in abundance. I was indeed heartily glad to have a naturalist under my roof. We had all retired to rest: every person, I imagined, in deep slumber save myself, when, of a sudden, I heard a great uproar in the naturalist's room. I got up, reached the place in a few moments, and opened the door, when, to my astonishment, I saw my guest running about the room naked, holding the handle of my favourite violin, the body of which he had battered to pieces against the walls, in attempting to kill the bats which had entered by the open window, probably attracted by the insects flying around his candle. I stood amazed, but he continued jumping, and running round and round, until he was fairly exhausted, when he begged me to procure one of the animals for him, as he felt convinced they belonged to "a new species." Although I was convinced of the contrary, I took up the bow of my demolished cremona, and administering a smart tap to each of the bats, as it came up, soon got specimens enough. The war ended, I again bade him good night, but could not help observing the state of the room: it was strewed with plants, which it would seem he had arranged into groups, but which were now scattered about in confusion. "Never mind, Mr. Audubon," quoth the eccentric naturalist, "never mind, I'll soon arrange them again. I have the bats; and that's enough!"

Several days passed, during which we followed our several occupations: M. de T. searched the woods for plants, and I for birds. He also followed the margin of the Ohio, and picked up many shells, which he greatly extolled. With us, I told him, they were gathered into heaps, to be converted into lime. "Lime! Mr. Audubon, why they are worth a guinea a-piece in any part of Europe." M. de T. remained with us for three weeks, and collected multitudes of plants, shells, bats, and fishes. We were perfectly reconciled to his oddities; and finding him a most agreeable and intelligent companion, hoped that his sojourn might be of long duration. But, one evening when tea was prepared, and we expected him to join the family, he was nowhere to be found. His grasses, and other valuables, were all removed from his room. The night was spent in searching for him in the neighbourhood. No eccentric naturalist could be discovered. Whether he had perished in a swamp, or had been devoured by a bear or a garfish, or had taken to his heels, were matters of conjecture; nor was it until some weeks after, that a letter from him, thanking us for our attention, assured me of his safety.

Poetry.

[In Original Poetry, the Name, real or assumed, of the Author, is printed in Small Capitals under the title; in Selections, it is printed in Italics at the end.]

THE LITTLE BELL

FROM THE GERMAN OF SCIDD.

THE King is on his death-bed, he bids them call his son,

He grasps the stripling by the hand, and, pointing to the throne, My son," he feebly faltered forth, "yon royal seat is thine, Yet, ere thou donn'st thy father's crown, think on these words of mine:

Fancy perchance hath pictured fair this vain weak world of ours, Alas for Fancy's dreams! too soon thou'lt find how few its flowers!

In niggard drops it yields its bliss, in swollen streams its woe; But few scant drops 'mid thousand streams have been thy sire's to know."

He said and slept for aye--the youth his words hath heeded not;

Fair as the rose which blooms in May deems he his lordly lot.

He mounts the throne, whilst scornful smiles athwart his features played,

abroad

But lo, his minister draws near, with face foreboding wo:
Alas, my liege, and is it thine, nor truth, nor trust to know!"
Sorely his soul is chastened, yet hath he not his land,
With many a princely treasure there, and many a gallant band?
Fairer, I ween, no realm than his e'er pranked beneath the sun,
He hies him to the lattice, and he looked far and wide,
For God and man, to do it grace, their goodliest had done.
And his royal eye is flashing, and his bosom swells with pride.
Now will he joyous to the cord, now will he sound-but lo,
Within the hall are hurried steps-a messenger louts low:
"Sir King, see there, see there, yon flame that riseth high and
clear,

Our dwellings burn, our maidens flee, before the foeman's spear!" Ah, caitiff slaves!" bursts forth the King, and stead of silken cord,

He snatches up his trusty mail, and buckles on his sword.
Already care hath thinned his locks and dimmed his eagle eye,
Yet ever silent rests the bell, the little bell on high.
And should a transient gleam of bliss illume his withered brow,
Scarce thinks he to awake its tones-it sways unnoticed now---
When from without unceasingly he hears a wailing cry.
He feels his sands are fleeting fast--he lays him down to die;
"What mean those sounds of sorrow, what means that note of
woe ? "

Ah, Sire, our father leaveth us--his children weep below!" "My children, bid them enter!-lov'd they their lord so well?" "Oh, Sire, could life but ransom life, their ready blood would tell!"

But many a stout and sturdy heart is eager thronging in,
Once more to bless his dying lord,-once more to see his King-
"Ye lov'd me then, my children?" and thousands faltered
Aye!"

No. 59.]

AMONG the numerous charitable foundations existing throughout this part of the kingdom, those are generally the most wealthy and flourishing which have some connexion with the metropolis. The immense increase in the value of property within the ever-widening bounds of London, causes a bequest of land in that city, (however small that bequest may have originally been) to become a fruitful source of wealth to the institution with which it is connected. Thus, in 1567, the bequest of a few acres of pasture land, called the Conduit Close, halfa-mile from the city of London, and then yielding a rent of only ten pounds a year, was the means of raising to wealth and importance that well-known establishment, Rugby School. This Conduit Close (now Lamb's Conduit-street, and the streets adjoining) yields at the present time an income of many thousands per annum a fact that would have appeared utterly incredible to the original founder of the charity. Similar instances are common; among which, we may here particularly notice that of an endowment made in 1587, of a moderate estate in Clerkenwell, yielding at that time a yearly

VOL. III.

rent of about one hundred and twelve pounds. This estate was generously devoted by its owner, Thomas Seckford, Esq., to the support of certain alms-houses built by him in the town of Woodbridge, a few miles from Ipswich, Suffolk, where his own property lay. The original alms-houses comprised seven tenements, with land adjoining, for the residence of thirteen poor men ; six of the houses being fitted each for the residence of two pensioners, and the seventh for the remaining pensioner, who was to be called the Principal. Each inmate had a yearly supply of fuel and clothing, and a stipend of five pounds, except the Principal, who had six pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence yearly. The founder of this charity also gave another tenement, and two acres of land for the use of three poor widows, to be nurses to such of the poor men as should be sick and infirm, and to have each a yearly stipend of two pounds thirteen shillings and fourpence.

In the course of time, the Clerkenwell estate rose immensely in value, and the governors of the almshouses improved the property in London, by taking

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knowledge imparted, and party prejudices repudiated. As Lord Morpeth said, 'It is most salutary to have some common neutral ground, where all can equally at times meet together without any restraint, save that of mutual self-respect.' If they merely bring together persons of different stations and occupations-if they lead the man of rank, the student, and the philosopher, into the haunts of busy industry-they will have done much to consolidate the various elements of our system, and to destroy the too frequent, but not inevitable, causes of repugnance and antagonism. And when once the ice is broken, literature, or science, or music, or amusement, will, at least, have the opportunity of proving their legitimate influences. We can easily understand the Eton aspirations of Lord Morpeth, when he looks forward to the time that some scholar will introduce to the knowledge of the Bradford mechanics the blind old bard of Scio's rocky isle.' Without, however, anticipating that period —perhaps not a distant one-we may profess ourselves content with hearing the bard of all time,' and the minstrel of the North' well read and well criticised in an assembly of men who live by the labour of their hands. A multitude which can applaud Shakspeare, and appreciate Scott, must cherish feelings of kindliness and humanity far higher and stronger than the passions of party, or the jealousies of caste. A peer or a doctor of laws expounding the philosophy of Hamlet and the pathos of Midlothian' to a congregation of mechanics, would present a study worthy of remark alike to the admirers and the assailants of our social system.

"We will not pass over Lord Morpeth's advice, that those amongst the busy folks of a busy town who have the opportunity should study the history and constitution of their native land. This advice applies to men higher in the social scale than the simple artisan. How many men are there, well to do and living at ease, who know literally nothing of their country's history! It was a remark of Coleridge, that the Reform Bill would give influence-not individual votes, but the command of votes-to the most ignorant portion of the community. Master builders, owners of small houses, publichouse keepers, &c. used generally, a few years ago, to harangue their operatives and tenants with a violence which could only be exceeded by their ignorance. And this mischief passed from words to actions. Perhaps the inhabitants of no other country in the civilized world are so utterly ignorant of their own history and institutions as Englishmen. Foreigners generally remark this. It applies even to professional men and fellows of colleges, but more particularly to the lower part of the trading body. From men of this class come the gross and ridiculous misstatements, the perverse notions, and the shameless lies, which, in times of political excitement, sway the feelings of our mobs. And it is from such men as these-men of uncertain fortunes and unfixed principles-that that very noisy faction, the Anti-Anglican party in America, is continually reeruited. It is by men who hate their country, because they are unworthy of it; who libel its institutions, because they know nothing of them; and misinterpret its history, because they never learned it-it is by these that England is dishonoured and calumniated to the world. And so long as our different ranks of society remain apart so long as there is no common pursuit to bring them together; no common study to humanize their sympathies and harmonize their affections-so long will this be so ;-so long must England continue to be a nation of castes, classes, and factions, instead of an empire bold in the confidence, and strong in the might, of undivided and invincible unity!"

"That strain I heard was of a higher mood," pitched to a higher key than we usually hear from such a quarter, though we know no good reason why it should

be so. The encountering of a passage like this, amid the stormy columns of a political journal, comes upon us step aside from a hard dusty road to a grassy path, from with the same feeling of refreshing relief with which we whose elastic turf our step springs more lightly, over whose green bosom the air breathes more freshly, and where every object meets the sense through a subduing and softening medium, relieving the glare, and stilling the noise, which had oppressed and wearied us. We wish it were oftener the case, that the conductors of our more influential journals of all parties, than whom there can be none better qualified by talent and education, and who occupy a position so secure that they incur little risk in leading, rather than following, the popular taste, indulged themselves in the relaxation of writings addressed more to men, in their widest and most enduring relations, and less to mere political partisans or opponents; that they sought to redeem from the service of party, and restore to their rightful employment, those talents and acquirements which were meant for mankind; that they threw themselves open to the ambition of being writers, not for a day or for an age, but for all time. There would be nothing in this inconsistent, so far as we can see, with the most zealous fulfilment of their duties as exponents and defenders of the views of the great parties in the state, as long at least as those duties continued to be worthy of having the energies of honourable and independent men employed upon them; while the good effect resulting from impregnating with the loftier elements of thought, a stream whose flow is so unintermitting, and which penetrates so deeply into every nook and corner of society, would be beyond our utmost power of estimating it.

We are not going to comment upon the article of The Times which we have quoted, but rather to follow out a train of thought of our own which it has suggested. We therefore do not here enter on the general question of the utility of Mechanics' Institutes and similar associations further than to express our agreement with the opinion of The Times, that everything in regard to them depends upon the conditions under which they subsist, and the management by which they are regulated. In themselves they are nothing more than a mere guarantee for a certain amount of mental activity, which may be valuable or mischievous according to the direction which is given to it. To decry them as necessarily and incurably mischievous, or to hold them up as the grand and unfailing instrument of social renovation, were equally unreasonable and untrue. Abstracted from their conditions and management, they can scarcely be said to have any moral quality at all; they have little or no spontaneous tendency either to good or to evil; they are but instruments-most powerful, it may be irresistible, instruments-but the effects of which are entirely dependent upon the manner in which they are employed. But this is not the subject upon which we wish at present to dwell.

There is no more indispensable qualification for the man who desires, in whatever sphere, to exercise a moral influence over society—whether as statesman, preacher, politician, or public writer-than the capacity to discern, and the disposition to recognise and acquiesce in, the inevitable facts of our condition, so that his efforts may be directed where they can be available for good, not wasted upon that which they are altogether powerless to affect. What Burke says of statesmanship, that it is the most eminent criterion of a wise government "well to know the best time and manner of yielding what it is impossible to keep," applies with equal truth to every mode of dealing with men in society. Natural forces may be directed and regulated-guided into channels in which their operation may be made subservient to the designs of the most enlightened philan

thropy; they cannot with safety be compressed or imprisoned. It is in this view, we think, that they are most apt to err, whose opinions lead them to apprehend danger to society from the increasing strength and influence of those classes of the people among whom the greatest amount of ignorance prevails regarding the right uses to which strength and influence should be applied. They are not wrong in thinking that it were well for society if the wise and well-instructed only were strong; if none had influence over the current of events but those who understand aright in what direction the current ought to flow. They are quite right in desiring to separate power from ignorance; but, in their endeavour to do so, they often pull at the wrong end, because they do not sufficiently consider which of the two they can succeed in moving-that the one is the result of a natural progress, moving onward as steadily and irresistibly as the earth round its axis, while the other is a blot, a defect, not necessary or inevitable, but the simple consequence of neglect or evil training. A father who allows his son to grow up from infancy without putting himself to any trouble to cultivate his affections or moral principles-whose only instrument of parental discipline is a blow-who has instilled into him no motive to obedience but fear, finds it, no doubt, a very inconvenient and troublesome thing, that the young man at last becomes too strong to be struck with impunity, and that thus his only instrument of control has slipped from his grasp. He feels it to be an overturning of the moral arrangements of nature, that a violent and unprincipled youth should be able to set his father at defiance, and even to terrify him into submission-to command where he ought to obey; but he did not reflect, while the matter was in some degree under his control, that though he could not prevent the boy from growing up to be a man, nor his limbs from hardening into strength, he might have so trained him to habits of obedience and filial duty, and, by the exhibition of his own character as an object of esteem and veneration, have so laid up for himself in the young man's mind a store of love and reverential affection, that the strength, which now beats down and destroys all his comfort in life, might have been the stay and support of his advancing age.

There can of course have never been a period in the history of society in which there were not many such inevitable facts as we have referred to-circumstances in the condition of mankind, and affecting the mutual relation of the different orders of the people, which flowed from causes operating in entire independence of any individual or collective will; but we do not believe that any point in past time can be indicated in which these facts were so numerous-so widely diffused-and so uncontrollable in their development, as at the present day. The popular destinies are becoming, whether happily or unhappily it is to little purpose to inquire, every day more and more emancipated from the government of any modification of human will, and are being committed to a stream, the sources of which lie deep in the unchangeable laws of nature. Progress-a word expressive of a truth so plainly written up before us wherever we turn, and therefore so universally acknowledged, that it is in imminent danger of degenerating into the hackneyed valueless counter which cant passes upon us for the genuine coin of thought-is the great law of the present condition of society. At the remotest extremities of the body the moving principle is at work; the progressive energy is felt from the heart to the finger points; the whole system is pervaded by a living and germinating power, which at every point is shooting forth into blossoms fast ripening into fruit. We are every now and then startled by some opening in our field of view suddenly revealing to us the rapid strides with which the whole of society is moving onward to some unknown goal. Time, the greatest and most effectual of innovators, but who usually, according to the aphorism of Bacon, so slides in his innovations as to

elude the sense,' would appear almost to have changed his character, and to be now hurrying them on so rapidly that the hand can be seen distinctly moving over the dial.

We have said that it is vain to inquire whether it is happily or unhappily that the destinies of mankind are becoming every day more committed to the operation of the natural law of progress; not that we do not consider it a very interesting speculative inquiry, or that it is not one which is capable of being solved, but that it is out of place in any discussion whose objects are practical, because it cannot lead to any practical results. Whether it be desirable or not, it is a fact which we cannot control. We cannot cause it to be otherwise. We cannot bid the world stand still, or retrace its steps, whatever we may think of the road on which it is travelling. But something we may do, and that is what it is important for us to inquire into. We may do much to determine the direction of the progress, and to impart their character for good or evil to its results.

The true modes of giving to the intellectual activity, which is so distinguishing a characteristic of all classes of the people at the present day, a safe and beneficial direction, are perhaps many and various; but one most effectual mode does certainly appear to us to be indicated in the concluding sentence of the passage we have quoted from The Times. We feel assured that the writer of the article is not mistaken when he says that it is only by "our different ranks of society ceasing to remain so much apart,"-by "there being some common pursuit to bring them together, some common study to hu manize their sympathies and harmonize their affections," -that we can feel any reasonable assurance that we shall continue to be "an empire bold in the confidence, and strong in the might, of undivided and invincible unity."

The truth of these statements is almost self-evident. So long as the bulk of the people remained a comparatively inert mass, exhibiting the development of no independent energies, but passively submitting to be borne along in obedience to the impulses of the smaller portion of the social body, in which mainly its whole vitality resided, so long it was of little consequence how far any real sympathy subsisted between the two. Where there is no effective will, it matters little how the affections tend. But, when the vital energy is diffused over every portion of the body—when everywhere, to the furthest extremity, there is separate independent action, the preservation of anything like unity or coherence in the whole can only be secured by an entire sympathy between all the parts,-by identity of desires, feelings, and objects, by "the harmony of their affections." Whether noble or plebeian, rich or poor, illustrious or obscure, there is scarcely a man among us whose separate energy does not constitute a unit in the vast aggregate of power in obedience to which the wheels of society are moved; whose voice does not contribute to swell the grand chorus which, under the name of public opinion, promulgates the law, more powerful than any act of any legislature, to whose decisions every other authority, however high, must ultimately bow. It is therefore now more indispensable than ever, that, throughout all the necessary diversities of circumstance and position which must have place in a large society, and which of themselves tend to create corresponding diversities of feeling and aim, there should be caused to flow a stream of common sentiment and affection, binding all the parts together, by a tie all the more powerful that it is linked around the first and inmost springs of feeling and action.

Let it not be supposed that it is necessary, for this end, that any man should forget or disregard the duties or conventional proprieties of his position in society; that we should cease to select our intimates and asso

(1) Novator maximus tempus: quidni igitur 'tempus imitemur, quod novationes ita insinuat, ut sensus fallat?