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We have endeavoured to represent our Cornish fellow-citizens such as we conceive them to be, in the strength as well as the weakness of their character, without selecting merely those points on which they are accustomed to compliments, and, at the same time, without any attempt at satire or any conscious misrepresentation. No one can have lived among them on terms of familiarity, much less intimacy, without acquiring perhaps an undue bias in their favour from their hearty and hospitable ways, and from that peculiar raciness of character which always belongs, for good or for evil, to people whose land is 'no thoroughfare;' and yet removed by their industrious habits and great commercial activity from the apathy and contented barbarism which are apt to prevail in districts so circumstanced. A deeper interest also attaches to strong local peculiarities in our day, when they are doubtless on the verge of disappearing. They cannot long coexist with our modern rapidity of communication— long, that is, in an historical sense of the word; though they will as yet survive through some generations ere they are replaced by that uniformity of thought and action, and extinction of mere local influences, which seems destined to be the ultimate result of our present course of improvement. Whatever sentimental regrets we may entertain for the past, we cannot doubt that anomalies of this kind do substantially act as so many obstacles, so much unnecessary friction, in the way of the machinery of civilization, and that the power of combined action on the one hand, the power of human thought itself on the other, will gain enormously by their entire removal. But this, as we have said, is a consummation as yet far off, even in our small island and intensely active society. In the mean time, it affords the purest and highest satisfaction to observe, that as from time to time the research of the antiquary fixes on and endeavours to portray these features as they exist in his own day—as we pass from the page of Carew to that of Hals, Borlase, Polwhele, and the other authorities to whom we have referred, and thence to the evidences of our own observation and that of our contemporaries-we trace, throughout, evidences of the substantial advance of good and decay of evil; the coarser, darker, and more repulsive features of the social organization tend the most clearly and rapidly towards disappearance. A century ago the inhabitants of the county which we have been describing were, as a people, very careless of religion, if not irreligious; they are now notorious for the prevalence of devotional feeling, with a strong tendency to the enthusiastic. They were all but universally addicted to drunkenness; intemperance is now exceptional among them. They were pugnacious and turbulent; they are now orderly and peaceful, notwithstanding

notwithstanding their habits of association in great numbers, in a degree surpassed by no civilized community. They were wreckers and smugglers; wrecking has not only ceased, but they are distinguished for their humanity and courage on the occasions of the many shipping disasters along their coasts; and smuggling (though probably from other than moral causes) is comparatively a trifling evil. Those who view things on the dark side will have it that these undeniable improvements have been effected at the cost of much loss of the rough but sincere morality of earlier life; that criminal offences, particularly of the fraudulent class, have multiplied, and the breach of some common moral laws has become more ordinary. It may be so: we have little confidence in statistical comparisons between the amount of crime at one period and another, knowing the many causes which lead to uncertainty in such comparisons; but the published tables are quite sufficient evidence of the relative amount of crime as between one locality and another, and they show that Cornwall stands remarkably high in this particular among the counties of England. But, however some may reject the notion as a paradox, the amount of legal crime is probably a very imperfect index of the general morality of a district or people. We look rather to the tone of public opinion. If that be manifestly improved in the great mass of the community,-if many a practice, formerly regarded as venial at best, be now looked on with disfavour, if not with contempt and abhorrence,-if there is a general and increasing admiration of that which is good, though mixed with much false sentiment and visionary enthusiasm, a general and increasing detestation of vice in the abstract, though it be accompanied with much of cant and self-righteousness, and with much of weakness in practice-the heart of the people is sound, and their deliverance from bondage is proceeding. It is a good sign when not only the vicious, but the merely thoughtless and extravagant, instead of setting the fashion, as they may be said to have done among the low as well as the high in days not very long gone by, are reduced rather to an apologetical state of selfdefence, and forced to murmur their complaints against the hypocrisy of the world, and their conviction that they are not in reality so much worse than other folks. And it may even happen that crime appears at the same time to remain stationary, or even to increase, because the criminal population, which lives in habitual conflict with justice or by preying on the remainder, is more distinctly marked out as a class, and cut off from sympathy with the rest of the community.

ART.

ART. II.-1. The Book of Rugby School, its History, and its Daily Life. Rugby, 1856.

2. Tom Brown's School Days, by an Old Boy. Cambridge,

1857.

OUR

UR readers must not be scared by the scholastic character of the two works by which this paper is headed. We by no means propose sending them back to school, nor to inflict on the memory of our senior friends the reminiscences of the difficulties by which the pursuit of literature was beset when George III. was king; those good old times are among the things that were, and now that the secret, knowledge is power,' is more fully revealed, a spirit of improvement has stirred the stagnant waters. Education is the panacea of the day, by which all that is rotten in the State is to be cured, and while progress is the theory, pace is the practice. Formerly there was no royal road to mathematics, but now, it seems, the rugged path is to rival in comfort the Great Western Express, and we heartily wish the philanthropic speculators a pleasant journey, for in proportion as the moral and intellectual faculties of man be developed, the more is he raised above the beasts that perish. But we fear the advantages are not all in one direction, and the old conveyances may possibly, however inferior in some respects, be surer and safer in the end.

Be that as it may, the works prefixed to this paper seem to us, not inaptly to illustrate this popular topic, and it was at Rugby that Arnold originated and established a better system as regarded the education of the upper classes. He is the Hamlet of the Rugby drama-the 'genius loci'-and shines throughout the bright light which was there first reflected. His impress is, indeed, everywhere, and remains as the footsteps of a megalotherian traced on antediluvian sand, now hardened into enduring rocks-the tracks bear a lasting record of his presence and action. Thus is it that the spirits of the eminent survive the grave; although dead, he still speaketh, inspires, and directs.

The idea and execution of the Book of Rugby is taken from the instructive but somewhat stilty work of Mr. Walcott on William of Wykeham and his colleges. It records the incidents of a school which now numbers an existence of nearly three centuries, and thus fixes recollections for ever, by type, as memory once interrupted can never be recalled. The performance, a labour of love, is a memorial of filial affection, raised by many alumni, in honour of a site where their golden age of youth was spent.

The

The book is prettily illustrated with vignettes and woodcuts, which bring before the stranger's eye the striking features of country and of those prominent objects which recall to the memory of former boys many a fond remembrance, hived in their bosom, like the honey of the bee. The record was edited by Dr. Goulburn, the accomplished head-master, on whom the mantle of his eminent predecessor worthily descended, and by whom his system was continued. Brought up himself at Eton, a school that long has basked in the sunshine of royalty, he laboured to communicate its polish and urbanity to the native rusticity of Rugby, a local foundation of mere mesocratic origin. He has recently passed from being the teacher of boys, to become the instructor of men, and the wider school of the metropolis is opened to his piety and eloquence.

"Our first founder,' Lawrence Sheriff, a native of Rugby, was a plain, homely, right-minded Englishman, who, having risen from an humble beginning, accumulated a large fortune in dealing with the fruits and spices of the West Indies. He was warden of the Grocers' Company during the reign of Queen Elizabeth; this was a critical epoch in the advance of civilization, when the discovery of a new world had opened space to the expanding intellect of the old one, which just then had been awakened from the long slumber of the dark ages by the restoration of classical literature: a new life was thus infused into the sacred cause of education, which finds a counterpart in the movement of this present moment. Luther, when he threw his inkstand at the head of the Evil One, had taught the laity their true weapon of offence and defence, with which they could wrest from the papal clergy that monopoly of knowledge, long the secret of their strength. Thus the great Reformer emancipated the mind of man, and shivered, once for all, those fetters forged at Rome by the mystery of iniquity. Again the dissolution of monasteries had thrown into the market, lands hitherto locked up in mortmain, and far-sighted lay benefactors were enabled to endow their new foundations.

Lawrence Sheriff seized the prevalent spirit, and by his last will, August 31, 1567, bequeathed a third of his Middlesex ⚫ estate to the foundation of a fair and convenient school-house and to the maintaining an honest, discreet, and learned man to teach grammar;' the rents of that third, which then amounted to 87. annually, had swelled in 1825 to above 55007., and to this happy change the present buildings are owing. Thus was sown that little grain of mustard-seed which has expanded to such dimensions, until a new power was set in motion by Arnold by which a thrilling action has been imparted from it to every public

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school in England. Well may his favourite motto, Forwards, forwards,' be interlaced on coign and buttress with the L. S.those simple initials which Lawrence Sheriff modestly directed to be inscribed in remembrance of himself and of his works.

The progress of the school before this new life was breathed into it by a master-spirit was slow and unobserved. A local and provincial character was the consequence of a remote midland situation, and one undistinguished by any impressive features of landscape, nor can the present school buildings boast of much artistical pretension. They were erected in the sad period of the Georgian and of poor sham Gothic. But architecture at that moment was in statu pupillari, and under the guidance of the Wyatt school was feeling its way to a restoration of worthier form. The cost exceeded 35,000l.-so soon had the art of constructing architectural bills arrived at colossal maturity ;-substantial convenience has been consulted in preference to taste and ornament, but the least said is the soonest mended, and the considerate Rugbeians, like the children of Noah, dutifully draw a veil over the masonic nakedness of Mr. Hakewell, nor do they pretend to class their architect with a William of Wykeham.

The chapel is somewhat better, and bears with its painted windows, storied bright,' the mark of Arnold; they are his work, and tell of his earnest desire to enhance the decorum of God's temple; and here he rests from his labours surrounded by those of his pupils who also have been prematurely cut off. Yet if they have known few of the pleasures of this world, they at least have not, like him, felt many of its sorrows, and death has not separated those who in life were united.

The localities and peculiarities of the school, past and present, are detailed in the Book, and, however delectable to Rugby esoterics, possess less interest for the public without;' and accordingly availing ourselves of the undoubted prerogative of reviewers we skip largely. It appears that formerly the boys were treated hardly, were half imprisoned, and put on the smallest rations, a plentiful allowance of the rod excepted. Birch was then universally deemed to be the wтn van by which the fundamental rules of grammar were to be inculcated. A grim tower is still pointed out among the local lions of Rugby, and not the most agreeable to old-boy reminiscences. In it is a sort of straffkammer, a torture room, in which a late pædagogue-one Dr. Woolof the plagosus Orbilius breed, small in stature but powerful in stripes, applied the argumentum baculinum with such striking effect, that the smarting recipients vented their wounded feelings on getting out, by exclaiming, 'Great cry and little Wool.' We may mention that the only former playground of the well

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