which do not seem to come conveniently under grammarian authority, are, in fact, blemishes, and only to be corrected, and rendered intelligible, by those rules and figures which Ruddiman has detailed. The Scripture has it, that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath, and, by a similar process of reasoning, I concluded, that the classics were made for the rules of Syntax, and not those rules derived from, and constructed upon the classics. Had Juvenal, in fact, or Terence arisen from the dead, and heard me in the act of construing their own works, with all the appliances, and means to boot, of Syntax,-they would absolutely have been ashamed of that dismal piece of mosaic, out of which I contrived, however, to bring government and concord in abund

ance.

But along with these more shewy and astonishing accomplishments, I had almost unconsciously acquired a certain portion of that honest manliness of spirit, which characterized a Roman citizen. I had stolen from the altars of Greece a small spark of that sacred and inextinguishable fire which there burnt so brightly. The love of liberty and of literature, had entwined themselves around my soul, in inseparable conjunction; and whilst my heart was warmed, and expanded with the admiration of noble and generous sentiment and achievement, my imagination was delighted, and my understanding invigorated by the finest specimens of thoughts and composition. Woe be to him, whatever his rank or his authority in the state, who would discourage the study of classical literature amongst us,-who, in the pursuit of the merely and directly useful, would have us overlook, or underrate, the ornamental and becoming -who would train up our generous and high-spirited youth to an acquaintance with tables of interest, steam-engines, and algebraical abstractions, to the exclusion of the pages of the Mantuan Bard, and of all that variegated and invigorating landscape of taste, genius, and sentiment, amidst which the classical scholar lives and luxuriates: And a triple woe be extended, in all its Catholical force, to him, or to her,

who, in compliance with the feverish bigotry of an excited age, would substitute "Ralph Erskine's Gospel Sonnets" for the Odes of Horace, and "Newton's Cardiphonia" for the Epistles of Pliny! whilst, that blessing which bespeaks the gratitude of the heart that bestows it, rather thair confers benefit on any one, abide and rest upon the memory of the Monks of Mount Cassin and Otranto, of Salerno and Amalfi, who, in the solitude and seclusion of their cells, drew forth into light and into public view the slumbering soul of antiquity-the immortal spirits of those men whose names are now associated with all that is truly noble, and generous, and elegant, and tasteful amongst us!

Yet it is quite possible to possess & genuine relish for classical literature, without possessing the slightest knowlodge of men-to be, in short, a scho- lar and an enthusiast, without being acquainted with the mere ordinary affairs of life. And this was actually my own condition at the time I am speaking of; for I was as ignorant of the world as if I had been born and educated in the Ring of Saturn. Except on one occasion, when I was sent with a present of gooseberries to a widow lady, a distant relation of my mother, I had never once set my foot upon a carpet. I had constantly devoured my dinner without the assistance of knife or fork, and had no more notion of the use of a tablecloth, than I had of a hand-basin or a towel, whilst the clear stream and my own coat-tail remained to be

used.

indeed prodigious hard labour; but then the honest and aged persons with whom I lodged were plain people, and but one degree elevated above the cottage rank. The transition, therefore, was easy and natural; and whilst I still made use of green horn instead of ram-horn spoons, and a broth plate for my breakfast porridge, instead of a wooden luggy, I was by no means puzzled or start led by the change. But "nemo est ab omni parte beatus." I was a subjeet of envy, and consequently of enmity, in a quarter where I was most anxious to become one of regard and esteem. The school-master of the parish into which I had been introduced in consequence of his real, or alleged indolence or incapacity, had a daughter, the very pink and Sharon rose, in my estimation of beauty, and of every attractive quality. For she was fat and plump, as the Hottentot Venus, had a fair complexion, hair verging towards red, but which, in certain lights, might be mistaken for auburn; and an arm, and a hand, in which neither elbow-bone nor knuckle were visible. Her countenance was open, for her features were upon somewhat of a large scale: nothing was crowded upon another, but nose, mouth, and eyes, seemed all anxious to preserve a respectful, and a distinct distance from each other. But what charmed me most of all, was her manners, which were free and affable; and although she walked every Sabbath to church upon pattens, and wore a dress of the very last fashion, and of the most genteel air, yet she would condescend to converse with me by the way, and occsionally, as I imagined, forgot her psalm-book at home, that she might have the benefit of mine at church. Her father, however, who was a most pompous and authoritative personage, I could easily see, liked me not, and would from time to time give his daughter such looks of earnest reproof, when she happened merely by chance to cast the tail of her eye my way, that I had been stupid indeed, as well as blind, not to have perceived his antipathy.

For some time, however, no overt act of anoyance was attempted in reference to me, or to my originally small, but now flourishing academy;

and I had every reason to conclude, that the embers of his yet unkindled wrath and indignation had been smothered in their own ashes; when I received an invitation to spend the, evening, or, as it is termed "the forenight," with his family. This invitation was most acceptable; so having arrayed myself in my very best, and having assailed my yet nascent beard with an unwonted degree of pertinacity, and having brushed up my grammar rules, in case of any exigency, for the contes, I set off, about dusk of a November evening, to tea. He received me at the end of his dwelling-house, as well remember, with a particularly low bow and a hearty shake of the hand, and conducted me straight ben the house, where his wife and only daughter were seated upon chairs, in the midst of a newly-sanded earthen floor, waiting my arrival. I took my seat immediately by the inglecheek, but felt all over of a prickling, or perspiration, when I perceived the face that was placed directly over against mine. However, from this embarrassment I was soon relieved, by the father of my fair Sabbath partner, only to be plunged into a worse, and a still more unpleasant dilemma. After having taken a hasty sketch of the past day, of the weather, of the country, and of the kingdom, not forgetting the French Revolution, which was then raging with volcanic fury, he pulled from his coat pocket a book, and without further ceremony, proceeded to inform me, that he had that day met with a passage in the school which had puzzled him not a little. 1 took a side-long glance at the size, for I could not discover the title of the ominous volume, and concluded that it must be Juvenal, or Sallust, or Ovid, at least. My fears, however, and embarrassments were greatly relieved, when I discovered that this mysterious volume, containing a passage of such intricacy as to baffle the learning of a scholar who had passed an examination by the Presbytery, was in fact, neither inore nor less, than a copy of Ruddiman's Rudiments. Whilst the wife therefore, and daughter, were busied in preparing the tea, this book was spread out on the table before us, and my attention

was called to the following most perplexing sentence contained amongst the "distichs," attributed, upon what evidence I know not, to Cato.

"Rem, tibi quam noscis aptam, dimittere noli

Fronte capillatâ―post est occasio calva."

The difficulty, I was told, lay in the last line, and my solution of it was earnestly, and with seeming deference, solicited. In all my course of seven years latinity at school, my attention had never once been directed to these distichs. I had indeed got by heart, and for my own amusement, the famous "Regimen mense honorabile," where every line ended most amusingly in "atis;" but Cato and his "De Moribus" couplets were almost equally unknown to me. Contrary to the rule in the grace above referred to "Ne scalpatis caveatis," I forthwith set about scratching my head, as if I had expected to make the discovery on the outside, rather than in the interior of my brain. "Fronte capillatâ, post est occasio calva!" Here were cases without government, and government without cases; an ablative, where a nominative seemed to be requisite, and a nominative again, where an accusative was by Ruddiman, at least, deemed indispensable! "Post est occasio." Was there ever such nonsense! Post occasio! why one might as well say "Propter urbs," or "ad Roma,"-it was downright absurdity! and so after a few writhings and twistings, by my finger and thumb, of my nose, I pronounced it; when, to my utter surprise and confusion, in the presence of the very girl whose good opinion I was anxious to win, and of the dissenting minister, who had now, as if by accident, joined us, my arch enemy explained the words most distinctly, and in such a manner, as to leave no doubt even upon my own mind, that he was not only right in his exposition, but that this had all along been a plot to entrap me! I made a feeble stand on the score of" Post," and of its government propensities, but was at last compelled to give up this forlorn hope, by a copious adduction of examples, where "Post" was used as an adverb, and not as a preposition; to express myself in a wretched pun,

but in the very meaning I wish to convey, I literally found myself in this case a post behind, and all owing to my keeping most rigorously to the rules of that very grammarian, whose confounding "Disticha Catonis" had fairly upset me. To those who have a character of any kind to lose, this may appear but a trivial occurrence; but to me, who had mine to make and to establish, this was beginning at the wrong side of the account, and could not fail, as I knew, to tell fearfully against me.

In our discourse, likewise, after tea, which continued, notwithstanding the presence of the ladies, to proceed upon literary, or rather classical subjects-having occasion to speak of the Latin verb, and of its fitness for the expression of various shades of thought, I was again thrown from a vantage ground, which, in keeping by generalities, I had now fairly gained, by a most direct and posing question, which was put to me by the seceder clergyman, respecting the reason why the Latins had no present participle passive? The fact was, I had never missed this participle at all. I had followed Pope's axiom, "whatever is, is right," and cannot be otherwise; so I was taken here again, like a ship at sea, upon whose every sail the wind has suddenly and violently shifted; and I remained quite mute and embarrased. The next inquiry coming to be, how this deficiency was, in practice, supplied? in what way-by what circumlocution, the Romans contrived to express the meaning, without making use of the tense? I heard, to my utter astonishment, that " quum," with the pluperfect subjunctive active, was deemed an equivalent. Had I been told that ten was equal to one, or a part to a whole, I could not have been more confounded. Yet, upon trying the tense, with all the coolness and collectedness of which I was capable at the time, I was compelled to admit the justice of what had been said; and yet, after all, neither of my antagonists, for in this point of view I had now begun to consider them both, were in any degree distinguished or accurate, or even tolerable. scholars; but, having prepared themselves, doubtless, before-hand, and

taking advantage of my inexperience, they suceeded in convincing me, at the time, most religiously, of their profound scholarship. Supper-time at last, much to my satisfaction, arrived, and, after the cloth was removed, the Bibles were laid down upon the table before me; and, for the first time in my life, I was requested to make family-worship; or, as it is termed amongst the peasantry of Scotland, "take the Book." If I had been upset in my sholarship by means of Ruddiman and Cato, I was much more likely to be altogether outdone in my chaplaining here.

The schoolmaster was a notorious and invincible adept at this devotional exercise. The established clergyman of the parish, as I had often heard said, could not hold a candle to him at a funeral or a death-bed: and he was often sent for express, at the middle of the night, to convoy some alarmed and despairing conscience, comfortably and peaceably, out of time into eternity. In this capacity, it was strongly suspected, and pretty generally rumoured, that he had actually accumulated a little fortune;-for, following the example of Mother Catholic, with her confessional, he had not scrupled, occasionally, to insinuate into the ears of departing devotees, particularly of the frail sex, that a little money deposited with him would be carefully, though secretly and unostentatiously, laid out on pious uses." With respect to the secrecy of the application of these deposits, no one could ever find fault; for he seemed to have complied most literally with the Christian maxim, never to let his left hand know what the other did; and so his cash-accounts with the bank accumulated daily. The dissenting clergyman, too though a young man, and as yet but partially known, was said, in the expressive language of my landlady, who was a hearer of his, to be wonderfully gifted, and to keep them standing on their feet, even for a whole hour, sometimes, of a Sabbath morning, without their feeling either cold feet or lumbago. So, for me to proceed to family-worship in the presence of two such Dons as these, was like running my head into the lion's mouth; it was bringing the strength and the

experience of the young and raw recruit, into comparison and competi tion with the veteran soldier. I pushed the Bibles past me accordingly, in spite of a look of scorn from the schoolmaster's wife, and one of apparent pity or commiseration from his daughter; and after a deal of disputation, it was settled at last, that the "Master" himself should proceed as usual. With a look of the most approving self-complacency, he took up the psalm-book-pronounced a long prefatory benediction-sung the psalm -read the chapter--and concluded with a prayer of a most unconscionable length, and fervour. It so happened, that, in kneeling, the daughter and I came almost into contact with each other, and either my eyes deceived mc, or I could observe her. looking out from beneath her braided tresses towards me with somewhat of "Eloisa" devotion, with that kind of mixed or composition piety, which partakes at once of the intensity of earthly, and of the sublimity of heavenly sentiment.

As I returned home this evening, from the first regular invitation visit which I had ever made, I felt like one who has had a fall from his horse, or who has tumbled over a precipice, all bruised inwardly, and alarmed for the consequences; and had it not been, that Resolve, in alliance with something of a still softer presence, lurked (like truth in the well, or like Hope in the bottom of the box of Pandora) in the bottom of my heart, I fancy I had that evening returned in despair to my mother's fire-side, or set off, in a coal-carrying barge, for Liverpool, or God knows where. But the tresses of this young maiden had wound themselves like Styx with Eurydice, nine times round ine; and I dreamed all the succeeding night of more than I can now recollect or repeat.

I did not long remain in suspense respecting the immediate consequen ces of this visit, for, on the following evening, my landlady returned from a visit to a daughter-in-law, who had lately been confined, full of wrath and indignation against the schoolmaster, for spreading and propagating. lies and fabrications of no ordinary import and magnitude against me. When I heard her general allega-.

tions, I knew well what was to follow-but the story had not lost in the telling. The smith's wife, who had herself heard it of the shoemaker's mother, an old gossipping woman in the neighbourhood, had intimated, at first with caution and reservebut, ultimately, with greater amplitude and freedom, that I could "neither teach nor pray;" that I was as ignorant of the Rudiments as I was of the Single Catechism ;nay, it was even averred, that one of the master's youngest, and least instructed scholars, had actually posed me with difficulties; and, finally, in the presence of the schoolmaster and the new minister, fairly upset me, and compelled me to confess, not only my own ignorance, but his suThis was all perior scholarship. very ill to bear, but it was still more difficult to gainsay and contradict truth and falsehood, as is customary on such occasions, were so artfully and intimately mixed up together, that a kind of chemical union betwixt them had taken place; and the compound, however disgusting and revolting it might be, I was compelled, for the time, at least, to swallow. But this was not all;the news, I could readily perceive, had reached my little school, and the two head boys of my highest class had the effrontery to dispute the meaning of a passage with me. In vain I stormed, and threatened, and even resorted to bodily chastisement. The more angry I seemed, and the more outrageously furious I became, the more convinced did they ardently appear of my incapacity; and when at last I dismissed them to their seats, and called up a younger form, I could hear them mutter, pretty distinctly, about teaching wee laddies, wha didna ken ony better." From the country-talk, and the school-report, the evil, quite naturally and inevitably, ascended to the ears of my employers, at the head of whom was a respectable widow-lady, and a gentleman of spirit and property, and great influence in the parish. I had been, indeed, powerfully recommended by my teacher; but as my incapacity had become matter of public notoriety, it was deemed necessary that my vindicatlon should be equally public

66

and effective. Without being let at all into the secret, I found myself, one evening, a member of a pretty large party, in my principal patron, "the laird's," house: and, to my utter surprise, associated amongst several others, with the dissenting clergyman, the schoolmaster, and the parish minister. Our conversation happening, as if by accident, though I verily believe it was all previously planned by my worthy friend. the minister, who knew his man perfectly, to turn upon the immensity of a certain individual's fortune, which had been acquired by dealing in black cattle; the schoolmaster proceeded, with the greatest coolness to observe, that Mr H., the person spoken of, would not be worth less than a million of money." This seemed to startle us all, except the parish parson, who had evidently anticipated the observation; so the schoolmaster was compelled to come to a condescendence upon the various "items" of which this vast and incredible sum was composed; and in the enumeration of three thousand in the bank, and four thousand lent out on landed security, and three constantly afloat as a trading capital, we discovered at last of what his million consisted! We all looked in each other's faces, and as I looked equally intelligent with the rest, it was evident I fully understood the ridicule. A little boy, one of my own pupils, who was reading Ovid's Metamorphoses at the time, having dropt in, as if accidentally, the minister drew him familiarly towards himself, and began to question him upon his reading. The boy, as is usual with boys on such occasions, drooped his head, shrugged up his shoulders, and remained silent. However, the questions were not thus to be put off, so he called for his book, and proceeded to cause the boy read and construe the three first lines of the poet, beginning with "Ante mare et tellus, et quod tegit omnia cœlum." The boy happened to be dull and bashful, and would not, or could not, advance one single step without assistance; so a reference was constantly had, first to the parish schoolmaster, then to the dissenting minister, and, latterly, to me, on the occasion. My two precur