exiled from the world, yet where he could sometimes see his country's banner waving over the deep, but which would not, or could not, bring him aid!

Thus those four men, who, from the peculiar situation of their portraits, seemed to stand as the representatives of all those whom the world calls great-those four, who each in turn made the earth tremble to its very centre by their2 simple tread, severally died-one by intoxication, or, as some suppose, by poison mingled in his wine-one a suicide-one murdered by his friends-and one a lonely exile!" How are the mighty fallen!"-From FIELD'S 'Scrap Book.'

THE history of England is emphatically the history of progress. It is the history of a constant movement of the public mind, of a constant change in the institutions of a great society. We see that society, at the beginning of the twelfth century, in a state more miserable than the state in which the most degraded nations of the East now are. We see it subjected to the tyranny of a handful of armed foreigners. We see a strong distinction of caste separating the victorious Norman from the vanquished Saxon. We see the great body of the population in a state of personal slavery. We see the most debasing and cruel superstition exercising boundless dominion over the most elevated and benevolent minds. We see the multitude sunk in brutal ignorance, and the studious few engaged in acquiring what did not deserve the name of knowledge.

In the course of seven centuries the wretched and degraded race have become the greatest and most highly-civilized people that ever the world saw, have spread their dominion over every quarter of the globe, have scattered the seeds of mighty empires and republics over vast continents, of which no dim intimation had ever reached Ptolemy or Strabo, have created a maritime power which would annihilate in a quarter of an hour the navies

of Tyre, Athens, Carthage, Venice, and Genoa together, have carried the science of healing, the means of locomotion and correspondence, every mechanical art, every manufacture, everything that promotes the convenience of life, to a perfection which our ancestors would have thought magical, have produced a literature which may boast of works not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us, have discovered the laws which regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, have speculated with exquisite subtility on the operations of the human mind, have been the acknowledged leaders of the human race in the career of political improvement.

The history of England is the history of this great change in the moral, intellectual, and physical state of the inhabitants of our own island. There is much amusing and instructive episodical matter; but this is the main action. To us, we will own, nothing is so interesting and delightful as to contemplate the steps by which the England of the Doomsday_Book, the England of the Curfew and the Forest Laws, the England of Crusaders, monks, schoolmen, astrologers, serfs, outlaws, became the England which we know and love, the classic ground of liberty and philosophy, the school of all knowledge, the mart of all trade.

The charter of Henry Beauclerk, the Great Charter, the first assembling of the House of Commons, the extinction of personal slavery, the separation from the See of Rome, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Revolution, the establishment of the liberty of unlicensed printing, the abolition of religious disabilities, the reform of the representative system, all these seem to us to be the successive stages of one great revolution; nor can we fully comprehend any one of these memorable events unless we look at it in connection with those which preceded and with those which followed it. Each of these great and ever-memorable struggles, Saxon against Norman, Villein against Lord, Protestant against Papist, Roundhead against Cavalier, Dissenter against Churchman, Manchester against Old Sarum, was, in its own order and season, a struggle, on the result of which were staked the dearest interests of the human race; and every man who, in the contest which in his time divided our country, distinguished himself on the right side, is entitled to our gratitude and respect.

We said that the history of England is the history of progress, and when we take a comprehensive view of it, it is so. But when examined in small, separate portions, it may with more propriety be called a history of actions and reactions. We have often thought that the motion of the public mind in our country

resembles that of the sea when the tide is rising. Each successive wave rushes forward, breaks, and rolls back; but the great flood is steadily coming in. A person who looked on the waters only for a moment might fancy that they were retiring, or a person who looked on them only for five minutes might fancy that they. were rushing capriciously to and fro; but when he keeps his eye on them for a quarter of an hour, and sees one sea-mark disappear after another, it is impossible for him to doubt of the general direction in which the ocean is moved. Just such has been the course of events in England. In the history of the national mind, which is, in truth, the history of the nation, we must carefully distinguish between that recoil which regularly follows every advance and a great general ebb. If we take short intervals-if we compare 1640 and 1660, 1680 and 1685, 1708 and 1712, 1782 and 1794,- -we find a retrogression. But if we take centuries,―if, for example, we compare 1794 with 1660, or with 1685,-we cannot doubt in which direction society is proceeding.—MACAULAY.

BRITISH FREEDOM.

IT is not to be thought of that the flood
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity
Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters, unwithstood,"
Roused though it be full often to a mood
Which spurns the check of salutary bands,
That this most famous stream in bogs and sands
Should perish; and to evil and to good
Be lost for ever. In our halls is hung
Armoury of the invincible knights of old:
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakspere spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

WORDSWORTH.

OUR daily experience may convince us how susceptible the tender mind is of deep impressions; and what important and permanent effects are produced on the characters and the happiness of individuals by the casual associations formed in childhood among the various ideas, feelings, and affections with which they were habitually occupied. It is the business of education not to counteract this constitution of nature, but to give it a proper direction; and the miserable consequences to which it leads, when under an improper regulation, only show what an important instrument of human improvement it might be rendered, in more skilful hands. If it be possible to interest the imagination and the heart in favour of error, it is, at least, no less possible to interest them in favour of truth. If it be possible to extinguish all the most generous and heroic feelings of our nature by teaching us to connect the idea of them with those of guilt and impiety, it is surely equally possible to cherish and strengthen them by establishing the natural alliance between our duty and our happiness. If it be possible for the influence of fashion to veil the native deformity of vice, and to give to low and criminal indulgences the appearance of spirit, of elegance, and of gaietycan we doubt of the possibility of connecting, in the tender mind, these pleasing associations with pursuits that are truly worthy and honourable? There are few men to be found, among those who have received the advantages of a liberal education, who do not retain through life that admiration of the heroic ages of Greece and Rome, with which the classical authors once inspired them. It is, in truth, a fortunate prepossession on the whole, and one, of which I should be sorry to counteract the influence. But are there not others of equal importance to morality and to happiness, with which the mind might, at the same period of

life, be inspired? If the first conceptions, for example, which an infant formed of the Deity, and its first moral perceptions, were associated with the early impressions produced on the heart by the beauties of nature, or the charms of poetical description, those serious thoughts which are resorted to by most men, merely as a source of consolation in adversity, and which, on that very account, are frequently tinctured with some degree of gloom, would recur spontaneously to the mind in its best and happiest hours; and would insensibly blend themselves with all its purest and most refined enjoyments.-STEWART'S 'Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.'

THE great mistake I have observed in people's breeding their children, has been, that this has not been taken care enough of in its due season; that the mind has not been made obedient to discipline and pliant to reason, when at first it was most tender, most easy to be bowed.

Parents being wisely ordained by nature to love their children, are very apt, if reason watch not that natural affection very warily, are apt, I say, to let it run into fondness. They love their little ones, and it is their duty; but they often, with them, cherish their faults too. They must not be crossed, forsooth; they must be permitted to have their wills in all things; aud they, being in their infancies not capable of great vices, their parents think they may safely enough indulge their irregularities, and make themselves sport with that pretty perverseness which they think well enough becomes that innocent age. But to a fond parent, that would not have his child corrected for a perverse trick, but excused it, saying it was a small matter, Solon very well replied, “Ay, but custom is a great one."

The fondling must be taught to strike and call names, must have what he calls for, and do what he pleases. Thus parents by humouring and cockering them when little, corrupt the principles of nature in their children, and wonder afterwards to taste the bitter waters, when they themselves have poisoned the fountain. For when their children are grown up, and these ill habits with them; when they are now too big to be dandled, and their parents can no longer make use of them as playthings, then they complain that the brats are untoward and perverse; then they are offended to see them wilful, and are troubled with those illhumours which they themselves infused and fomented in them;