"Give the brute the spur!" quoth O'Flaherty. Davie did as directed, when Bucephalus began kicking in a very awkward manner, and Davie had not the courage to repeat the dose. Bucephalus had now made a very important discovery; he had found that Davie was no horseman—a fatal discovery for veteran steeds to make at the outset of a journey. Bucephalus was a regular Houhynhnm-a reasoning brute of the first water. It was his wont to console himself, during his numerous peregrinations, by reflecting upon the vanity and littleness of mankind, of which his experience furnished him with such numerous examples. In short, he was a genuine peripatetic philosopher; and the train of his reflections led him, when he had proceeded about one hundred yards, to feel an anxiety to return to his hay-as for oats, alas! a taste-nay, even a smell of the delicious viands would have been like a Christmas dainty to him. Howbeit, he longed to resume the plucking of his hay. Thereanent he stopt short, reflected for a moment like a man who has lost something, turned sheer round, elevated his tail, and trotted back to his stable, without in the least discomposing himself. O'Flaherty choked with laughter. Davie roared out, "Weel, in a' my boarn days!""The deevil tak' thae brute!" "Whare 'll thae eemp o' Sattan be gangin' tull?" and he pulled his best, but all in vain. Davie was not master of the secret of "sawing;" and Bucephalus was the most headstrong brute in the metropolis. The roars of laughter with which Davie was received may be imagined, but need not be described. The proprietor's chuckle was perfectly demoniac. After enjoying the farcical scene as long as he thought fit, by the judicious application of a vigorous horsewhip he contrived to make Bucephalus "bout ship," and set out for the road again. In a lazy trot, the pair rejoined O'Flaherty, whose fit of cachinnation had scarcely yet subsided, and the Houhynhnm appeared disposed to "do his spiriting gently." Just as they had turned the round church, with the awfully sharp steeple, at Langham Place, (looking very much like a teetotum reversed,) and were emerging into Portland Place, three elegantly dressed young ladies caught Davie's eye, and as this was a fitting opportunity of displaying his parts, he gave his charger the spur to make him step out briskly. To this movement, Bucephalus paid no particular attention, but prompted, probably, by the proximity of the sacred edifice, remembered that he had not yet made his devotions. This was an idea which the sage and venerable Houhynhnm could not brook, so first he lowered his head between his fore-legs, by way of reverential salaam, and then without an instant's pause, he fell upon his knees and Davie also fell, and prayed lustily-for some one to take him up! The young ladies laughed provokingly loud, evincing much more of ill-nature than good breeding. Indeed-if the truth must be confessed-they could scarcely refrain from laughing, even before Davie's fall, for his figure on horseback was somewhat peculiar. As he had not yet provided himself with straps, the motion had puckered up his trousers within a short distance of his knees; and as he stooped very much in the saddle, his scanty skirts, lapped completely over each other, left his nether extremity palpable enough; while his toes, pointed in diametrically opposite directions, his armed heels, perpetually saluting the ribs of poor Bucephalus, goaded him to such a degree, that it was no wonder the jaded brute took to praying in his extremity—and his elbows, stuck out like a shoemaker's at work, completed the picture of this modern Centaur. O'Flaherty picked Davie up, and with some trouble got him firmly fixed in the saddle again. He was deeply chagrined, and vented his rage in curses. Davie was still more bitterly mortified, for the prestige of his horsemanship was over. Horace's line occurred to him, and it was but little consolatory— Turpe solum tetigit mento!" "Lick the brute!" said O'Flaherty, And Davie did so, but in the most gingerly manner. The horse did not like blows either of whip or of spur; besides, he was peculiarly nervous, and, above all things, hated barrel-organs; so he took to his wonted custom of " roaring." They were now in the Regent's Park-at the extremity of the Circus -just where the gate leads into the New Road. The fashionable line of terraces leading to the Zoological Gardens was just before them, and O'Flaherty longed to exhibit in this chosen region his graceful management of his very capital cob-but "There's many a slip As the d-1 would have it, just as they were passing the New Road, an Italian boy struck up Jim Crow on a barrel-organ. The sensitive Bu cephalus pricked up his ears-his weak nerves were quite overcomeit was "Jim Crow," the very tune that he most detested. Off he set at full gallop down the New Road, when, after scampering fully half-amile, he shied at a costermonger's cart, and flung Davie right through a milliner's shop-window, to the demolition of no fewer than twenty squares of window-glass, ten best Leghorn, chip, and velvet bonnets, trimmed with the most beautiful satin ribands, fourteen elegant shapes of the newest and most approved fashion, eight matron-ladies' full dress caps, and five costly turbans, as well as to the very great discomfiture and amazement of two of the milliner's girls, in whose laps he landed. STANZAS FOR MUSIC. It dwells, each heart to win; Of thy dark and glossy hair- Upon thy breast 'tis shining, At Love, th' enchanter's beck, Of thy rounded form may move, "Tis o'er them lambent-Mary dear, EPIGRAM. "Le monde est plein de fous, et qui n'en veut pas voir Doit se renfermer seul, et casser son miroir !" The world, good sooth, is full of fools; If shocked at sight of asses, You'll e'en do well to stop at home, G. 66 44 METROPOLITAN SCHOOLING. L'instruction est nulle, qui n'est que superficielle."-COUSIN. The school of ignorance is the innermost court of Bedlam."- HARRIET MARTINEAU. It is strange that, with all the talk about education in England, no other country in Europe abounds with so much educational quackery. We speak not now of the public schools which, for the most part, are tolerably well regulated, but of those noisome shoals of private seminaries which swarm in the metropolitan suburbs, and advertise their cheap nostrums with as much assiduity as Rowland parades the inestimable qualities of his Kalydor, or dentists their indestructible teeth and vegetable powder. Just think of "the advantages of a solid education, combined with every accomplishment necessary for genteel youths, AT TWENTY GUINEAS PER ANNUM, BOARD INCLUDED!" Yet a dozen such advertisements may be seen each morning in the Times. Those who can be hoodwinked by such liberal promises, of impossible performance, deserve less of pity than contempt. Competent teachers cannot be secured without a respectable remuneration; and it is therefore literally throwing a child away to entrust it to the charge of such presumptuous charlatans. No doubt there are beggarly parents in abundance, of good means, who, reckless of their children's interests, grasp at such offers; and to these we have too much of self-respect to offer a word of remonstrance. Unfortunately, neither the picture of Squeers, nor of old Nickleby, has been much overdrawn. But there is a charlatanism, too, in the private schools of a higher position, which, if not so barefaced, is scarcely at all more commendable a sacrifice of solidity to show-a tinsel and a glitter and a vain parade, which are utterly inconsistent with the steady progress of the pupils-a pretension to the attainment of an universality of educational ends, which merges uniformly in the superficial, and makes the youthful mind a thinly populated desert-a wilderness of tags of thought, and odds and ends of knowledge, instead of building up the sound fabric of intellect, investing the pupil's mind with solid acquirements, and training it to the right exercise of its nascent faculties. In these systems "all is false and hollow!" though the tongues both of master and mistress "drop manna" for their maternal visitors, and conjure up before their delighted eyes a delusive prospect where every thing is couleur de rose. The hypocrisy of the school-room is not less baneful than the Pharisaic assumption of sham-religion. The great importance of the schoolmaster's social position can never be sufficiently impressed.-Most certainly it cannot be overrated. In their hands is the rearing up of good citizens, the training of youth to virtuous and moral habits, the creation of sound principles of thought-in short, the universal formation of character. We speak not now of the education of the humbler classes of the people-for the most part utterly uneducated-the fitting subject of legislative interference-which it seems, however, that the eternal interposition of partisan warfare will withhold from the community for a term indefinitely prolonged. We speak of the private seminaries, where the children of the upper and middle classes receive their so-called education, and which, of course, will ever remain exempt from state control. We do not hesitate to assert that sounder principles of instruction are in operation in the provincial towns than in the metropolis-incomparably sounder in Scotland than in any part of England with which we happen to be acquainted-that vain display and arrogant assumption are characteristic of the great bulk of the metropolitan schools-and that superficial trifling, and the mere nomenclature of science, have been intro |