apply to the matters under discussion.

This is not seldom the case, even in rural interviews, with bookish people. Dr. Newman, especially, was a great quoter of poetry, both Latin and English, and knew how to hit the nail on the head with an apt citation.

Mrs. Smith. Some of Gray's verse I never could enjoy; but how often have I looked upon such a group as that near us, and found myself repeating

Gay hope is theirs, by fancy fed,

Less pleasing when possessed;
The tear forgot as soon as shed,
The sunshine of the breast.
Theirs buxom health, of rosy hue,
Wild wit, invention ever new,

And lively cheer, of vigour born;
The thoughtless day, the easy night,
The spirits pure, the slumbers light,
That fly the approach of morn.

Mrs. Barry. All good, Mary; but how fearfully dark are the stanzas which follow! I can scarcely read that famous ode without a pang.

Dr. Newman. Have you ever observed how fond our poets are of school scenes? It is so from Chaucer down to Crabbe.

Mrs. Barry. Everybody remembers Goldsmith's schoolmaster.

Barry. Yet no one ever wearies of it:

Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,
The love he bore to learning was in fault;
The village all declared how much he knew;
'Twas certain he could write and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,
And even the story ran that he could gauge;

In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill,

For ev'n though vanquished, he could argue still.

Mr. Mill. Stop there, Mr. Barry, for I am ready to admit the description to be just.

Barry. Wait till we try our powers in an argument, sir. Meanwhile, I beg leave, as lately belonging to the class, to read, from this volume, Lloyd's account of a school-usher. You will remember Lloyd as a friend of Cowper, at Westminster school.

Were I at once empowered to show,
My utmost vengeance on my foe,

To punish with extremest rigour,
I could inflict no penance bigger

Than, using him as learning's tool,
To make him usher of a school.

Yet still he's on the road, you say,
Of learning." Why, perhaps, he may,

But turns like horses in a mill,

Nor getting on, nor standing still;

For little way his learning reaches,

Who learns no more than what he teaches.

Dr. Newman. Too severe by half; and like most highly-coloured pictures, untrue. The last couplet is, however, good indeed, though full of latent sarcasm.

Mrs. Barry. Father, you will surely not forget Lloyd's friend, the gentle Cowper, and his Tirocinium, which is all about education, from beginning to end.

Dr. Newman. Hush, hush, my dear! Don't you see that our craft is ruined, if you cry up the Tirocinium? For what is it, but a defence of private education?

Mrs. Barry. If it is, it nevertheless is full of wholesome and delightful truths.

Dr. Newman. Let us admit it, Helen; as we safely do, without yielding the advantages of good public-schools.

Dr. Smith. Here are a number of schools, and school-folk, described to the life, in Crabbe's Borough and other tales.

Dr. Newman. Yes; and, as in all his descriptions, he has given pictures which have an accuracy like that of the daguerreotype.

Carl. May I ask, sir, how it happens that schools occupy so large a place in the poets?

Dr. Newman. We have only dipped intothe poets yet, Adler; this is but a taste. In regard to your question, however, many reasons might be given. The value and importance, and universality of schools, is one. Almost all educated persons, as poets generally are, went to school in their youth. The recollections of school-boy days are among the greenest spots in the retrospect of memory. Add to this, that hundreds of literary men and women have been themselves instructors. This is remarkably the case in America.

All which goes to dignify the occupation of the teacher.

Carl. Perhaps the seclusion and quiet of a rural school-life tends to foster poetic musings. Am I right, sir?

Dr. Newman. You are not without some ground for your conjecture, my young friend. But you probably reason from your own temper and experience. Ah! is it so? You blush, Adler. I must insist on your confession.

Mrs. Smith. I shall have to turn informer. I have in my basket two morsels of German poetry, by our young friend, written at his school-desk.

Adler. And one of them, I am forced to say, has been translated by Mary.

Dr. Smith. Mary is fairly caught; and as some of us read no German, we must insist on her producing the English.

Mrs. Barry. I will spare Mary the confusion of reading her own verses, which I find here enclosed in the other papers: so here