"St. George, that swinged the Dragonand ere since

Sits on his horse back, at mine hostess' door."

It always struck us that there is something very awkward in certain of the adjuncts of this figure; the short and broad sword, which the artist has placed in the hand of the naked champion of England, seems a weapon totally useless against his fell antagonist; indeed the hero appears rather to be thwacking the flanks of his affrighted horse with a bat or a battle-dore, than assailing his enemy; and as to his cloak, it may explain what Sir Richard Blackmore meant by stating that the hero of one of his poems despoiled a naked Pict of such a vestment. Here we would observe that nothing would perhaps redound more to the honour of good taste in this country, if instead of Greek and Roman costume being adopted for its coin, our mint masters (whose qualifications in former times for a long series of years, was confined to their political subserviency and capability of receiving large salaries) were to reassume the practice of representing our monarchs in the state-dress which they actually wore. The coins of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. &c. may be quoted as successful examples of the practice.

If reverses strictly heraldic should be occasionally abandoned, and the Patron of the Garter appear on our coin, he should be encased in the armour which the middle age assigned for him. This attention would preserve to us a connective point of our national history, and medallic annals at large will amply shew how com. patible such a mode would be with the developement of the highest sculptural talent and taste of design: to Græcise and Romanize the heads and emblems on our coins, has always, in our view, carried with it a degree of absurdity which even the excellence of an artist could scarcely redeem. The coronation robe and collar of the Garter worn by the reigning monarch would surely be no ungraceful accompaniments of his bust. The personified Genius of Britain might be admitted on our reverses; but this should be the Britannia of the medals of Antoninus, not of some of Wyon's prede

cessors in monetary science, one hand furnished with an unmeaning twig, and the other resting on a pot-lid scored with that unheraldic distinction, the Union-Jack. Mr. Wyon has, with excellent judgment, made great improvements in rejecting some of the foreign emblems, though of classic origin, which for nearly two centuries had been attached to our coins.

Mr. Wyon's talents are not, it appears, confined to the exercise of his profession, for he has considerable literary attainments. In 1834 he gave a lecture at the Society of Arts on the progress of medallic art, beginning with the Gold Daric-perhaps the most ancient coin known, struck by Darius Hystaspes, in the second year of the 64th Olympiad, 523 years before Christ. These gold darics are of great purity as to the metal, but of rude, irregular, and coarse workmanship. They have on the obverse the figure of a king kneeling upon one knee, holding in the left hand a bow, and in the right an arrow; upon the reverse, merely a rude indentation. It was this type of an archer which gave rise to the pasquinade on Agesilaus King of Sparta, that he was driven out of Asia by ten thousand of the king's archers."p. 67, vide Plutarch.

Mr. Wyon, in adverting to the debasement of our coin by Henry VIII. has put on record a story, of which we should have liked to know the authority, namely, that the workmen employed in melting down his deterio. rated pieces, "fell sick to death of the savour, and were advised to drink from a dead man's scull for their cure; accordingly a warrant was procured from council to take off the heads [of certain executed traitors] from London Bridge, and to make cups of them, out of which they drank and found some relief." It is added, but on what principle we are not chemist enough to tell "if there be any truth in this story, it is probable that the sickness arose from the fumes of arsenic employed in some part of the operations." The absurdity of our ancient pharmacy may, perhaps, give some colour to the narration; for there was hardly any substance, however nauseous and disgusting, which was not set down in the list of healing medicines, and its

efficacy the more relied on in proportion as its nature was revolting. Powder from human sculls is among the number of ancient drugs, and might possibly be prescribed for the afflicted melters,

The famous trial crown-piece of Thomas Simon, "the Petition Crown," sold at Trattle's sale, 1832, for the sum of 2251. "Posterity has done ample justice to the merits of the artist, although his incomparable skill, it is to be feared, failed of obtaining the redress which he sought."-p. 76. In 1835, it seems, Mr. Wyon, with the permission of Government, repaired to Lisbon, where he remained six weeks; the result of his visit has been the execution by him of dies for a new series of coin for the Portuguese dominions.

An elaborate catalogue raisonné of Mr. Wyon's numerous productions occupies the latter portion of Mr. Carlisle's volume; they of themselves prove, by their number and variety, the magnitude, importance, and gene. ral estimation of his labours, and we esteem him fortunate to have found, during his lifetime, such a careful and honest chronicler" of his public services. The contemporary biography of a distinguished artist by a friend, has the value of auto-biography, for no material mistake or omission can reasonably be supposed to occur; while the character of the writer, in the present instance, assures us impartiality. The works of Wyon will descend to posterity perennial monuments of his fame, and Mr. Carlisle's volume will be coveted by present and future numismatists as an authentic guide for collecting them.

A spirit of warm approbation for the achievements of diligence and taste, and an independent attachment to justice, pervades the composition of the worthy Editor. He has struck a literary medal for the fame of Wyon; the legible motto on which is-" Palmam qui meruit ferat."

The Tour of the French Traveller, M. de la Boullaye le Gouz, in Ireland, A.D. 1644. Edited by T. Crofton Croker, with Notes and Illustrative Extracts. 8vo.

A very pretty book, and one which we very earnestly recommend to our

readers of every class, as being full of amusing anecdotes of persons and places, at this most interesting period of Irish history. The name of the editor would itself be a sufficient warrant, were one necessary, of the accuracy of our assertion.

Boullaye le Gouz seems to have been a native of the town of Angers; he was a great traveller, and finally ended his days in Persia. The text of this little book is but a portion of his travels in different parts of Europe, which was first published in 1653. A visit to Ireland, at the period our traveller was there, by a Frenchman or a Spaniard was a very perilous undertaking, for the seas were scoured by ships of the Parliament, who shewed little mercy either to Irish rebels or to Papists, who made common cause with them, and both in going thither and in his return Master le Gouz had some very narrow escapes. On the 15th of May, 1644, he reached Dublin. From Dublin he went to Kilkenny, which was then the seat of the Catholic confederation. From thence he went to Cashel, and on his road was entertained by Lord Ikerrin, one of the rebel chiefs, at whose table he met with a Spanish monk, and they fell into a fierce dispute as to the merits of their several countries, which we think very characteristic and amusing :

"At supper a friar from Spain brought the conversation from Spanish diet to the religion of that country, and bearing a mortal dislike to the French, my countrymen, he could not refrain from giving vent to his antipathy in my presence, stating, that as we had no Inquisition in France, we were but a set of reprobates, and partial to heretics, whom instead of tolerating as we do, we ought rather to exterminate, as the progress of the Catholic faith could not co-exist with this pestilential sect (the Calvinists), whose very name ought to be abhorred by the people. That Spain had the advantage of never having been infected with heresy, and hence their monarch was called the Catholic King, and hence aiso the great preponderance of that power in war.

"I felt it my duty thus to reply to this monk, whose zeal appeared to me to be most indiscreet:- My reverend father, I am surprised that you, born in Ireland, a neutral country, should be so much under the influence of prejudice and womanish imbecility as to prefer Spain so unjustly to France, a land where religion

and valour are equally found, if not in a higher degree. And whatever charms the Inquisition may have for you, and however useful you may think it as a means of purging a country of impiety, and preserving religion in its integrity, the French nation is too well informed that faith, which is the basis and foundation of Christianity, cannot be established by persecution. And as to Spain, although it may be true as you assert, that Huguenots never could thrive there, still the Moors and Infidels of Grenada are so mixed up with the population, that you can hardly

discriminate between them and real Catholics. Appearances often mislead us. The French, to outward semblance, seem free and careless, but are in reality excellent Christians; while your Spaniard, with a look of a devotee and an angel, is very often the reverse at heart.""

At Cashel our traveller had another much longer and very amusing dispute with the Spanish monks, for which we refer our readers to the book itself. From Cashel he went to Limerick, which he describes as "the strongest fortress in Ireland," and afterwards visited Cork. He also visited Kinsale and Youghall, the latter of which places had been preserved to the English party by the great Earl of Cork, and whose governor at this time was his son Lord Broghill, whose life, a most important work for Irish history, at present occupies the pen of the editor of Boullaye le Gouz. Hence he passed through Dungarvon and Waterford to Wexford, and here he stops to give us a detailed account of the personal appearance, character, and manners of the native Irish of his time, At Wexford M. de la Boullaye le Gouz embarked, and, after visiting Falmouth, escaped, with great difficulty, to France. Though the residence of our French traveller in Ireland was not of long duration, it will be seen by the foregoing sketch that he had had an opportunity of seeing much, and a glance at the book will show that he made good use of his eyes. Few similar works, of the same extent, could have presented so many subjects for notes and illustrations, which, in this instance, form by much the greater portion of

the contents of Crofton Croker's volume.

Sermons preached at the British Episcopal Church, Rotterdam. By the Rev. C. R. Muston, M. A. Assistant Chaplain, and author of "Recognition in the World to Come." 8vo, pp. 503.

WE are glad to welcome a volume written under the peculiar circumstances of these sermons. It appears that Mr. Muston was educated for a Dissenting minister among the Independents, first at their academies and afterwards at Glasgow; where he gained several prizes, and regularly graduated. In England he experienced so much pain from the oppression and tyranny of what is called the Voluntary System, that he was induced to consider the lawfulness and expediency of Establishments. An invitation being given by the English Presbyterian Church at Rotterdam, Mr. Muston accepted it, and thus became a minister of the Dutch Establishment. A new field of inquiry was now open, and after a patient and close examination of the earliest and most authentic ecclesiastical records, he was not only fully convinced that establishments afforded the most effectual means of disseminating the Gospel, but that Episcopacy was the primitive form of church government. Having derived many advantages from a union with the Dutch Church, and been convinced that in the earliest churches there were

bishops, priests, and deacons, conformity to the Church of England was to be expected. Every obstacle to his admission into the Church of England was removed by one of the most learned and eminent prelates of the present day, the Bishop of London, who in due time admitted Mr. Muston into Deacon's Orders. These sermons are the first fruits of his vigorous and highly cultivated mental powers, exercised as a clergyman of the Church of England. They are a fine specimen of pulpit eloquence, and do equal credit to the mind and heart of the author. Though they are not of a polemical character_ on the contrary, they breathe a warm and an affectionate Christian spirit— yet there is a proper and dignified tone of decision, arising from conviction, which, while "unwilling to descend from the high and common ground of essential principle," shows that, if ne

cessary, he could wield powerfully the weapons of defence. In these sermons man is properly treated as an intellectual and moral agent. The understanding is first convinced, and then the affections of the heart are warmly called into operation, that he may be excited to the constant practice of benevolent and virtuous actions. In short, these sermons are equally adapted to convince and gratify the understanding of the most refined, and to warm and cheer the heart of the most humble and practical Christian.

Dyce's Works of Bentley.

(Continued from p. 279.)

THAT the language of Dr. Parr, expressed forty-two years ago, is true to the letter, even at the present day, may be inferred from the remarks of Mr. Coleridge, who says, that the minute acquaintance with the niceties of two dead languages, which was once honoured with the exclusive name of scholarship, and regarded as the sole symbol of a liberal education, is now considered by the most influential movers of public opinion, as the specious disguise of self-complacent ignorance, the fruitless blossoms of strenuous idleness; at best a frivolous accomplishment, and not seldom an insidious abettor of privileged prejudices, and of creeds outrun.'

Of course we are well aware that such are the sentiments of the Edinburgh and Westminster Reviews, the pets and protégés of my Lord Brougham's School of Reform, Clerical, Legal, Political, Parochial, and Normal; for, to a genius like the ex-Chancellor, the House of Peers and the House of Paupers are but two Houses of Correction, where his lordship may wield his rod over men, women, boys, and girls, and even the very sucklings of Political or Domestic Economy. But like the rest of the doctrines of that clever clique, they are either true in the premises and false in the conclusions, or false in the premises and true in the conclusions. For though we confess that an acquaintance with the niceties of two dead languages was once honoured with the exclusive title of scholarship, and regarded as the sole symbol of a liberal education, we deny that it is the disguise of ignoGENT. MAG. VOL. VII.

rance, or what is the real gravamen of the accusation-that scholars are the insidious abettors of privileged prejudices or of creeds outrun. Did the Brougham school, which arrogates to itself the name of Pantologists, know anything of the history of scholarship, they would have known that amongst the first-rate Grecians of past days, and even of our own, not one can be named, who was an insidious abettor of privileged prejudices. Were Bentley, Dawes, Markland, Taylor, Tyrwhitt, Parr, Porson, Burney, Wakefield, and Dobree, in England; were Hemsterhuis, Valckenaer, Ruhnken, and Wyttenbach in Holland; were Heyne, Wolf, Beck, or are Hermann, Schaefer, Boeckh, Müller, and Lobeck, in Germany, abettors of privileged prejudices? Is not the genius of Greek Poetry, History, and Oratory rather more Republican than Aristocratical? Butscholars, forsooth, are wont to conceal the poverty of their minds under the cloak of a learned language, because their self-complacent ignorance cannot stand the piercing rays of my Lord Brougham's Sun of Pantology! Has the strenuous idleness of this army of scholars, whose equals Time will not see again, for Nature has broken the mould in which they were cast, produced nothing but the cinder apples of a Dead Sea? Away with such rubbish of the superficial, or worse, the wilfully false; who put forth these exaggerated statements solely with the view of pandering to the base passions of the many, pleased, as they always are, to see their superiors brought down to their own level, and branded as fools, who know nothing but a little Greek and Latin, or as knaves, who are willing to turn their knowledge only to the political degradation of their fellow men.

But whatever may be the opinions, real or assumed, of Lord Brougham's disciples, the teacher himself knows better than to decry all ancient literature; for unless his Lordship be the most consummate of hypocrites, he has expressed with all his heart, and with all his mind, and with all his soul, his sentiments in favour of those very languages,-which his followers take every opportunity to deride and decry,and which, as Bentley said, have died, and thus become immortal, and of

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which he might have said, had he lived to see their immortality oozing away, as the valour of Bob Acres did, at the ends of his fingers, that if we put out your lights, ye cunningest patterns of all excellence, there is no Promethean fire that can your lamps relume."

"Yes, but there is," say our modern Wiseacres," have we not translations of all that is worth reading in Greek and Latin? But who, we ask, has given or can give a translation of Homer or Horace, of Thucydides or Tacitus, of Herodotus or Livy, of Demosthenes or Cicero, that can convey more than the bald sense of the original? What a noble Epic does the Greek Iliad appear in the Latin prose translation of Spondanus, or the metrical English of the Ovidian Pope! Thucydides is crabbed enough in the original; but in the translation of Hobbes, the best that has yet appeared, the Athenian talks like an ultra-Barbarian. But the grand boast of the day is the substitution of English for Latin notes. And yet this very substitution must lead eventually to a perfect ignorance of the dead languages. No man who has ever had to do with the instruction of youths, but knows that the lad who cannot construe a Latin note, will kick away his Greek and Latin books as soon as he leaves college at furthest, if not before. Instead, then, of giving him English notes, it were better to give him only English books to read; for then he might learn something; whereas at present he not only learns nothing, but, while he is gravelled with the difficulty in the text, he is disgusted with the absurdity

in the note, and frightened with every learned symbol, even £. s. d. in his tailor's bill.

But even granting, say our School Reformers, that Greek and Latin were lost completely, no mighty harm would surely arise.

Undoubtedly people could buy bread and cheese, and lounge in their Gin Palaces, and steam it to Greenwich Fair, even if Dr. were abolished, and P. S. P. substituted for the Roman L. S. D. But would there be no impediment to the march of intellect, if every nation confined itself to its vernacular tongue? and what would be the gain eventually, if the whole of life were spent in merely learning the symbols of ideas in every European and half the Asiatic languages, instead of possessing, not indeed an universally spoken one, for that is impossible, but an universally written one, be it Greek or Latin it matters not, provided only it be not a living one, and thus rendered unchangeable. There is, however, another and not trifling advantage to the editor himself, in the use of a foreign instead of a vernacular tongue. He is compelled to think twice ere he writes once; and as second thoughts they say are wisest, he will either say nothing, or only what is to the purpose. It is true that Bentley's Phalaris and Porson's Letters to Travis, the only two perfect specimens of controversial writing, lose nothing by their English dress; nor is the learning and acuteness of Bayle less perceivable in Des Maiseaux's translation than in his own work; nay, we are told that Rabelais is far more intelligible in English, and