Moliere, Le
Mifanthrope,
A&t i. Sc. i.

Evening Solace,
Currer Bell,
Poems, p. 122.

T. Jackson's
Works, ii. 42.
Folio.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Ignorance corrected.

"Pardon what I have spoke,

For 'tis a ftudied, not a prefent thought,

By duty ruminated."

"Je prends tout doucement les hommes comme ils font,
J'accoutume mon âme à fouffrir qu'ils font :

Et je crois qu'à la cour, de même qu'à la ville,
Mon flegme eft philofophe autant que votre bile."

"But there are hours of lonely mufing,
Such as in evening filence come,
When, foft as birds their pinions clofing,

The heart's beft feelings gather home."

"Though no man be wife without much knowledge, yet a man may know many things, and not be very wife."

GNORANCE is manifold, but, in our converse with the people, our own ignorance needs quite as much correction as theirs.

A

paffage from Adam Bede will ferve to exem

Vol ii. p. 17. plify what I mean. "Human converse, I think fome wife man has remarked, is not rigidly fincere. But I herewith discharge my

confcience, and declare that I have had quite
enthusiastic movements of admiration towards
old gentlemen, who spoke the worst English,
who were occasionally fretful in their temper,
and who had never moved in a higher sphere
of influence than that of parish overfeer; and
that the way in which I have come to the
conclufion that human nature is loveable,-
the way I have learnt fomething of its deep
pathos, its fublime myfteries,-has been by
living a great deal among people more or less
common-place and vulgar, of whom you
would perhaps hear nothing very furprising if
you were to inquire about them in the neigh-
bourhoods where they dwelt. Ten to one
most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity
faw nothing at all in them." A very
A very comfort-
ing paffage, I will venture to affert, and one
which one delights to fet against fuch lines as
thefe of Pope's.

"Vice with fuch giant ftrides comes on amain,
Invention ftrives to be before in vain ;

Feign what I will, and paint it e'er so strong,
Some rifing genius fins up to my fong."

Notwithstanding the Superftitions of the People, glanced at in the preceding chapter, take them as a whole, by THE SEA-BOARD

Epilogue to
Satires, Dialogue

II.

My faithful old
Schoolmafter
CHARLES RUFF,

long gone to his
reft, always used

the word indite, when he spoke

with importance.

AND THE DOWN, and you will find that they are enabled to give you a good deal of practical information on moft points. Very undemonstrative, and not fond of appearing to know any thing, if you can but once get them to open, they will conftantly surprise you. Of book-learning, as might be expected, they have little ftore,-formerly indeed it was almost derogatory to a Suffex boor to be thought to know any thing about fuch things. It was well enough for Clerks and Schoolmafters, and Attorneys,-but "What did they want with inkhorns and larning?" Parfon figned all papers, and the Clerk, poffibly, could help them write at a pufh,but the Schoolmafter could always indite, (the old current word,) and to him they went to make their small wills, and to write their few letters, even on the tenderest subjects. Not long ago a boy in an adjoining Parish faid to his fellow-fervant, "Why did you let master know I could write?"-a remnant of that more recently affumed ignorance which the cunning man hopes one day to turn to account, and to profit by.

Some ten years ago the following extract created no little furprise, and the smile of in

credulity curled many a lip. "William Kirk, driver of a hackney carriage, faid of Maria Manning, that he confidered fhe was a countrywoman, or a woman that came from Effex or SUSSEX, a perfon who could not speak the English language." Such was the state of fimple nefcience according to which we were rated by a fharp practitioner on a cabstand, where the every-day joftling and collifion of interefts gives a keen edge to intellects even naturally dull.

"They fay, beft men are moulded out of faults,

And, for the most, become much more the better,
For being a little bad;"

and it is an odd way of putting the matter.
However, it has its truth in it, and gives great
scope to those who are endeavouring to better
the grievous eftate of cabftands and omnibus.
yards, to their. great credit. But the remark,
strong as it seems, was no unfit one for many
by the SEA-BOARD AND THE DOWN fifty years
ago, and Cabby thought he had hit the nail
right on the head. Looking to his own
sharpness, he was juft the man to fay,

Coroner's InAug. 28, 1849.

queft, Times,

Measure for Measure, A&t v. Sc. i.

"All the clerks,

Hen. VIII., A&

ii. Sc. ii.

I mean the learned ones, in Christian kingdoms,

Have their free voice."

«Αναύδων
παίδων τᾶς
αμιάντου,”
Alchyl. Pers.
v. 580.
"Mutis
pifcibus," Hor.

iv. Od. iii. 19.

Kingfley's

Andromeda.

The truth is, that although there is a great deal of Ignorance not in Suffex only, but throughout the land,-to be collected, as I have hinted above, from their Popular Super

ftitions, that Ignorance is correcting itself, and on common fubjects there is more pretended ignorance than real. Edwin Fairfoot is a little deaf, and knows nothing of what is likely to implicate himself, and bring him, or thofe about him, into trouble; and James Binfield knows about as much, and is a little deaf too. But, place their own interefts well before them, and it is aftonishing to see how the dull flow man becomes quick and apprehenfive. None readier now than he who was fo tongue-tied but a little before,—mute almost as the dumb fishes in the sea hard by.

But this touches upon that Low-Cunning which has been spoken of in a former chapter, and which will disappear, more or less, as men advance, and raise the standard of principle, quitting all low, paltry, and mean habits,

"Bred of the flime, like the worms, which are bred from the muds of the Nile bank,"

Another phase of ignorance is likewise on the wane, and is correcting itself. Within my recollection the oppofition to inftruction was