for me, from the respectful behaviour I met with the whole time I was there.

Thus ended our trip to Windsor, which but for the unlucky incident just mentioned would have been as amusing as it has been instructive.

Sept. 20, 1842.

Yours, till extinction,

Peter Pillbocks.

A RESTLESS NIGHT.

Where dwellest thou, still, droning under-song,
That hauntingly dost brood upon the ear,
Filling the void of silence stern and drear?

When, as I strain for sleep, and crush the throng
Of rude and obstinate thoughts that in despite
Creep back and multiply, I strive to lose
Within the mystic labyrinth of night

This clinging wakefulness, and break the clues
That lead me back to dull intelligence,

And evermore that strange pathetic sound,
Born of some bodiless inorganic sense,

And scarce akin to our mortality,

Lives on through awful watches. Would that I
Still, as of yore by spells of childhood bound,
And still enshrined within the peaceful bed
Which smiles of mother-love encompassed;
Would that I might re-learn my simple creed,
And listen musingly, and think forsooth,
That nothing else than Conscience this could be,
Of whose undying power I wont to read,
Echoing from out the soul-built caves of truth
To peal one ceaseless warning note for me.

LINES

Addressed to a friend on hearing that he was about to leave Eton.

Then, ere thou quit'st this spot,

Where boyhood spent its happiest hours,

And deemed the rest all wreathed with flow'rs,

Think what the world is not,

And sigh to quit this spot.

REPENTANCE.

There is an hour, when in the heart
All scarred with many a fearful sin,
The waters of repentance start

And pour their healing tide within;
Then will the weary man of crime

Live o'er again his wasted years,
And sighs to find that manhood's prime

Boasts not a thought that's free from tears.

Perhaps the burthen of some song,

Learnt when a trifle gave him joy,

Has waked an echo loud and long
Of the once careless happy boy :
It tells how on his father's knee

He heard sweet tales of by-gone years;
Ah! could he then, poor child! foresee
Not e'en this mem'ry free from tears.

Repentance comes! the past hath flown
Like a dark cloud before the sun;
Wrecked on life's shore he stands alone

And tracks the course his barque hath run.

Oh! that some kindly angel's hand

Could blind to all but childhood's years, And man's dark deeds from out the sand

Be washed away by angel's tears!

Φιλανθρωπος.

PROPOSALS

FOR THE REFORMATION OF

THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND.

Ενθα γάρ τι δεῖ ψεῦδος λέγεσθαι, λεγέσθων τοῦ γὰρ ἀυτοῦ γλιχόμεθα, Οι τε ψευδόμενοι, καὶ δι τῇ ἀληθήΐη διαχρεωμενοι. Herod. Thalia. 72.

Oui, cela était autrefois ainsi : mais nous avons changé tout cela, et nous faisons maintenant l'histoire d'une methode toute nouvelle.

Le Medecin malgré lui. Act II. Scene 6.

Reform and improvement are continually going on around us. Hardly any part of our institutions in Church and State has been left unilluminated by the new light of the nineteenth century. Our intellectual noses are turned up with supreme contempt at those antiquated dotards, those benighted Bekkeσenvor, who prefer the dull taper of ancient times to the flaming Bude-light of our own progressing" age. Thus far we may congratulate ourselves-but it has struck us as matter for surprise, if not for sorrow, that, while the work of remodelling everything is going on so bravely, one of the strongholds of antiquity yet remains unstormed; merely, let us hope, from the circumstance that no assault has yet been formally made upon it. What we mean is, that no daring spirit, armed with the torch of modern science, has as yet ventured to set steadily to work at reforming on the most enlightened principles of the times in which we live, that mass of startling events and disagreeable facts which is still universally received as the truc History of England. It would seem that superstition, that modern Niobe, has till now succeeded in shielding from destruction, this her dearest and last-surviving child: that history is that one temple of Delphi, which the riflers and incendiaries of a thousand other sanctuaries are prevented by inexplicable

pánic from violating. Some indeed there are who think that even " the light of modern days" would be incapable of representing in any novel, or at least in any amended form, the events and characters of history; we know some wiseacres who have gravely asserted that facts are facts; and as such beyond the reach of that improvement which it has been the lot of our happy generation to see effected in everything else. In answer to such cavillers we shall content ourselves with asking confidently, is it to be believed that Mr. Canning meant nothing more than to give utterance to a piece of facetious nonsense, when he told the House of Commons that "there was but one thing more fallacious than a figure, and that thing was a FACT?" We assure our readers that we ourselves once thought this a mere witticism; but our deep reverence for the great Etonian Statesman has led us carefully to consider his words; and that careful consideration has produced in our mind, as we will hope it may in the minds of all who read these pages, the firm conviction, that although at the time (as is the case with every man who is in advance of the age in which he lives) Mr. Canning was not understood to have uttered anything peculiarly deep and philosophical, and though even now many still doubt the truth of his assertion, yet that in that apparently chance expression there was contained a maxim founded upon the acutest discernment, the most enlightened and invincible wisdom. Yes-in those few words was contained the great doctrine of the "falsehood of facts,"-a doctrine hinted at, if not openly taught, by many of the philosophers of old, as Pyrrho for instance, and the academies who doubted everything-a doctrine which has slumbered for so many ages only to burst with tenfold brilliancy and vigour upon the nineteenth century. It is