large majority of most unmitigated lands

men.

It is Sunday morning, and our little schooner is one of a fleet of eighty sail in A man may acquire a taste for hunting or Cowes Roads, with the broad pendant of shooting, or the turf; he may become a tol- that gallant old Commodore and prince of erable rider, or a decent shot; but if he yachtsmen, Lord Yarborough, in the midst. takes to yachting, the heart and the stomach There, too, is the Commodore of the for the sport must be born with him. A "Thames," in his trim little twenty-five ton yacht is either, like any other vessel, a cutter ready to blow you out of the water prison with the chance of being drowned, or with a salute from his plucky two-pounders. it is the palace of a poet. You must have What a spectacle for a foreigner who is a horror of a yacht (as most wives have, by studying the secret of "naval supremacy!" the by), or you must love her "like a Here are the finest craft in the world, manned woman." Go down to Cowes or Ryde the by something like a thousand picked seafirst week in August, and you will find the men. The Commodore's flag-ship, the Kesgentlemen who live afloat at ease, a capital trel, is a private man-of-war, as trim, as representative body of the British and, we smart, as clean as a frigate. The old lord may add, of the Irish race. There is the who attended the battle of Navarino in his duke of half a dozen counties, the tired own ship, the Falcon, surveys his squadron statesman, the great city merchant or with honest pride. The boatswain's pipe is banker, the successful tradesman, the engi- busy in the Kestrel, and the signal midshipneer, the country squire, the clergyman, the man has no sinecure. The Commodore lawyer, the soldier, and the naval man, who, "makes" eight o'clock, and up go all the like the actor who always goes to the play ensigns and burgees; at church time up goes when he is not acting himself, goes a-yacht- the church pendant to the peak; twelve ing while he is waiting for a ship. In that o'clock is "made," and so is sunset. How little Thames cutter there is a theatrical splendidly those gigs' crews "give way" to manager who spends his leisure moments on the Club-house steps! There the talk is all board in making up his play-bills for a huge of next week's matches, and of the squadron public. Each transpontine club has its own which is to go down Channel on the day rendezvous; but all these yachtsmen belong after the squadron ball, under the Commoto a national volunteer service, and in that dore's orders. Ah! the blue and breezy pleasure navy there is a real esprit de corps. sky, and the fresh sunshine! Twenty-two No class or order of men contains a larger yachts were we, as we took station accordnumber of " eccentricities," and nowhere is ing to tonnage and tacked in succession bea fairer field for eccentricity to be found. fore the Commodore. Just as we clear the This characteristic of yachting breaks out in roads, fourteen sail of the "Thames" miniaall manner of shapes and forms: sometimes ture squadron appear in line and exchange in the costume, half naval, half piratical, of salutes. And now we are away through the the owner and his crew; sometimes in the Needles passage. Presently the Commodore discipline and trim of the craft. The ladies, signals us to "make all sail without regard who constitute an important and delightful to stations," and the longest legs make the section of the yachting world, enter eagerly shortest miles of it. Before sunset we are into the spirit of these eccentricities, and all becalmed, but before we come on deck adopt the fashion of the craft to which they from dinner we are rushing through the waare attached with enthusiasm. Indeed, on ter with a spanking breeze on our quarter. these pleasant shores of the gentle Solent Night brings thunder and lightning and a all the conventionalities of dress and de-gale, and when the morning breaks we are meanor are willingly, and as if by common beating into Weymouth with two reefs down. consent, thrown aside for a season by "all | What a merry reckless company we are on hands,” and the result is wonderfully picturesque and refreshing after the faded and factitious society of the London season.

As we write a past generation of yachtsmen and women comes sailing up the silent sea of memory!

board, giving to storm and calm alike "a frolic welcome," and resolved to be jolly under all changes of wind and weather! It is a lovely dawn when we come to an anchor in Torbay with all our consorts once more in company. That was the last squadron the

good Lord Yarborough was destined to com- | wave-line of bow has taught us how a vessel mand. Before another summer came round, may be fast and dry, neither sacrificing speed our much-loved Commodore had gone aloft! to comfort, nor comfort to speed. Another Of course, we cannot admit that there are change for the better is in the trim of racing such yachts or yachting-men in these degen- yachts. Some years ago, the yachts that erate times. The best" eleven" and the best won the prizes were good for nothing else; "eight" are always the "eleven" and the now the racing craft are often admirable sea"eight" of our own Eton days. Certainly boats. Now-a-days, too, the silly practice in the far time we are recalling, not without of" carrying on" is given up, and the ada pang, yachting was in all its glory. Only vantage of sailing as much as possible on an remember that match round the island in even keel is better understood. The nice which two schooners were dismasted! And question of measurement, if not quite equitathe match between the Corsair and another bly solved, is not so prone to abuse as it was cutter (whose name we have forgotten) round formerly. Throughout all these changes it is the Eddystone in half a gale of wind! When curious and interesting to find that the old those two cutters returned through the Nee- | Arrow and the old Alarm (transformed into dles, they were so close together that the a schooner) have scarcely yet found their Corsair won by four minutes and a half. equals in a long day's contest. The introAnd what "characters" we had among us duction of steam-yachts is, we humbly conin those days! There was a famous cutter fess, a novelty we cannot find it in our hearts whose owner" and commander," as he in- to approve. Screw engines cost too much, sisted on being called, was a perfect martyr and take up too much space, to be compatito man-of-war principles. He carried a ble with any but the largest yachts and the brass band which was the terror of the Chan- richest owners; and steam appears to us nel, and his boatswain piped like an omni- essentially repugnant to the genius of yachtbus conductor. One day he invited a partying to the noble independence of all reto divine service on board, which he read himself with one eye fixed on the church flag at the peak. To set this flag, the mainsail had been expressly hoisted-in harbor-and while we were all praying, a sudden squall sent down the mainsail by the run, and we are sorry to say that those who came to pray remained to scream with laughter, and morning service ended abruptly with some very strong language from the officiating minister. Are there any such "characters" now ?

straints of time which becomes a yachtsman. Before many years have come and gone, it may be that the British navy will consist of enormous iron barges, studded with cupola towers, and of Noah's arks with steel fixings. Only at the yachting stations will the tapering spars and the snowy wings of the skimmers of the seas be found. We devoutly hope that it may be reserved for our posterity to witness this hideous conversion of the British navy into iron-clasped safes and batteries. Let our yachtsmen, at all events, be content with spars and sails, remembering that even men-of-war are forbidden to " down screw" as long as they can

Yachts and yachting, like the navy, have undergone a revolution since those days. The America taught a trick or two to builders, and since her victories schooners have" up stick." almost superseded cutters, and the long

TURNER says (vol. 1, p. 311), "there can be [ A CLEAR inference drawn from Cæsar, that no doubt that the majority of the British population was preserved to be useful to their conquerors." I think the total change of language disproves this; and that the nature and length of the contest also show that the separation was almost complete. No doubt they preserved the slaves, who would mostly be of their own stock. -Southey.

the Britons knew the use of letters,―else why should the Druids have forbidden their doctrines to be written,-but because they were like their worthy successors, the Romish priests, desirous of concealing the records which might be examined to their prejudice.—Script. Rev. Hibern, p. 1, Proleg. xxx.

From The Spectator. BODLEY'S LIBRARY AND ITS TREASURES.*

degenerate men who have gradually declined from lofty folios to tiny duodecimos; from Ockham and Thomas Aquinas to the last shilling volume of the Parlor Library. Here may the reader bury himself for hours with no visions of petticoats; no vanities of this day, not even of "Vanity Fair." He may dine with Duke Humphrey; he may realize to himself an age when learning condescended to nothing short of a folio; when

THE Reading-room of the British Museum, with its magnificent dome, its blue and gilt spandrils, its books in the newest of bindings, its easy lounges and capacious desks, is a sight worthy of the metropolis. Ladies in crinoline and fashionable bonnets, gentlemen in wide-awakes, pork-pies, and unimpeachable tweeds, sit down to the lit-stout hearts beat high beneath black gowns ; erary fare, provided for them by the munificence of the trustees, with as much ease and comfort as in their clubs or their drawingrooms. Learning is stripped of its rust and repulsiveness. It has put on the gayest of garbs. It needs no apologist for its want of politeness. And if Plato could come upon earth again, he would no longer have to apologize for the manners of the learned -so far, at least, as the Reading-room of the British Museum may be considered as the type of modern scholarship-by saying that scholars were like "the gallypots of apothecaries, which, on the outside had apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sovereign and precious liquors and confections." It is a sign of the times when it is no longer necessary for the votary of science to bid farewell to the world and shut himself up in seclusion, when a life of activity is not incompatible with learning, and Mr. Monckton Milnes is in no fear, like his predecessor Gascoigne, of having his return petitioned against in the House of Commons, on the bare fact of his being a poet. All this is very well. Let the applause of Mr. Panizzi, the trustees, and their Readingroom reach to the highest honors this generation can bestow; let it ring from spotless lemon kid gloves, perfumed with the choicest of Rimmel's toilet vinegar.

But old and mighty Bodley is old and mighty still unchanged and unchangeable; and long may it continue so! Murky in its antiquity, redolent of old bindings, "fragrant with moth-scented coverings!" No morocco, red, citron, or green, later than the days of the historian De Thou, profanes with flaunting colors the sober calf-skins which, more venerable than Nestor, have reigned supreme over three centuries of learning, and look down with dignified contempt upon *Hackman's Catalogue of the Jenner MSS. in

the Bodleian. Clarendon Press.

when trencher-caps shook with agitation at the serried logic of rival Nominalists and Realists, and the glory of a University was imperilled in a Syllogism. Or, to descend still lower, here, without effort, may he transfer himself to the times when the latest new sensation book upon Philosophy was the Novum Organon of Bacon, and doctors turned pale over the heretical audacity of a Lord Chancellor, who had taken Plato and Aristotle to task, and stigmatized the wise dictators of antiquity as ricketty children, competent to nothing else than blare and babble. What feet have ever trodden the Reading-room of the British Museum except penny-a-liners, foreign correspondents of the daily press, or young gentlemen intent on cribs? Even Lord Macaulay died some years too soon for his own reputation and Mr. Panizzi's masterpiece. No Seldon, no Laud, no Milton, no Cromwell, Owen, Clarendon, Dryden, Pope, Bolingbroke or burly Johnson, or quaint Charles Lamb, to say nothing of earlier worthies,-Hooker, or Ben Jonson, or Burton, have cast their shadows over the spick and span new paint and gilding of the Metropolitan Readingroom. By no effort of imagination can its visitors repeople the Reading-room of the British Museum, as we can hardly avoid doing Bodley, with the glories of the past. Its brilliancy, whatever it may be, is of the future exclusively. It belongs to the generation of railways and locomotives, of competitive examinations, and fast trains. Not so Bodley and its treasures. Once a year the delegates of the library march round in solemn train, as they have done since the days of the first Stuarts, with vice chancellor, beadles, and silver maces, to survey the shelves and their sacred treasures. No profane bookbinder violates the sanctity of that repose, Heaven be praised, or intrudes his gilt gingerbread and modern frivolities on

its founder, to the present century, from the days when Queen Elizabeth, in ruff and farthingale, with Burghley and Walsingham at her side, harangued the doctors and Heads of Houses in well-poised Latin, to the time when the Allied Sovereigns celebrated the advent of peace within its walls, or Queen Victoria inscribed her name among its manuscripts! And no wonder that its treasures of books, manuscripts, and rarities should partake of the character of the place and have a sort of uniqueness and quaint antiq

here, in undisturbed repose, and still better, fresh and unchanged, as in their primitive state, are the collections of Dr. Dee, the earliest of spirit-rappers, "who did observe and write down what was said by the spirits, Kelley (his assistant magician), seeing and interpreting." Here, too, is garnered up all the correspondence of Hyde, Lord Clarendon, and the little notes that passed between him and Charles I. in the lobby of the House of Commons during those debates which cost the king his crown. Here, too, in its bands of red silk, is the correspondence of the same monarch with his children, when they had taken refuge in France; and here, in sombre winding-sheets of black silk, and seals to match, are the letters that passed after Charles' execution. Here are the correspondence of the parliamentary generals,

the sober decorum of Bodley. Only within comparatively recent period have the chains been removed which locked its books together in the close and loving embrace of a Macedonian phalanx, and nearly proved fatal to an ambitious author who, Icarus-like, soared too high, and hung himself in their iron tendrils. Still more recently has hot air been introduced into one division of the library for the benefit of luxurious masters of arts, who could not keep themselves warm over Duns Scotus or Athanasius, but, in the pride of their hearts, descended to the ex-uity about them not found elsewhere. For ternal world, and took to polished leather boots and thin potations. With these exceptions, Bodley was and is what it was in the days of its founder-goodly to look upon as he; that "full solempne man," who thought, if we should "cancel all our theories, axioms, rules, and tenents," as Bacon advised, "it would instantly bring us to barbarism, and, after many thousand years, leave us more unprovided of theorical furniture than we are at the present." Save also, and excepting that ruthless necessity, in the shape of those same masters of arts, has marred the quaint device of Sir Thomas (who wished to preserve the remembrance of his Christian name T. in the shape of his library), and, by developing one end of it, have metamorphosed it into an H. But for this, the mullioned windows, the fragrant air from the College gardens, the solemn the papers of the unhappy non-jurors; of pealing of bells-they have rung out generations of students, and shall ring in generations of students yet to come-repeat from hour to hour, and year to year, the pious deeds of our English forefathers, and the dim traditions of the past. "Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou, that, being nothing, art everything? What mystery lurks in this retroversion? Or what half Januses are we that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with which we forever revert? The mighty future is as nothing, being everything! The past is everything, being nothing!"

Archbishop Sancroft, and of Bishop Ken, whose name lives forever in the Morning and Evening Hymn. And here are the details of the Pretender's doings, and his secret friends in England, in the reigns of Anne, George I., and George II. And what else there may be of curious lore and unrevealed mysteries in that capacious and undisturbed receptacle of "Mighty Bodley," who shall tell us?

Of late some attempt has been made by the authorities of Oxford to sort and tabulate their treasures; and Mr. Hackman's catalogue, which we have until this late period in our article unconsciously omitted to notice-rapt in reminiscences of Bodley

In these respects the Bodleian Library is unique, not only in England, but in Europe. No library of similar extent possesses the is partly the result of these new efforts. same conventual character. Paris, Brus- We wish to deal gently with Mr. Hackman's sels, Frankfort, Augsburg, Munich, Valla- labors. His errors of omission and commisdolid, and Madrid have nothing like it. sion in the execution of his task we will not Associated with all the great traditions of censure heavily; for who that has had dealEngland, from the age of Duke Humphrey, ings with manuscripts does not know how

inevitably, spite of all vigilance and pre- |ters, printing the former in the body of the cautions, all sorts of errors will creep in ? work, and the latter in the index. So for But Mr. Hackman's notions of a catalogue, every entry the reader has to turn backwards and of the requirements of those who are and forwards, and incur at each step, as Mr. likely to consult one, seem to us more Hackman himself must have done, a needstrange, uncouth, and antiquated than Dr. less amount of double labor. When Mr. Dee's spirit-rapping, or a non-juror's advo- Hackman goes home, we suppose that he cacy of the claims of the Pretender. If Mr. despises the door of his chambers in Christ Hackman had spent his academical life in Church, and gets in at the windows. We trying to produce a catalogue as unlike in look for better things under the librarianits plan to any now in existence, and as re- ship of Mr. Coxe, for we shall expect a more pulsive and inconvenient in the using as complete analysis of papers to be catalogued, possible, he could not have succeeded bet- a more intelligible order, a more thorough ter. The index to his book is considerably knowledge of the wants of modern students; larger than the book itself; and to use it, in short, catalogues as unlike Mr. Hackman's, the student must take learning by the tail, in all these respects, as Mr. Hackman's laand proceed rearwards like an irritated crab. bors are unlike the labors of his predecessors Mr. Hackman (ominous name!) separates and contemporaries. the addresses from the substance of the let

and even far beyonɑ, to place the cu the early age of three, four, or five years, in the family of the Americo-Liberians expressly

to learn English and to acquire civilized THERE were some Nunneries founded by habits. Among the natives, to understan some of our forefathers, wherein it was appointEnglish is the greatest accomplishment aned that some should be taught the knowledge of

the Saxon tongue, on purpose to preserve it, and transmit it to posterity by communicating it down from one to another. Such was the Nunnery at Tavistock and many others which he (Archbishop Parker) could have named.Strype's Parker, p. 536.

These foundations must have been made by Saxons under the Norman kings.-Southey.

WILLIAM sent Harold's standard to the Pope :

THE first Alfred while he was a refugee in Ireland became "deeply versed in literature and enriched his mind with every kind of learn ing." His fourth successor Celwulf was also scholar. "Bede at the very juncture wher "it was sumptuously embroidered with gold and Britain most abounded with scholars, offered precious stones, in the form of a man fighting." his History of the Angels for correction, to this prince more especially; making choice of his authority, to confirm by his high station wha had been well written; and of his learning to

IN THE WOODS.

rectify by his talents what might be carelessly AND so she learned to wander in the woods, expressed."

As if in search, not knowing where she went, And she put on a statelier beauty, grew More beautiful through sadness, while the years THIS Celwulf "thinking it beneath the dig Led her to womanhood with persuasive hands. nity of a Christian to be immersed in earthlyNot Aphrodite coming in her shell, things, abdicated the throne after a reign of When those four seasons met her on the shore, eight years and assumed the monastic habit a Was lovelier; being in beauty more divine, Lindisfarn," where he lived and died in the But missing her sweet grace of humanness. odor of sanctity.

And she grew up a perfect woman pure, With passion in her, well subdued to truth; Saddened at most things as she went by them: And made the Dryads weep at her sad looks. BONIFACE Wrote to Cuthbert, Archbishop of And all her heart and being yearned for love. Canterbury, to remonstrate with the clergy and She peeped into the leafy nests of birds, nuns on the fineness and vanity of their dress And wondered what could make them twit and

THIRD SERIES.

LIVING AGE. 936

sing.

-Thomas Ashe.