Here we have a four hours' morning fast before the first meal, followed by eight hours of endurance before the second and last succeeded. This was perhaps the most marked change effected by the Conquest, when the four and sometimes five heavy Saxon meals per diem of the preceding period are taken into account. Another strik

ing change was in the new nomenclature imposed upon the articles of diet. While feeding and rearing, the animals suited to the table retained their Saxon names, but as soon as they were killed they became to all intents Norman. Thus a cow became beef, a calf veal, a sheep mutton, a sow pork, a deer venison, and a fowl a pullet. Amidst these transitions it is somewhat significant that bacon remained unaltered. The conquerors were probably too proud as well as too dainty to meddle with such fare, and had therefore left it untouched, as only fitted for the vanquished Saxons.

7. The sports in use among the common people were few and cheerless. The chief of these was bowling. Another, commonly called the game of hayle-pins, consisted in striking down small conical pieces of wood with the throw of a cudgel-a sport almost the same as that of nine-pins. Cudgel-playing and the fence of sword and buckler are frequent in the pictorial delineations of this era, and were in great favour among the English commons, as they have always been among every martial people, in spite of the dangers with which they are attended. A more sportive form of these warlike amusements was the sword-dance, which was performed to the sound of music. Foot-racing and the game of foot-ball, spear-throwing, and archery are also included among the sports of the period; while cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and bear-baiting appear to have been already commenced in England among the larger towns.-Comprehensive History of England.

THE EMPTINESS OF RICHES.

Can gold calm passion or make reason shine?
Can we dig peace or wisdom from the mine?
Wisdom to gold prefer, for 'tis much less
To make our fortune than our happiness-
That happiness which great ones often see,
With rage and wonder, in a low degree,
Themselves unblessed. The poor are only poor.
But what are they who droop amid their store?
Nothing is meaner than a wretch of state;
The happy only are the truly great.

Peasants enjoy like appetites with kings,
And those best satisfied with cheapest things.
Could both our Indies buy but one new sense,
Our envy would be due to large expense;
Since not those pomps which to the great belong
Are but poor arts to mark them from the throng.
See how they beg an alms of flattery:

They languish! oh, support them with a lie!
A decent competence we fully taste;

It strikes our sense and gives a constant feast;
More we perceive by dint of thought alone;
The rich must labour to possess their own,
To feel their great abundance, and request
Their humble friends to help them to be blest;
To see their treasure, hear their glory told,
And aid the wretched impotence of gold.

But some, great souls! and touched with warmth divine,
Give gold a price, and teach its beams to shine;
All hoarded treasures they repute a load,

Nor think their wealth their own till well bestowed.
Grand reservoirs of public happiness,

Through secret streams diffusively they bless,

And while their bounties glide, concealed from view, Relieve our wants and spare our blushes too.

-Edward Young (1684–1765).

SPEECH OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE

PRINCE CONSORT

AT THE BIRMINGHAM TOWN-HALL, ON THE OCCASION OF HIS LAYING THE FIRST STONE OF THE BIRMINGHAM AND MIDLAND INSTITUTE.

1. It has been a great pleasure to me to have been able to participate, in however trifling a degree, in a work which I do not look upon as a simple act of worldly wisdom on the part of this great town and locality, but as one of the first public acknowledgments of a principle which is daily forcing its way amongst us, and is destined to play a great and important part in the future development of this nation, and of the world in general:I mean the introduction of science and art as the unconscious regulators of productive industry.

2. The courage and spirit of enterprise with which an immense amount of capital is embarked in industrial pursuits, and the skill and indefatigable perseverance with which these are carried on in this country, cannot but excite universal admiration; but in all our operations, whether agricultural or manufacturing, it is not we who operate, but the laws of nature, which we have set in operation.

3. It is, then, of the highest importance that we should know these laws, in order to know what we are about, and the reason why certain things are, which occur daily under our hands, and what course we are to pursue with regard to them.

4. Without such knowledge we are condemned to one of three states: either we merely go on to do things just as our fathers did, and for no better reason than because they did them so; or, trusting to some personal authority, we adopt at random the recommendation of some specific, in a speculative hope that it may answer; or lastly—and this is the most favourable case-we ourselves improve

upon certain processes; but this can only be the result of an experience hardly earned and dearly bought, and which, after all, can only embrace a comparatively short space of time, and a small number of experiments.

5. From none of these causes can we hope for much progress; for the mind, however ingenious, has no materials to work with, and remains in presence of phenomena the causes of which are hidden from it.

6. But these laws of nature, these divine laws, are capable of being discovered and understood, and of being taught and made our own. This is the task of science; and, whilst science discovers and teaches these laws, art teaches their application. No pursuit is therefore too insignificant to be capable of becoming the subject both of a science and an art.

7. The fine arts (as far as they relate to painting, sculpture, and architecture), which are sometimes confounded with art in general, rest on the application of the laws of form and colour, and what may be called the science of the beautiful. They do not rest on any arbitrary theory on the modes of producing pleasurable emotions, but follow fixed laws-more difficult, perhaps, to seize than those regulating the material world, because belonging partly to the sphere of the ideal, and of our spiritual essence, yet perfectly appreciable and teachable, both abstractedly and historically, from the works of different ages and nations.

8. No human pursuits make any material progress until science is brought to bear upon them. We have seen accordingly many of them slumber for centuries upon centuries; but from the moment that science has touched them with her magic wand, they have sprung forward, and taken strides which amaze, and almost awe, the beholder.

9. Look at the transformation which has gone on around us since the laws of gravitation, electricity, magnetism, and the expansive power of heat have become known to us. It has altered our whole state of existence --one might say, the whole face of the globe. We owe

this to science and to science alone; and she has other treasures in store for us, if we will but call her to our assistance.

10. It is sometimes objected by the ignorant that science is uncertain and changeable, and they point with a malicious kind of pleasure to the many exploded theories which have been superseded by others, as a proof that the present knowledge may be also unsound, and, after all, not worth having. But they are not aware that, while they think to cast blame upon science, they bestow, in fact, upon her the highest praise.

11. For that is precisely the difference between science and prejudice: that the latter keeps stubbornly to its position, whether disproved or not, whilst the former is an unarrestable movement towards the fountain of truth, caring little for cherished authorities or sentiments, but continually progressing, feeling no false shame at her shortcomings, but, on the contrary, the highest pleasure, when freed from an error, at having advanced another step towards the attainment of divine truth-a pleasure not even intelligible to the pride of ignorance.

12. We also hear, not unfrequently, science and practice, scientific knowledge and common sense, contrasted as antagonistic. A strange error! for science is eminently practical, and must be so, as she sees and knows what she is doing, whilst mere common practice is condemned to work in the dark, applying natural ingenuity to unknown powers to obtain a known result.

13. Far be it from me to undervalue the creative power of genius, or to treat shrewd common sense as worthless without knowledge. But nobody will tell me that the same genius would not take an incomparably higher flight, if supplied with all the means which knowledge can impart; or that common sense does not become, in fact, only truly powerful when in possession of the materials upon which judgment is to be exercised.

14. The study of the laws by which the Almighty governs the universe, is, therefore, our bounden duty. Of these laws our great academies and seats of education