It was from Dr. Phillips we received our first impressions of Cambridge life; of its outer form, at all events; of its traditions and customs; of the Acts and Opponencies in its Schools, and other quaint formalities, still in use in our own undergraduate day, but now abolished: from him we first heard of Trumpington, and St. Mary's, and the Gogmagogs; of Lady Margaret and the cloisters at Queen's; of the wooden bridge and Erasmus' walk in the gardens of that college; and of many another storied object and spot, afterwards very familiar.
A manuscript Journal of a Johnsonian cast kept by Dr. Phillips, when a youth, during a tour of his on foot in Wales, lent to us for perusal, marks an era in our early experience, awakening in us, as it did, our first inklings of travel. The excursion described was a trifling one in itself—only from Whitchurch, in Herefordshire, across the Severn into Wales—but to the unsophisticated fancy of a boy it was invested with a peculiar charm; and it led, we think, in our own case, to many an ambitious ramble, in after years, among cities and men.—In the time of Dr. Phillips there was put up, by subscription, across the whole of the western end of the school-house, over the door, a rough lean-to, of considerable dimensions. A large covered space was thus provided for purposes of recreation in bad weather. This room is memorable as being associated with our first acquaintance with the term "Gymnasium:" that was the title which we were directed to give it.—There is extant, we believe, a good portrait in oil of Dr. Phillips.
It was stated above that Cricket was not known in the playground of the District Grammar School, except possibly under the mildest of forms. Nevertheless, one, afterwards greatly distinguished in the local annals of Cricket, was long a master in the School.
Mr. George Antony Barber accompanied Dr. Phillips to York in 1825, as his principal assistant, and continued to be associated with him in that capacity. Nearly half a century later than 1826, when Cricket had now become a social institution throughout Western Canada, Mr. Barber, who had been among the first to give enthusiastic encouragement to the manly English game, was the highest living local authority on the subject, and still an occasional participator in the sport.
We here close our notice of the Old Blue School at York. In many a brain, from time to time, the mention of its name has exercised a spell like that of Wendell Holmes's Mare Rubrum; as potent as that was, to summon up memories and shapes from the Red Sea of the Past—
"Where clad in burning robes are laid Life's blossomed joys untimely shed, And where those cherish'd forms are laid We miss awhile, and call them dead."
The building itself has been shifted bodily from its original position to the south-east corner of Stanley and Jarvis Street. It, the centre of so many associations, is degraded now into being a depot for "General Stock;" in other words, a receptacle for Rags and Old Iron.
The six acres of play-ground are thickly built over. A thoroughfare of ill-repute traverses it from west to east. This street was at first called March Street; and under that appellation acquired an evil report. It was hoped that a nobler designation would perhaps elevate the character of the place, as the name "Milton Street" had helped to do for the ignoble Grub Street in London. But the purlieus of the neighbourhood continue, unhappily, to be the Alsatia of the town. The filling up of the old breezy field with dwellings, for the most part of a wretched class, has driven "the schoolmaster" away from the region. His return to the locality, in some good missionary sense, is much to be wished; and after a time, will probably be an accomplished fact.
[Since these lines were written, the old District Grammar School building has wholly vanished. It will be consolatory to know that, escaping destruction by fire, it was deliberately dismantled and taken to pieces; and, at once, walls of substantial brick overspread the whole of the space which it had occupied.]
