"FRAGMENT OF AN ORATION.

"Part of Mr Whitbread's speech on the trial of Lord Melville, 1805, put into verse by Mr Canning at the time it was delivered.

"I'm like Archimedes for science and skill;

I'm like a young prince going straight up a hill;
I'm like (with respect to the fair be it said),
I'm like a young lady just bringing to bed.
If you ask why the 11th of June I remember
Much better than April, or May, or November,
On that day, my Lords, with truth I assure ye,
My sainted progenitor set up his brewery;
On that day in the morn he began brewing beer;
On that day too commenced his connubial career;
On that day he received and he issued his bills;
On that day he cleared out all his cash in his tills;
On that day he died, having finished his summing,

And the angels all cried, ‘There's old Whitbread a-coming!'
So that day I still hail with a smile and a sigh,
For his beer with an E, and his bier with an I;
And still on that day in the hottest of weather,
The whole Whitbread family dine altogether.
So long as the beams of this house shall support
The roof which o'ershades this respectable court,
Where Hastings was tried for oppressing the Hindoos;
So long as that sun shall shine in at those windows,
My name shall shine bright as my ancestor's shines;
Mine recorded in journals, his blazoned on signs."

Our examples have been uniformly taken from biographers' collections of letters and private recollections. In only one case have we referred to the poet's "poems" for the specimen in point; though our extract may, in one or two instances, have been removed from its original standing to a niche in what are emphatically called an author's works.

It is obvious, on this and other grounds, that our poets at play can include no living brother within

their circle.

Poets must first be known and valued

by their works. They must have done great things before we care for trifles from their hands. But this knowledge once acquired, and an estimate formed, a further intimacy may be promoted by some acquaintance with performances which do not rank among their works. It would be very unjust to measure them by such specimens as we have strung together; but having established their reputation with us, trivialities, like many of these, if they do not contribute to their fame, yet suggest versatility, and in most cases add an engaging touch of homely nature to a great name. They are all examples, as we began by saying, of that essential element of the poet's nature when in working effective order-exceptional life and spirits. Nobody writes verse for his own pleasure, or even relief, without the barometer of his spirits being on the rise. They are tokens of that abiding youthfulness which never leaves him while he can write a living line. The poet, we need not say, is for ever sighing over the youth that is past and gone, not taking note of the youth that remains to him, altogether independent of years. But, in fact, he is a boy all his life, capable of finding amusement in matters which the plodding man of the world considers puerile, and so conferring on his readers and lovers some share of his own spring, some taste of the freshness which helps to keep the world alive.

SCHOOLS OF MIND AND MANNERS.

THE word education has always carried with it two distinct ideas the acquisition of knowledge, and the discipline which fits for society. One man means by it the power that stimulates thought and brings it in relation with the past; another, the training which adapts the individual for intercourse with his kind. The education of knowledge is compatible with an utter deficiency in the habits and qualities which help men socially; the education which takes the body in hand, and the mind as it regulates temper and manners, may accomplish its object with little help from large and accurate knowledge, or culture of the purely intellectual faculties. We say culture, as distinct from native sense, for a basis of understanding is indispensable for all success: nor can the merest external training effect its purpose unless the intellect works even energetically towards the aim in view. The brain has its part in every effort-nothing is well done without its sustaining action. In old days we

find these two modes of training had their appropriate spheres and seasons rigidly assigned to them. Collegiate life drilled the mind: the court-if the pupil had to be made a fine gentleman-took the body and manners in hand, and educated through the outside and the contagion of example; through deportment, expression, action, voice all that manifestation of self that acts on others, and which is caught by observation, and by contact with what is decorous and graceful in manner and phrase. In universities men were made learned; in high-bred society they were taught to please: neither sphere infringed on the other. Those who passed their lives in colleges thought polite society frivolous; and fine gentlemen and ladies regarded the seats of learning as the homes of rusticity and morosity." Of course there were acknowledged exceptions-the scholars who were also men of the world, and men of distinguished manners who were also deeply read; but it used to be assumed that learning and manners could not be learned in the same school. The satirists of last century delighted in showing up the uncouth pedantry of the one class, and the ignorance, levity, and affectation of the other. The accomplished gentleman must first learn from books, and then set forth on his travels; from which, if we may judge from the notices of the time, more marvels were expected than were often compassed. The bear and the bear-leader, fresh from the seat of learning, made a poor figure to practised eyes. "Most of our travelling youth," writes Lady Pomfret from

Florence (1740), "neither improve themselves nor credit their country. This, I believe, is often owing to the strange creatures that are made their governors, but as often to the strange creatures that are to be governed." But the system was an acknowledged one. This "in

undation of poor creatures" had a recognised claim on their compatriots; and the great lady, in fact, made her drawing-room at Florence a school of manners, when, to provide against the inconveniences of this inundation as a constant invasion, she opened it for a general reception once a-week. "I shall be at home. every Friday evening, and at no other time, when I shall also have the pleasure of seeing all the Florentine nobility, whose hospitality and politeness I can never enough commend." But this all belongs to a past day. Learning and propriety of manners have agreed to a compromise. If we have fewer prodigies of erudition, we have fewer prodigies of another sort. Our scholars have learnt even to dispute and quarrel in polite terms; and college training, if it does not accomplish what nothing but intercourse with good general society can accomplish, at least does not overlay its pupils with a rust hard to be rubbed off.

So far, however, in our remarks, education has meant only the education of men. In the last century, at any rate, the one prevailing idea of education for women scarcely included learning at all. It meant simply and emphatically the discipline which fits for society. Through more than half that period manners were the thing in question-manners, and how to