Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 4).djvu/421

 in the evening with the Bishop of Winchester!"

In a glass case is Byron's "Euripides' Hecuba"; some Latin exercises written by Sir Robert Peel when at Harrow in 1804, and letters from Wellington, Faraday, Landseer, and Sydney Smith. An archer's dress of white satin and silver lace worn at Harrow on the day of shooting for the silver arrow is preserved, together with a couple of the silver arrows competed for.

We cross the road, up the steep stony incline to the church, and stand for a moment by the tomb—now railed in—on which Byron used to sit and dream. From the place of poetry to the spot of pugilism is but a few steps. The latter is the old milling ground where Byron fought his battles.

The streams where we swam and the fields where we fought.

"At Harrow I fought my way very fairly. I think I lost but one battle out of seven," Byron wrote to a friend. But the place of milling is no more. The courtyard is no longer used as a grand stand by the boys; the masters no longer have to shut their eyes to a pugilistic encounter. The days of fights are o'er, and the patch of once famous land now grows very long grass and is used as a practice ground for the Morris tube.

All that remains of the old school stands here. Here is the old fourth form, with its oaken benches and panels, tiny windows, and huge Elizabethan mantelpiece—its quaint old desks and chairs. It forms the Harrow scroll of fame, for on the walls and benches, on the doors—aye, everywhere—the pen-knife of many a famous man has cut into the wood. Here is "Byron," and in the next panel to the poet is "H. Temple, 1800." "R. Peel" is in big letters near the Head Master's seat; "Haddo" (Lord Aberdeen), "R. B. Sheridan"—until very recently a direct descendant of Sheridan was in the school—and near the floor, in very small letters, "H. E. Manning, 1824." No walls were ever so famously decorated as these. The old fourth form is now only used for prayers and birching. A