regeneration which
releases us from I know not what original sin. And if a man does not
see that, he is a fool, such a fool that I shouldn't wonder if he
gravely asked me to explain what I meant by original sin in such a
connection. . . ."

So his thoughts reverted to the school he had left in 1892. In October,
1897, he returned to it on a visit. He was the guest of one of the house
masters, Mr. Tait, and on Friday evening, October 29th, gave an address to
the boys of the house. He had spoken for some minutes with brightness and
vigour, when his voice grew thick and he was seen to stagger. He died in
less than two hours.

His letters have been collected and piously given to the world by Mr.
Irwin, one of his closest friends. By far the greatest number of them
belong to those last five years in the Island--the happiest, perhaps, of
his life, certainly the happiest temperamentally. "Never the time and the
place . . ." but at least Brown was more fortunate than most men.
He realised his dream, and it did not disappoint him. He could not carry
off his friends to share it (and it belongs to criticism of these volumes
to say that he was exceptionally happy in his friends), but he could
return and visit them or stay at home and write to them concerning the
realisation, and be sure they understood. Therefore, although we desire
more letters of the Clifton period--although twenty years are omitted,
left blank to us--those that survive confirm a fame which, although never
wide, was always unquestioned within its range. There could be no
possibility of doubt concerning Brown. He was absolute. He lived a
fierce, shy, spiritual life; a wise man, keeping the child in his heart:
he loved much and desired permanence in the love of his kind.
"Diuturnity," says his great seventeenth-century namesake, "is a dream and
folly of expectation. There is nothing strictly immortal but
immortality." And yet, _prosit amasse!_

The railway took me on to Oxford--

"Like faithful hound returning
For old sake's sake to each loved track
With heart and memory burning."

"I well remember," writes Mrs. Green of her husband, the late John Richard
Green, "the passionate enthusiasm with which he watched from the train for
the first sight of the Oxford towers against the sky:" and although our
enthusiasm nowadays has to feed on a far tamer view than that which
saluted our forefathers when the stage-c