"Well, we set to work, and soon had a lot of tall trees down. Charley

put up his forge and his grindstone, to keep the ax sharp, and I staid

with him. Dick went tailing the cattle, and the overseer sat on a log,

and looked on. The second day a mob of blacks came down on the opposite

side of the river. They were quite wild, regular _myals_, but some of

our men with green branches, went and made peace with them. They liked

our bread and sugar; and after a short time we had a lot of them helping

to draw rails, fishing for us, bringing wild honey, kangaroos, rats, and

firewood, in return for butter and food, so we began to be less careful

about our arms. We gave them iron tomahawks, and they soon found out

that they could cut out an opossum from a hollow in half-an-hour with

one of our tomahawks, while it took a day with one of their own stone

ones.

"And so the time passed very pleasantly. We worked away. The young men

and gins worked for us. The chiefs adorned themselves with the trinkets

and clothes we gave them, and fished and hunted, and admired themselves

in the river.

"Dick never trusted them; he stuck to his cattle; he warned us not to

trust them, and the overseer called him a blood-thirsty, murdering

blackguard for his pains.

"One day, the whole party were at work, chopping and trimming

weather-boards for the hut; the blacks helping as usual. I was turning

the grindstone for Charley Anvils, and Dick was coming up to the dray to

get some tea, but there was a brow of a hill between him and us: the

muskets were all piled in one corner. I heard a howl, and then a

scream--our camp was full of armed blacks. When I raised my head, I saw

the chief, Captain Jack, we called him, with a broad ax in his hand, and

the next minute he had chopped the overseer's head clean off; in two

minutes all my mates were on the ground. Three or four came running up

to us; one threw a spear at me, which I half parried with a pannikin I

was using to wet the grindstone, but it fixed deep in my hip, and part

of it I believe is there still. Charley Anvils had an ax in his hand,

and cut down the first two fellows that came up to him, but he was

floored in a minute with twenty wounds. They were so eager to kill me,

that one of them, luckily, or I should not have been alive now, cut the

spear in my hip short off. Another, a young lad I had sharpened a

tomahawk for a few days before, chopped me across the head; you can see

the white hair. Down I fell, and nothing could have saved us, but the

other savages had got the tarpaulin off, and were screaming with

delight, plundering the drays, which called my enemies off. Just then,

Dick came in sight. He saw what was the matter; but although there were

more than a hundred black devils, all armed, painted, bloody, and

yelling, he never stopped or hesitated, but rode slap through the camp,

fired bang among them, killing two, and knocking out the brains of

another. As he passed by a top rail, where an ax was sticking, he caught

it up. The men in the camp were dead enough; the chief warriors had made

the rush there, and every one was pierced with several spears, or cut

down from close behind by axes in the hands of the chiefs. We, being

further off, had been attacked by the boys only. Dick turned toward us,

and shouted my name, I could not answer, but I managed to sit up an

instant; he turned toward me, leaned down, caught me by the jacket, and

dragged me on before him like a log. Just then Charley, who had crept

under the grindstone, cried, 'Oh, Dick, don't leave me!' As he said

that, a lot of them came running down, for they had seen enough to know

that, unless they killed us all, their job would not be half done. As

Dick turned to face them, they gave way, and flung spears, but they

could not hurt him: they managed to get between us and poor Charley.

Dick rode back a circuit, and dropped me among some bushes on a hill,

where I could see all. Four times he charged through and through a whole

mob, with an ax in one hand, and his short musket in the other. He cut

them down right and left, as if he had been mowing; he scared the

wretches, although the old women kept screeching and urging them on, as

they always do. At length, by help of his stirrup leather, he managed to

get Charley up behind him. He never could have done it, but his mare

fought, and bit, and turned when he bid her, so he threw the bridle on

her neck, and could use that terrible left arm of his. Well, he came up

to the hill, and lifted me on, and away we went for three or four miles,

but we knew the mare could not stand it long, so Dick got off, and

walked. When the blacks had pulled the drays' loads to pieces, they

began to follow us, but Dick never lost heart--"

"Nay, mate," interrupted Dick, "once I did; shall never forget it, when

I came to put my last bullet in, it was too big."

"Good Heavens!" I exclaimed, "what did you do?"

"Why, I put the bullet in my mouth, and kept chawing and chawing it,

and threatening the black devils all the while, until at last it was

small enough, and then I rammed it down, and dropped on my knee, and

waited until they came within twenty yards, and then I picked off

Captain Jack, the biggest villain of them all."

Here Dick, being warmed, continued the story: "We could not stop; we

marched all evening and all night, and when the two poor creturs cried

for water, as they did most of the night, as often as I could I filled

my boots, and gave them to drink. I led the horse, and traveled seventy

miles without halting for more than a minute or two. Toward the last

they were as helpless as worn-out sheep. I tied them on. We had the luck

to fall in with a party traveling just when the old mare was about

giving in, and then we must all have died for want of water. Charley

Anvils had eighteen wounds, but, except losing two fingers, is none the

worse. Poor Jemmy, there, will never be fit for any thing but a

hut-keeper; as for me, I had some scratches--nothing to hurt; and the

old mare lost an ear. I went back afterward with the police, and squared

accounts with the blacks.

"And so, you see, stranger, the old woman thinks I saved her old man's

life, although I would have done as much for any one; but I believe

there are some gentlemen in Sydney think I ought to have been hung for

what I did. Any how, since that scrimmage in the bush, they always call

me 'TWO-HANDED DICK.'"

[From Household Words.]

THE USES OF SORROW.

Oh, grieve not for the early dead,

Whom God himself hath taken;

But deck with flowers each holy bed--

Nor deem thyself forsaken,

When one by one, they fall away,

Who were to thee as summer day.

Weep for the babes of guilt, who sleep

With scanty rags stretch'd o'er them,

On the dark road, the downward steep

Of misery; while before them

Looms out afar the dreadful tree,

And solemn, sad Eternity!

Nor weep alone; but when to Heaven

The cords of sorrow bind thee,

Let kindest help to such be given

As God shall teach to find thee;

And, for the sake of those above,

Do deeds of Wisdom, Mercy, Love.

The child that sicken'd on thy knee,

Thou weeping Christian mother,

Had learn'd in this world, lispingly,

Words suited for another.

Oh, dost thou think, with pitying mind,

On untaught infants left behind?

BENJAMIN WEST.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

The two principal houses at which I visited, till the arrival of our

relations from the West Indies, were Mr. West's (late President of the

Royal Academy), in Newman-street, and Mr. Godfrey Thornton's (of the

distinguished city family), in Austin-Friars. How I loved the Graces in

one, and every thing in the other! Mr. West (who, as I have already

mentioned, had married one of my relations) had bought his house, I

believe, not long after he came to England; and he had added a gallery

at the back of it, terminating in a couple of lofty rooms. The gallery

was a continuation of the house-passage, and, together with one of those

rooms and the parlor, formed three sides of a garden, very small but

elegant, with a grass-plot in the middle, and busts upon stands under an

arcade. The gallery, as you went up it, formed an angle at a little

distance to the left, then another to the right and then took a longer

stretch into the two rooms; and it was hung with the artist's sketches

all the way. In a corner between the two angles was a study-door, with

casts of Venus and Apollo, on each side of it. The two rooms contained

the largest of his pictures; and in the farther one, after stepping

softly down the gallery, as if reverencing the dumb life on the walls,

you generally found the mild and quiet artist at his work; happy, for he

thought himself immortal.

I need not enter into the merits of an artist who is so well known, and

has been so often criticised. He was a man with regular, mild features;

and, though of Quaker origin, had the look of what he was, a painter to

a court. His appearance was so gentlemanly, that, the moment he changed

his gown for a coat, he seemed to be full-dressed. The simplicity and

self-possession of the young Quaker, not having time enough to grow

stiff (for he went early to study at Rome), took up, I suppose, with

more ease than most would have done, the urbanities of his new position.

And what simplicity helped him to, favor would retain. Yet this man, so

well bred, and so indisputably clever in his art (whatever might be the

amount of his genius), had received so careless, or so homely an

education when a boy, that he could hardly read. He pronounced also some

of his words, in reading, with a puritanical barbarism, such as _haive_

for _have_, as some people pronounce when they sing psalms. But this was

perhaps an American custom. My mother, who both read and spoke

remarkably well, would say _haive_, and _shaul_ (for _shall_), when she

sung her hymns. But it was not so well in reading lectures at the

Academy. Mr. West would talk of his art all day long, painting all the

while. On other subjects he was not so fluent; and on political and

religious matters he tried hard to maintain the reserve common with

those about a court. He succeeded ill in both. There were always strong

suspicions of his leaning to his native side in politics; and daring

Bonaparte's triumph, he could not contain his enthusiasm for the

Republican chief, going even to Paris to pay him his homage, when First

Consul. The admiration of high colors and powerful effects, natural to a

painter, was too strong for him. How he managed this matter with the

higher powers in England, I can not say. Probably he was the less

heedful, inasmuch as he was not very carefully paid. I believe he did a

great deal for George the Third with little profit. Mr. West certainly

kept his love for Bonaparte no secret; and it was no wonder, for the

latter expressed admiration of his pictures. The artist thought the

conqueror's smile enchanting, and that he had the handsomest leg he had

ever seen. He was present when the "Venus de Medicis" was talked of, the

French having just taken possession of her. Bonaparte, Mr. West said,

turned round to those about him, and said, with his eyes lit up, "She's

coming!" as if he had been talking of a living person. I believe he

retained for the emperor the love that he had had for the First Consul,

a wedded love, "for better, for worse." However, I believe also that he

retained it after the emperor's downfall; which is not what every

painter did.

PEACE

Peace has a dwelling near a river

Where the darkened waters quiver.

Where the ripple we can hear

Bursting on the pebbly shore,

Making music soft and clear

For evermore, for evermore.

Peace has a dwelling near a wood

Where the cooing pigeons brood,

Where the sweet-voiced nightingale

Unto the moon her song doth pour,

And songsters swell the echoing vale

For evermore, for evermore.

Peace has a dwelling in the soul

That can its hopes and fears control;

In silent wood or city's din

Alike it may be found to dwell;

Its dearest home is that within

The chastened heart's profoundest cell.

Peace has a dwelling where no more

The ear can hear the torrent roar,

Or lists the rippling of the river,

As softly it turns up its wave,

Where never more the moon-beams quiver

Within the silent grave.

Peace--oh, thou white-garmented

Maiden, with the flower-decked head,

Come, make thy mansion in my heart!

A tenant thou shalt freely rest,

And thou shalt soothe each bitter smart

That racks the chambers of my breast

CHARLES DRYDEN.

[From Household Words.]

ALCHEMY AND GUNPOWDER.

The day-dream of mankind has ever been the Unattainable. To sigh for

what is beyond our reach is, from infancy to age, a fixed condition of

our nature. To it we owe all the improvement that distinguishes

civilized from savage life--to it we are indebted for all the great

discoveries which, at long intervals, have rewarded thought.

Though the motives which stimulated the earliest inquiries were

frequently undefined, and, if curiously examined, would be found to be

sometimes questionable, it has rarely happened that the world has not

benefited by them in the end. Thus Astrology, which ascribed to the

stars an influence over the actions and destinies of man; Magic, which

attempted to reverse the laws of nature, and Alchemy, which aimed at

securing unlimited powers of self-reward; all tended to the final

establishment of useful science.

Of none of the sciences whose laws are fully understood, is this

description truer than of that now called Chemistry, which once was

Alchemy. That "knowledge of the substance or composition of bodies,"

which the Arabic root of both words implies, establishes a fact in place

of a chimera. Experimental philosophy has made Alchemy an impossible

belief, but the faith in it was natural in an age when reason was seldom

appealed to. The credulity which accepted witchcraft for a truth, was

not likely to reject the theory of the transmutation of metals, nor

strain at the dogma of perpetual youth and health; the concomitants of

the Philosopher's Stone.

The Alchemists claim for their science the remotest antiquity possible,

but it was not until three or four centuries after the Christian era

that the doctrine of transmutation began to spread. It was among the

Arabian physicians that it took root. Those learned men, through whom

was transmitted so much that was useful in astronomy, in mathematics,

and in medicine, were deeply tinctured with the belief in an universal

elixir, whose properties gave the power of multiplying gold, of

prolonging life indefinitely, and of making youth perpetual. The

discoveries which they made of the successful application of mercury in

many diseases, led them to suppose that this agent contained within

itself the germ of all curative influences, and was the basis of all

other metals. An Eastern imagination, ever prone to heighten the effects

of nature, was not slow to ascribe a preternatural force to this

medicine, but not finding it in its simple state, the practitioners of

the new science had recourse to combination, in the hope, by that means,

of attaining their object. To fix mercury became their first endeavor,

and this fixation they described as "catching the flying bird of

Hermes." Once embarked in the illusory experiment, it is easy to

perceive how far the Alchemists might be led; nor need it excite any

wonder that in pursuit of the ideal, they accidentally hit upon a good

deal that was real. The labors, therefore, of the Arabian physicians

were not thrown away, though they entangled the feet of science in

mazes, from which escape was only effected, after the lapse of centuries

of misdirected efforts.

From the period we have last spoken of, until the commencement of the

eleventh century, the only Alchemist of note is the Arabian Geber, who,

though he wrote on the perfections of metals, of the new-found art of

making gold, in a word, on the philosopher's stone, has only descended

to our times as the founder of that jargon which passes under the name

of "gibberish." He was, however, a great authority in the middle ages,

and allusions to "Geber's cooks," and "Geber's kitchen," are frequent

among those who at length saw the error of their ways, after wasting

their substance in the vain search for the elixir.

A longer interval might have elapsed but for the voice of Peter the

Hermit, whose fanatical scheme for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre

was the cause of that gradual absorption, by the nations of the West, of

the learning which had so long been buried in the East. The crusaders,

or those, rather, who visited the shores of Syria under their

protection--the men whose skill in medicine and letters rendered them

useful to the invading armies--acquired a knowledge of the Arabian

languages, and of the sciences cultivated by Arabian philosophers, and

this knowledge they disseminated through Europe. Some part of it, it is

true, was derived from the Moors in Spain, but it was all conveyed in a

common tongue which began now to be understood. To this era belong the

names of Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile; of Isaac Beimiram, the son

of Solomon the physician; of Hali Abbas, the scholar of Abimeher Moyses,

the son of Sejar; of Aben Sina, better known as Avicenna, and sometimes

called Abohali; of Averroes of Cordova, surnamed the Commentator; of

Rasis, who is also called Almanzor and Albumasar; and of John of

Damascus, whose name has been latinized into Johannes Damascenus. All

these, physicians by profession, were more or less professors of

alchemy; and besides these were such as Artephius, who wrote alchemical

tracts about the year 1130, but who deserves rather to be remembered for

the cool assertion which he makes in his "Wisdom of Secrets" that, at

the time he wrote he had reached the patriarchal--or fabulous--age of

one thousand and twenty-five years!

The thirteenth century came, and with it came two men who stand first,

as they then stood alone, in literary and scientific knowledge. One was

a German, the other an Englishman; the first was Albertus Magnus, the

last Roger Bacon.

Of the former, many wonderful stories are told: such, for instance, as

his having given a banquet to the king of the Romans, in the gardens of

his cloister at Cologne, when he converted the intensity of winter into

a season of summer, full of flowers and fruits, which disappeared when

the banquet was over; and his having constructed a marvelous automaton,

called "Androis," which, like the invention of his contemporary, Roger

Bacon, was said to be capable of auguring all questions, past, present,

and to come.

To know more than the rest of the world in any respect, but particularly

in natural philosophy, was a certain method by which to earn the name of

a necromancer in the middle ages, and there are few whose occult fame

has stood higher than that of Roger Bacon. He was afraid, therefore, to

speak plainly--indeed, it was the custom of the early philosophers to

couch their knowledge in what Bacon himself calls the "tricks of

obscurity;" and in his celebrated "_Epistola de Secretis_," he adverts

to the possibility of his being obliged to do the same thing, through

"_the greatness of the secrets_ which he shall handle." With regard to

the invention of his greatest secret, we shall give the words in which

he speaks of the properties of gunpowder, and afterward show in what

terms he concealed his knowledge. _"Noyses_," he says, "_may be made in

the aire like thunders_, yea, with greater horror than those that come

of nature; _for a little matter fitted to the quantity of a thimble,

maketh a horrible noise and wonderful lightning_. And this is done after

sundry fashions, _whereby any citie or armie may be destroyed_." A more

accurate description of the explosion of gunpowder could scarcely be

given, and it is not to be supposed that Bacon simply confined himself

to the theory of his art, when he knew so well the consequences arising

from a practical application of it. On this head there is a legend

extant, which has not, to our knowledge, been printed before, from which

we may clearly see why he contented himself with the cabalistic form in

which he conveyed his knowledge of what he deemed a fatal secret.

Attached to Roger Bacon's laboratory, and a zealous assistant in the

manifold occupations with which the learned Franciscan occupied himself,

was a youthful student, whose name is stated to have been Hubert de

Dreux. He was a Norman, and many of the attributes of that people were

conspicuous in his character. He was of a quick intelligence, and hasty

courage, fertile in invention, and prompt in action, eloquent of

discourse, and ready of hand; all excellent qualities, to which was

superadded an insatiable curiosity. Docile to receive instruction, and

apt to profit by it, Hubert became a great favorite with the

philosopher, and to him Bacon expounded many of the secrets--or supposed

secrets--of the art which he strove to, bring to perfection. He

instructed him also in the composition of certain medicines, which Bacon

himself believed might be the means of prolonging life, though not to

the indefinite extent dreamed of by those who put their whole faith in

the Great Elixir.

But there never yet was an adept in any art or science who freely

communicated to his pupil the full amount of his own knowledge;

something for experience to gather, or for ingenuity to discover, is

always kept in reserve, and the instructions of Roger Bacon stopped

short at one point. He was himself engaged in the prosecution of that

chemical secret which he rightly judged to be a dangerous one, and,

while he experimented with the compound of sulphur, saltpetre, and

charcoal, he kept himself apart from his general laboratory, and wrought

in a separate cell, to which not even Hubert had access. To know that

the friar had a mysterious occupation, which, more than the making of

gold or the universal medicine, engrossed him, was enough of itself to

rouse the young man's curiosity; but when to this was added the fact,

that, from time to time, strange and mysterious noises were heard,

accompanied by bright corruscations and a new and singular odor,

penetrating through the chinks close to which his eyes were stealthily

riveted, Hubert's eagerness to know all that his master concealed had no

limit. He resolved to discover the secret, even though he should perish

in the attempt; he feared that there was good reason for the accusation

of dealing in the Black Art, which, more than all others, the monks of

Bacon's own convent countenanced, but this apprehension only stimulated

him the more. For some time Hubert waited without an opportunity

occurring for gratifying the secret longing of his heart; at last it

presented itself.

To afford medical assistance to the sick, was, perhaps, the most useful

practice of conventual life, and the monks had always among them

practitioners of the healing art, more or less skillful. Of this number,

Roger Bacon was the most eminent, not only in the monastery to which he

belonged, but in all Oxford.

It was about the hour of noon on a gloomy day toward the end of

November, in the year 1282, while the Friar and his pupil were severally

employed, the former in his secret cell, and the latter in the general

laboratory, that there arrived at the gate of the Franciscan convent a

messenger on horseback, the bearer of news from Abingdon, that Walter de

Losely, the sheriff of Berkshire, had that morning met with a serious

accident by a hurt from a lance, and was then lying dangerously wounded

at the hostelry of the Checkers in Abingdon, whither he had been hastily

conveyed. The messenger added, that the leech who had been called in was

most anxious for the assistance of the skillful Friar, Roger Bacon, and

urgently prayed that he would lose no time in coming to the aid of the

wounded knight.

Great excitement prevailed among the monks on the receipt of this

intelligence, for Walter de Losely was not only a man of power and

influence, but moreover, a great benefactor to their order. Friar Bacon

was immediately sought and speedily made his appearance, the urgency of

the message admitting of no delay. He hastily enjoined Hubert to

continue the preparation of an amalgam which he was desirous of getting

into a forward state, and taking with him his case of instruments with

the bandages and salves which he thought needful, was soon mounted on an

easy, ambling palfrey on his way toward Abingdon, the impatient

messenger riding before him to announce his approach.

When he was gone, quiet again reigned in the convent, and Hubert de

Dreux resumed his occupation. But it did not attract him long. Suddenly

he raised his head from the work and his eyes were lit up with a gleam

in which joy and fear seemed equally blended. For the first time, for

months, he was quite alone. What if he could obtain access to his

master's cell and penetrate the mystery in which his labors had been so

long enveloped! He cautiously stole to the door of the laboratory, and

peeped out into a long passage, at the further extremity of which a door

opened into a small court where, detached from the main edifice and

screened from all observation, was a small building which the Friar had

recently caused to be constructed. He looked about him timorously,

fearing lest he might be observed; but there was no cause for

apprehension, scarcely any inducement could have prevailed with the

superstitious Franciscans to turn their steps willingly in the direction

of Roger Bacon's solitary cell.

Reassured by the silence, Hubert stole noiselessly onward, and

tremblingly approached the forbidden spot. His quick eye saw at a glance

that the key was not in the door, and his countenance fell. The Friar's

treasure was locked up! He might see something, however, if he could not

enter the chamber. He knelt down, therefore, at the door, and peered

through the keyhole. As he pressed against the door, in doing so, it

yielded to his touch. In the haste with which Friar Bacon had closed the

entrance, the bolt had not been shot. Herbert rose hastily to his feet,

and the next moment he was in the cell, looking eagerly round upon the

crucibles and alembics, which bore witness to his master's labors. But

beyond a general impression of work in hand, there was nothing to be

gleaned from this survey. An open parchment volume, in which the Friar

had recently been writing, next caught his attention. If the secret

should be there in any known language. Hubert knew something of the

Hebrew, but nothing yet of Arabic. He was reassured; the characters were

familiar to him; the language Latin. He seized the volume, and read the

few lines which the Friar had just traced on the last page.

They ran thus:

"Videas tamen utrum loquar in aenigmate vel secundum veritatem." And,

further (which we translate): "He that would see these things shall have

the key that openeth and no man shutteth, and when he shall shut no man

is able to open again."

"But the secret--the secret!" cried Hubert, impatiently, "let me know

what 'these things' are!"

He hastily turned the leaf back and read again. The passage was that one

in the "_Epistola de Secretis_" which spoke of the artificial thunder

and lightning, and beneath it was the full and precise receipt for its

composition. This at once explained the strange noises and the flashes

of light which he had so anxiously noticed. Surprising and gratifying as

this discovery might be, there was, Hubert thought, something beyond.

Roger Bacon, he reasoned, was not one to practice an experiment like

this for mere amusement. It was, he felt certain, a new form of

invocation, more potent, doubtless, over the beings of another world,

than any charm yet recorded. Be it as it might, he would try whether,

from the materials around him, it were not in his power to produce the

same result.

"Here are all the necessary ingredients," he exclaimed; "this yellowish

powder is the well known sulphur, in which I daily bathe the

argent-vive; this bitter, glistening substance is the salt of the rock,

the _salis petrae_; and this black calcination, the third agent. But the

proportions are given, and here stands a glass cucurbit in which they

should be mingled. It is of the form my master mostly uses--round, with

a small neck and a narrow mouth, to be luted closely, without doubt. He

has often told me that the sole regenerating power of the universe is

heat; yonder furnace shall supply it, and then Hubert de Dreux is his

master's equal!"

* * * * *

The short November day was drawing to a close, when, after carefully

tending the wounded sheriff, and leaving such instructions with the

Abingdon leech as he judged sufficient for his patient's well-doing,

Roger Bacon again mounted his palfrey, and turned its head in the

direction of Oxford. He was unwilling to be a loiterer after dark, and

his beast was equally desirous to be once more comfortably housed, so

that his homeward journey was accomplished even more rapidly than his

morning excursion; and barely an hour had elapsed when the Friar drew

the rein at the foot of the last gentle eminence, close to which lay the

walls of the cloistered city. To give the animal breathing-space, he

rode quietly up the ascent, and then paused for a few moments before he

proceeded, his mind intent on subjects foreign to the speculations of

all his daily associations.

Suddenly, as he mused on his latest discovery and calculated to what

principal object it might be devoted, a stream of fiery light shot

rapidly athwart the dark, drear sky, and before he had space to think

what the meteor might portend, a roar as of thunder shook the air, and

simultaneous with it, a shrill, piercing scream, mingled with the

fearful sound; then burst forth a volume of flame, and on the wind came

floating a sulphurous vapor which, to him alone, revealed the nature of

the explosion he had just witnessed.

"Gracious God!" he exclaimed, while the cold sweat poured like

rain-drops down his forehead, "the fire has caught the fulminating

powder! But what meant that dreadful cry? Surely nothing of human life

has suffered! The boy Hubert--but, no--he was at work at the further

extremity of the building. But this is no time for vain, conjecture--let

me learn the worst at once!"

And with these words he urged his affrighted steed to its best pace, and

rode rapidly into the city.

All was consternation there: the tremendous noise had roused every

inhabitant, and people were hurrying to and fro, some hastening toward

the place from whence the sound had proceeded, others rushing wildly

from it. It was but too evident that a dreadful catastrophe, worse even

than Bacon dreaded, had happened. It was with difficulty he made his way

through the crowd, and came upon the ruin which still blazed fiercely,

appalling the stoutest of heart. There was a tumult of voices, but above

the outcries of the affrighted monks, and of the scared multitude, rose

the loud voice of the Friar, calling upon them to extinguish the flames.

This appeal turned all eyes toward him, and then associating him with an

evil, the cause of which they were unable to comprehend, the

maledictions of the monks broke forth.

"Seize the accursed magician," they shouted; "he has made a fiery

compact with the demon! Already one victim is sacrificed--our turn will

come next! See, here are the mangled limbs of his pupil, Hubert de

Dreux! The fiend has claimed his reward, and borne away his soul. Seize

on the wicked sorcerer, and take him to a dungeon!"

Roger Bacon sate stupefied by the unexpected blow; he had no power, if

he had possessed the will, to offer the slightest resistance to the fury

of the enraged Franciscans, who, in the true spirit of ignorance, had

ever hated him for his acquirements. With a deep sigh for the fate of

the young man, whose imprudence he now saw had been the cause of this

dreadful event, he yielded himself up to his enemies; they tore him from

his palfrey, and with many a curse, and many a buffet, dragged him to

the castle, and lodged him in one of its deepest dungeons.

The flames from the ruined cell died out of themselves; but those which

the envy and dread of Bacon's genius had kindled, were never

extinguished, but with his life.

In the long years of imprisonment which followed--the doom of the stake

being averted only by powerful intercession with the Pope--Bacon had

leisure to meditate on the value of all he had done to enlarge the

understanding and extend the knowledge of his species. "The prelates and

friars," he wrote in a letter which still remains, "have kept me

starving in close prison, nor will they suffer any one to come to me,

fearing lest my writings should come to any other than the Pope and

themselves."

He reflected that of all living men he stood well-nigh alone in the

consciousness that in the greatest of his inventions he had produced a

discovery of incalculable value, but one for which on every account the

time was not ripe.

"I will not die," he said, "without leaving to the world the evidence

that the secret was known to me whose marvelous power future ages shall

acknowledge. But not yet shall it be revealed. Generations must pass

away and the minds of men become better able to endure the light of

science, before they can profit by my discovery. Let him who already

possesses knowledge, guess the truth these words convey."

And in place of the directions by which Hubert de Dreux had been guided,

he altered the sentence as follows:

"Sed tamen salis petre,

LURU MONE CAP UBRE

et sulphuris."

The learned have found that these mystical words conceal the anagram of

_Carbonum pulvere_, the third ingredient in the composition of

Gunpowder.

[From a Month at Constantinople.]

GLIMPSES OF THE EAST.

BY ALBERT SMITH.

A TURKISH BATH.--The second day I was at Constantinople I had a bath, in

the proper Turkish fashion; and this was quite as novel in its way as

every thing else had been. The establishment patronized was the head one

in Stamboul; and we went from the street into a very large hall,

entirety of marble, with a gallery round the walls, in which were

couches, as well as down below. On these different visitors were

reposing: some covered up and lying quite still, others smoking

narghiles, and drinking coffee. Towels and cloths were drying on lines,

and in the corner was a little shed, serving as a Cafe.

We went up-stairs and undressed, giving our watches and money to the

attendant, who tied our clothes up in a bundle. He then tucked a colored

wrapper round our waists, and threw a towel over our shoulders, after

which we walked down stairs, and put on some wooden clogs at the door of

the next apartment. The first thing these did was to send me head over

heels, to the great discomfiture of my temporary costume, and equal

delight of the bathers there assembled. We remained in this room, which

was of an increased temperature, idling upon other couches, until we

were pronounced ready to go into the second chamber. I contrived, with

great care and anxiety, to totter into it upon my clogs, and found

another apartment of marble, very warm indeed, and lighted from the top

by a dome of glass "bull's-eyes." In the middle of this chamber was a

hot, raised octagon platform, also of marble, and in the recesses of the

sides were marble vases, and tanks, with taps for hot and cold water,

and channels in the floor to carry off the suds. Two savage, unearthly

boys, their heads all shaved, with the exception of a tuft on the top,

and in their scant costume of a towel only, looking more like wild

Indians than Turks, now seized hold of me, and forcing me back upon the

hot marble floor commenced a dreadful series of tortures, such as I had

only read of as pertaining to the dark ages. It was of no use to resist.

They clutched hold of the back of my neck, and I thought they were going

to strangle me; then they pulled at my arms and legs, and I thought

again they were going to put me on the rack; and lastly, when they both

began to roll backward and forward on my chest, doubling my cracking

elbows underneath them, I thought, finally, that my last minute was

come, and that death by suffocation would finish me. They were fiends,

and evidently delighted in my agony; not allowing me to look to the

right or left after my companions, and throwing themselves on me again,

whenever they conceived I was going to call the dragoman to my

assistance. I do not know that I ever passed such a frightful five

minutes, connected with bathing, nervous as are some of the feelings

which that pastime gives rise to. It is very terrible to take the first

summer plunge into a deep, dark river and when you are at the bottom,

and the water is roaring in your ears, to think of dead bodies and

crocodiles; it is almost worse to make that frightful journey down a

steep beach, in a bathing machine, with a vague incertitude as to where

you will find yourself when the doors open again: but nothing can come

up to what I suffered in my last extremity, in this Constantinople bath.

Thoughts of Turkish cruelty and the sacks of the Bosphorus; of home, and

friends, and my childhood's bowers--of the sadness of being murdered in

a foreign bath--and the probability of my Giaour body being eaten by the

wild dogs, crowded rapidly on me, as these demons increased their

tortures; until, collecting all my strength for one last effort, I

contrived to throw them off, one to the right and the other to the left,

some half dozen feet--and regained my legs.

The worst was now over, certainly; but the persecution still continued

sufficiently exciting. They seized on me again, and led me to the tanks,

where they almost flayed me with horse-hair gloves, and drowned me with

bowls of warm water, poured continuously on my head. I could not see,

and if I again tried to cry out, they thrust a large soapy swab, made of

the fibres that grow at the foot of the date palm, into my mouth,

accompanying each renewed act of cruelty with a demand for _baksheesh_.

At last, being fairly exhausted, themselves, they swathed me in a great

many towels; and I was then half carried, half pushed, up stairs again,

where I took my place upon my couch with feelings of great joy and

thankfulness.

I now began to think that all the horrors I had undergone were balanced

by the delicious feeling of repose that stole over me. I felt that I

could have stopped there forever, with the fragrant coffee steaming at

my side, and the soothing bubble of the _narghiles_ sounding in every

direction. I went off into a day dream--my last clear vision being that

of a man having his head shaved all but a top knot, which was long

enough to twist round and round, under his fez--and could scarcely

believe that an hour had elapsed, when the dragoman suggested our return

to the bustling world without.

* * * * *

THE SLAVE MARKET AT CONSTANTINOPLE.--No European goes to the East with a

clear idea of a Slave-market. He has seen fanciful French lithographs,

and attractive scenes in Eastern ballets, where the pretty girls

appeared ready, on the shortest notice, and in the most bewitching

costumes, to dance the Gitana, Romaika, Tarantella, Redowa, or any other

characteristic _pas_ that might be required of them. Or if not schooled

into these impressions, he takes the indignant view of the subject, and

thinks of nothing but chains and lashes, and finds, at last, that one is

just as false as the other.

There is now no regular slave-market at Constantinople. The fair

Circassians and Georgians reside in the houses of the merchants, to whom

many of them are regularly consigned by their friends, and of these it

is impossible for a Frank to obtain a glimpse, for the usual privacy of

the harem is granted to them. The chief depot of the blacks is in a

large court-yard attached to the Mosque of Suleyman. In a street

immediately outside the wall was a row of coffee-houses, where opium,

was also to be procured for smoking, which is by no means so general a

practice as is imagined; and over and behind these were buildings in

which the slaves were kept. It is true that these were grated, but the

lattices through which only the Turkish women can look abroad, gave a

far greater notion of imprisonment.

There were a great many women and children grouped about in the

court-yard, and all those who appeared to possess any degree of

intelligence were chatting and laughing. Some were wrapped up in

blankets and crouching about in corners: but in these, sense and feeling

seemed to be at the lowest ebb. I should be very sorry to run against

any proper feelings on the subject, but I do honestly believe that if

any person of average propriety and right-mindedness were shown these

creatures, and told that their lot was to become the property of others,

and work in return for food and lodging, he would come to the conclusion

that it was all they were fit for--indeed, he might think that they had

gained in exchanging their wretched savage life for one of comparative

civilization. I would not pretend, upon the strength of a hurried visit

to a city, to offer the slightest opinion upon the native domestic and

social economy; but I can say, that whenever I have seen the black

slaves abroad, they have been neatly dressed, and apparently well kept;

and that, if shopping with their mistresses in the bazaars, the

conversation and laughing that passed between them was like that between

two companions. The truth is that the "virtuous indignation" side of the

question holds out grander opportunities to an author for fine writing

than the practical fact. But this style of composition should not always

be implicitly relied upon; I knew a man who was said by certain reviews

and literary _cliques_ to be "a creature of large sympathies for the

poor and oppressed," because he wrote touching things about them; but

who would abuse his wife, and brutally treat his children, and harass

his family, and then go and drink until his large heart was sufficiently

full to take up the "man-and-brother" line of literary business, and

suggest that a tipsy chartist was as good as a quiet gentleman. Of this

class are the writers who even call livery "a badge of slavery," and

yet, in truth, if the real slave felt as proud of his costume and calves

as John feels, he might be considerably envied for his content by many

of us.

As we entered the court-yard, a girl rose and asked Demetri if I wanted

to buy her. I told him to say that I did, and would take her to England.

She asked Demetri where that was, and on being told that it was so many

days' journey, she ran away, declaring that she would never go so far

with any body. We next went up to a circle of black females, who had

clustered under the shade of a tree. A Turkish woman in her vail was

talking to them. I made Demetri tell them that we had no slaves in

England, as our queen did not allow it, but that every one was free as

soon as they touched the land. This statement excited a laugh of the

loudest derision from all the party, and they ran to tell it to their

companions, who screamed with laughter as well; so that I unwittingly

started a fine joke that day in the slave-market.

* * * * *

DOGS IN CONSTANTINOPLE.--After an hour's doze I woke up again, and went

and sat by the window. The noise I then heard I shall never forget.

To say that if all the sheep-dogs going to Smithfield on a market-day

had been kept on the constant bark, and pitted against the yelping curs

upon all the carts in London, they could have given any idea of the

canine uproar that now first astonished me, would be to make the

feeblest of images. The whole city rang with one vast riot. Down below

me at Tophane--over at Stamboul--far away at Scutari--the whole eighty

thousand dogs that are said to overrun Constantinople, appeared engaged

in the most active extermination of each other, without a moment's

cessation. The yelping, howling, barking, growling, and snarling, were

all merged into one uniform and continuous, even sound, as the noise of

frogs becomes when heard at a distance. For hours there was no lull. I

went to sleep, and woke again, and still, with my windows open, I heard

the same tumult going on: nor was it until daybreak that any thing like

tranquillity was restored. In spite of my early instruction, the dogs

delight to bark and bite, and should be allowed to do so, it being their

nature, I could not help wishing that, for a short season, the power was

vested in me to carry out the most palpable service for which brickbats

and the Bosphorus could be made conjointly available.

Going out in the day-time, it is not difficult to find traces of the

fights of the night, about the limbs of all the street-dogs. There is

not one, among their vast number, in the enjoyment of a perfect skin.

Some have their ears gnawed away or pulled off; others have had their

eyes taken out; from the backs and haunches of others, perfect steaks of

flesh have been torn away; and all bear the scars of desperate combats.

Wild and desperate as is their nature, these poor animals are

susceptible of kindness. If a scrap of bread is thrown to one of them

now and then, he does not forget it; for they have, at times, a hard

matter to live--not the dogs among the shops of Galata or Stamboul, but

those whose "parish" lies in the large burying-grounds and desert-places

without the city; for each keeps, or rather is kept, to his district;

and if he chanced to venture into a strange one, the odds against his

return would be very large. One battered old animal, to whom I used

occasionally to toss a scrap of food, always followed me from the hotel

to the cross-street at Pera, where the two soldiers stand on guard, but

would never come beyond this point. He knew the fate that awaited him

had he done so; and therefore, when I left him, he would lie down in the

road and go to sleep until I came back. When a horse or camel dies, and

is left about the roads near the city, the bones are soon picked very

clean by these dogs, and they will carry the skulls or pelves to great

distances. I was told that they will eat their dead fellows--a curious

fact, I believe, in canine economy. They are always troublesome--not to

say dangerous--at night; and are especially irritated by Europeans, whom

they will single out among a crowd of Levantines.

[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]

CHRIST-HOSPITAL WORTHIES.

Christ-Hospital is a nursery of tradesmen, of merchants, of naval

officers, of scholars; it has produced some of the greatest ornaments of

their time; and the feeling among the boys themselves is, that it is a

medium, between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton the

Westminster, and the plebeian submission of and charity schools. In

point of University honors, it claims to be equal with the best; and

though other schools can show a greater abundance of eminent names, I

know not where many will be found who are a greater host in themselves.

One original author is worth a hundred transmitters of elegance; and

such a one is to be found in Richardson, who here received what

education he possessed. Here Camden also received the rudiments of his.

Bishop Stillingfleet, according to the memoirs of Pepys, lately

published, was brought up in the school. We have had many eminent

scholars, two of them Greek professors, to wit, Barnes, and the present

Mr. Scholefield, the latter of whom attained an extraordinary succession

of University honors. The rest are Markland; Middleton, late Bishop of

Calcutta; and Mitchell, the translator of "Aristophanes."

Christ-Hospital, I believe, toward the close of the last century, and

the beginning of the present, sent out more living writers, in its

proportion, than any other school. There was Dr. Richards, author of the

"Aboriginal Britons;" Dyer, whose life was one unbroken dream of

learning and goodness, and who used to make us wonder with passing

through the school-room (where no other person in "town-clothes" ever

appeared) to consult books in the library; Le Grice, the translator of

"Longus;" Horne, author of some well-known productions in controversial

divinity; Surr, the novelist (not in the Grammar school); James White,

the friend of Charles Lamb, and not unworthy of him, author of

"Falstaff's Letters" (this was he who used to give an anniversary dinner

to the chimney-sweepers, merrier than, though not so magnificent as Mrs.

Montague's); Pitman, a celebrated preacher, editor of some school-books,

and religious classics; Mitchell, before mentioned; myself, who stood

next him; Barnes, who came next, the editor of the "Times," than whom no

man (if he had cared for it) could have been more certain of obtaining

celebrity for wit and literature; Townsend, a prebendary of Durham,

author of "Armageddon," and several theological works; Gilly, another of

the Durham prebendaries, who wrote the "Narrative of the Waldenses;"

Seargill, a Unitarian minister, author of some tracts on Peace and War,

&c.; and lastly, whom I have kept by way of climax, Coleridge and

Charles Lamb, two of the most original geniuses, not only of the day,

but of the country. We have had an embassador among us; but as he, I

understand, is ashamed of us, we are hereby more ashamed of him, and

accordingly omit him.

Coleridge I never saw till he was old. Lamb I recollect coming to see

the boys, with a pensive, brown, handsome, and kindly face, and a gait

advancing with a motion from side to side, between involuntary

consciousness and attempted ease. His brown complexion may have been

owing to a visit in the country; his air of uneasiness to a great burden

of sorrow. He dressed with a quaker-like plainness. I did not know him

as Lamb: I took him for a Mr. "Guy," having heard somebody address him

by that appellative, I suppose in jest.

Every upper boy at school appears a giant to a little one. "Big boy" and

senior are synonymous. Now and then, however, extreme smallness in a

senior scholar gives a new kind of dignity, by reason of the testimony

it bears to the ascendency of the intellect. It was the custom for the

monitors at Christ-Hospital, during prayers before meat, to stand

fronting the tenants of their respective wards, while the objects of

their attention were kneeling. Looking up, on one of these occasions,

toward a new monitor who was thus standing, and whose face was unknown

to me (for there were six hundred of us, and his ward was not mine), I

thought him the smallest boy that could ever have attained to so

distinguished an eminence. He was little in person, little in face, and

he had a singularly juvenile cast of features, even for one so _petite_.

It was MITCHELL, the translator of Aristophanes. He had really attained

his position prematurely. I rose afterward to be next to him in the

school; and from a grudge that existed between us, owing probably to a

reserve, which I thought pride, on his part, and to an ardency which he

may have considered frivolous on mine, we became friends. Circumstances

parted us in after life: I became a reformist, and he a quarterly

reviewer; but he sent me kindly remembrances not long before he died. I

did not know he was declining; and it will ever be a pain to me to

reflect, that delay conspired with accident to hinder my sense of it

from being known to him, especially as I learned that he had not been so

prosperous as I supposed. He had his weaknesses as well as myself, but

they were mixed with conscientious and noble qualities. Zealous as he

was for aristocratical government, he was no indiscriminate admirer of

persons in high places; and, though it would have bettered his views in

life, he had declined taking orders, from nicety of religious scruple.

Of his admirable scholarship I need say nothing.

Equally good scholar, but of a less zealous temperament was BARNES, who

stood next me on the deputy-Grecian form, and who was afterward

identified with the sudden and striking increase of the _Times_

newspaper in fame and influence. He was very handsome when young, with a

profile of Grecian regularity; and was famous among us for a certain

dispassionate humor, for his admiration of the works of Fielding, and

for his delight, nevertheless, in pushing a narrative to its utmost, and

drawing upon his stores of fancy for intensifying it; an amusement for

which he possessed an understood privilege. It was painful in after life

to see his good looks swallowed up in corpulency, and his once handsome

mouth thrusting its under lip out, and panting with asthma. I believe he

was originally so well constituted, in point of health and bodily

feeling, that he fancied he could go on all his life without taking any

of the usual methods to preserve his comfort. The editorship of the

_Times_, which turned his night into day, and would have been a trying

burden to any man, completed the bad consequences of his negligence, and

he died painfully before he was old. Barnes wrote elegant Latin verse, a

classical English style, and might assuredly have made himself a name in

wit and literature, had he cared much for any thing beyond his glass of

wine and his Fielding.

What pleasant days have I not passed with him, and other schoolfellows,

bathing in the New River, and boating on the Thames. He and I began to

learn Italian together; and any body not within the pale of the

enthusiastic, might have thought us mad, as we went shouting the

beginning of Metastasio's ode to Venus, as loud as we could bawl, over

the Hornsey-fields.

LEIGH HUNT DROWNING.

At Oxford, my love of boating had nearly cost me my life. I had already

had a bit of a taste of drowning in the river Thames, in consequence of

running a boat too hastily on shore; but it was nothing to what I

experienced on this occasion. The schoolfellow whom I was visiting was

the friend whose family lived in Spring Gardens. We had gone out in a

little decked skiff, and not expecting disasters in the gentle Isis, I

had fastened the sail-line, of which I had the direction, in order that

I might read a volume which I had with me, of Mr. Cumberland's novel

called "Henry." My friend was at the helm. The wind grew a little

strong, and we had just got into Iffley Reach, when I heard him exclaim,

"Hunt, we are over!" The next moment I was under the water, gulping it,

and giving myself up for lost. The boat had a small opening in the

middle of the deck, under which I had thrust my feet; this circumstance

had carried me over with the boat, and the worst of it was, I found I

had got the sail-line round my neck. My friend, who sat on the deck

itself, had been swept off, and got comfortably to shore, which was at a

little distance.

My bodily sensations were not so painful as I should have fancied they

would have been. My mental reflections were very different, though one

of them, by a singular meeting of extremes, was of a comic nature. I

thought that I should never see the sky again, that I had parted with

all my friends, and that I was about to contradict the proverb which

said that a man who was born to be hung would never be drowned; for the

sail-line, in which I felt entangled, seemed destined to perform for me

both the offices. On a sudden, I found an oar in my hand, and the next

minute I was climbing, with assistance, into a wherry, in which there

sat two Oxonians, one of them helping me, and loudly and laughingly

differing with the other, who did not at all like the rocking of the

boat, and who assured me, to the manifest contradiction of such senses

as I had left, that there was no room. This gentleman is now no more,

and I shall not mention his name, because I might do injustice to the

memory of a brave man struck with a panic. The name of his companion, if

I mistake not, was Russell. I hope he was related to an illustrious

person of the same name, to whom I have lately been indebted for what

may have been another prolongation of my life.

On returning to town, which I did on the top of an Oxford coach, I was

relating this story to the singular person who then drove it (Bobart,

who had been a collegian), when a man who was sitting behind surprised

us with the excess of his laughter. On asking him the reason, he touched

his hat, and said, "Sir, I'm his footman." Such were the delicacies of

the livery, and the glorifications of their masters with which they

entertain the kitchen.--_From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt._

WILLIAM PITT.

BY S. T. COLERIDGE.

The following very graphic and very severe critical estimate of WILLIAM

PITT, the great Prime Minister of England during the stormy era of the

French Revolution, was written by COLERIDGE for the London Morning Post,

with which he was then connected. It appeared in the number of that

paper, dated Wednesday, March 19, 1800. We copy it from COLERIDGE'S

"Essays on His Own Times," just published in London.

* * * * *

PLUTARCH, in his comparative biography of Rome and Greece, has generally

chosen for each pair of lives the two contemporaries who most nearly

resemble each other. His work would, perhaps have been more interesting,

if he had adopted the contrary arrangement and selected those rather,

who had attained to the possession of similar influence or similar fame,

by means, actions, and talents, the most dissimilar. For power is the

sole object of philosophical attention in man, as in inanimate nature:

and in the one equally as in the other, we understand it more

intimately, the more diverse the circumstances are with which we have

observed it co-exist. In our days the two persons, who appear to have

influenced the interests and actions of men the most deeply and the most

diffusively are beyond doubt the Chief Consul of France, and the Prime

Minister of Great Britain; and in these two are presented to us similar

situations with the greatest dissimilitude of characters.

William Pitt was the younger son of Lord Chatham; a fact of no ordinary

importance in the solution of his character, of no mean significance in

the heraldry of morals and intellect. His father's rank, fame, political

connections, and parental ambition were his mould; he was cast, rather

than grew. A palpable election, a conscious predestination controlled

the free agency, and transfigured the individuality of his mind; and

that, which he _might have been_, was compelled into that, which he _was

to be_. From his early childhood it was his father's custom to make him

stand up on a chair, and declaim before a large company; by which

exercise, practiced so frequently, and continued for so many years, he

acquired a premature and unnatural dexterity in the combination of

words, which must of necessity have diverted his attention from present

objects, obscured his impressions, and deadened his genuine feelings.

Not the _thing_ on which he was speaking, but the praises to be gained

by the speech, were present to his intuition; hence he associated all

the operations of his faculties with words, and his pleasures with the

surprise excited by them.

But an inconceivably large portion of human knowledge and human power is

involved in the science and management of _words_; and an education of

words, though it destroys genius, will often create, and always foster,

talent. The young Pitt was conspicuous far beyond his fellows, both at

school and at college. He was always full grown: he had neither the

promise nor the awkwardness of a growing intellect. Vanity, early

satiated, formed and elevated itself into a love of power; and in losing

this colloquial vanity he lost one of the prime links that connect the

individual with the species, too early for the affections, though not

too early for the understanding. At college he was a severe student; his

mind was founded and elemented in words and generalities, and these too

formed all the superstructure. That revelry and that debauchery, which

are so often fatal to the powers of intellect, would probably have been

serviceable to him; they would have given him a closer communion with

realities, they would have induced a greater presentness to present

objects. But Mr. Pitt's conduct was correct, unimpressibly correct. His

after-discipline in the special pleader's office, and at the bar,

carried on the scheme of his education with unbroken uniformity. His

first political connections were with the Reformers, but those who

accuse him of sympathizing or coalescing with their intemperate or

visionary plans, misunderstand his character, and are ignorant of the

historical facts. Imaginary situations in an imaginary state of things

rise up in minds that possess a power and facility in combining images.

Mr. Pitt's ambition was conversant with old situations in the old state

of things, which furnish nothing to the imagination, though much to the

wishes. In his endeavors to realize his father's plan of reform, he was

probably as sincere as a being, who had derived so little knowledge from

actual impressions, could be. But his sincerity had no living root of

affection; while it was propped up by his love of praise and immediate

power, so long it stood erect and no longer. He became a member of the

Parliament--supported the popular opinions, and in a few years, by the

influence of the popular party, was placed in that high and awful rank

in which he now is. The fortunes of his country, we had almost said, the

fates of the world, were placed in his wardship--we sink in prostration

before the inscrutable dispensations of Providence, when we reflect in

whose wardship the fates of the world were placed!

The influencer of his country and of his species was a young man, the

creature of another's predetermination, sheltered and weather-fended

from all the elements of experience; a young man, whose feet had never

wandered; whose very eye had never turned to the right or to the left;

whose whole track had been as curveless as the motion of a fascinated

reptile! It was a young man, whose heart was solitary, because he had

existed always amidst objects of futurity, and whose imagination, too,

was unpopulous, because those objects of hope, to which his habitual

wishes had transferred, and as it were _projected_, his existence, were

all familiar and long established objects! A plant sown and reared in a

hot-house, for whom the very air that surrounded him, had been regulated

by the thermometer of previous purpose; to whom the light of nature had

penetrated only through glasses and covers; who had had the sun without

the breeze; whom no storm had shaken; on whom no rain had pattered; on

whom the dews of heaven had not fallen! A being, who had had no feelings

connected with man or nature, no spontaneous impulses, no unbiased and

desultory studies, no genuine science, nothing that constitutes

individuality in intellect, nothing that teaches brotherhood in

affection! Such was the man--such, and so denaturalized the spirit--on

whose wisdom and philanthropy the lives and living enjoyments of so many

millions of human beings were made unavoidably dependent. From this time

a real enlargement of mind became almost impossible. Pre-occupations,

intrigue, the undue passion and anxiety with which all facts must be

surveyed; the crowd and confusion of those facts, none of them seen, but

all communicated, and by that very circumstance, and by the necessity of

perpetually classifying them, transmuted into words and generalities;

pride, flattery, irritation, artificial power; these, and circumstances

resembling these, necessarily render the heights of office barren

heights, which command, indeed, a vast and extensive prospect, but

attract so many clouds and vapors, that most often all prospect is

precluded. Still, however, Mr. Pitt's situation, however inauspicious

for his real being, was favorable to his fame. He heaped period on

period; persuaded himself and the nation, that extemporaneous

arrangement of sentences was eloquence; and that eloquence implied

wisdom. His father's struggles for freedom, and his own attempts, gave

him an almost unexampled popularity; and his office necessarily

associated with his name all the great events, that happened during his

administration. There were not, however, wanting men, who saw through

this delusion; and refusing to attribute the industry, integrity, and

enterprising spirit of our merchants, the agricultural improvements of

our land-holders, the great inventions of our manufacturers, or the

valor and skillfulness of our sailors to the merits of a minister, they

have continued to decide on his character from those acts and those

merits, which belong to him and to him alone. Judging him by this

standard, they have been able to discover in him no one proof or symptom

of a commanding genius. They have discovered him never controlling,

never creating events, but always yielding to them with rapid change,

and sheltering himself from inconsistency by perpetual indefiniteness.

In the Russian war, they saw him abandoning meanly what he had planned

weakly, and threatened insolently. In the debates on the Regency, they

detected the laxity of his constitutional principles, and received

proofs that his eloquence consisted not in the ready application of a

general system to particular questions, but in the facility of arguing

for or against any question by specious generalities, without reference

to any system. In these debates, he combined what is most dangerous in

democracy, with all that is most degrading in the old superstitions of

monarchy; and taught an inherency of the office in the person, in order

to make the office itself a nullity, and the Premiership, with its

accompanying majority, the sole and permanent power of the State. And

now came the French Revolution. This was a new event; the old routine of

reasoning, the common trade of politics were to become obsolete. He

appeared wholly unprepared for it: half favoring, half condemning,

ignorant of what he favored, and why he condemned, he neither displayed

the honest enthusiasm and fixed principle of Mr. Fox, nor the intimate

acquaintance with the general nature of man, and the consequent.

_prescience_ of Mr. Burke.

After the declaration of war, long did he continue in the common cant of

office, in declamation about the Scheldt and Holland, and all the vulgar

causes of common contests! and when at last the immense genius of his

new supporter had beat him out of these _words_ (words signifying

_places_ and _dead objects_, and signifying nothing more), he adopted

other words in their places, other generalities--Atheism and

Jacobinism--phrases, which he learned from Mr. Burke, but without

learning the philosophical definitions and involved consequences, with

which that great man accompanied those words. Since the death of Mr.

Burke, the forms and the sentiments, and the tone of the French have

undergone many and important changes: how, indeed, is it possible that

it should be otherwise, while man is the creature of experience! But

still Mr. Pitt proceeds in an endless repetition of the same _general

phrases_. This is his element; deprive him of general and abstract

phrases, and you reduce him to silence. But you can not deprive him of

them. Press him to specify an _individual_ fact of advantage to be

derived from a war, and he answers, Security! Call upon him to

particularize a crime, and he exclaims, Jacobinism! Abstractions defined

by abstractions! Generalities defined by generalities! As a minister of

finance, he is still, as ever, the man of words and abstractions!

Figures, custom-house reports, imports and exports, commerce and

revenue--all flourishing, all splendid! Never was such a prosperous

country, as England, under his administration! Let it be objected, that

the agriculture of the country is, by the overbalance of commerce, and

by various and complex causes, in such a state, that the country hangs

as a pensioner for bread on its neighbors, and a bad season uniformly

threatens us with famine. This (it is replied) is owing to our

PROSPERITY--all _prosperous_ nations are in great distress for

food!--still PROSPERITY, still GENERAL PHRASES, uninforced by one

_single image_, one _single fact_ of real national amelioration; of any

one comfort enjoyed, where it was not before enjoyed; of any one class

of society becoming healthier, wiser, or happier. These are _things_,

these are realities; and these Mr. Pitt has neither the imagination to

body forth, nor the sensibility to feel for. Once, indeed, in an evil

hour, intriguing for popularity, he suffered himself to be persuaded to

evince a talent for the Real, the Individual; and he brought in his POOR

BILL!! When we hear the minister's talent for finance so loudly

trumpeted, we turn involuntarily to his POOR BILL--to that acknowledged

abortion--that unanswerable evidence of his ignorance respecting all the

fundamental relations and actions of property, and of the social union!

As his reasonings, even so is his eloquence. One character pervades his

whole being. Words on words, finely arranged, and so dexterously

consequent, that the whole bears the semblance of argument, and still

keeps awake a sense of surprise; but when all is done, nothing

rememberable has been said; no one philosophical remark, no one image,

not even a pointed aphorism. Not a sentence of Mr. Pitt's has ever been

quoted, or formed the favorite phrase of the day--a thing unexampled in

any man of equal reputation. But while he speaks, the effect varies

according to the character of his auditor. The man of no talent is

swallowed up in surprise; and when the speech is ended, he remembers his

feelings, but nothing distinct of that which produced them--(how

opposite an effect to that of nature and genius, from whose works the

idea still remains, when the feeling is passed away--remains to connect

itself with the other feelings, and combine with new impressions!) The

mere man of talent hears him with admiration--the mere man of genius

with contempt--the philosopher neither admires nor contemns, but listens

to him with a deep and solemn interest, tracing in the effects of his

eloquence the power of words and phrases, and that peculiar constitution

of human affairs in their present state, which so eminently favors this

power.

Such appears to us to be the prime minister of Great Britain, whether we

consider him as a statesman or as an orator. The same character betrays

itself in his private life; the same coldness to realities, and to all

whose excellence relates to reality. He has patronized no science, he

has raised no man of genius from obscurity; he counts no one prime work

of God among his friends. From the same source he has no attachment to

female society, no fondness for children, no perceptions of beauty in

natural scenery; but he is fond of convivial indulgences, of that

stimulation, which, keeping up the glow of self-importance and the sense

of internal power, gives feelings without the mediation of ideas.

These are the elements of his mind; the accidents of his fortune, the

circumstances that enabled such a mind to acquire and retain such a

power, would form a subject of a philosophical history, and that, too,

of no scanty size. We can scarcely furnish the chapter of contents to a

work, which would comprise subjects so important and delicate, as the

causes of the diffusion and intensity of secret influence; the machinery

and state intrigue of marriages; the overbalance of the commercial

interest; the panic of property struck by the late revolution; the

short-sightedness of the careful; the carelessness of the fat-sighted;

and all those many and various events which have given to a decorous

profession of religion, and a seemliness of private morals, such an

unwonted weight in the attainment and preservation of public power. We

are unable to determine whether it be more consolatary or humiliating to

human nature, that so many complexities of event, situation, character,

age, and country, should be necessary in order to the production of a

Mr. Pitt.

[From Household Words.]

IGNORANCE OF THE ENGLISH.

The lamentable deficiency of the commonest rudiments of education, which

still exists among the humbler classes of the nation, is never so darkly

apparent as when we compare their condition with that of people of

similar rank in other countries. When we do so, we find that England

stands the lowest in the scale of what truly must be looked upon as

_Civilization_; for she provides fewer means for promoting it than any

of her neighbors. With us, education is a commodity to be trafficked in:

abroad, it is a duty. Here, schoolmasters are perfectly irresponsible

except to their paymasters; in other countries, teachers are appointed

by the state, and a rigid supervision is maintained over the trainers of

youth, both as regards competency and moral conduct. In England, whoever

is too poor to buy the article education, can get none of it for himself

or his offspring; in other parts of Europe, either the government (as in

Germany), or public opinion (as in America), enforces it upon the

youthful population.

What are the consequences? One is revealed by a comparison between the

proportion of scholars in elementary schools to the entire population of

other countries, and that in our own. Taking the whole of northern

Europe--including Scotland, and France, and Belgium (where education is

at a low ebb), we find that to every 2-1/4 of the population, there is

one child acquiring the rudiments of knowledge; while in England there

is only one such pupil to every _fourteen_ inhabitants.

It has been calculated that there are, at the present day in England and

Wales, nearly 8,000,000 persons who can neither read nor write--that is

to say, nearly one quarter of the population. Also, that of all the

children between five and fourteen, more than one half attend no place

of instruction. These statements--compiled by Mr. Kay, from official and

other authentic sources, for his work on the Social Condition and

Education of the Poor in England and Europe, would be hard to believe,

if we had not to encounter in our every-day life degrees of illiteracy

which would be startling, if we were not thoroughly used to it. Wherever

we turn, ignorance, not always allied to poverty, stares us in the face.

If we look in the Gazette, at the list of partnerships dissolved, not a

month passes but some unhappy man, rolling perhaps in wealth, but

wallowing in ignorance, is put to the _experimentum crucis_ of "his

mark." The number of petty jurors--in rural districts especially--who

can only sign with a cross is enormous. It is not unusual to see parish

documents of great local importance defaced with the same humiliating

symbol by persons whose office shows them to be not only "men of mark,"

but men of substance. We have printed already specimens of the partial

ignorance which passes under the ken of the Post Office authorities, and

we may venture to assert, that such specimens of penmanship and

orthography are not to be matched in any other country in Europe. A

housewife in humble life need only turn to the file of her tradesmen's

bills to discover hieroglyphics which render them so many arithmetical

puzzles. In short, the practical evidences of the low ebb to which the

plainest rudiments of education in this country has fallen, are too

common to bear repetition. We can not pass through the streets, we can

not enter a place of public assembly, or ramble in the fields, without

the gloomy shadow of Ignorance sweeping over us. The rural population is

indeed in a worse plight than the other classes. We quote--with the

attestation of our own experience--the following passage from one of a

series of articles which have recently appeared in a morning newspaper:

"Taking the adult class of agricultural laborers, it is almost

impossible to exaggerate the ignorance in which they live and move and

have their being. As they work in the fields, the external world has

some hold upon them through the medium of their senses; but to all the

higher exercises of intellect, they are perfect strangers. You can not

address one of them without being at once painfully struck with the

intellectual darkness which enshrouds him. There is in general neither

speculation in his eyes, nor intelligence in his countenance. The whole

expression is more that of an animal than of a man. He is wanting, too,

in the erect and independent bearing of a man. When you, accost him, if

he is not insolent--which he seldom is--he is timid and shrinking, his

whole manner showing that he feels himself at a distance from you,

greater than should separate any two classes of men. He is often

doubtful when you address, and suspicious when you question him; he is

seemingly oppressed with the interview, while it lasts, and obviously

relieved when it is over. These are the traits which I can affirm them

to possess as a class, after having come in contact with many hundreds

of farm laborers. They belong to a generation for whose intellectual

culture little or nothing was done. As a class, they have no amusements

beyond the indulgence of sense. In nine cases out of ten, recreation is

associated in their minds with nothing higher than sensuality. I have

frequently asked clergymen and others, if they often find the adult

peasant reading for his own or others' amusement? The invariable answer

is, that such a sight is seldom or never witnessed. In the first place,

_the great bulk of them can not read_. In the next, a large proportion

of those who can do so with too much difficulty to admit of the exercise

being an amusement to them. Again, few of those who can read with

comparative ease, have the taste for doing so. It is but justice to them

to say, that many of those who can not read, have bitterly regretted, in

my hearing, their inability to do so. I shall never forget the tone in

which an old woman in Cornwall intimated to me what a comfort it would

now be to her, could she only read her Bible in her lonely hours."

We now turn to the high lights of the picture as presented abroad, and

which, from their very brightness, throw our own intellectual gloom into

deeper shade. Mr. Kay observes in the work we have already cited:

"It is a great fact, however much, we may be inclined to doubt it, that

throughout Prussia, Saxony, Bavaria, Bohemia, Wirtemberg, Baden, Hesse

Darmstadt, Hesse Cassel, Gotha, Nassau, Hanover, Denmark, Switzerland,

Norway, and the Austrian Empire, ALL the children are actually at this

present time attending school, and are receiving a careful, religious,

moral, and intellectual education, from highly educated and efficient

teachers. Over the vast tract of country which I have mentioned, as well

as in Holland, and the greater part of France, _all_ the children above

six years of age are daily acquiring useful knowledge and good habits

under the _influence_ of moral, religious, and learned teachers. ALL the

youth of the greater part of these countries, below the age of

twenty-one years, can read, write, and cipher, and know the Bible

History, and the history of their own country. No children are left idle

and dirty in the streets of the towns--there is no class of children to

be compared in any respect to the children who frequent our "ragged

schools"--all the children, even of the poorest parents, are, in a great

part of these countries, in dress, appearance, cleanliness, and manners,

as polished and civilized as the children of our middle classes; the

children of the poor in Germany are so civilized that the rich often

send their children to the schools intended for the poor; and, lastly,

in a great part of Germany and Switzerland, the children of the poor are

receiving a _better_ education than that given in England to the

children of the greater part of our middle classes."

"I remember one day," says Mr. Kay in another page, "when walking near

Berlin in the company of Herr Hintz, a professor in Dr. Diesterweg's

Normal College, and of another teacher, we saw a poor woman cutting up,

in the road, logs of wood for winter use. My companions pointed her out

to me, and said, 'Perhaps you will scarcely believe it, but in the

neighborhood of Berlin, poor women, like that one, read translations of

Sir Walter Scott's Novels, and many of the interesting works of your

language, besides those of the principal writers of Germany.' This

account was afterward confirmed by the testimony of several other

persons. Often and often have I seen the poor cab-drivers of Berlin,

while waiting for a fare, amusing themselves by reading German books,

which they had brought with them in the morning, expressly for the

purpose of supplying amusement and occupation for their leisure hours.

In many parts of these countries, the peasants and the workmen of the

towns attend regular weekly lectures or weekly classes, where they

practice singing or chanting, or learn mechanical drawing, history, or

science. The intelligence of the poorer classes of these countries is

shown by their manners. The whole appearance of a German peasant who has

been brought up under this system, _i. e._, of any of the poor who have

not attained the age of thirty-five years, is very different to that of

our own peasantry. The German, Swiss, or Dutch peasant, who has grown up

to manhood under the new system, and since the old feudal system was

overthrown, is not nearly so often, as with us, distinguished by an

uncouth dialect. On the contrary, they speak as their teachers speak,

clearly, without hesitation, and grammatically. They answer questions

politely, readily, and with the ease which shows they have been

accustomed to mingle with men of greater wealth and of better education

than themselves. They do not appear embarrased, still less do they

appear gawkish or stupid, when addressed. If, in asking a peasant a

question, a stranger, according to the polite custom of the country,

raises his hat, the first words of reply are the quietly uttered ones,

'I pray you, sir, be covered.' A Prussian peasant is always polite and

respectful to a stranger, but quite as much at his ease as when speaking

to one of his own fellows."

Surely the contrast presented between the efforts of the schoolmaster

abroad and his inactivity at home--refuting, as it does, our hourly

boastings of "intellectual progress"--should arouse us, energetically

and practically, to the work of educational extension.

LINES BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

(FROM AN UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH.)

The days of Infancy are all a dream,

How fair, but oh! how short they seem--

'Tis Life's sweet opening SPRING!

The days of Youth advance:

The bounding limb, the ardent glance.

The kindling soul they bring--

It is Life's burning SUMMER time.

Manhood--matured with wisdom's fruit,

Reward of learning's deep pursuit--

Succeeds, as AUTUMN follows Summer's prime.

And that, and that, alas! goes by;

And what ensues? The languid eye,

The failing frame, the soul o'ercast;

'Tis WINTER'S sickening, withering blast,

Life's blessed season--for it is the last.

[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]

THE SCHOOLMASTER OF COLERIDGE AND LAMB.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

Boyer, the upper master of Christ-Hospital--famous for the mention of

him by COLERIDGE and LAMB--was a short, stout man, inclining to

punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip,

and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles which he

wore threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with

a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of the

sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he

generally wore gray worsted stockings, very tight, with a little

balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented something formidably

succinct, hard, and mechanical. In fact, his weak side, and undoubtedly

his natural destination, lay in carpentry; and he accordingly carried,

in a side-pocket made on purpose, a carpenter's rule.

The merits of BOYER consisted in his being a good verbal scholar, and

conscientiously acting up to the letter of time and attention. I have

seen him nod at the close of the long summer school-hours, wearied out;

and I should have pitied him, if he had taught us any thing but to fear.

Though a clergyman, very orthodox, and of rigid morals, he indulged

himself in an oath, which was "God's-my-life!" When you were out in your

lesson, he turned upon you a round, staring eye like a fish; and he had

a trick of pinching you under the chin, and by the lobes of the ears,

till he would make the blood come. He has many times lifted a boy off

the ground in this way. He was, indeed, a proper tyrant, passionate and

capricious; would take violent likes and dislikes to the same boys;

fondle some without any apparent reason, though he had a leaning to the

servile, and, perhaps, to the sons of rich people; and he would

persecute others in a manner truly frightful. I have seen him beat a

sickly-looking, melancholy boy (C----n) about the head and ears, till

the poor fellow, hot, dry-eyed, and confused, seemed lost in

bewilderment. C----n, not long after he took orders, died out of his

senses. I do not attribute that catastrophe to the master; and of course

he could not wish to do him any lasting mischief. He had no imagination

of any sort. But there is no saying how far his treatment of the boy

might have contributed to prevent a cure. Tyrannical schoolmasters

nowadays are to be found, perhaps, exclusively in such inferior schools

as those described with such masterly and indignant edification by my

friend Charles Dickens; but they formerly seemed to have abounded in

all; and masters, as well as boys, have escaped the chance of many

bitter reflections, since a wiser and more generous intercourse has come

up between them.

I have some stories of Boyer, that will completely show his character,

and at the same time relieve the reader's indignation by something

ludicrous in their excess. We had a few boarders at the school; boys,

whose parents were too rich to let them go on the foundation. Among

them, in my time, was Carlton, a son of Lord Dorchester; Macdonald, one

of the Lord Chief Baron's sons; and R----, the son of a rich merchant.

Carlton, who was a fine fellow, manly, and fall of good sense, took his

new master and his caresses very coolly, and did not want them. Little

Macdonald also could dispense with them, and would put on his delicate

gloves after lesson, with an air as if he resumed his patrician plumage.

R---- was meeker, and willing to be encouraged; and there would the

master sit, with his arm round his tall waist, helping him to his Greek

verbs, as a nurse does bread and milk to an infant; and repeating them,

when he missed, with a fond patience, that astonished us criminals in

drugget.

Very different was the treatment of a boy on the foundation, whose

friends, by some means or other, had prevailed on the master to pay him

an extra attention, and try to get him on. He had come into the school

at an age later than usual, and could hardly read. There was a book used

by the learners in reading, called "Dialogues between a Missionary and

an Indian." It was a poor performance, full of inconclusive arguments

and other commonplaces. The boy in question used to appear with this

book in his hand in the middle of the school, the master standing behind

him. The lesson was to begin. Poor ----, whose great fault lay in a

deep-toned drawl of his syllables and the omission of his stops, stood

half-looking at the book, and half-casting his eye toward the right of

him, whence the blows were to proceed. The master looked over him; and

his hand was ready. I am not exact in my quotation at this distance of

time; but the _spirit_ of one of the passages that I recollect was to

the following purport, and thus did the teacher and his pupil proceed:

_Master._ "Now, young man, have a care; or I'll set you a _swinging_

task." (A common phrase of his.)

_Pupil._ (Making a sort of heavy bolt at his calamity, and never

remembering his stop at the word Missionary.) "_Missionary_ Can you see

the wind?"

(Master gives him a slap on the cheek.)

_Pupil._ (Raising his voice to a cry, and still forgetting his stop.)

"_Indian_ No!"

_Master._ "God's-my-life, young man! have a care how you provoke me."

_Pupil._ (Always forgetting the stop.) "_Missionary_ How then do you

know that there is such a thing?"

(Here a terrible thump.)

_Pupil._ (With a shout of agony.) "_Indian_ Because I feel it."

One anecdote of his injustice will suffice for all. It is of ludicrous

enormity; nor do I believe any thing more flagrantly willful was ever

done by himself. I heard Mr. C----, the sufferer, now a most respectable

person in a government office, relate it with a due relish, long after

quitting the school. The master was in the habit of "spiting" C----;

that is to say, of taking every opportunity to be severe with him,

nobody knew why. One day he comes into the school, and finds him placed

in the middle of it with three other boys. He was not in one of his

worst humors, and did not teem inclined to punish them, till he saw his

antagonist. "Oh, oh, sir!" said he; "what! you are among them, are you?"

and gave him an exclusive thump on the face. He then turned to one of

the Grecians, and said, "I have not time to flog all these boys; make

them draw lots, and I'll punish one." The lots were drawn, and C----'s

was favorable. "Oh, oh!" returned the master, when he saw them, "you

have escaped, have you, sir?" and pulling out his watch, and turning

again to the Grecian, observed, that he found he _had_ time to punish

the whole three; "and, sir," added he to C----, with another slap, "I'll

begin with _you_." He then took the boy into the library and flogged

him; and, on issuing forth again, had the face to say, with an air of

indifference, "I have not time, after all, to punish these two other

boys; let them take care how they provoke me another time."

Often did I wish that I was a fairy, in order to play him tricks like a

Caliban. We used to sit and fancy what we should do with his wig; how we

would hamper and vex him; "put knives in his pillow, and halters in his

pew." To venture on a joke in our own mortal persons, was like playing

with Polyphemus. One afternoon, when he was nodding with sleep over a

lesson, a boy of the name of Meaer, who stood behind him, ventured to

take a pin, and begin advancing with it up his wig. The hollow,

exhibited between the wig and the nape of the neck, invited him. The

boys encouraged this daring act of gallantry. Nods and becks, and then

whispers of "Go it, M.!" gave more and more valor to his hand. On a

sudden, the master's head falls back; he starts, with eyes like a shark;

and seizing the unfortunate culprit, who stood helpless in the act of

holding the pin, caught hold of him, fiery with passion. A "swinging

task" ensued, which kept him at home all the holidays. One of these

tasks would consist of an impossible quantity of Virgil, which the

learner, unable to retain it at once, wasted his heart and soul out "to

get up," till it was too late.

Sometimes, however, our despot got into a dilemma, and then he did not

know how to get out of it. A boy, now and then, would be roused into

open and fierce remonstrance. I recollect S., afterward one of the

mildest of preachers, starting up in his place, and pouring forth on his

astonished hearer a torrent of invectives and threats, which the other

could only answer by looking pale, and uttering a few threats in return.

Nothing came of it. He did not like such matters to go before the

governors. Another time, Favell, a Grecian, a youth of high spirit, whom

he had struck, went to the school-door, opened it, and, turning round

with the handle in his grasp, told him he would never set foot again in

the place, unless he promised to treat him with more delicacy. "Come

back, child--come back!" said the other, pale, and in a faint voice.

There was a dead silence. Favell came back, and nothing mere was done.

A sentiment, unaccompanied with something practical, would have been

lost upon him D----, who went afterward to the Military College at

Woolwich, played him a trick, apparently between jest and earnest, which

amused us exceedingly. He was to be flogged; and the dreadful door of

the library was approached. (They did not invest the books with flowers,

as Montaigne recommends.) Down falls the criminal, and, twisting himself

about the master's legs, which he does the more when the other attempts

to move, repeats without ceasing, "Oh, good God! consider my father,

sir; my father, sir; you know my father!" The point was felt to be

getting ludicrous, and was given up. P----, now a popular preacher, was

in the habit of entertaining the boys that way. He was a regular wag;

and would snatch his jokes out of the very flame and fury of the master,

like snap-dragon. Whenever the other struck him, P. would get up; and,

half to avoid the blows, and half render them ridiculous, begin moving

about the school-room, making all sorts of antics. When he was struck in

the face, he would clap his hand with affected vehemence to the place,

and cry as rapidly, "_Oh_, Lord!" If the blow came on the arm, he would

grasp his arm, with a similar exclamation. The master would then go,

driving and kicking him; while the patient accompanied every blow with

the same comments and illustrations, making faces to us by way of index.

What a bit of a golden age was it, when the Rev. Mr. Steevens, one of

the under grammar-masters, took his place, on some occasion, for a short

time! Steevens was short and fat, with a handsome, cordial face. You

loved him as you looked at him; and seemed as if you should love him the

more, the fatter he became. I stammered when I was at that time of life;

which was an infirmity that used to get me into terrible trouble with

the master. Steevens used to say, on the other hand, "Here comes our

little black-haired friend, who stammers so. Now, let us see what we can

do for him." The consequence was, I did not hesitate half so much as

with the other. When I did, it was out of impatience to please him.

Such of us were not liked the better by the master, as were in favor

with his wife. She was a sprightly, good-looking woman, with black eyes,

and was beheld with transport by the boys, whenever she appeared at the

school-door. Her husband's name, uttered in a mingled tone of

good-nature and imperativeness, brought him down from his seat with

smiling haste. Sometimes he did not return. On entering the school one

day, he found a boy eating cherries. "Where did you get those cherries?"

exclaimed he, thinking the boy had nothing to say for himself. "Mrs.

Boyer gave them me, sir." He turned away, scowling with disappointment.

Speaking of fruit, reminds me of a pleasant trait on the part of a

Grecian of the name of Le Grice. He was the maddest of all the great

boys in my time; clever, full of address, and not hampered with modesty.

Remote rumors, not lightly to be heard, fell on our ears, respecting

pranks of his among the nurses' daughters. He had a fair, handsome face,

with delicate, aquiline nose, and twinkling eyes. I remember his

astonishing me, when I was "a new boy," with sending me for a bottle of

water, which he proceeded to pour down the back of G., a grave Deputy

Grecian. On the master asking him one day, why he, of all the boys, had

given up no exercise (it was a particular exercise that they were bound

to do in the course of a long set of holidays), he said he had had "a

lethargy." The extreme impudence of this puzzled the master; and I

believe nothing came of it. But what I alluded to about the fruit was

this: Le Grice was in the habit of eating apples in school-time, for

which he had been often rebuked. One day, having particularly pleased

the master, the latter, who was eating apples himself, and who would now

and then with great ostentation present a boy with some half-penny token

of his mansuetude, called out to his favorite of the moment: "Le Grice,

here is an apple for you." Le Grice, who felt his dignity hurt as a

Grecian, but was more pleased at having this opportunity of mortifying

his reprover, replied, with an exquisite tranquillity of assurance,

"Sir, I never eat apples." For this, among other things, the boy's

adored him. Poor fellow! He and Favell (who, though very generous, was

said to be a little too sensible of an humble origin) wrote to the Duke

of York, when they were at college, for commissions in the army. The

duke good-naturedly sent them. Le Grice died in the West Indies. Favell

was Killed in one of the battles in Spain, but not before he had

distinguished himself as an officer and a gentleman.

EDUCATION IN AMERICA

What is the enterprise and general prosperity of the Americans to be

attributed to (their country is not naturally so rich or fruitful as

Mexico), except to their general enlightenment? The oldest manufacturers

of cotton in the world are the Hindoos; labor with them is cheaper than

it is in any other part of the world: yet we take the cotton that grows

at the doors of their factories, bring it 13,000 miles to this country,

manufacture it here where labor is so expensive, take it back 13,000

miles, and undersell the native manufacturer. Labor is dearer in America

than in any part of the world, and yet we dread and fear their

competition more than that of any other nation. The reason of all this

is obvious. All the advantages which the Hindoo possesses are far more

than counterbalanced by his intellectual inferiority to ourselves; while

we dread the American, with reason, because he is, intellectually at

least, our equal, and, considering the general intelligence and good

conduct of the hands he employs, our superior. To what cause, except

that of a decided superiority in captains and crews, can we attribute

the fact that the Americans have deprived us of so large a portion of

the whale fishery, as in a measure to have monopolized it? American

clocks, which we now see in almost every hall and cottage, ought to set

us thinking. We may be sure of this, the commerce of the world will fall

into the hands of those who are most deserving of it. If political or

philanthropic considerations should fail to show us the necessity of

educating our people, commercial considerations will one day remind us

of what we ought to have done. We can only hope that the reminder may

not come too late.

Enlightenment is the great necessity and the great glory of our age;

ignorance is the most expensive, and most dangerous, and most pressing

of all our evils. Among ourselves we find a variety of motives

converging upon this conclusion. The statesman has become aware that an

enlightened population is more orderly, more submissive, in times of

public distress, to the necessity of their circumstances; not so easily

led away by agitators; in short, more easily and more cheaply governed.

The political economist is well aware of the close connection between

general intelligence and successful enterprise and industry. The greater

the number of enlightened and intelligent persons, the greater is the

number of those whose thoughts are at work in subduing nature, improving

arts, and increasing national wealth. The benevolent man is anxious that

all should share those enjoyments and advantages which he himself finds

to be the greatest. Both Churchman and Dissenter know well enough that

they are under the necessity of educating. And the manufacturer, too,

who is employing, perhaps, many more hands than the colonel of a

regiment commands, is now becoming well aware how much to his advantage

it is that his men should prefer a book or a reading-room to the parlor

of a public house; should understand what they are about, instead of

being merely able to go through their allotted task as so many beasts of

burden; and that they should have the strong motive of making their

homes decent and respectable, and of bettering their condition. All

these motives are now working--strongly, too--in the public mind, and

have begun to bear fruit.--_Frazer's Magazine._

[From Bartlett's "Nile Boat."]

SCENES IN EGYPT.

The Egyptian Pyramids.--How many illustrious travelers in all ages have

sat and gazed upon the scene around! and how endless are the

speculations in which they have indulged! "The epochs, the builders, and

the objects of the pyramids," says Gliddon, "had, for two thousand

years, been dreams, fallacies, or mysteries." To begin at the beginning,

some have supposed them to be antediluvian; others, that they were built

by the children of Noah to escape from a second flood--by Nimrod, by the

Pali of Hindostan, and even the ancient Irish. It was a favorite theory

until very lately, that they were the work of the captive Israelites.

The Arabians attributed them to the Jins or Genii; others to a race of

Titans. Some have supposed them to have been the granaries built by

Joseph; others, intended for his tomb, or those of the Pharaoh drowned

in the Red Sea, or of the bull Apis. Yeates thinks they soon followed

the Tower of Babel, and both had the same common design; while,

according to others, they were built with the spoils of Solomon's temple

and the riches of the queen of Sheba. They have been regarded as temples

of Venus, as reservoirs for purifying the waters of the Nile, as erected

for astronomical or mathematical purposes, or intended to protect the

valley of the Nile from the encroachments of the sands of the desert

(this notable theory, too, is quite recent); in short, for every

conceivable and inconceivable purpose that could be imagined by

superstitious awe, by erudition groping without data in the dark, or

reasoning upon the scanty and suspicious evidence of Grecian writers. At

length, after a silence of thousands of years, the discoveries of

Champollion have enabled the monuments to tell their own tale; their

mystery has been, in great measure, unraveled, and the names of their

founders ascertained. The explorations of Colonel Vyse, Perring, and

recently of Lepsius, have brought to light the remains of no less than

_sixty-nine_ pyramids, extending in a line from Abouroash to Dashoor.

These, by the discovery of the names of their founders, are proved to

have been a succession of royal mausolea, forming the most sublime

Necropolis in the world. The size of each different pyramid is supposed

to bear relation to the length of the reign of its builder, being

commenced with the delving of a tomb in the rock for him at his

accession, over which a fresh layer of stones was added every year until

his decease, when the monument was finished and closed up. Taking the

number of these Memiphite sovereigns and the average length of their

reigns, the gradual construction of the pyramids would, therefore, it is

presumed, extend over a period, in round numbers, of some _sixteen

hundred years!_ Imagination is left to conceive the antecedent period

required for the slow formation of the alluvial valley of the Nile until

it became fit for human habitation, whether it was first peopled by an

indigenous race, or by an Asiatic immigration, already bringing with

them from their Asiatic birth-place the elements of civilization, or

whether they grew up on the spot, and the long, long ages that might

have elapsed, and the progress that must have been made, before

monuments so wonderful could have been erected.

[Illustration: THE PYRAMIDS.]

Such is the latest theory, we believe, of the construction and import of

the pyramids.

The entrance to the great pyramid is about forty feet from the ground.

At the entrance, the stones follow the inclination of the passage:

there are a few foot-holes to aid you in descending the slippery blocks.

Stooping down at the entrance of the low passage, four feet high, we

began the sloping descent into the interior. This first passage

continues on a slope, down to a subterranean room; but at the distance

of 106 feet, a block of granite closes it; and an upper passage ascends

from this point at an angle of 27 deg.. Climbing by a few steps into the

second passage, you ascend to the entrance of the great gallery. From

this point a horizontal passage leads into what is called the Queen's

Chamber, which is small, and roofed by long blocks, resting against each

other, and forming an angle: its height to this point is about twenty

feet. There is a niche in the east end, where the Arabs have broken the

stones in search for treasure; and Sir G. Wilkinson thinks, that "if the

pit where the king's body was deposited does exist in any of these

rooms, it should be looked for beneath this niche." He remarks besides,

that this chamber stands under the apex of the pyramid. At the base of

the great gallery, to which we now return, is the mouth of what is

called the well, a narrow funnel-shaped passage, leading down to the

chamber at the base of the edifice, hollowed in the rock, and if the

theory of Dr. Lepsius is correct, originally containing the body of the

founder. The long ascending slope of the great gallery, six feet wide,

is formed by successive courses of masonry overlaying each other, and

thus narrowing the passage toward the top.

[Illustration]

Advancing 158 feet up this impressive avenue, we come to a horizontal

passage, where four granite portcullises, descending through grooves,

once opposed additional obstacles to the rash curiosity or avarice which

might tempt any to invade the eternal silence of the sepulchral chamber,

which they besides concealed, but the cunning of the spoiler has been

there of old, the device was vain, and you are now enabled to enter

this, the principal apartment in the pyramid, and called the King's

Chamber, entirely constructed of red granite, as is also the

sarcophagus, the lid and contents of which had been removed. This is

entirely plain, and without hieroglyphics; the more singular, as it

seems to be ascertained that they were then in use. The sarcophagus

rests upon an enormous granite block, which may, as suggested by Mrs.

Poole, in her minute account of the interior, have been placed to mark

the entrance to a deep vault or pit beneath. There are some small holes

in the walls of the chamber, the purpose of which was for ventilation,

as at length discovered by Col. Howard Vyse.

Above the King's Chamber, and only to be reached by a narrow passage,

ascending at the south-east corner of the great gallery, having notches

in which pieces of wood were formerly inserted, and from the top of

that, along another passage, is the small chamber discovered by Mr.

Davison; its height is only three feet six inches; above it are four

other similar niches, discovered by Colonel Howard Vyse, the topmost of

which is angular. Wilkinson supposes that the sole purpose of these

chambers is to relieve the pressure on the King's Chamber, and here was

discovered the cartouche containing the name of the founder, Suphis,

identical with that found upon the tablets in Wady Maghara, in the

desert of Mount Sinai.

The second pyramid, generally attributed, though without hieroglyphical

confirmation, to Cephrenes, is more ancient and ruder in its masonry

than that of Cheops. Standing on higher ground, it has from some points

an appearance of greater height than that of the great pyramid, and its

dimensions are hardly less stupendous. It is distinguished by having a

portion of the smooth casing yet remaining, with which all the pyramids

were once covered, and it is a great feat to climb up this dangerous,

slippery surface to the summit. Yet there are plenty of Arabs who for a

trifling beckshish will dash "down Cheops and up Cephrenes" with

incredible celerity. Its interior arrangements differ from those of the

great pyramid, in that in accordance with Lepsius's theory, the

sarcophagus of the builder is sunk in the floor, and not placed in the

centre of the edifice. The glory of opening this pyramid is due to the

enterprising Belzoni.

The third pyramid is of much smaller dimensions than the two others, but

beautifully constructed. It was the work, as is proved by the discovery

of his name, of Mycerinus or Mencheres, whose wooden coffin in the

British Museum, very simple, and unornamented, as well as the desiccated

body, supposed to be that of the monarch himself, has probably attracted

the notice of our readers. This pyramid is double, _i. e._, eased over

with a distinct covering. Besides these principal ones, there are still

standing other and smaller pyramids, more or less entire, grouped about

these larger ones, and forming a portion of this stupendous Necropolis

of Memphis.

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