Bush, now the Rector of Christchurch, Hants; T. Ashe, a writer and poet too little known to fame; W. E. Mullins, Master of the Modern Side of Marlborough College; and myself, now the Headmaster of Clifton College.

Of these five the one who most impressed the few men who knew him was Ashe. He was dreamy and immature, but shewed flashes of genius: he was often a brilliant contributor to our Saturday evenings. He took orders, gave them up, and has since published many volumes of poetry which have not taken the public fancy, but exhibit all the finest elements of the poetic mind. In the first number he wrote the second article, How far a poet may copy from a picture without plagiarism, not at all a characteristic essay; and the little poem on Arion (p. 22). The verses on Taking Heart (p. 93) are fully characteristic of his style at that time.

Bush was a remarkable man from his knowledge of languages. We never got to the end of his list. Besides modern languages, namely French and German and Italian, he certainly knew Hebrew, Chaldee, Samaritan, Arabic, Persian, and a few more Oriental

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languages. We had no notion that he knew AngloSaxon also till he produced the article on p. 113. He applied to the Bishop of Salisbury for work in his diocese, asking for a neglected district in which there was no church or school or endowment. The Bishop accommodated him with the hamlet of Burton near Christchurch. There Bush settled, and took pupils, and successively built schools and church and vicarage, and endowed the parish, he being when he started as penniless as the poorest curate that ever took Holy Orders. After some years there he was transferred to the important post of Rector of Christchurch.

Adams was not a contributor to the magazine. He was a brother of the great Cambridge Professor, a genial companion, and a sound and strong but not fluent mathematician.

Mullins was the father of the Society. A year or two older than the rest of us, except perhaps Bush, a disciple of Maurice, Kingsley, Ludlow, and Hughes; a reader of Goethe, when young readers of Goethe were rare, he was mentally far in advance of us. Among his early articles I recognise Paley's Moral Philosophy and Our College Chapel.

I believe I was the chief undergraduate editor, and wrote the first article, Grappling, the note on The Quarto Editions of Othello, Shakespeare Societies, and some others. Our Shakespeare Society contributed the first idea of the magazine, and two editors, Mullins and myself: but we invited Arthur Holmes, the brilliant classical scholar of that day, to join us. He wrote us Sketches of Alcester by an old Alcestrian; and sent us that exquisite translation from Tibullus, which he had actually sent up in the Craven Scholarship Examination in 1856.

S. Butler also joined us, as a senior editor. He wrote, as far as I recollect, the article On English Composition and other matters, and that only. He went

out to New Zealand, and had a somewhat strange life. He was the author of a rather well-known book Erewhon, a Utopia. Of late years I have lost sight of him, but the Eagle notes from time to time his successive 'Opera:'

Finally comes our senior editor, the Rev J. B. Mayor, who is not forgotten in Cambridge. He was one of a band of young Fellows who really cared for the undergraduates. St John's was fortunate at that day in its junior Fellows; but among them all were none who did so much for us, by way of stimulus and guidance, as J. B. Mayor. He wrote the article on Classical Studies. I think it was due largely to his influence and wisdom that the Eagle was born with so healthy a constitution as to have survived all the College vicissitudes and successive generations for thirty years.

The appearance of the Eagle was followed by that of the Lion. It burst upon the University with a roar from Trinity. But it proved to be the work, wholly or mainly, of one man, now known as the Rev H. R. Haweis, and it only survived for two numbers. It was extinguished, mocked out of its ephemeral existence, laughed to death by the Bear.

I hope the Bear survives in some form accessible to Cambridge antiquarians. It was written wholly by G. O. Trevelyan, in indignation at the Lion. Leading article, poetry, illustrations, essays, notices to correspondents, and even advertisements, were all the work of Trevelyan, and I still think that among all his squibs of that period this was the wittiest. No second number of the Bear was needed. The Lion died silently. The modest Eagle still survives. J. M. WILSON,

Clifton College,

February 6, 1889.

A FORTNIGHT IN BURMA.

EN the principle, I presume, that every old Johnian who travels in far-off lands is in duty bound to contribute something to his College Magazine,* I have been asked, and have willingly consented, to write down a few of the impressions formed in the course of a fortnight's stay in Burma during the month of February of last year. As all ideas thus hastily picked up are liable to be imperfect, I do not lay claim to any special knowledge of the country or its people, but write merely as a casual observer from notes taken at the time.

Rangoon, the first Burmese port I arrived at, is a splendid town containing over 200,000 inhabitants, mostly Burmans, but including also other nationalities such as English, Chinese, natives of India, Malays, Shans, Karens, Portuguese, Italians, Dutch, and so on. It derives its importance mainly from its good approaches by sea, being situated about thirty miles inland from the mouth of the Irrawaddy river. Its site before the British occupation in 1852 was occupied by a mere collection of huts. Most of the trade of Lower and Upper Burma passes through Rangoon, and the rice and teak export trades are every year assuming larger dimensions.

In its public buildings Rangoon is far ahead of many Eastern seaports, and the streets and roads in and about the capital are good, clean, and well-lighted.

A very laudable principle-EDD. Eagle.