to their task as to a sport! Passing from infancy to age, they dreamed away all their days as in a grammar-school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies; renewing constantly the occupations which had charmed their studious childhood; rehearsing continually

Philoclea; with the occasional duncery of some untoward tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa, or a clown Damœtas!

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 subject of public charities; which led to the comparative merits of provision for the poor in past and present times, with observations on the old monastic institutions, and charitable orders; but, finding me rather dimly impressed with some glimmering notions 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), With what a savour doth the Preface to by way of parrying the question, the coach Colet's, or (as it is sometimes called) Paul's stopping relieved me from any further appre- Accidence, set forth! "To exhort every hensions. My companion getting out, left man to the learning of grammar, that inme in the comfortable possession of my igno- tendeth to attain the understanding of the rance; and I heard him, as he went off, tongues, wherein is contained a great treaputting questions to an outside passenger, sury of wisdom and knowledge, it would who had alighted with him, regarding an seem but vain and lost labour; for so much epidemic disorder, that had been rife about as it is known, that nothing can surely be Dalston, and which my friend assured him ended, whose beginning is either feeble or had gone through five or six schools in that faulty; and no building be perfect whereas neighbourhood. The truth now flashed upon the foundation and groundwork is ready to me, that my companion was a schoolmaster; fall, and unable to uphold the burden of the and that the youth, whom he had parted frame." How well doth this stately preamfrom at our first acquaintance, must have ble (comparable to those which Milton combeen one of the bigger boys, or the usher-mendeth as having been the usage to prefix He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who to some solemn law, then first promulgated did not seem so much desirous of provoking by Solon or Lycurgus") correspond with and discussion by the questions which he put, as illustrate that pious zeal for conformity, exof obtaining information at any rate. It did pressed in a succeeding clause, which would not appear that he took any interest, either, fence about grammar-rules with the severity in such kind of inquiries, for their own sake; of faith-articles! -"as for the diversity of but that he was in some way bound to seek grammars, it is well profitably taken away for knowledge. A greenish-coloured coat, by the king majesties wisdom, who foreseewhich he had on, forbade me to surmise that ing the inconvenience, and favourably prohe was a clergyman. The adventure gave viding the remedie, caused one kind of birth to some reflections on the difference grammar by sundry learned men to be dilibetween persons of his profession in past and gently drawn, and so to be set out, only present times. 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

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues; the breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Linacres: who believing that