of Literature. But no one would have looked for it here, where it is completely out of place.

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'My good sir, there is quite enough left untouched in Textor to form a very amusing paper for the journal which you have mentioned, and the editor may thank you for the hint. But you are mistaken in thinking that what has been said of those dialogues is out of place here. May I ask what you expected in these volumes ?"

"What the title authorized me to look for."

"Do you know, sir, what mutton broth means at a city breakfast on the lord mayor's day, mutton broth being the appointed breakfast for that festival? It means, according to established usage-by liberal interpretation-mutton broth and everything else that can be wished for at a breakfast. So, sir, you have here not only what the title seems to specify, but everything else that can be wished for in a book. In treating of the doctor, it treats de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. It is the doctor, &c.; and that &c., like one of Lyttleton's, implies everything that can be deduced from the words preceding.

"But I maintain that the little which has been said of comical old Textor (for it is little compared to what his dialogues contain) strictly relates to the main thread of this most orderly and well compacted work. You will remember that I am now replying to the question proposed in the third chapter P. I., Who was the doctor?' And as he who should undertake to edit the works of Chaucer, or Spenser, or Shakspeare, would not be qualified for the task unless he had made himself conversant with the writings of those earlier authors, from whose storehouses (as far as they drew from books) their minds were fed, so it behooved me (as far as my information and poor ability extend) to explain in what manner so rare a character as Dr. Dove's was formed.

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Quo semel est imbuta recens-you know the rest of the quotation, sir. And perhaps you may have tasted water out of a beery glass-which it is not one or two rinsings that can purify.

"You have seen yew trees cut into the forms of pyramids, chess kings, and peacocks: nothing can be more unlike their proper growth-and yet no tree except the yew could take the artificial figure so well. The garden passes into the possession of some new owner who has no taste for such ornaments: the yews are left to grow at their own will; they lose the preposterous shape which had been forced upon them, without recovering that of their natural growth, and what was formal becomes grotesque-a word which may be understood as expressing the incongruous combination of formality with extravagance or wildness."

The intellectual education which young Daniel received at home was as much out of the ordinary course as the book

in which he studied at school. Robinson Crusoe had not yet reached Ingleton. Sandford and Merton had not been written, nor the history of Pecksey and Flapsey and the Robin's Nest, which is the prettiest fiction that ever was composed for children, and for which its excellent authoress will one luck day rank high among women of genius when time shall have set its seal upon desert. The only book within his reach, of all those which now come into the hands of youth, was the Pilgrim's Progress, and this he read at first without a suspicion of its allegorical import. What he did not understand was as little remembered as the sounds of the wind, or the motions of the passing clouds; but the imagery and the incidents took possession of his memory and his heart. After a while Textor became an interpreter of the immortal Tinker, and the boy acquired as much of the meaning by glimpses as was desirable, enough to render some of the personages more awful by spiritualizing them, while the tale itself remained as a reality. Oh! what blockheads are those wise persons who think it necessary that a child should comprehend everything it reads!

CHAPTER XV. P. I.

THE AUTHOR VENTURES AN OPINION AGAINST THE PREVAILING
WISDOM OF MAKING CHILDREN PREMATURELY WISE.

Pray you, use your freedom;

And so far, if you please, allow me mine,
To hear you only; not to be compelled
To take your moral potions.

MASSINGER.

"WHAT, sir," exclaims a lady, who is bluer than ever one of her naked and woad-stained ancestors appeared at a public festival in full die-" what, sir, do you tell us that children are not to be made to understand what they are taught?" And she casts her eyes complacently towards an assortment of those books which so many writers, male and female, some of the infidel, some of the semi-fidel, and some of the super-fidel schools have composed for the laudable purpose of enabling children to understand everything. What, sir," are we to make our children learn things by rote like parrots, and fill their heads with words to which they cannot attach any signification?"

she repeats,

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"Yes, madam, iu very many cases."

"I should like, sir, to be instructed why."

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She says this in a tone, and with an expression both of

eyes and lips which plainly show, in direct opposition to the words, that the lady thinks herself much fitter to instruct than to be instructed. It is not her fault. She is a good woman, and naturally a sensible one, but she has been trained up in the way women should not go. She has been carried from lecture to lecture, like a student who is being crammed at a Scotch university. She has attended lectures on chymistry, lectures on poetry, lectures on phrenology, lectures on mnemonics; she has read the latest and most applauded essays on taste; she has studied the newest and most approved treatises, practical and theoretical, upon education; she has paid sufficient attention to metaphysics to know as much as a professed philosopher about matter and spirit; she is a proficient in political economy, and can discourse upon the new science of population. Poor lady, it would require large draughts of Lethe to clear out all this indigested and indigestible trash, and fit her for becoming what she might have been! Upon this point, however, it may be practicable to set her right.

"You are a mother, madam, and a good one. In caressing your infants you may perhaps think it unphilosophical to use what I should call the proper and natural language of the nursery. But doubtless you talk to them; you give some utterance to your feelings; and whether that utterance be in legitimate and wise words, or in good extemporaneous nonsense, it is alike to the child. The conventional words convey no more meaning to him than the mere sound; he understands from either all that is meant, all that you wish him to understand, all that is to be understood. He knows that it is an expression of your love and tenderness, and that he is the object of it.

but

"So, too, it continues after he is advanced from infancy into childhood. When children are beginning to speak they do not and cannot affix any meaning to half the words which they hear; yet they learn their mother tongue. What I say is, do not attempt to force their intellectual growth. Do not feed them with meat till they have teeth to masticate it. "There is a great deal which they ought to learn, can learn, and must learn, before they can or ought to understand it. How many questions must you have heard from them which you have felt to be best answered when they were with most dexterity put aside! Let me tell you a story which the Jesuit Manuel de Vergara used to tell of himself. When he was a little boy, he asked a Dominican friar what was the meaning of the seventh commandment, for he said he could not tell what committing adultery was. The friar, not knowing how to answer, cast a perplexed look round the room, and thinking he had found a safe reply, pointed to a kettle on the fire, and said the commandment meant that he must never put his hand in the pot while it was boiling. The very

next day, a loud scream alarmed the family, and behold there was little Manuel running about the room, holding up his scalded finger, and exclaiming, 'Oh dear! oh dear! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery! I've committed adultery!'

CHAPTER XVI. P. I.

USE AND ABUSE OF STORIES IN REASONING, WITH A WORD IN BEHALF OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS, AND IN REPROOF OF THE EARL OF LAUDERDALE.

My particular inclination moves me in controversy especially to approve his choice that said, Fortia mallem quam formosa.-DR. JACKSON.

I ENDED that last chapter with a story, and though "I say it who should not say it," it is a good story well applied. Of what use a story may be even in the most serious debates, may be seen from the circulation of old Joes in parliament, which are as current there as their sterling namesakes used to be in the city some three score years ago. A jest, though it should be as stale as last week's newspaper, and as flat as Lord Flounder's face, is sure to be received with laughter by the collective wisdom of the nation; nay, it is sometimes thrown out like a tub to the whale, or like a trail of carrion to draw off hounds from the scent.

The bill which should have put an end to the inhuman practice of employing children to sweep chimneys was thrown out on the third reading in the House of Lords (having passed the Commons without a dissentient voice) by a speech from Lord Lauderdale, the force of which consisted in, literally, a Joe Miller jest. He related that an Irishman used to sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was fastened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose after it. A neighbour to whom he recommended this as a convenient mode, objected to it upon the score of cruelty to the goose, upon which he replied that a couple of ducks might do as well. Now, if the bill before the house had been to enact that men should no longer sweep chimneys, but that boys should be used instead, the story would have been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it related to chimney-sweeping; but it was a joke, and that sufficed. The lords laughed; his lordship had the satisfaction of throwing out the bill, and the home negro trade has continued from that time, now seven years, till this day, and still continues. His lordship had his jest; and it is speak

ing within compass to say, that in the course of those seven years two thousand children have been sacrificed in consequence.

The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor admit of a better defence before God and man.

Had his lordship perused the evidence which had been laid before the House of Commons when the bill was brought in, upon which evidence the bill was founded? Was he aware of the shocking barbarities connected with the trade, and inseparable from it? Did he know that children inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a childhood during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute of every kind of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or eighteen to seek their living how they can in some other employment, for it is only by children that this can be carried on? Did his lordship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused? that their sufferings begin at the age of six, sometimes a year earlier? finally, that they are sold to this worst and most inhuman of slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the purpose of being sold to it?

I bear no ill-will towards Lord Lauderdale, either personally or politically: far from it. His manly and honourable conduct on the queen's trial, when there was such an utter destitution of honour in many quarters where it was believed to exist, and so fearful a want of manliness where it ought to have been found, entitles him to the respect and gratitude of every true Briton. But I will tell his lordship that rather than have spoken as he did against an act which would have lessened the sum of wickedness and suffering in this country-rather than have treated a question of pure humanity with contempt and ridicule-rather than have employed my tongue for such a purpose, and with such success, I wouldbut no: I will not tell him how I had concluded. I will not tell him what I had added in the sincerity of a free tongue and an honest heart. I leave the sentence imperfect rather than that any irritation which the strength of my language might excite should lessen the salutary effects of self-condemnation.

James Montgomery! these remarks are too late for a place in thy Chimney-sweepers' Friend: but insert them, I pray thee, in thy newspaper, at the request of one who admires and loves thee as a poet, honours and respects thee as a man, and reaches out in spirit at this moment a long arm to shake hands with thee in cordial good-will.

My compliments to you, Mr. Bowring! Your little poem in Montgomery's benevolent album is in a strain of true