In the morning the blackened ruins looked desolate and dismal; only the walls and stone staircase of the old sixteenth-century house remained, with the peatstack still smoking and smouldering close by. A chest of drawers blistered and smoked, a blanket and a few odd garments were in the yard, all that had been saved except the varied spoils of the dairy. The homeless Occupants of the farm surveyed the scene disconsolate, though borne up to some extent by the knowledge that they were for the moment the personages of supreme importance in the village. The kindly sympathy of the moorland farmers did much to make difficulties easy, till the walls of a less picturesque, but more sanitary, dwelling rose again, and the activities of the farm were in full swing once more. Among the somewhat circumscribed interests of a Dartmoor hamlet it will be long before the fire at Higher Merripit ceases to hold prominence in the conclaves and cogitations of the neighbourhood.

H. W. H.

ODE ON PROGRESS.

O MOULDERS of this earth, unresting throng
Of mortals, passing on her busy ways,

Mirthful and toiling underneath the sun,
Your glory and your praise

I sing whom Fate has held apart from you,
Long wrapt in other thoughts and dreaming long,
Withheld from what ye do.

The woods and hills I knew them many a one,
The birds that sing naught human in their lay
Whate'er of them the sacred poet tells:

And silent lakes I knew,

That hold upon their breast of waters grey
New skies, new hills and faery-trodden dells,
Where nothing mortal dwells

And nothing of our growth or our decay.

But coming now along these quiet shores
I gaze upon the tracts of wrinkled waves,
Not heeding them nor that day-pallid moon
Who their far tides enslaves:

Another thought doth rule me, other life
I see that labours still and ever wars,
With Nature still at strife,

And seeming victor vanquish'd all too soon.
What freak of destiny is that which made
Man fight against the destiny of all,
A world of changes rife,

Whose law is that the haphazard be obey'd,

That each should live by chance and rise and fall, As veering chance may call

Things heedless of themselves to flower or fade?

Here from this cove of silvery wave-worn sand,
Enclosed by weed clad rocks and crystal pools,
The haunt of life that lives and wills no more,
Here, ere the twilight rules,

The fishermen put forth and take their way
To where the shoals swim nearest to the land,
Mindful of many a day

To come when winter rages on the shore,
And labouring to make certain and assured
Life, of all things least stable and most frail;
But with long forethought they,

Floating upon the night-waves mist-obscured,
Plan out the year, when fickle tide or gale
Makes the sea-harvest fail;

Yet fails not hope or courage long-inured.

Far otherwise it was

In that primeval monster-bearing age,

When the first scatter'd tribes, without more laws
Than hunger, fear and rage,

Wander'd amid the forests, glutted now,

Now famine-pinch'd; when lust and ravin fired.
Fierce eyes and apish brow

And minds that never knew that they aspired.

Upward they climb'd from that dark life and prone,
Upward they look'd and found the higher light;

New thoughts came to them, duty, love and awe,
New sorrow, new delight:

The glorious world roll'd outward from them, show'd
Its life apart, what no brute beast had known;

And far above them glow'd

The heavens that made and follow'd steadfast law;
And there they saw or seem'd to see the power
That call'd them to a greater destiny,

Imposed the heavier load:

And pride seem'd theirs, theirs seem'd the earth for dower, The wilderness for them grew rich with rye:

So still our hopes are high

In the first flourish of our youthful hour.

So first they strove and found The long necessity of things array'd

Against them the drench'd harvest strow'd the ground;

The sea rush'd in and made

Riot amid their homes and wasted toil;

The earth shook under them, and tottering fell
On the volcanic soil

Long-labour'd fane and column'd citadel.

Yet great was their achievement and their praise,
So mighty and so dread the enemy,
Unconquerable Nature whose supreme
Resolve at last must be.

Fair cities and proud states they made adorn'd
With temples and with towers to outlast the days,
And by the days were scorn'd.

But works they were in which mankind could dream
Itself eternalized and lord of Time:

The mind created more than Life unroll'd,
The ideal of joy, and mourn'd
The secrecy of pain in glorious rhyme;
The statuary could conceive and mould
Perfection that may hold

Immortal life in some immortal clime.

Was this for utter ruin? Ruin came
With death and cold oblivion over all,

City and state and law and government;
And thriving on their fall

Have new arisen, will again arise

And for their hour possess the bruit of fame;
But more this world denies.

So Nature gives, and so her gift is spent,
Thus would she seem most alien to desires,
That must be of her, for her sons are we.
Then in their dreams were wise,

Who heed not what the moment's race acquires
Through year on year and flitting century:
No single age may be

That realm for which the abiding mind aspires.

THE GEOLOGY OF THE COLLEGE CHAPEL.*

HE present chapel was consecrated on May 12, 1869. The foundations of the old one may be seen projecting just above the ground in the first court. That had formed part of the Hospital of St John, which had been granted to the Lady Margaret when she was contemplating the foundation of St John's College. The Hospital chapel, which had been erected about 1280,† was transferred—at least the part used for worship-into a rather inornate Tudor structure, covered outside with plaster to conceal the patching. On the north side three arches led into the chantry of Bishop Fisher, which was afterwards fitted with seats. Still north of this was a building about half the length of the original chapel, with its eastern gable abutting on the street It contained several sets of small rooms, was approached by a passage between the eastern end of the chapel and the street, and was

The substance of a lecture to the St John's College Natural History Society on January 21st. The part dealing with the history of the buildings and one or two geological discussions of a more general character have been somewhat condensed. The monuments and memorial tablets are excluded.

A full history of the foundation and subsequent changes will be found in Willis and Clark's Architectural History of Cambridge, Vol. II. Sect. 12. The buildings mentioned above are shown on Loggan's Cantabrigia Illustrata, Plates xxvi and xxvii.

A full description by the late Professor Cardale Babington, with a plan shewing the the position of the new and old building and illustrations, will be found in the Eagle, vol. 1v., p. 253, and a brief statement of the materials employed and other matters connected with the New Chapel in vol. VI., p. 333.