All round thy girdling reefs, That walk thy shore, Memories of joys and griefs Ours evermore.

`I have NOT worked for my classes this session,' he writes (1884), `and shall not take any places.' The five or six most distinguished pupils used, at least in my time, to receive prize-books decorated with the University's arms. These prize-men, no doubt, held the `places' alluded to by Murray. If HE was idle, `I speak of him but brotherly,' having never held any `place' but that of second to Mr. Wallace, now Professor of Moral Philosophy at Oxford, in the Greek Class (Mr. Sellar's). Why was one so idle, in Latin (Mr. Shairp), in Morals (Mr. Ferrier), in Logic (Mr. Veitch)? but Logic was unintelligible.

`I must confess,' remarks Murray, in a similar spirit of pensive regret, `that I have not had any ambition to distinguish myself either in Knight's (Moral Philosophy) or in Butler's.' { 1}

Murray then speaks with some acrimony about earnest students, whose motive, he thinks, is a small ambition. But surely a man may be fond of metaphysics for the sweet sake of Queen Entelechy, and, moreover, these students looked forward to days in which real work would bear fruit.

`You must grind up the opinions of Plato, Aristotle, and a lot of other men, concerning things about which they knew nothing, and we know nothing, taking these opinions at second or third hand, and never looking into the works of these men; for to a man who wants to take a place, there is no time for anything of that sort.'

Why not? The philosophers ought to be read in their own language, as they are now read. The remarks on the most fairy of philosophers--Plato; on the greatest of all minds, that of Aristotle, are boyish. Again `I speak but brotherly,' remembering an old St. Leonard's essay in which Virgil was called `the furtive Mantuan,' and another, devoted to ridicule of Euripides. But Plato and Aristotle we never blasphemed.

Murray adds that he thinks, next year, of taking the highest Greek Class, and English Literature. In the latter, under Mr. Baynes, he took the first place, which he mentions casually to Mrs. Murray about a year after date:-

`A sweet life and an idle He lives from year to year, Unknowing bit or bridle, There are no Proctors here.'