the consideration of our poor-law commissioners. They tell us, and parliament seems inclined to believe them, that to check this kind of mischief, the only plan is to throw all the punishment on the woman. The other plan of dividing the penalty between the accomplices has been tried, they say, for hundreds of years—and nevertheless the mischief goes on: a wiser, though apparently a less equitable, system must now therefore be adopted. Did it never occur to these worthy logicians that their new system has been, in point of fact, long established as regards mischief in the high places of the earth-and just to pause for a moment, and consider what its effect has been there, before recommending its application on that wider sphere where human passions, in themselves probably much the same all the world over, have comparatively few and feeble barriers? How tremendous is the doom of the erring matron in the upper world, we all see and know. Has the certainty of that utter ruin in case of detection been found, in practice, to diminish the array of delinquency? The hero, Prince Alexis von Schaffhausenstein, seduces Eve, the fair and tender wife of Sir Adam Tudor, a baronet of Essex, whose talk is of bullocks. He deserts her-is challenged by Sir Adam-meets the injured husband at Battersea, and severely wounds him. As soon as it is ascertained that the baronet's life is not in danger, the prince's cabriolet re-appears in St. James's Street 'Sing Te Diabolum, ye tribes of Hell, Ye kindred tribes of Fashion round Pall- Exult! for, safe from marital assaults, Dearest of Men, with all his little faults. Illuminate Almack's! more lights! more lights! He comes! the pride of Clubs! the very soul of White's!'-p. 6. We pass some poor-enough verses on the different clubs, of which the author does not happen to be a member. Now for the lady : That cruel voice was ever in her ears, Though vanished was the Tempter from her sight. Abruptly as an arrow's silent flight, Forsaken Eve forsook the world that shunned her, And left no trace behind; and 'twas a nine days' wonder!' The poet chooses to involve his frail heroine in the catastrophe of the Amphitrite at Boulogne, on the 31st of August, last year -and we can have no doubt that he must himself have been an eye-witness of the scene which he has described. That none but exiles know, whose hope is o'er; And some were singing, not forlorn the less, Their childhood's songs of joy, thrice sad in their distress. One wasted figure, lovely, lonely, mild, But such a smile 'twas agony to see, Condolence made the tears rain faster on her Book. Who can contemplate such a form and features, Nor feel his heart reverse the stern award That mingles with the lees of human creatures What seems of purest essence still though marred We omit the description of the Of all that freight of crime and woe survives Woman nor child: by chance, or buoyant aid Of spar or splinter that the water drives Ashore, three mariners to safety wade.Butlo! the troubled morning lifts the shade That veiled the wreck-strewn coast; a scene of dread, By some strange turn of Fortune blind and hard! Yet Justice is not Justice if the scales Contrition's sigh be Theirs, whom Pity's nought avails! Their's was the doom, but not the destiny, Of banishment to that Australian soil Where roves the native silvan Savage free, While Britain's gangs of guilty bondsmen toil, Tasked as of yore the Hebrews on the Nile. Those shores of bale they never shall behold, Nor Nepean's valleys where December's smile With countless tints irradiates flowers untold, While flower-like birds disport on wings bedropt with gold. Them shall not Ocean with his ceaseless brawl For months with hoarse monotony molest; Nor shall they hear at last the thrilling call Of "Land!" that gladdens ev'n the Convict's breast Loathing his floating dungeon of unrest; And makes him start to greet the Mountains Blue, Though they but welcome ocean's idle guest To painful labour with a felon-crew.— The many by heart-smitten pity led, Where are they now? Of some the deep sea knows; St. Louis' walls, by pity reared to woe, Where crowds confused inquire, lament, Twice thirty women in one room enclose; Three ghastly lines of spectres in repose, upbraid: The But But what repose! See the dishevelled hair, Dilated nostrils, cheeks that horror froze, Eyes that, in fearful agony, yet stare, Hands clenched, and limbs convulsed in exquisite despair. Here is a wretch whose struggle was sublime; This tawny mother by her infant pale. These flat and homely traits may tell of crime; They tell of love, unyielding as the gale, Her boy she fettered to her heart, and sprung The host of howling billows to assail, Dashed mid the breakers, their o'er-trampling force Crushed her, but wrenched not from her heart the child: And they were found together, corse to The child has not a lineament of her Whose throes to give him birth to these were weak; His tresses blond are silken as the fur That warms the flocks of Cashmere, waving sleek. A bland composure lulls his polished cheek, But here, not, surely, of a vulgar race, sleep. Her dexter arm is pillowed on her breast, The hand upon the heart whose sorrows are at rest. Was ever chiselled beauty more complete? Yet fearful too, so delicately spare! Those white, minute, attenuated feet, · Those wasted arms, those sharpened features wear The meagre stamp of famine; but gaunt care, Time fills his lenient and oblivious urn; And sprinkling the pained heart, with process slow But certain, medicates the deepest woe.The orphan's smiles revived, and cheered her sire, As vernal beams the willow bent with But snow. soon, too soon, expire, Quenched in far other tears-of shame, remorse, and ire. those smiles were to Her Father's eyes, obscured by torpid age, Their holiest charm to peril. Not the stem By moths that steal into the folds of By social vanities, was ate away. This Outcast of the Sea, is Eve, "The How from the form-fenced ledge of ornate ease To such a depth of wretchedness she By what terrific plunge, or slow degrees, The search of kindred whose relenting Would yet have screened her in their northern dell. Contempt, compassion, thus alike denied, In squalid want she lived, in woe consummate died.' Impalpably the precious zone of duty, Of purity the strong though silken stay, We apprehend we can hardly be mistaken when we pronounce the writer of these stanzas something more than a mere versifier. We conjure him to clear his head' of politics, scandal, and all manner of uncharitableness, and not to let life slip away-for we cannot for a moment fancy him a very young man-without seizing the days and the nights that must be given to the worthy completion of a monument of genius. ART. VI.-Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School. By a Parent. Fifth Edition. London. 1834. 2. The Eton Abuses considered; in a Letter addressed to the Author of Some Remarks on the present Studies and Management of Eton School.' Second Edition. London. 1834. 3. A few Words in Reply to Some Remarks upon the present System and Management of Eton School.' By Etonensis. London. 1834. 4. The Eton System of Education vindicated; and its Capabilities of Improvement considered: in Reply to some recent Publications. London. 1834. 5. Oxford as it is. By a Foreigner of Rank. London. 1834. 6. Oxford in 1834: a Satire, in Six Parts. London. OF F all our national institutions, perhaps our great public schools are the most characteristic; those which we should almost despair of making intelligible to an inquiring foreigner, or even to acute and sensible men in our own country, who in their youth have breathed an entirely different atmosphere. In some respects, they seem to set at defiance all the general principles, and to be at war with the whole theory of education, so that a dry detail of the school business, and of the daily and weekly exercises, may be accurate to the very letter, yet will give as inadequate, if not as unfair, a view of the real system, as the skeleton does of the breathing and animated man. We are the last to deny that much is wanting to bring these institutions up to the rising level of general information; the age demands an expansion of their system: but this may be effected without abandoning its primary and essential characteristics. Education, especially when intended to comprehend that class of English youth whose birth and fortune place them above professional ambition, and who, however they may take a share in the public business of the country, must have much idle and unoccupied time—education, to this class especially, and indeed to those who aspire to fill the several departments of the learned professions, has not discharged its high and important function, when it has forcibly exacted the acquisition of certain rudiments of learning, and by incessant diligence driven into the reluctant and unconsenting mind the barren and ungerminating seeds of knowledge: it must excite rather than pretend to satisfy an ardent appetite for still increasing information; and encourage that love of letters and knowledge, without which the compulsory lessons of the school will either stagnate into pedantic self-sufficiency, or, as is more usually the case, be cast aside, and utterly forgotten, immediately that the constraint is removed. Education cannot, perhaps, implant, but it may foster and stimulate, to an incalculable degree, this selfimproving spirit; and it has certainly been the good fortune, if not the deliberate aim, of the great school to which most of these pamphlets refer, to justify, by its success, in thus kindling the enthusiasm of youth towards the studies of the place, the ardent and somewhat exclusive attachment of its admirers. In Eton, this spirit, according to the general direction of study long adopted within its walls, has taken the turn of correct and elegant classical attainment. Years back this may be traced in the pure and exquisite, though perhaps fastidious and overwrought, poetry of Gray; in later days, after mingling with the fervid oratory, and giving a peculiar lucidness to the vehement invectives of Fox, it retired with him to St. Ann's Hill, to throw a quiet grace over the evening of his agitated life, and to impart a delightful occupation to a mind exhausted with political turbulence; it has shown itself not less distinctly in the statesman-like, yet highly-polished, public documents which have proceeded from the Wellesleys and Grenvilles; VOL. LII. NO. CIII. K it |