It savours of the improbable to assert that the life-careers of my school-comrades have proved to be mainly in development of their boyish traits of character; yet in the majority of instances such has been the case.

Sir James Martin, late Chief Justice of New South Wales, was always facile princeps among us—in every class, in every subject. He may not have posed as a too industrious worker, but, whatever his method, he mastered every department of knowledge which he essayed with unvarying success. That he, in common with most of the \'old boys,\' wrote with ease and effectiveness was due, perhaps, to the care bestowed upon the study of English composition. It was a speciality of the school. Hugh Ranclaud once produced an essay so polished and scholarly that suspicion of plagiarism was aroused. A subject was given to him, \'Marauders by land or sea,\' to work out under supervision. He emerged triumphantly from the ordeal. The first numbers of Pickwick appearing about that time, in green covers, if I mistake not, Martin commenced a tale, embodying a similar style of incident. I forget the title now, but some numbers were printed. It was a boy\'s audacious imitation, but even at this distance of time I recall the undoubted ability of his performance. Part of the action was laid in London, a city, strangely enough (though he knew more of its history and topography than many a dweller within sound of Bow Bells), that he was never destined to behold.

William Forster was much the same kind of boy as he was a man: obstinately honest, uncompromising, detesting the expedient; clever at classics and mathematics, yet with a 361strong leaning to poetry. He left us to go to the King\'s School at Parramatta, then in charge of the Rev. Mr. Forrest, Hovenden. Hely, Whistler and Eustace Smith, Moule, the Rossi Brothers, Walter Lamb, and a large contingent of Stephens were contemporaries. Alfred of that ilk and I were great chums. He was a steady worker, as were most of that branch of his family. Consett (Connie) was then a handsome, clever boy, who could learn anything when he liked, but was not over-fond of work. Matthew Henry (now a Supreme Court judge), on the other hand, was an insatiable acquirer of knowledge, and bore off a bagful of prizes, so to speak, at every examination. Frank, his cousin, was not over-eager about draughts from the Pierian spring, which led to misunderstandings between him and our worthy master; but he was famous for tenacity of purpose and indomitable resolution, qualities which served him well in after-life. Among the boys who came comparatively late was George Rowley. He must have been fourteen, at least, and by no means forward. In two years he was not far from the head of the school. The Brennans—John, the late sheriff, and his brother Joseph—David Moore, a Minister of the Crown in Victoria in days to come, David Forbes, the present judge, and George Lord were the Spofforths, Bannermans, and Massies of that long-past day—old fashioned, perhaps, in a cricketing sense, but prophetic of triumphs to come.

There were fights now and then, and \'what for no?\' But these necessary conflicts were conducted with all proper decorum at the bottom of the playground. Mr. Cape, very properly, did not discourage them as long as there was no unfairness. I reminded Mr. William Crane, stipendiary magistrate, years since, of an obstinate engagement between us, in which his superior science gained the victory. I \'knocked back\' or put out a knuckle of my right hand (as our schoolboy phrase was) in that or some other desperate fray. Dr. Parsons, a medical friend whom I met in the street, reduced the swelling for me. The worthy stipendiary showed a similar displacement, attributable to the same cause, as we compared notes.

Ronald Cameron was one of our leading champions, being ready to fight anything or anybody at short notice. He challenged to the combat Cyrus Doyle, a long-limbed native, 362big enough to eat him, with the assurance of a gamecock defying an emu. He lost the fight, of course; but no other boy of his size in the school would have thought of commencing it. He had been at sea for a year, and was thereby enabled to tell us wonderful tales of his adventures among the South Sea Islands—much after the fashion of \'Jack Harkaway,\' who, however, like gas in the time of Guy Fawkes, \'wasn\'t then inwented.\' In after-years a report was current among us that he was lost at sea. Whether true or not I am unable to say. He certainly was, with the exception of Carden Collins, the most utterly fearless boy I ever saw.

Of course, with so large a school, under masters were required. These gentlemen were excellent teachers and conscientious disciplinarians. First came Mr. Murray, the English and arithmetical master; then Mr. O\'Brien, writing master and teacher of mathematics. He had a way of saying, when arrived at the Q.E.D. of a problem in Euclid, \'And the thing is done.\' How well I remember his desk and the pen he was always mending! No steel pens in those days. We had to learn to mend our own quill pens and keep them in good order. If the pens were bad and the writing suffered thereby, we suffered in person. This led to the careful preparation of the obsolete goose-quill—now a figure of speech, a thing of the past.

The Rev. Mr. Woolls was for a year or more classical master. He afterwards went to Parramatta and established himself independently. A fair-haired, ruddy-faced, Kingsley-looking young Englishman was he when he first came to Sydney College. He was the ideal tutor, and most popular with us all: strict in school, but full of life and gaiety when lessons were over.

The late Reverend David Boyd, afterwards of East Maitland, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, succeeded him. He was an accomplished person if you like: a first-rate classical scholar, with a fair knowledge of French, German, and Italian—possibly Hebrew, for he knew pretty well everything, from astronomy to single-stick, fencing to comparative philology. He rode, drove, shot, fished, painted, was musical, mathematical—a mesmerist doubtless. \'Omnibus rebus et quibusdem aliis\' ought to have been his motto. We boys looked upon him as a successor of the Admirable 363Crichton, and revered him accordingly. I was very glad when he \'followed the rush\' to Port Phillip in 1842, and gave the Hammonds, Howards, myself, and a few other ex-Sydney College boys our last year\'s teaching. We ought to have made the most of it, for, as none of us got any more, we had to rely upon those early years of conscientious grounding for the foundation of any edifice of learning we should elect to place thereon. It has proved extremely useful to all of us, and it was no one\'s fault but our own if we did not imbibe every form of useful knowledge short of what university training alone could have supplied.

Besides these gentlemen we had drawing and French masters. Mr. Rodius was a German artist, a painter in watercolours and a limner of likenesses in crayon. Many of the early celebrities will owe whatever immortality they may secure, to his industrious pencil. Still linger in old colonial mansions a few portraits, not obtruded perhaps, but too life-like to be lost sight of, bearing the signature \'C. Rodius.\' In our family scrap-album several water-colour sketches are to be seen, showing perhaps more than the portraits—which were necessary \'pot-boilers\' in that material age—the true artistic touch. He used to scold us, his pupils, for our indifference and inattention: \'Ven I was yong I did rone a whole mile every day so as to be in dime vor my bainding lezzon; I belief you would all rone a mile do esgabe it.\' I don\'t know that he succeeded in forming artists of that generation, but possibly we may have been rendered more appreciative of the paintings which most of us were to behold in the Galleries of Europe. Mr. Stanley, our French master, knew his Paris intimately, I doubt not. He had the Parisian accent, too, very different in quality from the provincial French which, when spoken fluently, enables so many professors of the language to pass muster. He was a man of distinguished bearing and \'club\' form, resembling curiously in appearance, and in some other ways, a late fashionable celebrity. Why he had come to live in a colony and teach French at a boarding-school we might wonder, but had no means of ascertaining. His life, doubtless, contained one of the romances of which Australia was at that time full. He was generous to all his pupils. No unkind word was ever said regarding him. He imparted to us a thorough comprehension of the genius of the language; and 364if we never fully probed the subtle distinctions of irregular verbs, it was no fault of his. Long afterwards, when at the Grand H?tel de Louvre, or the \'Trois Frères Provencaux,\' I was able to make my wants known, surrounded by British and American capitalists, sitting mute as fishes, I recalled with gratitude Mr. Stanley\'s faithful monitions.

One of our school games was, of course, that of \'fives.\' We played against one of the high gables of the college building, where the ground had been partially levelled; but it was rather rough still. A road-party was doing something to the present College Street when a master suggested that I should ask my friend Mr. Felton Mathew, then Surveyor-General and Chief Road-superintendent, to allow the men to complete our \'fives\' court. Mr. Mathew was our neighbour at Enmore; he bought the ground from my father on which he built Penselwood. My request was granted, and a party of men under an overseer soon made another place of it.

A tragical incident connected with the game occurred about this time. Some of the boys were playing in Sydney against a high wall in a court built for the purpose. It was not properly supported, for it fell suddenly, killing poor Billy Jones, who was one of the players. I don\'t think I remember any other accident. There was an epidemic of influenza, precisely like the \'fog fever\' of recent years in symptom, cause, and effect. It was universal, severe, and troublesome, but we all recovered in due time. Even \'fog fever,\' there............