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The chief labor in education is the eradi- | resolved to become either sailors or hunters. cation of instincts. School-life is for a long What days are spent in grievous indecision time but an artful war between the peda- whether it is better to go to the Rocky gogue and the savage propensities of his Mountains and shoot buffaloes or to the Japan pupils. Observe what bloody books are seas and harpoon whales. What nights are boys' favorites. Their earliest reading is of made glorious by dreams of killing seals by pirates and Arabs. The attack of Indians torch-light in caves where the Antarctic Trion the cabin of the settler, with its attendant tons blow their "wreathed horns" in alarm at horrors of burning roofs, ringing rifles, and the robbery of their folds. What plots for remerciless murders, have a fascination for viving the ancient and amiable fraternity of them-even for the mildest. Books of des- Sea Kings are concocted of winter evenings, perate or vagrant and lawless action please by flaxen-headed conspirators, as they crack them. In history, they open an intimacy butternuts before the kitchen fire-thwackwith Hannibal and Leonidas; in adventure, ing the solid nut-shells with their hammers with Captain Kyd and the Argonauts. These as if they were smiting the mailed heads of propensities are cunningly made to work Celts and Saxons, while some young hero their own destruction. The savage instinct who has lately posted himself up in Scandiis gratified by reading about vagabonds and navian matters doles out tales of the Red headlong heroes, but the shrewd teacher will Erics, the Rollos, and the Harold Slambangremark how this arouses faculties which will ers who roamed the seas with their gigantic in time master instinct. His appetite for boatswains, before the Law of Nations was other delights arises, and a taste for books heard of in the North Sea and the Bay of of a somewhat different tone is provoked. Biscay. What consultations are held conThe young reader gets an ear for the graces cerning the feasibility of fitting up the old of style, and remarks the difference between den in the rocks above the village for a cave those abrupt sentences which pitch him of Forty Thieves, who are to operate accordalong like the chopping waves of a Gulf ing to the system of the enterprising gentleStream, and the majestic periods, the long men of the Arabian tale, excepting that oil Ciceronian swells on which we are borne is to be abstained from both as an article of through successive chapters till as we ap- trade and as a beverage-the former because proach the close, like sailors in a boat, we it proved the ruin of Ali Baba's guests, and hear a fine roaring of surges, and ride to the the latter owing to a grudge entertained beach through the surf of a peroration. Thus since infancy. Minerva, overhearing these is a taste for Literature born, and in a few eager conversations, smiles. In forty years years, when the bloodthirsty little reader has Red Eric is President of a Marine Insurance attained man's estate, his earliest acquaint- Company, and Rollo's bills are honored in ances, the forest outlaws and the buccaneers, Copenhagen. Some of the Forty Thieves are received at his mental levées on entirely are Justices of a Western Court of Stara different footing. The old desire of train- Chamber, administering Lynch-Law to forging in Robin Hood's company has assumed ers and blacklegs, and others are legislators perhaps the form of a willingness to be Little and grand jurymen. The young lions have John to Carlyle or some other æsthetical been cheated of their teeth. The lust for bandit. The satisfaction he once would have barbarism has been quenched by stimulating felt at boarding an argosy on the Spanish the remote appetite for refinement. main, has become a singular delight in way- boy who at the age of twelve is fully relaying the portly octavo in which some solved, as soon as he is released from home learned man has stowed his philosophic tyranny, to pitch his camp on the North fork ingots, and is ploughing his stately course in of the Arkansas, and spend the rest of his fancied security; in dashing at the clumsy life in the society of wolves and wild horses, prize after the fashion of Hawkins and Mor- finds that each year a band is tied to him gan, and in making the wretched master which he will not be able to sunder; and at walk the plank like a grandee of Arragon twenty-one he is firmly bound to civilization intercepted by Black Beard in his voyage -a slave to clocks and stoves and tablesfrom Porto Bello to Cadiz. a bondman to hotels and newspapers.

Few boys, it has been remarked, I believe, reach manhood without at some time having

The

Schoolmasters, the missionaries whom we employ to labor in that dense barbarism

tion which boys possess in such perfection, cattle trains, freight trains, and express trains, circulating through the United States in the most lively manner imaginable. Ought not the pedagogue to have rejoiced at the achievements of this precocious Railroad Director, as so many triumphs over the wild nature within him? Perhaps he ought, but he didn't. He seemed to carry in his single soul more hostility to internal improvements than the whole band of Michigan conspirators, and one day managed to throw the mail train off the track with such violence, that the brakeman was seriously contused and the conductor got his knuckles broken. This rather dampened the railroad mania.

which darkens our nurseries, bear witness | pigeon shot rolling through these became, to the fidelity of all juveniles to their when viewed through that eye of imaginamother, Nature. They can testify, however, that the general rule is not without apparent exceptions. They sometimes get young converts faster than they bargained for. Some young gentlemen manifest the most precocious faculty for adapting themselves to the artificial structure of the society in which they find themselves born, as if they saw the uselessness of resistance, and were inclined to make the best of their misfortune. Inconsistent as it may seem, these little pioneers are made to feel the "peculiar institution" which prevails in all well-regulated schools, more often than their duller mates, who hanker for the pleasures of Bedouins, and hang back and sulk when the handsome young man with the helmet (see the frontispiece of the spelling-book) offers to lead them to yonder edifice, labelled Science; which inscription needs only to be changed to Circus to fire the sulkers, for years to come, with love at first sight for all young men who wear helmets. The reason is, that schoolmasters are generally impenetrably pedantic, and insist that youth shall be enlightened according to certain approved systems. All short cuts to civilization, avoiding the slough of Orthography and the valley of the shadow of Arithmetic, are as criminal in their eyes as the contrivance of the gentleman immortalized in the Pilgrim's Progress, to get on the high road to the City without facing the enemies which the intrepid Christian met and vanquished. I once knew a school where grammar was not loved quite so well as some other things in which Black Hawk would have delighted, where nevertheless the most complicated and artificial transactions of the civilized world were carried on with amazing zeal. But these it was necessary to conceal from the teacher, for he had his own way, of course, and visited the Banking Institutions, the East India Companies and the Express Offices which flourished in his dominions with the same undiscriminating switch with which he tingled the legs of truants and

The young gentlemen of that school showed a surprising aptitude for civilization within doors, and a no less decided genius for barbarism without. There were more naval and financial enterprises afloat than there were in Tyre of old. One financial operation we remember, which would have startled Wall street. A genius in a secluded corner of the room started the "Empire Bank," which began business on the gigantic scale of the Bank of England. For about a week notes were issued daily to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the school was in a short time full of millionaires in bare feet and linen jackets, not a few of whom would have been impudent enough to offer Rothschild the loan of a hundred dollars to set up a grocery with, or to propose to Nicholas to supply him with funds to carry on the Circassian war, provided he would give a chattel mortgage on the Kremlin for security.

"Pandemonium, the high capital Of Satan and his peers," did not arise more suddenly or mysteriously than this financial prodigy, and was not a more gorgeous affair, nor worth more money when it was completed. Still there was something not altogether secure, I fear, about the basis of its credit. It never was How fresh is our recollection of one disclosed what securities were pledged to hazel-eyed young schemer-the Hudson of indemnify the holders of its notes, but I susthe school-who had a finger in more rail-pect that if an inventory of its actual proproads than you can find in the North American Guide-Book. Long grooves in the pine desk were his railway lines, and

blockheads.

erty which might have been reached in Equity had been taken, the schedule of the investigating committee would have exhib

have bought out the East India Company. This was disastrous, it is true, but the Bank was a very spry one, and was on its legs again by dinner time. The President was remarkably fertile in expedients. Before

ited about ten fish-hooks and a kite. Think | disgorge their treasures, till he found himof these chattels, and a doubtful demand self in possession of a "pile" which would against an Irish boy for breaking a ball-club, as resources, to meet liabilities somewhat greater than the national debt of Great Britain! Nevertheless, holders felt secure, and the manufacture of money went on without interruption. Nabobs of the most astound-the afternoon was half through, his financial ing opulence surrounded the throne of our foundry was in full blast, and before the unconscious Sultan, who continued to cuff summons of " All hands ahoy to spell" was and ferule with as little ceremony as they given at four bells, the Bank of England, cut off paupers' heads in the East. Even which had shot ahead during the temporary in India it won't do to strangle a nabob suspension of its rival, was "nowhere." as summarily as his porter; but here there The panic had subsided; insolvents had was not the slightest discrimination between picked themselves up. Our next neighbor, Bobs and Nabobs. Indeed, it was some who lost all in the general bankruptcy of the time before the Despot found that an aris-morning, was worth a million of dollars tocracy of wealth was springing up in his when school was dismissed, owing to a masrealm; but one unlucky day, a thousand-terly speculation in buck-shot, but he lost dollar note having fallen into his hands by two hundred and fifty thousand before bedaccident or treachery, there was a tremen- time, by indiscreetly carrying it in his pocket dous commotion in the money market forth- when he went after the cows. with. The Bank exploded; indeed, what else could have been expected of an institution whose credit depended upon a pledge of kites and fish-hooks of the gross value of eighteen pence? The schoolmaster's encounter with it was like General Jackson's famous tilt with the "Monster." He was not awed by wealth-not he! He would have "tanned" Croesus himself for spelling phthysic without a p and two h's. So he handled the "monopoly" without mittens, as Old Hickory would have done, spanked the Cashier, and compelled fund-holders to

These illustrations, we admit, do not materially support our argument. These enterprises indicated a marvellous aptitude for civilization, it must be confessed, and so far, they go to sap the theory which has just been presented. But could we show you these young Bankers and "Railway Kings" out of doors, and unveil their schemes and secrets, their wishes, plots and dreams, (which cannot in justice to the Rights of Readers be now done,) the balance in favor of barbarism would, we fear, be rather startling.

G. H. M.

October,

NO MORE!

"Les années qui me sont déterminée s'en vont, et j'entre dans un sentier d'où je ne reviendrai plus."

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THE EARLY ENGLISH DRAMATISTS.

JOHN FORD.

Ir is a curious fact, that within the short space of half a century, from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the breaking out of the civil wars, there flourished all that England can boast of as superior in the art of serious dramatic literature. Perhaps we should make an exception in favor of one solitary example-the Samson Agonistes; but after that we have almost nothing. In the firmament of this age of "strong-minded England," the name of Shakspeare has the position of the sun; a comparison which will hold good in many ways. The brightness encircling Shakspeare's memory completely blinds the ordinary gazer to the beauties of other kindred contemporary spirits-as Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger, Webster, Kit Marlow, and numerous others. Among these, John Ford held in his day a very high position, which even now he is allowed to have merited.

John Ford, or as he sometimes spelt his name, Forde, was born of reputable parentage in Devonshire, England, in the spring of 1586. It is the lamentable dearth of all positive evidence, even on such a point as this, that has caused one of the most distinguished British poets to say, "It is painful to find the name of Ford a barren spot in our poetical biography, marked by nothing but a few dates and conjectures, chiefly drawn from his own dedications." However, there is still extant at Ilsington, in Devonshire, the record of his baptism, dated April 17th, 1586. Like Congreve, and many others of the brotherhood, Ford, after receiving a liberal education, was entered in the Middle Temple, 16th November, 1602, as a student of law. It would seem that in after life he was a practitioner of no mean eminence in this science. In 1606, not yet arrived at the age of manhood, he published an affectionate tribute to the memory of the Earl of Devonshire, in the shape of some verses entitled "Fame's Memorial," etc. Twenty-three years after this date we again find him before the

VOL. VIII. NO. IV. NEW SERIES.

public. In 1629 he published his "Lover's Melancholy," which he assures us, in his dedication to the Society of Gray's Inn, was his first printed dramatic effort. It is probable that he composed several plays in the long interim for representation, although none of them had as yet emanated from the press. Happily for our curiosity, his dedications afford us some irrefragable testimony as to the history of the compositions to which they are attached. The first play, the product of Ford's mind, that appeared on the stage, seems to have been, ""Tis pity she's a Whore," although it was not published until 1633. In the dedication to the Earl of Peterborough, the author styles it "the first fruit of his leisure in this action." From the very nature of this play, its damnation ensues. The horrible traits in the characters of the hero and heroine of the piece render it unfit for perusal by the young, and sickening to the old. It is pleasing however to hear the author's real sentiments in the very opening of the play, from the mouth of Friar Bonaventura, (a second Friar Laurence :)—

«Dispute no more in this, for know, young man,
These are no school-points; nice philosophy
May tolerate unlikely arguments,
But Heaven admits no jests! Wits that presumed
on wit too much, by striving how to prove
Discovered first the nearest way to hell,
There was no God, with foolish grounds of art,
And filled the world with devilish atheism.
Such questions, youth, are fond: far better 'tis
To bless the sun, than reason why it shines;
No more;-I may not hear it."

And He thou talk'st of is above the sun.

Hear the lover describing the charms of his mistress, in an impassioned strain worthy of Ariosto himself:

"View well her face, and in that little round You may observe a world of variety: For coral, lips; for sweet perfumes, her breath; Hair; for delicious choice of flowers, cheeks; For jewels, eyes; for threads of purest gold, Wonder in every portion of that form. 20

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