in supplying the poor of the village with money, the industrious with work, the idle and vicious with good counsel and proper rebuke, and the sick with medicines and cordials. In this last department many of them became so presumptuous that no ailment was too hard for them, from a toothache to a pestilence, from the stroke of a cudgel to that of a thunderbolt.

Their remedies for the most part were those of the verriest quackery. One of their favourite remedies for consumption was that which they called snail pottage. This was a whole peck of garden snails washed in small beer, and fried, shells and all, in a frying-pan, with a quantity of earth-worms, mingled with abundance of herbs, spices, and drugs. This curious compound must have been invented by those who believed that "that which will not poison will fatten." In others of their vile preparation there were as much of cruelty as of loathsomeness and absurdity. For instance; to make oil of swallows, some ten or twelve swallows were pounded alive in a mortar, with many other queer ingredients: in making what was called c-k water, the bird had to be plucked alive. Sometimes also the planets were necessary to make the charm successful; as, for instance, one of their medicines into which the tips of crabs' claws entered largely, the rule was, they should be gathered when the sun enters cancer. Many of the possets and restoratives-in short, the whole which filled this receipt book, would require the nerves as well as the cauldron of the weird sisters to prepare them. The practices in question were chiefly confined to staid elderly ladies, the wife of the nobleman, squire, or vicar, some well-doweried widow or considerate spinster, who, with abundance of means and inclination, had unfortunately, as is too often the case with poor frail mortals, stumbled upon the wrong path. But it ought to admonish us not to interfere in matters which we do not understand; for, though we may be inclined to interfere with the pure motive of good intentions, it should be recollected there is an old maxim, that "the naughty place is said to be paved with good intentions ;' if so, good intentions are but a poor excuse.

*

One of these ladies bound upon such a visit, surrounded, as she was, with much impatience, from her age, her station in life, and benevolent conduct-followed by her loaded abigail, panting and perspiring under the cartel of medicinal benevolences, must have been a formidable, no less than an exhilarating, spectacle. We may conceive the deep and low-muttered curses of the village doctor, whose office was thus reduced to a starving, and perhaps a bloodless, sinecure; the shudder of her patients when her footsteps were heard upon the honey"The Queen's Closet Opened."

suckle decorated cottage threshold, or when her nostrums were unpacked, to be gulped down under her own eye; and the annoyances she must have inflicted upon those whose cases were considered hopeless, until they must be glad to escape from such unbounded and unfounded benevolences in good earnest.

From Ker's "English Rhymes and Nursery Phrases," (1834,) it appears that many of the old childish songs and nursery sayings are of Dutch origin. App. xvi.

MALE EDUCATION.

"His eye was meek and gentle, and a smile
Play'd on his lips; and in his speech were heard
Paternal sweetness, dignity, and love.

Learning grew,

Beneath his care, a thriving, vig'rous plant:

The mind was informed, the passions held

Subordinate, and diligence was choice." CowPER.

THERE were plenty of schools wherein both Greek and Latin were taught: indeed they were so numerous that Lord Bacon wished some repressed.

Ascham describes school-masters as badly paid: he says they 66 pay more for taking care of a horse than educating their children," which drew forth from him this reflection, "that they took more pleasure in their horses than their children."

"Hierom (epistle lib. 1, Læta de institut filiæ) gives a most especial charge to all parents, and many good cautions about bringing up of children, that they be not committed to undiscreet, bedlam tutors, light, giddy-headed, or covetous persons; and spare for no costs, that they may be well nurtured and aught, it being a matter of so great consequence. For such parents as do otherwise Plutarch esteems like them that are more careful of their shoes than of their feet, that rate their wealth above their children. And he (saith Cardan) that leaves his son to a covetous scholar to be informed, or to a close abby to fast and learn wisdom together, doth no other than that he be a learned fool or a sickly wise man.

The school-master was often combined with the reputation of a conjurer. Ben Jonson says: "I would have ne'ere a Running school-master in Englande; I meane a cunning man that .s a conjurer." According to both Ascham and Peacham, they were both ignorant and tyrannical. "It is a general plague and * Butler's "Anatomy of Melancholy."

complaint of the whole lande; for, for one discreet and able teacher, you shall finde twentie ignorant and carelesse, and where they make one scholar they marre ten."* My motto, therefore, finely expresses what they should have been, rather than what they were; and the next quotation, from Butler, will explain one part, and that the real part, of their conduct that cannot be sufficiently reprobated:

"Whipping, that's Virtue's governess,
Tut'ress of arts and sciences;

That mends the gross mistakes of nature,
And puts new life into dull matter."

This cruel writer does not perceive that one great cause of children's falsehoods, the crime of lying, proceeds from the severity of their teachers; as children do commit errors, and knowing they will be both severely and perhaps unjustly punished, they are induced to tell a lie to save their carcass. The judicious Ensor observes: "Jewish ordinances, aided by the penances imposed by religion on its priests, caused the ferula and rod to be the Catholic means of education. The inflictions of the cloisters were easily transferred to the school-room by those who were the directors of both."

To this charge of undue severity may be added the accusation of frequent immorality and buffoonery, which, for obvious reasons, I shall omit quoting; there can be no need of ingrafting ancient crimes upon the modern stock, which are sufficiently productive. But

"It lawful was of old, and still will be,

To speak of vice, but let the name go free."

"At Trinity College I knew one who would, on a cold morning in winter, whip his boys once over, for no other purpose than getting himself a sweate; another would beat them for swearing, and all the while would sweare himselfe most terrible oathes."+

The substance of a finished education was a little Latin and less Greek beaten into him at one of the public establishments, or by the thwackum of some martinet of a domestic school

room.

When the youth had been whipped through the parts of speech, interjections, and all, and driven through a few fragmental portions of the classics, and was able to construct a few nonsense verses upon his fingers, he was then qualified to shine equally in the senate or at a masquerade.

* Complete Gentleman. + Hollingshed.

A strict disciplinarian.

To these he added the accomplishment of dancing, and perhaps a little music; as for science, that was out of the question, (except it was pugilistic,) being deemed suitable only for professional characters.

The grand finish to such an education was the tour of Europe, and forth went the boy accordingly, often in leadingstrings, to gaze at streets, rivers, mountains, rocks, water-falls, and lakes. "Nothing is more frequent," says the Spectator, "than to take a lad from grammar and taw, and, under the tuition of some poor scholar who is willing to be banished for £30 per year and a little victuals, send him, crying and snivelling, into foreign countries. Thus he spends his time as children do at puppet-shows, and much to the same advantage, in staring and gaping at an amazing variety of strange things; strange indeed, to one who is not prepared to comprehend them, without the solid foundation of knowledge in his mind, and furnished with rules to direct his future conduct through life under some skilful master in the art of instruction."

Such tourists naturally picked up in their rambles what was most easily acquire; the fashions, the frivolities, and the vices of foreign countries, which they imported into England, and ingrafted upon the native stock.

Having given a chapter on foreign travel, it will be perceived that this chapter applies to the latest part of our period.

Before the reign of Charles II. the education was different. There was then other intellectual requirements besides mere book learning.

"If not to some peculiar end designed,

Reading is a specious trifling of the mind." YOUNG.

Indeed, mere book learning is but a small part, and perhaps the least part, of education. Their education comprised various active exercises of a military character, and also the sports of the field; consequently, most of the gentry were ready at once "to stride the war-horse" on the breaking out of the civil wars. In some of the old monastic schools, which, according to Dr. Dunham, began during the period of Pope Boniface, there was more learning, and far better discipline, (perhaps too severe.) This learned Protestant historian says: "Very little has been added to our knowledge of grammar; in logic, the improvement is insignificant; in theology, below the first four centuries of the Christian era; in morals, or political or metaphysical philosophy, we have little reason to boast; in poetry we are inferior; but in history we are much superior."

In England at this time the monastics are reviving they were permitted to creep on during the whole of the French

revolutionary wars, to allow the Catholic nobility and gentry an opportunity to have their sons educated at home. But the act of 10 Geo. IV., ch. vii., commonly called the emancipation act, has completely legalized them.

An Hircocervus, or Man Animal.-At Wyckham's College, Winchester, there is now remaining an instance of the fondness of our ancestors for placing up judicious advice to those intrusted to their charge: they were forcibly alive to the propriety of placing constantly before the eye good maxims, a custom, I am sorry to say, now rearly out of use.

There is a painting on the walls addressed to the servants. It is styled "The Trusty Servant," in Latin and English. I will give the English.

"A trusty servant's portrait would you see,
This emblematic figure well survey;
The porker's snout not nice in diet shows,
The padlock's shut, no secrets he'll disclose;
Patient the ass his master's wrath will bear,
Swiftness in errand the stagg's feet declare;
Loaded his left hand apt to labour saith,
The vest his neatness, open hand his faith;
Girt with his sword, his shield upon his arm,
Himself and master he'll protect from harm."

At the end of the school-room is another inscribed, with symbols, as follows:

accompanied with some excellent rules in Latin for the students.*

Admonitions of this sort, often presented from the eye to the mind, must cause reflection; and, except the party is really incorrigible, much good must arise.

The church floors in their tesselated pavements proclaimed wise sentiments and instructive histories. There is an old Latin maxim, "It is better to trust to our eyes than our ears ;" and, agreeable to this notion, even in the chimney-corners of the houses were introduced Dutch tiles, on which Scripturai quotations, and other instructive admonitions and histories, were continually conveying silent instruction. Society, I conceive, has lost much by abandoning this salutary custom. "That the

This noble room is ninety feet long, thirty-six feet broad, and suitably lofty. See "Milner's History of Winchester."