"The same may be said of everything that is acknowledged to be good"-of education, of charity, of pleasure, etc. Education, for instance, is a good thing; give a small portion, and the gift is gooda larger, and it is better, while its value increases in the ratio of its approach to completeness. Impelled by such views, we have felt ourselves called upon to plead for the thorough education of as many as can receive it for the partial education of those who cannot. CLERK WILLIAM'S PILGRIMAGE. A LAY OF MODERN ROME. (Edited with Notes by JOHN HOWDEN, Esq.) —ερεὶν Οτι μετὰ τὸ γενέσθαι με εκεῖ δεῖ με καὶ ΡΩΜΗΝ 87. Terrarum dea, gentiumque, ROMA, (CLESK WILLIAM having vowed a pilgrimage to Rome,] COME hither, Willy Ferguson, An' stand beside my knee, The while I rhyme a pleasant rhyme O' Italie to thee. Now our gude clerk, Clerk William, [His departure is sorely bewailed by his servitors,] An' sair, sair hae his servitors Bewail'd their maister dear, And aften wud ilk strive to hide, In vain, the starting tear. Was nane o' a' his servitors But wud hae left his hame [Who keep assiduous watch for his return.] An' lang they'll watch the thundering car [In the meantime, their master having arrived in Italy, "Oh, dear to me the bonny shaws That deck the banks o' Tay; Pleasant to me the sunny vines O' Provence far away; An' dark an' drear the deadly fens That laves wi' its waves The shores o' Italie! [He rejoiceth greatly as he draweth near the city,] "But I hear, aboon the City's hum, Her chimes swell loud an' clear, An' I see, through the thin morning mist, Her thousand spires appear; An' every glance at her lichts up, Though wan an' worn she be, The desert places o' the heart, The shades o' memorie. [Generously forbeareth to curse her for sorceries,] "Proud Wreck o' Time! now age an' crime, An' crime yet mair than age, Hae writ thy doom, in lines o' gloom, Upon thy brow's braid page; Not mine to brand wi' deeper shame That dim, dishonour'd brow— Thou wert a Queen, an' pitying tears Should best beseem thee now. [And apostrophiseth her, with Byron,* as Mother of Nations!] "Cauld as Iana's ice the heart That wudna warm to thee! Though chang'd an' dim thou be, Where seer an' sage hae stood wud stand [From the Tarpeian Rock he espieth, or fancieth he can espy the Sabine Farm,] Now frae the hill Tarpeian, O'er a' the Sabine land; On forests bricht wi' fading leaves, An' on the gather'd gold o' sheaves [Which awaketh in him memories pleasant to the soul.] It may be he had linger'd By mony a fairer scene, An' lang a wanderer been; It waketh in him memories O' boyhood's happy years, Ere grief hath wrung the heart wi' pain, Or dimm'd the eye wi' tears; When bending o'er that pleasant page, Those sweet Horatian lays, He dreamed away the golden hours O' the lang, lang simmer days. An' now he looks upon the land The sword grass wave beside the brook, [Then beginneth he to moralise on the "fair humanities of old Religion,"] "Fell, flood, an' field-a' else is changed, An' now that Time's grown auld an' gray, The Dryad an' the Oread That trod its glades o' yore. [On Echo,] "Oh, never more shall shepherd boy, By haunted thicket, pine To look, sweet Daughter o' the Voice, Upon thy form divine; And never more to longing ears, By cove or mountain pass, Shall phantom voices stir the leaves, Or whisper in the grass! [And on the Islands of the Blessed.] "Oh, never more shall hero tread, Beneath the blushing west, Those shadowy isles, where weary souls Find never-ending rest Lone Isles o' Bliss, where mighty seers An' the strong true hearts of old By simmer hill or shady rill Untiring converse hold! [Then reverteth he to Horace,] "No, never more!-We yearn, O Bard, For regions lovelier far Than the loveliest o' the myriad isles Which, in thy budding youth, An' kissed thee mouth to mouth. [Who sleeps not, he assureth us, at Lucretilis,] "The mountain torrent, as of old, By fair Licenza leaps, O'er fair Licenza's cottage homes Still frown the Sabine steeps; An' still by fair Licenza Stands thy dear native home, Far o'er the drear Campagna That girds the walls o' Rome. The author mistakes. Byron's language is, "Lone Mother of dead Empires." In this we can see a perfect meaning; but we confess our inability to see as much in the line before us. "TIS SWEET THE FACE TIS sweet the face of heaven to view But sweeter far, and fairer too, Is lovely woman's face. [Of the Rape of the Sabines, o the murder of Servius,] "Up yonder steep the Ramnes Down yonder path, lang deem'd accurs'd [Of Lucretia and Horatius,] "Where was it that the famous spouse Her grave perchance were yon rude mound The rushing flood from under, [And Scævola, and the Tarquins,] Ran red wi' purple foam, [And Virginia, and the Triumph.] "There, through Rome's stately Forum, Adown the Sacred Street, Trickled the young Virginia's blood To Claudius' cursed feet; And there, through Rome's proud Forum, Slow streamed the March o' Triumph [And concludeth by again apostrophising Rome as Mother "Hail, Mother o' the Nations! All-hail thy hill-tops seven! A priest o' alien race, O' alien creed, o' alien land, OF HEAVEN TO VIEW. The stars are beautiful indeed, An allusion, we presume, to the Egyptian lions on the staircase of the Capitol. It is evident from this, as well as other passages in the "Pilgrimage," that the writer's acquaint ance with Mr Macaulay's magnificent poems is not slight. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AS AN EXPONENT OF THOUGHT. HAIL native Language, that by sinews weak Did'st move my first endeavouring tongue to speak; LANGUAGE is the embodiment of thought. In it thought sculptures itself in the most varied forms—from the plainly expressed sentence to the ornamented delineation of the most glowing conception. Nay more; with the brilliant constructive colouring of the imagination, it depicts to the eye the freshness and vividness of life. It is a quarry from which we may hew the forms of all kinds of thought. Painting, sculpture, and the kindred imitative arts, are but specific modes of expression, and are therefore more limited in their variety and range; but language is the divine expression that contains all other modes, for it contains all that is in man. It is a form plastic enough to receive, and vigorous enough to retain every impressive character the immortal mind is capable of. But living thought must animate, for thought is the soul that thrills it with expressive beauty. Thus language, the form of thought, can be said to exist only when thought sustains it with life. Language, the form of thought, is controlled by the necessities of thought. The modifications of language are not the result of accident or arbitrary caprice, but are formed in obedience to the laws of thought. Grammar and rhetoric are directly conversant with the forms or expressions of thought, and indirectly, with thought, the causes of those forms and their modifications. The English grammar in common use has been conformed to the Latin, and this distorted form has been used for such a length of time, that there is little hope of restoring it to its former simplicity. By this Latinising of it we have rendered it much more difficult and unnatural than it is in reality. But the Classics are now finding their proper place, and it is to be hoped that ere long we shall begin the acquisition of a good English style of writing, with the study of a truly English grammar. In moulding thought into the forms of language, we increase our power to think, at the same time that we are acquiring the art of expressing our thought. This Power of thought is developed by observation and reflection. Those who neglect this process, and indiscriminately store up in their memories the thoughts of others, can never properly use them. alone this digesting of the food of the mind, and consequent appropriation of vigour by the mental system, is what we would dignify with the title of power of thought. This is the true reason given to man and to no other earthly creature, but which man oftener abuses than uses to a rightful issue. Suitable Power to think is natural. We all think in degree. studies and practical training will carry us forward to an increasing degree of power, only limited by the term of our natural existence. The art of expressing thought is reckoned difficult, because, being from its nature of slow and almost imperceptible development, we wish to annihilate the necessary stages, and wield the power at once. Nature limits us in this, as in all things. We cannot step on before her, else she is sure to pull us back, or knock us down by hurling one of her relentless laws at us. We might as well deem it difficult to grow physically in any of our bodily powers. In both, the laws of our constitution must be obeyed, if we wish to attain our end. What would we think of a person who, wishing to grow very fast, for that purpose kept continually cramming himself with food? Yet we have multitudes of mental crammers, who paralyse the action of nature, and crush the vital energy of the mind. The art of expressing thought is necessarily of slow development, and the development of the mind ought to be the basis and measure of its advancement. As language is the expression of thought, the grammar of language. is an account of the expression of thought, comprehending its phenomena, and the causes which produce these. This account embraces, first, the individual nature of the words; and second, the relation words bear to one another. Under the first are comprehended their derivation, inflection, orthography and pronunciation; under the second, all the form of composition based upon necessity, usage or taste. From derivation we obtain a knowledge of the history of words -from inflection a knowledge of the changes they undergo when they are qualified by certain accessory ideas-from orthography, a knowledge of the correct mode of spelling words, and from pronunciation, a knowledge of the correct mode of pronouncing them. The natural relations of thought are the necessary relations of language. Usage comprehends the idiom peculiar to a language, and taste the more elaborate compositions that address themselves not only to the reason, but to the imagination also. It The English language, it is well known, is not a native one. was imported from the north of Germany, from that tract of country extending along the seacoast, from Jutland to the Rhine. The following is a statement of its successive importations: First, A.D. 449. The Jutes, under Hengist and Horsa, landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet. They shortly after founded the kingdom of Kent. Second, A.D. 477. The Saxons, under Ella, landed in Sussex, and founded the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. Third, A.D. 495. Another tribe of Saxons, under Cerdie, landed in Hampshire, and founded the kingdom of the West Saxons, or Wessex. Fourth, A.D. 530. Certain Saxons landed in Essex. Fifth. During the reign of Cerdie in Wessex, the Angles landed in Norfolk and Suffolk. Sixth, A.D. 547. The Angles, under Ida, landed in the south-eastern counties of Scotland, between the Tweed and the Forth. These successive importations gradually extended over a great part. |