ments were suggested. Two or three of them were near the mark, but not so near as to be quite satisfactory. Silence ensued; every one was lost in search of the precious but latent word—a word conveying the idea of ease in position and breadth of range in rotation. Suddenly a voice was heard: What say you to swivel?' Gravity at once collapsed, and away into vacancy on a roar of laughter went poem and poet and all.

The next illustration may be given in Canning's own words. In September 1790, he writes from Crewe Hall:

Crewe Hall, September 4th, 1790.

Mrs. Crewe, you must know, has a dog called 'Quan.' A day or two ago, at dinner, Mr. Crewe said that poor 'Quan' had been very ill in the morning, and 'If he dies,' said he to Mrs. Crewe, will you let him be buried in your dairy?' Now a dairy is rather too delicate a place to bury a dog in, and so Mrs. C. fought it off for some time; but at last, 'Well,' said she, turning to me, ‘Quan shall be buried there if you will give him an epitaph.' 'That I will,' said I, ' and with all my heart:

Poor "Quan" lies buried in the dairy,

And is not that a sad Quandary?'

Many years afterwards he had to entertain the King and Queen of the Sandwich Islands when they visited England during his tenure of the Foreign Office. He named Mr. Byng, so well known as the poodle, to act as master of the ceremonies to their Majesties. One morning arrangements were to be made for an excursion. A council was held, and every place in the carriage was supplied with an occupant, when some one exclaimed, You can't leave Byng behind; how is he to go?' Underneath, of course,' said the Minister. A laugh ensued, but the poodle was seated with due respect.

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There is reason to presume that practical joking was a good deal in fashion about a century ago. The amusement was one which had its inconveniences, but they belong to the time of action, and the remembrance may be entertained without a spark of regret. Two instances in which Mr. Canning had a share still hold a place in my recollection. A party of young people were brought together at a country house in Derbyshire, when it happened one day that the conversation turned upon the manner in which trials were conducted, and a lady who was present expressed her ignorance of the forms and her wish to see them in practice. Nothing more easy,' said one of the company. I think we are numerous enough to get up a trial without waiting till the Courts are in session.' No sooner said than done. In a very few days the judge was on his bench, the lawyers, the witnesses, the parties concerned, all in their respective places. A respectable number of spectators made the representation complete. The pleadings, the examinations, the summing-up, were all carried through, and the judge, having received the verdict of a supposed jury, was on the point of giving sentence, when the leading

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counsel (Canning, no doubt) stepped forward, and requested in earnest tones that an important witness, just arrived, might be heard. Consent was given with becoming gravity, and the new witness, a young female of colour, was ushered in. Imagine his lordship's horror when he perceived that the engaging personation was his own wig-stand dressed up for the occasion, and disclosing in full blaze the secret, so carefully kept, of his premature baldness. The judge was no less a person than the late Right Honourable John Hookham Frere.

Unqualified amusement, the rose without its thorn, must have closed upon the fish-dinner speech ascribed to Mr. Canning, and proved, one might say, by internal evidence to have been his :

Rising, gentlemen, to thank you for your kindness in drinking my health, I hope you will permit me to take a hint from the occasion which has brought us together. This, gentlemen, is a fish dinner. Fish drink much, and say little. While you follow their example in the first respect, allow me to follow it in the second. I drink most cordially to the health of every one here.

To my understanding it appears that no unusual stretch of indulgence is required to find no shade of ill-nature or unkindness in these representative instances of our statesman's wit, but on the contrary a general tone of lively good-humour bordering on fun, and only in some cases disparaging, as wit, the offspring of conscious quickness, must ever be when taking a personal form.

What little remains to be noted wears a more serious and, in its close, a more sad and deplorable aspect. Mr. Canning, as I have said, was lost to England when the sudden decease of Lord Castlereagh brought him back from the port of his embarkation for India to fill the vacant places of Secretary for Foreign Affairs and leader in the House of Commons. There is no reason to doubt that his administration of Indian affairs would have redounded to his credit and increased his fame, but well was it for himself and for his country that Providence ordered it otherwise. The addition of five years and several months to his political as well as to his natural life was nobly, successfully, and gloriously devoted to the establishment of the best principles, and their corresponding enactments.

To our foreign relations he gave a tone which had the effect of maintaining our national dignity without compromising the country's peace, although he had often to deal with powers either hostile to our constitutional system or jealous of our commercial prosperity. He laid the foundation of Greek independence, he limited the action of despotic influence abroad, he recognised the revolted provinces of Spanish America as independent States, he defended Portugal when threatened by neighbouring powers with a vigour and efficiency seldom matched, he opened negotiations for the settlement of every outstanding difference with the United States.

Liberal as he thus appears to have been, his opinions had root in

a love of popularity; their consisteney resulted from conviction. He opposed Parliamentary reform at home as steadily as he promoted the cause of freedom abroad. Right or wrong, in that respect he held the same doctrines alike when Pitt was his chief and when Lansdowne was his colleague.

It may be said with truth that when he was finally called to the helm, he owed that well-earned elevation to the united confidence of his sovereign and the people. Nor is it less true that his premature death a few months later was not only a cause of deep sorrow throughout his own country, but was felt as a loss by every nation capable of appreciating high qualities of mind, sound principles of conduct, and resolution to confront every kind of difficulty for the honour and welfare of his native land.

STRATFORD DE Redcliffe.

ATHLETICS IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

AN Englishman who travels from time to time on the Continent, and on his way converses with some of the Frenchmen or Germans he meets, not unfrequently elicits some opinion from them on the institutions or peculiarities of his own country; for he has a feeling that such opinions are perhaps free from the prejudices he is familiar with at home, and that consequently the views they express may be original, even if erroneous. He is accordingly prepared for something a little new, and there are a few subjects in which I think his expectation will not be disappointed. One of these is the education. of the boys of our higher classes. Let us suppose that he is talking with an intelligent Frenchman, a man fully acquainted with his own country, who has also picked up what he can about England. He will find him highly appreciative of our public-school system, which appreciation the Englishman takes as a matter of course, having probably been educated at one himself, and having great faith in the training he has undergone; but the reason the foreigner gives rather surprises him. It is not the intellectual training our lads enjoy which has excited his admiration; on that score he thinks his own lyceés in Paris are in no way inferior. Still less is it the almost unbounded liberty allowed to English boys; that he regards as a national idiosyncrasy which, if tolerably harmless in England, it would be madness to encourage in France; but he selects for his unqualified approval a feature of our educational system which has no counterpart in the establishments of his own country, that is to say, the culte of athletics. The Englishman is surprised because he is hardly yet prepared to say that athleticism is quite the most admirable feature in our schools, and he does not see why, if the thing is so much admired, it is not adopted in France. Now leaving the latter question aside, we have to consider firstly, whether athleticism is so highly spoken of with good reason; secondly, if there are grounds for thinking that elements of danger are contained therein; thirdly, if this is the case, what measures should be taken to meet this danger most effectually.

1. What then are the main reasons why athletics are encouraged among boys at school? or rather let us say, What ought to be the

reasons why they are encouraged? for it often happens that a system is valuable on certain grounds, but is lauded and supported on others; which perhaps we shall find to be the case in this instance. Firstly then, they are encouraged, and rightly so I think, on the grounds of health. Recent years have witnessed among all classes of society a growing attention to the health of the body, and the hygienic value of games for boys has never yet been seriously impugned. Few things are more consoling to our national vanity than the contrast presented by the spectacle of English boys engaged in one of our outdoor games, and that of a troop of sallow knock-kneed French youths filing in groups of three along the high-road, for this is their corresponding and solitary recreation. An English boy has probably tried the same thing at a private school, and hates the memory of it now that he is 14 and can play football regularly; but a young Frenchman of 17 bas never known anything more attractive. He hears occasional rumours of a country where boys practise 'le box' and other strange pastimes, and wonders if they are happy; while his young energy is never stirred by the delight of bodily feats successfully performed, or stimulated to prowess by eager companions. His youth passes wearily, and he looks back on it afterwards as the time of his life most productive of dismal recollections, a time of close restraint and unrelieved labour. We observe this contrast and believe in athletics as preservative of one immeasurably precious possession, the possession of health, and so leading to another yet more precious, for boys and men alike, the possession of happiness. Again, there is another most useful side to athletics not so commonly talked of; I mean their discipline. A boy is disciplined by them in two ways: by being forced to put the welfare of the common cause before selfish interests, to obey implicitly the word of command, and act in concert with the heterogeneous elements of the company he belongs to; and secondly, should it so turn out, he is disciplined by being raised to a post of command, where he feels the gravity of responsible office and the difficulty of making prompt decisions and securing a willing obedience. Good moral results of this sort may be expected from games wherever they have developed spontaneously, and where all, even to the youngest, eagerly engaging, choose their commanders, pugnæque cient simulacra sub armis.

These are some of the satisfactory aspects of athleticism. More might be enumerated, but it would be superfluous, as Englishmen. evidently are alive to all the merits of this national characteristic, and we may remark that this has been especially noticeable during the last quarter of a century or so. It is not easy to produce authentic information bearing on the importance attached to athletics before the lifetime of the present generation, but there are two facts showing clearly enough which way the stream runs, that are worth mentioning. Any one who played in the Oxford and Cambridge or