with a sensible, well-informed man, that does not know me. I lately got into a dilemma of this sort. up, with the probabilities of its success-to all which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory answers, having been drilled into this kind of etiquette by some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the stage divisions; nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in the first- In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsnamed of these two Terræ Incognitæ. I have gate and Shacklewell, the coach stopped to no astronomy. I do not know where to look for take up a staid-looking gentleman, about the the Bear, or Charles's Wain; the place of any wrong side of thirty, who was giving his star; or the name of any of them at sight. I parting directions (while the steps were guess at Venus only by her brightness-and adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a if the sun on some portentous morn were to tall youth, who seemed to be neither his clerk, make his first appearance in the West, I verily his son, nor his servant, but something believe, that, while all the world were gasp- partaking of all three. The youth was dising in apprehension about me, I alone should missed, and we drove on. As we were the stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed want of observation. Of history and chrono- his conversation to me; and we discussed logy I possess some vague points, such as one the merits of the fare, the civility and cannot help picking up in the course of punctuality of the driver; the circumstance miscellaneous study; but I never deliberately of an opposition coach having been lately set sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarchies; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the Persian, floats as first, in my fancy. I make the widest conjectures concerning Egypt, and her shep- aforesaid—when he suddenly alarmed me herd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, got me to think I understood the first proposition in Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages; and, like a better man than myself, have "small Latin and less Greek." I am a stranger to the shapes and texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers-not from the circumstance of my being town-born-for I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into the world with me, had I first seen it "on Devon's leafy shores,"—and am no less at a loss among purely town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not that I affect ignorance-but my head has not many mansions, nor spacious; and I have been obliged to fill it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without aching. I sometimes wonder, how I have passed my probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man may do very well with a very little knowledge, and scarce be found out, in mixed company; everybody is so much more ready to produce his own, than to call for a display of your acquisitions. But in a tête-à-tête there is no shuffling. The truth will out. There is nothing which I dread so much, as the being left alone for a quarter of an hour by a startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize cattle that morning in Smithfield? Now, as I had not seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibitions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare notes on the subject. However, he assured me that I had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cottons this spring. I was now a little in heart, as the nature of my morning avocations had brought me into some sort of familiarity with the raw material; and I was surprised to find how eloquent I was becoming on the state of the India market-when, presently, he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, by inquiring whether I had ever made any calculation as to the value of the rental of all the retail shops in London. Had he asked of me, what song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas Browne, have hazarded a wide solution." 66 Urn Burial. Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damotas ! My companion saw my embarrassment, and, all learning was contained in the languages the almshouses beyond Shoreditch just which they taught, and despising every other coming in view, with great good-nature and acquirement as superficial and useless, came dexterity shifted his conversation to the to their task as to a sport! Passing from subject of public charities; which led to the infancy to age, they dreamed away all their comparative merits of provision for the poor days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in in past and present times, with observations a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, on the old monastic institutions, and charita- syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing constantly ble orders; but, finding me rather dimly the occupations which had charmed their impressed with some glimmering notions studious childhood; rehearsing continually from old poetic associations, than strongly the part of the past; life must have slipped fortified with any speculations reducible to from them at last like one day. They were calculation on the subject, he gave the matter always in their first garden, reaping harvests up; and, the country beginning to open more of their golden time, among their Flori and and more upon us, as we approached the their Spici-legia; in Arcadia still, but kings; turnpike at Kingsland (the destined ter- the ferule of their sway not much harsher, mination of his journey), he put a home but of like dignity with that mild sceptre thrust upon me, in the most unfortunate attributed to king Basileus; the Greek and position he could have chosen, by advancing Latin, their stately Pamela and their some queries relative to the North Pole Expedition. While I was muttering out something about the Panorama of those strange regions (which I had actually seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stopping relieved me from any further apprehensions. My companion getting out, left me in the comfortable possession of my ignorance; and I heard him, as he went off, putting questions to an outside passenger, who had alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder, that had been rife about Dalston, and which my friend assured him had gone through five or six schools in that neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; and that the youth, whom he had parted from at our first acquaintance, must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher.He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the questions which he put, as of obtaining information at any rate. It did not appear that he took any interest, either, in such kind of inquiries, for their own sake; but that he was in some way bound to seek for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, which he had on, forbade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The adventure gave birth to some reflections on the difference between persons of his profession in past and present times. Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who believing that With what a savour doth the Preface to Colet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, that intendeth to attain the understanding of the tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and lost labour; for so much as it is known, that nothing can surely be ended, whose beginning is either feeble or faulty; and no building be perfect whereas the foundation and groundwork is ready to fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth this stately preamble (comparable to those which Milton commendeth as "having been the usage to prefix to some solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon or Lycurgus") correspond with and illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a succeeding clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with the severity of faith-articles!—" as for the diversity of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the king majesties wisdom, who foreseeing the inconvenience, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be diligently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere to be taught for the use of learners, and for the hurt in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that which follows: "wherein it is profitable that he [the pupil] can orderly decline his noun house, or his favourite his favourite watering-place. and his verb." His noun ! Wherever he goes this uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boyrid, sick of perpetual boy. The fine dream is fading away fast; and the least concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate grammar-rules. The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little of everything, because his pupil is required not to be entirely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something of pneumatics; of chemistry; of whatever is curious or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind; an insight into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of statistics; the quality of soils, &c., botany, the constitution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a notion of some part of his expected duties by consulting the famous Tractate on Education, addressed to Mr. Hartlib. All these things-these, or the desire of them-he is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, which he may charge in the bill, but at school intervals, as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields (those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least part of what is expected from him is to be done in school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasionthe season of the year-the time of the day -a passing cloud-a rainbow-a waggon of hay-a regiment of soldiers going by-to inculcate something useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of instruction. He must interpret beauty into the picturesque. He cannot relish a beggarman, or a gipsy, for thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of moral uses. The Universe-that Great Book, as it has been called-is to him, indeed, to all intents and purposes, a book out of which he is doomed to read tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys.-Vacations themselves are none to him, he is only rather worse off than before; for commonly he has some intrusive upper-boy fastened upon him at such times; some cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobility, or gentry; that he must drag after him to the play, to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates; but they are unwholesome companions for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the one side than on the other.-Even a child, that "plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of children, playing their own fancies—as I now hearken to them, by fits, sporting on the green before my window, while I am engaged in these grave speculations at my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell-by distance made more sweet-inexpressibly take from the labour of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so -for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of poetry, far unlike the harsh proseaccents of man's conversation.-I should but spoil their sport, and diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in their pastime. I would not be domesticated all my days with a person of very superior capacity to my own-not, if I know myself at all, from any considerations of jealousy or self-comparison, for the occasional communion with such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of my life-but the habit of too constant intercourse with spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from others, restrain what lesser portion of that faculty you may possess of your own. You get entangled in another man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, whose strides out-pace yours to lassitude. The constant operation of such potent agency would reduce me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive thoughts from others; your way of thinking, the mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's intellectual frame.— As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged upward, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to be stunted downwards by your associates. The trumpet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a whisper teases you by its provoking inaudi- him with a parent's anxiety, never could bility. Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence of a schoolmaster ?—because we are conscious that he is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and out of place, in the society of his equals. He comes like Gulliver from among his little people, and he cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. One of these professors, upon my complaining that these little sketches of mine were anything but methodical, and that I was unable to make them otherwise, kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which young gentlemen in his seminary were taught to compose English themes. The jests of a schoolmaster are coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is under the restraint of a formal or didactive hypocrisy in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He can no more let his intellect loose in society than the other can his inclinations. He is forlorn among his coevals; his juniors cannot be his friends. repay me with one look of genuine feeling. He was proud, when I praised; he was submissive, when I reproved him ; but he did never love me-and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness for me, is but the pleasant sensation which all persons feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and fears; and the seeing on equal terms the man they were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My wife, too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say, “my once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster.— When I married her-knowing that the wife of a schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable creature, and fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to death-I expressed my fears that I was bringing her into a way of life unsuitable to her; and she, who loved me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, and she has kept her word. What wonders "I take blame to myself," said a sensible will not woman's love perform ?-My house man of this profession, writing to a friend is managed with a propriety and decorum respecting a youth who had quitted his unknown in other schools; my boys are well school abruptly, "that your nephew was not fed, look healthy, and have every proper acmore attached to me. But persons in my commodation; and all this performed with situation are more to be pitied than can a careful economy, that never descends to well be imagined. We are surrounded by meanness. But I have lost my gentle help young, and, consequently, ardently affection-less Anna! When we sit down to enjoy an ate hearts, but we can never hope to share an hour of repose after the fatigue of the day, I atom of their affections. The relation of am compelled to listen to what have been master and scholar forbids this. How pleasing her useful (and they are really useful) emthis must be to you, how I envy your feelings! ployments through the day, and what she my friends will sometimes say to me, when proposes for her to-morrow's task. Her they see young men whom I have educated heart and her features are changed by the return after some years' absence from school, duties of her situation. To the boys, she their eyes shining with pleasure, while they never appears other than the master's wife, shake hands with their old master, bringing and she looks up to me as the boys' master; a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, to whom all show of love and affection would and thanking me in the warmest terms for be highly improper, and unbecoming the my care of their education. A holiday is dignity of her situation and mine. Yet this begged for the boys; the house is a scene of my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For happiness; I, only, am sad at heart.-This my sake she submitted to be this altered fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who creature, and can I reproach her for it?”— fancies he repays his master with gratitude For the common of this letter I am for the care of his boyish years-this young indebted to my man-in the eight long years I watched over Bridget. IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch.-Religio Medici. THAT the author of the Religio Medici, their mode of proceeding. We know one mounted upon the airy stilts of abstraction, another at first sight. There is an order of conversant about notional and conjectural imperfect intellects (under which mine must essences; in whose categories of Being the be content to rank) which in its constitution possible took the upper hand of the actual; is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners should have overlooked the impertinent indi- of the sort of faculties I allude to, have vidualities of such poor concretions as man-minds rather suggestive than comprehensive. kind, is not much to be admired. It is They have no pretences to much clearness rather to be wondered at, that in the genus of animals he should have condescended to distinguish that species at all. For myself -earth-bound and fettered to the scene of my activities,— Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste; or when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be disrelishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices-made up of likings and dislikings-the veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indifferently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The more purely-English word that expresses sympathy, will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend to a worthy man, who upon another account cannot be my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people alike.* I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair. They cannot like me--and in truth, I never knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There is something more plain and ingenuous in I would be understood as confining myself to the subject of imperfect sympathies. To nations or classes of men there can be no direct antipathy. There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold or precision in their ideas, or in their manner of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. She presents no full front to them-a feature or side-face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They beat up a little game peradventure-and leave it to knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it down. The light that lights them is not steady and polar, but mutable and shifting: waxing, and again waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They will throw out a random word in or out of season, and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. They cannot speak always as if they were upon their oath but must be understood, speaking or writing, with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature a proposition, but e'en bring them. believe the story of two persons meeting (who never saw I have met with my moral antipodes, and can The lines are from old Heywood's "Hierarchie of Angels," and he subjoins a curious story in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he had taken to the first sight of the King. -The cause which to that act compell'd him Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. |