R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

256 W. E. HeitlandThe author 1 was A. C. Hilton, an undergraduate of StJohn's, who was the chief contributor to the two numbersthat appeared. Both in verse and in prose this is thebrightest of such publications within my memory—yes,even though the next period saw the early work of OwenSeaman and A. R. Ropes, and the flashes of H. R.Tottenham, J. K. Stephen and R. H. Forster. IndeedI can hardly refrain from further quotations to illustratethe versatile ingenuity with which contemporary writersand academic foibles are alike subjected to jets of happyand original banter. Venom there is none, and the jibesof irresponsible youth play alike on Carlyle or Swinburne,Tennyson or Bret Harte, the Cambridge Toiler or theProctorial system.One topic seems to call for a paragraph to itself. In the'sixties the subject of Dreams, Ghost stories, Spiritualism,and the credibility and explanation of alleged phenomena,began to attract considerable interest. I cannot pass overthis topic altogether. For among those to whom suchproblems appealed were Henry Sidgwick and F. W.Myers, through whom the staid unemotional Cambridgereceived its share of what was to become a widespreadinfection. The Society for Psychical Research was foundedin 1882. That Cambridge men took no small part in itsdoings, truly indicates that it was largely the outcome ofthe interest taken in such things here during the 'seventies,though its proceedings took place mostly in London. Iam not going to discuss a matter of which I am notcompetent to speak. But one fact of curious coincidenceseems to me well worth mentioning. It was in the'seventies that E. H. Palmer was residing in Cambridge.This extraordinary linguist, familiar with Orientaltongues and the Oriental appetite for mystery and for1 Of whom there is a little Life, with his literary remains, by SirRobert Edgcumbe, Cambridge, 1904.