communication, and the association with them in their work is to my mind one of the happiest incidents of my present position. I would, indeed, that this thought had been without the drawback that, at the very moment of my return, I in common with the whole of the rest of the University should have to lament the loss of one [Dr. Shirley], noble, good, and wise far beyond his years, who had watched and worked for the development of this study from the day of its introduction to Oxford, whose labours and influence were ever used for good and for everything that was good, whose early promotion and effective character had marked him out as the man who was to do great things for the University and the Church of God in this age. Seldom has so much promise, seldom have so great earnests of great work been so sadly or so fatally blighted : we cannot look that his place can ever in all respects be so filled that there will not still be much, very much, to desiderate ; for it is not Oxford alone that laments him, nor the cause of Historical study only with which he had identified himself both here and throughout the literary world. But I will not touch on questions beyond the scope of my present consideration. Besides the very advantageous position which, without nursing, I repeat, our study has attained here, in men, books, and honours, the immense treasures of historical lore which are now being poured liberally from the great storehouses of record throughout Europe, but most especially in England, form a feature of the present time that promises to renew the youth of the Historic Muse. The great Continental collections of Historians are growing slowly but substantially ; the German collection, begun in 1826, nearly rivals the French one a century its .senior ; the Sardinian Government had one of its own, which we may hope will not be smothered for the sake of more ambitious plans ; the Vatican itself, under the kindly influence of a German Oratorian, has