I am of opinion that education is a bringing or leading out of whatever faculty may already be implanted in us by nature. I opine that all, and several, the kinds and degrees of ability are heavensent, or, as we say, given by nature. From my mother's nature, I received a taste, if not a genius, for the art-musical; from my father's, as I think, a natural independency and freedom of mind. My good master, entertaining views of the subject of education very nearly the reverse of mine, no sooner detected these traits in me, than he resolved to suppress them; and the more perfectly to accomplish this, set himself diligently to educating such of my parts as nature had left deficient. I was accordingly forbid den whatever I asked for, and kept from what I intended. I was forbidden to practice, or even to hear music; but because nature cursed me with a plantigrade walk, and a stammering elocution, I was put through a daily lesson of dancing and declamation, to my utter sorrow and confusion.

There happened to live in our vicinity a barber; a fat, pleasant little round man, Mr. Flusky, of Irish birth and French education. In Mr. Flusky's company my good master took an especial delight, both for his natural and acquired parts, which were many and remarkable. This good man, though short of stature, had a singularly smooth and reverential address. He professed himself a royalist and a high churchman. My patron, too, held the same opinions, but from what different principles!

To enter deeply into the real cause of the friendship between these persons, it is necessary to know or believe in a certain principle of human nature, which I hold universally valid, that all friendships rest upon a similarity of aims, with a difference of principles. Observe, sir, how you are secretly bound to your fellow-traveler, by the knowledge that he is going to the same distant land with yourself; though his purpose, in going thither, be a matter of which you make no inquiry. He is younger than you, of a different complexion, stature, condition; you never saw him before in your life-yet, I question not, a secret regard, though in its degree almost insensibly

small, is already sprung up between you. Or consider, my good madam, the unspeakable differences of nature and character, between yourself and your thrice-honored husband; yet so perfect your love for him-so exquisite the sentiment of your harmony! What is the reason of it? Plainly, your purposes, your aims, are alike-your treasures lie in the same heaven-or Paradise, wherever that may be-I know not where, for I was never married.

The friendship between my patronfather and the barber, began on the first day of my induction to Yorick mansion, and continued unabated while I remained under the discipline of that venerable roof. It rested altogether upon a similarity of opinion, and a difference of sentiment, in regard to my education. The barber would have me educated in one fashion; my patron, in another. Both agreed as to the end, but differed as to the means.

"It was a cold evening of November, when my mother, leading, or rather holding me by the hand, ascended the steps that led to the door of Mr. Yorick's house. While we stood shivering upon the platform, the wind howled dismally along the narrow street; the shutters of the opposite houses rattled and tugged at their fastenings, as if longing to join the general flight of light rubbish and city-dust, that swept invisible along upon the dry blast, felt only by the half-choked watchman turning on his round, or by us shivering supplicants, waiting the slow movements of the humorous old housekeeper, till it should please her to open the street-door." Plainly, it was a windy November night when my mother took me to Mr. Yorick's, and being neither of us suitably clothed, we suffered some inconvenience from the cold and dust.

If the reader is curious to know why I spoiled that bit of a description, by stripping naked in such a rude fashion, he may know I did it for a pretence to let him into a secret of my literary history, which shall now appear. The great Racine used to write out his tragedies in plain prose before he versified them. When he had one fairly written out in this naked style, he would say,

Now my tragedy is finished. His judgment made sure of the subject, before his fancy painted it out; as nature shapes a female body before the milliner adorns it.

I, on the contrary, having a natural horror of imitation, do the direct contrary of that great example, for it first occurs to me to dress out a score of magnificent sentences to the due length of a chapter, and then, stripping away the ornaments, observe what there is left. These capita mortua make up the body

BY MRS. C.

THIS curious old book, long received as true history, and defended as such by some writers even as late as the time of Henry VIII., is among the many made accessible to the common reader by the late system of universal reprint. We are not sure that we have an altogether friendly feeling toward these reprints, stripping as they do the soft delusive veil from time-honored chronicles, and forcing into open day, and subjecting to critical line and plummet, things which look best in twilight-bidding

"The wild illusions fly

Which fancy had conceived,
Abetted by an anxious eye

That longed to be deceived.
It was a fond deception all,
Such as in solitary hall

Beguiles the musing eye, When, gazing on the sinking fire, Bulwark and battlement and spire In the red gulf we spy." But we love such illusions. We envy those who believed in the whole line of British kings, from king Brute down to Cadwallader, and doubted not that London was founded when Eli the priest governed in Judea, and the ark of the covenant fell into the hands of the Philistines.

But the reprint tells us that the whole series of British monarchs, from Brutus downward, is a tissue of fables. Not only are we forbidden to credit the pretty story of Diana's sending Brutus to Britain after he had offered sacrifices at her desolate altar, "holding before it a conse

KIRKLAND.

crated vessel filled with wine and the blood of a white hart," but even the wellauthenticated (for is not the city still there?) recital of the building of Bath by Bladud, (contemporary with the prophet Elias,) who attempted to fly to the upper air with wings which he had himself constructed by magical art, but unfortunately fell down upon the Temple of Apollo, in the city of Irinovantum, (now London,) and was dashed to pieces. The story of King Leir, too, though true beyond doubt, since we find it in Shakspeare, is among those on which a shade of discredit is thrown by these unpleasant meddlers with pleasant antiquity; and Merlin, honored as a magician by Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Tennyson-not to mention seers of lesser note-is thus set down for a vulgar conjurer,

"With his hair on end At his own wonders, wondering for his bread."

But not to find further fault with Messieurs the Translators, without whose help we, at least, could not have read with our bodily eyes the Chronicles, done into good Latin out of unintelligible ancient British, by Geoffrey of Monmouth, let us inquire something as to the identity of Geoffrey himself. He is said to have been "a man profoundly versed in the history and antiquities of Britain, excellently skilled in the British tongue, and withal (considering the time) an elegant writer both in verse and prose." He lived in the time of Henry Î., and dedicates his Latin ver

sion to Robert, Earl of Gloucester, son of that monarch. The book was an ancient book, and a great curiosity, even at that day, and was brought by Walter Mapes from Armorica, where he found it, bearing marks of great antiquity. The fabu lous stories said to abound in it are not to be ascribed to the first translator, who everywhere disclaims any attempt to do more than render the original in a homely style, never having made fine language his study, "by collecting florid expressions from other authors;" which disclaimer we take to be a touch of satire in the old gentleman. He was first, Archdeacon of Monmouth, and then Bishop of St. Asaph; and, by trying to hold, in addition to these two preferments, that of the Abbacy of Abingdon, he lost all. He is a very modest person, if we may judge by his prefatory letter to Robert of Gloucester, in which he says: "This work humbly sues for the favor of being so corrected by your advice, that it may not be thought to be the poor offspring of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but, when polished by your refined wit and judgment, the production of him who had Henry, the glorious King of England, for his father," &c.

This history, though much esteemed as such in more credulous days, is in our sceptical time prized chiefly as having been, says the last editor, "to our early dramatic poets what the ill-fated House of Edipus was to the tragic writers of ancient Greece," viz., the source whence many of them drew their materials. In the very first chapter we find the prototype of a passage in Drayton's Poly-olbion: "Britain, the best of islands, is situated in the western ocean, between France and Ireland. It produces every thing that is useful to man, with a plenty that never fails. It abounds with all kinds of metals, and has plains of large extent, and hills fit for the finest tillage, the richness of whose soil affords variety of fruits, in their proper seasons. It is also well watered with lakes and rivers, abounding with fish," &c., &c. A few pages further on we find the origin of one of Milton's allusions"Severn swift, guilty of maiden's death."

*

Geoffrey tells us that Guendolana-a jealous wife-" commanded Estrildis and her daughter Sabren, to be thrown into the river now called the Severn, and

In the eleventh and four following chapters, we have the story of Lear, though with considerable differences. Shakspeare is said, by Mr. Capell, to his time, second-hand only from the have taken his from a wretched play of chronicles; the essentials are, however, the same.

trophe of Ferrex and Porrex, used in The sixteenth chapter gives the catasLord Buckhurst's tragedy of Gorboduc. Porrex having slain his brother, is killed by his mother-stabbed in bed, says the poet; but the chronicle has it, torn to pieces, with the assistance of the queen's

women.

of her chamber to salute King Vortigern,* bearing a golden cup of wine-saying, "Laverd king wacht heil But far from possessing the purity of our Rowena, this proved a wicked one, poisoning her step-son Vortimer, without mercy; and resembling the fair dame of Ivanhoe in nothing but her name, her beauty, and her Saxon tongue.

We have not a syllable of the Druids, but a story of Stonehenge, which states that Aurelius Ambrosius, the successor of Vortigern, thinking something ought to be done to perpetuate the memory of the patriots who had been slain on Salisbury plain, (then Kaercaradoc,) applied to Merlin the prophet, who advised him to send to Ireland for the "Giants' dance," which was in Killaurus; saying, this dance was composed of immense stones, of a mystical value and medicinal virtues, brought from Africa by the giants of old. Merlin was employed to effect the transportation of this wonderful structure; an errand which he accomplished by the use of certain engines, (not described, but we may suppose them similar to those since used in the removal of the obelisk of Luxor by the French,) after a bloody battle with the natives, who cared more for their ancient monument than do the degenerate Orientals.

This same Aurelius is described as "magnificent in his presents, constant at his devotions, temperate in all respects, and above all things hating a lie." A description which shows that the original author knew well what goes to the making of a hero. We are told accordingly, that there was none that durst encounter with him."

An odd instance of generosity is given, with a hint of the politics of the time. Arthgallo, coming to the throne, endeavored to depress the nobility, and advance the baser sort of people. But the nobility deposed him, and made his brother Elidure king in his stead, afterwards surnamed the pious, on account of his kinduess to the exiled king. After five years' reign, Elidure, watching his opportunity, secretly conveyed Arthgallo to his own bed-chamber, at the same time giving out that he himself was very ill. The first nobility coming to visit him on this account, he gave orders that they should come into his chamber one by

one, softly and without noise. In obedience to this command they entered his house singly. But Elidure had given charge to his servants, who were placed ready for the purpose, to take each of them as they entered, and cut off their heads, unless they would again submit themselves to Arthgallo. This (gentle) method having succeeded, Elidure recrowned his brother with his own hands, and for his extraordinary affection obtained the surname of the Pious. The story finishes appropriately with the assu rance that Arthgallo made amends for his former maladministration, "by depressing men of the baser sort, and advancing men of good birth."

King Arthur figures as a hero, but with only a warlike interest about him. We hear no word of his Round Table, or of his knights of high emprize. Queen Guenever seasons not the page with her jealousies, but merely plays the woman by marrying a nephew when Arthur is long absent; and she is called Queen Ganhumara, so does not seem like an old acquaintance. Arthur tells wonderful stories of some lakes or ponds in Britain, and in particular, we learn, that our wellbeloved Loch Lomond, which we have always thought of as mirroring the blue heavens most unpretendingly, is, in fact, a phenomenon, containing sixty islands, and receiving into its bosom sixty rivers, which empty themselves into the sea by no more than one mouth. There is also an equal number of rocks in the islands, and of eagles' nests in those rocks. And a neighboring pond (Katrine perhaps), is exactly twenty feet square, and five feet deep, having in the four corners four different kinds of fishes, none of which ever stray into any other part of the pond. And these two are only specimens of the wonderful lakes and ponds treated of in this history.

The speeches, whether of exhortation, defiance, complaint, or submission, are all given with Phitarchian accuracy, and the conclusion we draw from them is, that the eloquence of antiquity, though of a swelling and a flowery tone, was far less wordy than that of our own day. In Merlin's prophecy we find many dark sayings, and among the rest, these : "Women shall become serpents in their gait, and all their motions shall be full