he so seldom repeated, that Thackeray once affirmed that he had listened to him telling no fewer than fifty on a single evening, not one of which he had heard him relate before.

There is probably no other club in existence of which so many memorabilia exist, either told of, or by, its members, as the Athenæum. The anecdotage of such things bristles with these ana, and if Mr Humphry Ward's book does not repeat them, it is probably because they are beneath the dignity of so serious a publication. Dickens, snatching a hasty luncheon, often only off a sandwich munched not infrequently as he walked about the room; or Darwin feeding, as he himself has expressed it, like a gentleman or rather like a lord' there; Charles Kemble calling in his best dramatic manner for 'Bread, with a dash of black tay'; or Kinglake, grown deaf, shouting confidences into the ear of Thackeray, under the impression that he was talking in a whisperthese and a hundred more scenes can be conjured up by those familiar with the Club's annals.

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There are hardly any reminiscences or memoirs of the period which do not contain some allusion to this famous haunt, and they are nearly all illuminated by the record of an interesting fact or an amusing anecdote. At Christmas time there not infrequently stood a boar's head on the sideboard at which a certain witty ecclesiastic remarked: Ah! head of a decapitated member, I presume?'; and Charles Landseer's comment on his tough steak is well known: They say there's nothing like leather-this is.' That this was not a usual fault of the kitchen seems clear from the fact that on the single occasion on which Lord Palmerston dined here, he was so pleased with the capabilities of the cook, that he there and then offered him higher wages and carried him away in triumph-probably that same cuisinier who, according to a political antagonist, alone saved the Prime Minister from the depth of political degradation.

Every apartment in the Athenæum has its special aura and its notable memories; even the Smoking-room, under the Carlton Terrace Gardens, and once known as theCrypt,' its frequenters being called the Moles, is not lacking in them. As in all clubs of the period, the necessity for such an adjunct was not at first dreamed

of, and the daring spirits that did venture on a 'weed' or a pipe, were relegated to the small room at the top of the building which, owing largely to Thackeray's efforts, was set aside for those who had to submit to the implication of Dr Hawtrey's remark that 'No gentleman smoked.'

The Card-room, in which Abraham Hayward, on a single occasion, is known to have revoked to the 'awestruck satisfaction,' as it has been phrased, of the Club in general, at first shared the subterranean apartment on the North side, but when the changes were made in 1900, it was removed to more commodious quarters in the top story, and a second billiard table was added in the Crypt. Here a most friendly and sociable party assembles almost daily and even Bishops may be seen enjoying a game of billiards. Here too Herbert Spencer is said to have delivered his famous rebuke to his youthful and too-successful opponent. It is in the Drawing-room, however, and, most important of all, the Library, that the characteristic life of the Athenæum centres. The former, redecorated in 1893, under the superintendence of Sir L. Alma Tadema, is to-day actually an extension of the immense library, but a portion where conversation is allowed. The Club is one, as we have said, of historic spots and corners, and in this vast room (it is 100 feet long by 30 feet wide) you may see the seat favoured by Charles Greville (The Gruncher) and Lord Leighton; the table where Laurence Oliphant worked; the spot where Trollope stood when he announced his intention of killing Mrs Proudie'; and that where Sydney Smith enunciated some of his witticisms ; and again another where Crabb Robinson told Matthew Arnold not to send him one of his books as he would be dead in a fortnight—and actually was.

The advanced age of many of the members has become a byword, and was illustrated by such nonagenarians as Vice-Chancellor Bacon and Charles Pelham Villiers, Bishops Durnford and Tatham, and the gentleman, aged ninety-six, who, questioned as to what brought him out in such bad weather, replied in stentorian tones: 'I have come to consult an aurist-as I don't want to be deaf all my life.' By the way, our old friend, Sir Richard Owen, once being asked if he knew a fellow-member,

replied, 'No; but bring me one of his bones, and I will tell you all about him.'

As I have before remarked, the Library is the pièce de résistance of the Club, not merely for the size of the actual room and the extent and value of its bibliographical treasures, but also because it focusses that atmosphere of learning which is the marked characteristic of the place, and because about it must still wander the ghosts of those illustrious ones who have here laboured and produced so much world-stirring work. When the Club first took possession of these premises, the Library numbered some four thousand volumes; in 1844, these had increased to twenty thousand odd; in 1882, they were more than doubled; and to-day there are no fewer than seventy thousand books and pamphlets on the shelves. Among the other interesting objects in this room are Rysbrack's bust of Pope, and the cane armchair used by Dickens in the Chalet at Gadshill.

Those who have worked here include Theodore Hook, and Lord Lytton, using, it is said, an incredible amount of the club stationery; Thackeray, writing at a table in the south-west corner, or dictating to Eyre Crowe (the Club possesses, by the way, the MS. of 'The Orphan of Pimlico'); Hallam, and Lord Macaulay, close to the fireplace, by the section devoted to English History, where the latter delivered his famous eulogy on Clarissa to Thackeray. Among the best-known stories connected with the Library is the one which tells how a Church dignitary asked a new attendant if Justin Martyr was in the Library?' 'I don't think he is a member, my Lord, but I'll go and ask the porter!' Se non é vero.

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When a club is impregnated with good stories there will always accrue to them others of the ben trovato order, and the Athenæum has been as much the victim of such as the War Office. But its atmosphere is so impregnated with genius and scholarship that it can afford to be exposed to the occasional draughts of good-humoured banter. What is remarkable in its long history is the absence of those feuds and regrettable episodes which have had their place not infrequently in the annals of other cognate institutions. In these placid surroundings, few désagrémens have occurred to

break the cloistral calm. Incidents have happened, to be sure: as when a member once wrote on the notice pboard an insulting allusion to another; as when another member who, as Scott would have said, was a better book-keeper than arithmetician, for a time complacently this abstracted books from the library-and sold some of them; as when in 1854, there broke out what was termed The Coffee Room Revolt-a serio-comic affair, as Mr Humphry Ward describes it, concerning the right Tor not of members to cut and carve for themselves. But these were but the ruffling of the surface of that #placid lake in which the delinquents were indeed rari nantes.

As one leaves the Club one can turn from these #facetic to the splendid rôle of great men who have left their names on its list of members. A hundred and more of them will be found buried or commemorated in the Abbey and St Paul's. There lie their honoured bones; here their memory remains preserved in all sorts of ways. A table or a chair, a secluded nook or a flight of stairs, are sufficient to recall some anecdote or story connected with them in their favoured haunt, and thus the inalienable property of the Club. Every great institution of the kind in London can claim, I suppose, something of this tradition; but in none is it so insistent as at the Athenæum, where not only has so much of the history of the country been made but some of the masterpieces of its literature have germinated.

Art. 6. THE PRESIDENCY OF GENERAL PANGALOS.

LITTLE more than two years after its birth, the Hellenic Commonwealth of Mr Papanastasiou, the first Republican Prime Minister, has become the Military Republic of General Pangalos. What its founders had intended to be a Conservative Republic on French lines has evolved into a military dictatorship, whose chief magistrate holds power, nominally by a vote of the people, really by the will of the army, or rather, of the officers. Parliament has ceased to exist till such time as it may please the President to cause another Chamber to be elected in his own image; and decrees-sometimes made retrospective, as in one notorious case-have taken the place of laws. There were persons who foresaw this strange evolution almost from the beginning. A former Greek diplomatist, meeting me in an Athenian street in the early summer of 1924, remarked: 'Pangalos will send all these politicians away.' He was correct.

When General Pangalos with a handful of men seized the National Bank and the Telegraph Office on June 25, 1925, it was obvious that he would not long cover his military uniform with the 'parliamentary mantle,' kindly provided by Mr Papanastasiou; but for many months he contented himself with the position of Prime Minister, leaving to Admiral Coundouriotes that of President. Clearly this state of things could not last. The two men were of different temperaments, different ideas, and different traditions, and a strong sense of patriotism, such as has always animated his family, which made great sacrifices for Greece in the War of Independence, alone kept the Admiral in Government House, and prevented him from retiring to his beloved island of Hydra. At last the time came when he could no longer support his unequal yoke-fellow'; and the omission to disclose to him in advance, as the head of the State, the negotiations with Italy was the last straw which led him to retire. He had twice-in 1920 and in 1923-24-held the Regency with dignity, and will always be remembered as the first President of the Hellenic Republic.

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At this time General Pangalos became interested in

th