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It was while puzzled with these reflections, that Jubb was called up to say his lesson. "Please, sir," he said, in the simplicity of his new pupillage, "I do not understand this at all, but I have no doubt I shall, if you will be so kind as to explain it to me." Blewitt answered by darting upon him like a wolf. He seized the "new boy" by the collar of his jacket, and instantly produced upon his back, what Jubb at our last meeting described as 66 a very vivid representation of a gridiron, red hot!" This incident happened about a quarter of a century ago, but Jubb does not forget it.

Just in the same way, some of us were taught algebra. It seemed easy enough to learn, that by multiplying an a with a figure of 2, you obtained an a with a figure of 4, and so on with the rest. But not one of us ever knew or cared to enquire, what on earth it all meant. Among ourselves it was whispered, that the affair had some mysterious connexion with arithmetic, and tended to simplify that study. But how that was to come about, appeared inscrutable. To us it was arithmetic, plus the alphabet.

The efforts made to teach us astronomy resulted, I believe generally, in inspiring our minds with the most deeply-rooted antipathy to that peculiar science possible under any circumstances whatever. Under the best of aspects, it seemed to be only a cunning device, whereby our old and jovial friend, the magic lanthorn, was converted into a brilliant, but uninteresting swindle. We learned, by rote, all about orbits, parallaxes, constellations, and magnitudes. We were forced to commit to memory, long strings of figures, describing distances of planets and fixed stars from the various heavenly bodies, and from each other. If, instead of the orthodox numbers, any others whatever, in lines of similar or different lengths, had been set before us, we should have known, cared, and remembered just as much about them. I am sure all Blewitt's boys, now grown up and surviving, must have felt as delighted as I did, when the late eclipse could not be seen.

The same plan was pursued with respect to our historical studies. By what extraordinary gift any author can possibly ever have written an uninteresting work upon history, of all subjects ever written upon the most replete with human interest of every possible nature, has always appeared to me a mystery of the most extraordinary kind. Yet our History, at the Academy, was only one degree better than that terrible ogre of an Astronomy. It would be difficult for me to detail why and how this was so, and much easier to give an illustration at once of the style and of the kind of impression left upon our minds after reading it. When I do so, I think the type will be recognized, and maintain that four or five hundred pages of similar stuff to that I am about to introduce, would be quite as useful as that of most authorised versions now in use for instructing an English youth in the history and progress of his native country. The figures and dates I acknowledge to have placed somewhat at random, but as boys never, by any possibility, carry away any idea whatever from bare figures and dates, one will do for them as well as another.

KING HENRY IX.-11559 to 12027

Upon the death of his predecessor, King Edward the 17th, Henry, formely Duke of Pimlico, and fifty-seventh son of the deceased monarch, ascended the

throne. One of his first acts (A.D. 18583), was an edict, suppressing the sale of indigo in his dominions, an act of oppression, which caused some dissatisfaction among his subjects, and is said, perhaps without authority, to have been prompted by his favorite and prime minister, Oldrum, Bishop of St. Mary Axe. In the eleventh year of his reign he married Margaret, of Boulogne, daughter of the Prince de Poictiers, by whom he had eleven children, fifteen only of which attained the age of majority. During this period the kingdom was much inflamed by internal dissensions, which, in many instances, were only repressed at the cost of some bloodshed.

In the two hundred and seventy-eighth year of Henry's reign, the Earl of Miledale was executed on Tower-hill, for having, as was alleged, appropriated certain of the public revenues, arising from the duties upon flax. He behaved on the scaffold with much firmness, and assured the spectators that his error had arisen from an oversight upon his part, which should not again occur. He then laid his head upon the block, and was decapitated at the seventieth blow.

Meanwhile, the palace of Henry, at Shoreditch, was the scene of the most festive revelry.

*

*

This kind of light reading, about as impressive to the mind of a child, as a columnar statistical report, continues for about half-a-dozen pages for each reign, and is supposed to make boys acquainted with the course of History! A more fallacious, foolish heresy, a more groundless and ludicrously absurd supposition, never influenced a preceptorial mind. But this was not all. Once in every month, every pupil of Mr. Blewitt's academy, was expected to repeat the chronological table of the accessions and decessions of the English kings. Nobody that I recollect, except Gaby Bostock, ever did it. Therefore, of course, everybody, except Gaby Bostock, always received upon the occasion, the inevitable "cut." It used to strike us that this was the sole object of the proceeding, and perhaps it was. Gaby himself utterly broke down, when checked between William the Conqueror and George the Fourth, and when afterwards required to recommence where he left off.

Gaby Bostock resembled Cardinal Wolsey, in one respect only. He was the son of a butcher. He was the most apt scholar, at most things, of all Blewitt's pupils. We all hated him. The first-class boys used to hug themselves in the delight that Bostock, at least, could never be one of them, for he had no more capacity for learning Latin or French, than for flying. They were to him simply intellectual impossibilities. But he would learn any amount of "lesson," and gabble it off from his tongue, in a way that would remind you of the sudden whizzing run-down of on overwound watch. He was Blewitt's chief spy and favored tell-tale. A slate was daily provided and given to one of the boys, who thereupon became the monitor of the school. Whoever was seen whispering, had his name called by the monitor, and entered on the slate, of course for a cut." The first-desk boys, the aristocracy of the school, scorned this dirty work, and evaded its duties. Bostock loved it, was vigilant and subservient. The fellow had a wizen, deeply-pitted face, rat-like eyes, and lank, greasy hair. The boys used to adapt his initials to those of opprobrious epithets, and stick the result inside his hat. G. B. was Greasy Butcher, Great Beast, and Gabbling Brute. Four boys once conspired each to call out a single word in rapid succession. The four together made "Gaby!-where'sthe-skewers!" Gaby was as quick as they, called all their names, threw in those of one or two little boys who laughed, and, when Blewitt came in, obtained for them a double "cut" apiece.

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At parsing, Bostock always failed lamentably; nevertheless, he was first in the English grammar class, which, oddly enough, was totally distinct from that for parsing. Bostock was so clever at parrotting the rules, that he obtained a prize for this branch of study. I was amused the other day, when walking through Clare market with a literary friend and old schoolfellow, to hear and see Bostock shouting, "Woddy buy, Ladies; woddy buy, buy, buy, buy! Now then, Ladies! Fine jint, marm!" and to be reminded that this was the youth whose English grammatical accomplishments had gained him the prize, without his being able to parse a sentence.

Such being the intellectual effects of Mr. Blewitt's system, they were seconded, in a moral sense, by others, which it is not to be believed, that he could have contemplated. This constant dread of overhanging punishment tended to make the boys timid, treacherous, mean, and vindictive. Where talebearing is encouraged, talebearers are created. The first-class boys, by sly reading of romances and novels, hit upon a remarkable plan of conspiracy. They introduced and maintained among themselves a kind of chivalric honour and fraternity; they explained each others' difficulties by stealth, and furnished each other, by common subscription, with scraps of paper, pencils, Indian rubber, and other requisites, the absence of which, when called for suddenly by Bostock, entailed a "cut." They maintained mutually strict truth and fidelity, and found all these things the more delightful, because opposed to the results which the discipline was calculated to induce.

But one other effect was inevitable. Every boy punished with unjust severity, carried its recollection about with him for life. I mention this, because there appears a tendency among some men to sneer at the wrongs of schoolboys. When a schoolmaster, some time since, thrashed a boy so unmercifully that the Lord Mayor said he had never seen a criminal's back so fearfully flagellated, the Times pooh-poohed the matter, and the Grand Jury threw out the bill of indictment. I have mentioned the first incident of Jubb's school life; the facts are taken from his own relation of them, only a few days since. Another friend and former schoolfellow of ours is now a famous popular artist. Through all his studies at the Royal Academy (where, by the way, pupils do learn, and are not thrashed), through all his struggles for art, for fame and fortune, this friend, now a bald-headed, middle-aged gentleman, remembers that he was once a child, with crisp curling locks, and was then a pupil of Blewitt; that for some childish fault, Blewitt suddenly thrust his divided fingers, as a comb, into that child's hair, and lifted him thereby completely off the floor. That then withdrawing his fingers, the master relieved them of the scattered hairs which, torn from the scalp, remained about his hand, and that the child had sufficient presence of mind to gather these from the ground, fold them in paper, and convey them home, in evidence, to his parents. And Blewitt's name is never mentioned to the artist, or to Jubb, without the one or other of these anecdotes being forthwith related.

What has been told is but one side of the truth. Mr. Blewitt did, in reality, teach his pupils many things of a useful and practical kind. He was no vulgar tyrannical pretender to learning, but a learned,

accomplished, and even philanthropic gentleman. The profits of his school were devoted, to the highest extent commensurate with his means, to the collection of scientific apparatus. Periodically, just before the holidays, these were produced, and their effects displayed for our instruction and gratification. The wonders of chemistry, electricity, and optics, were then exhibited to us, and the phenomena of nature explained and illustrated, to our intense enjoyment, without the concurrence of that diabolic Cane. We thus obtained an intelligent knowledge of natural philosophy, small only when not compared with that of the general society of that day. The newest "experiments" were Mr. Blewitt's recreation among us upon such occasions. The rest of his system was merely the relic of his traditions of "the old school." But he had been thrashed himself, and, most inconsequentially, thought it natural and proper, as the Times does still.

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CURRENT LITERATURE

"SEA-SIDE STUDIES" will have been in the hands of many of our readers long before this notice appears; but the book is not one of those delicacies of the season which go out before the critic has well had time to taste their mild-flavoured qualities. Blackwood's Magazine first gave these pages of biological gossip to the reading world; and Mr. G. H. Lewes reproduces in a handsome volume, with plates and an index, the articles which delighted us from month to month. He has also taken the opportunity of making several important additions to the scientific details. We admire Mr. Lewes more as a physiologist than as a metaphysician; and if, like him, we pretended to an extraordinary playfulness in addition to our well-known acquaintance with natural phenomena, nothing would be more probable than that our readers would die of laughing at our observations on that subtle argument of Mr. Lewes's, to the effect that there are no snch things as animals, or vegetables either; that nothing is, in fact, but what is not; that what is not and what is are alike arbitrary and subjective definitions of nothing; and that the milk in the cow and the milk in the

cocoa-nut are entities which may both be accounted for, in an abstract and provisional sort of way, by science, but which nature will not for any consideration be induced to look at, much less to swallow.

In the first flush of Mr. Charles Kingsley's fame-that is to say, directly after the publication of "Alton Locke "some verses of his were brought to the notice of Leigh Hunt, who then gave utterance to a hope that the writer would henceforward make verse his usual and frequent means of expression. The metrical productions of the Rector of Eversley, since that time, have not been numerous; but their quality has borne out Leigh Hunt's implied opinion, that the author of "Yeast" is a poet, in that strictest and completest sense, by which we understand that his tendency is towards a rhythmical form of language. We have now before us Mr. Kingsley's new poem, "Andromeda." The hexameters in which it is written are surely some of the finest in the English language. When it is considered that this kind of metre has been vulgarized by countless burlesques of Longfellow's "Evangeline"-we will not say vulgarized by the American poet himself, for we have a genuine love for the music of his "clear harp," though we certainly think that, of all his "divers tones," the tone of "Evangeline" is the least dulcet-when it is considered, too, how foreign the hexameter is to the genius of our language, we think that the passage descriptive of a procession of sea nymphs, beheld by Andromeda, from the rock to which she is chained, is nothing short of marvellous in its effect of beauty. The triumphal movement is perfect; beginning "far off, in the heart of the darkness," rising slowly, as the "bright, white mists" of the sea rise, into life and joy, swelling into a proud delirium, and then dying gradually away, the strain fitly closing with a dirge for the sea-boys, whom certain of the nymphs, "pitiful, floating in silence apart," bear in their bosoms:

Slain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus; Hapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers Welcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but, wearily pining, Gaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless Sleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids . Several of Mr. Kingsley's true-hearted ballads, full of manly tenderness and manly strength, reappear in this book. Among them are the "Three Fishers," and that sweet piece of tragedy, the "Sands of Dee." We may be pardoned for quoting one entire poem, on the score of its excellence, as well as brevity :

A FAREWELL.

My fairest child, I have no song to give you ;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey :
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you

For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long:
And so make life, death, and that vast for ever,

One grand, sweet song.

There were reasons why we should look with more than common interest at the little volume of "London Lyrics," by Mr. Locker. Certain verses, published from time to time in the "TRAIN," were written in a spirit near akin to that which the title of this book suggests. It did not surprise us to find many coincidences of thought and style; as in the lines on "Old Let

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