istinctly we remember the zest with which the wretched waiting for evil
tidings was exchanged for hopeful activity; the rush of preparations; the
anxiety which watched their passage through the ordeal of practice; the
growing sense of security; the mellowing down of novelty and privation
into routine and ease; the contrast, all the while, between the outward
peace of the colony, and the secret difficulties of finance and
commissariat; the long intermittent crisis which gave the administrative
no rest; the hopes and efforts for our return home, and the reversal of
them; all this, and--and--very much else as well, which was of acutest
interest at the time, and which it will become convenient to describe
only when it will be of interest to no one. All this passes before us in
the series of a long dissolving view, full of bright lights, and only
less full of unlovely shadows.

And, somehow, as we review the past this evening, pacing the beach in the
twilight, the fact accomplished seems to us not smaller, but greater than
when we lived in it. There are moments some would say of illusion, some
of vision--when the things most familiar to our eyes and thoughts,
whether in nature or human society, surprise us with a dignity and beauty
not discovered in them before. That glamour is in the air this evening.
Perhaps the night-wind, which creeps to us from over the grassy tomb of
Taliesin, warrior and bard has touched the fancy with a breath out of his
heroic days. What wonder if it were so? Thirteen centuries ago the hero
became the guardian of the shore; but the story which ends to-day is,
perhaps, as worthy note as any he has watched from his hill-side. Those
who rate the dignity of human action by other standards than the breadth
and conspicuousness of its stage, will not mock us because we find some
stuff of romance in the homely circumstance and not always epic passages
of this modern episode of school.

But if the stranger who may read the tale will spare his scorn--those for
whom we shall tell it would forgive even a bolder word; for some of them
were themselves a part of it, and others will make it a part of their
heritage in the past. English schools have always honoured their
traditions, counting them the better part of their wealth. Some have
majestic memories of royal benefactors, or can point to a muster-roll of
splendid names, whose greatness was cradled in their walls. Such
traditions are not ours. A past,