set with precious stones. In short, as I said before, the scene might well have appeared an Eastern poet's dream, or some magic vision, in the wonderful tales of an Arabian night.

"When we drew near, I found the netire front of the building open to the garden; the roof being sustained by a double range of columns, the height of which measured eleven Persian yards (a Persian yard being forty four inches; hence they rose upwards of forty feet. Each column shoots up from the united backs of four lions, of white marble; and the shafts of the columns rising from these extraordinary bases, were covered with arabasque patterns, and foliages, in looking-glass gilding, and painting; some twisting spirally; others winding in golden wreaths, or running into lozenges, stars, connecting circles, and I know not what intricacies of fancy and ingenious workmanship. This ceiling was equally iris-hued, with flowers, fruits, birds, butterflies, and even couching tigers, in gold, silver, and painting, amidst hundreds of intermingling compartments of glittering mirrors. At some distance, within this open chamber, are two more pillars of similar taste to the range; and from their capitals springs a spacious arch, forming the entrance to a vast interior saloon; in which all the caprices and labors and cost of Eastern magnificence, have been lavished to an incredible prodigality. The pillars, the walls, the ceiling, might be a study for ages, for designers in these gorgeous labyrinthine or naments. The floors of both apartments were covered with the richest carpets, of the era in which the building was constructed, the age of Shah Abbas, and were as fresh as if just laid down; there needs no other proof of the purity of the climate. From one angle of the interior chamber, two low folding-doors opened into a very spacious and lofty hall, the sides of which were hung with pictures of various dimensions, most of them descriptive of convivial scenes; and the doors, and pannels of the room near the floor, being also emblazoned with the same merry-making subjects, fully declared the purpose of the place. But a very odd

addition was made to the ornaments of the wall. Little recesses spotted its lower range, taking the shape of bottles, flaggons, goblets, and other useful vessels, all equally indispensable, in those days, at a l'ersian feast. Very different from the temperance which now presides there; and how directly the reverse of the abstemiousness and its effects, that marked the board of the great Cyrus!

"Six pictures of a very large size, occupy the walls of this banquetingchamber, from the ceiling, to within eight or ten feet of the floor. Four of these represent royal entertainments, given to different embassadors during the reigns of Shah Abbas the First, alias, the Great; and of Shah Thamas, or Tamasp, as it is sometimes written. The two other pictures are battle pieces. Every one of these different subjects are portrayed with the most scrupulous exactness, as far as the still life could be copyed. The golden vases, and other vessels in the banqueting scenes, with the musical instruments, and every detail in the dresses of the persons present, are painted with an almost flemish precision. Wine (the peculiar bane of the Sefi race) appears the great vehicle of enjoyment at these feasts; an air of carouse being in all the figures, and the goblets disposed with the most anacreontic profusion. The guests are also entertained with a variety of dancing girls, whose attitudes and costumes sufficiently show the second vice of the times, and explain the countries whence they come.

"The warlike pictures are defined with equal nicety; the trappings of the horses, the arms of the heroes, and even to the blood red wounds of the combatants. One of the battles represents the troops of the valiant Shah Tamasp the First the son of Shah Ismail, the beginner of the Sefi dynasty) engaging the troops of Sultan Soli man. The Persian king is depicted in the act of cleaving a grim Janisary from head to saddle bow and the weapon having nearly reached the last point of its aim, the artist has marked its dreadful journey down the body of the man, with a long red streak. following the royal blade. But, nevertheless,

tries. By their extraordinary efforts the Bible has been translated into sixtythree different languages, and the Apostles-endowed as it were afresh with the gift of tongues-have been circulatted through the most distant parts of the world. There is a spirit of inquiry on foot which can no longer be repressed, and the happiness of mankind will depend upon the direction which shall be given to it. However great the good which this society may have a chieved, it has not been without a certain alloy of evil, which was suggested as long ago as the time of Charles the First, by a quaint old writer, whose authority on such a subject ought to have great weight. "The design may be good to reduce the price of the Bible to so small a volume, partly to make it the more portable in men's pockets, and partly to bring down the price, so that the poor may better compass the purchase. But know that vilis in the Latin tongue, in the first sense, signifieth what is cheap; in the second sense what is base. And thus the small price of the Bible hath caused the small prizing of the Bible."

**

**What a different animal an Englishman is at home and abroad! Abroad, he cannot move a step without abusing every thing and every body, while he sings an everlasting Io Pean in praise of Old England; at home, he rails, with equal violence, at all the customs and institutions of his own country. At home he is a lover of liberty, and an advocate for the equal rights of mankind; abroad, he acts, like the Roman proconsuls in their provinces, as if the greatest part of the human species were brought into the world for no other purpose but to wait upon his pleasure. In lighter matters, too, the distinction is equally striking. Abroad he is an indefatigable sight-seer, and will not pass through the obscurest town without an accurate scrutiny of every thing that a laquais de place can point out to his notice;-at home he toses entirely this thirst for information, and I verily believe there are many Englishmen who have lived half their lives in London, and yet know less of its curiosities than they do of Rome, Athens, or Thebes. An Eng

lish friend, who has visited three quarters of the globe, called on me this morning just as I was sitting out upon my daily pilgrimage, and upon my applying to him to direct me in the selection of the worthiest objects of curiosity, he candidly acknowledged that, excepting Westminster Abbey, the Tower, the British Museum, and Exeter Change, which he had been taken to see as a school-boy, he had never devoted a single morning to the examination of London. "Come then," said I, "you shall accompany me today;"-and so off we set. For the first time in his life he saw St. Paul's; for though he had often looked at it through the fog of Fleet-street, he had never surveyed it in all its details with the attention which so noble a structure deserves. St. Paul's is only second to St. Peter's; and in comparing them we must not forget what the English with justice boast of-that while it required 12 architects, 19 popes, and 145 years to complete the building of St. Peter's, St. Paul's was began and finished in the short space of 35 years, under one Bishop, Dr. Campton, and by one architect, Sir Christopher Wren, who laid the first stone in the year 1675, and lived to see the last stone of the lantern placed by the hands of his son, in the year 1710. Wren, the son of the architect, in his "Parentalia” relates, that "in the beginning of the new works of St. Paul's, an incident was taken notice of by some people as a memorable omen, when Sir Christopher in person had set out, upon the place, the dimensions of the great dome, and fixed upon the centre, a common labourer was ordered to bring a flat stone from the heaps of rubbish, (such as should first come to hand) to be laid for a mark and direction to the masons; the stone, which was imme diately brought and laid down for that purpose, happened to be a piece of a grave stone, with nothing remaining of the inscription but this simple word in large capitals-RESURGAM." This accidental hint suggested to Sir Christopher the idea of the Phoenix, which he placed on the south portico, with the same word inscribed beneath it.

Nothing seems more difficult than to

get at the dimensions of churches accurately; and indeed the knowledge is not worth the difficulty. Scarcely any two writers agree in their comparative statements of St. Peter's and St. Paul's. Wren's "Parentalia" and Pennant's "London,"-both works of authority are directly at issue on almost every point of admeasurement. Where then is a poor traveller to look for the truth?

If the outside of St. Paul's is inferior to St. Peter's, the inside is more so. As we traversed the dreary dirty aisles, -"every thing about them denoting a careless desolation,"-we thought of the difference of care and culture which the Roman temple receives from its Catholic guardians. The monuments are, with a few exceptions, a disgrace to the church;-mere lumps of masonry, and fit only for the lime-kiln. One of the exceptions is buried in the vaults below,-Dr. Donne in his shroud. A short time before his death he dressed himself in that funeral habit, and shutting his eyes like a departed person, was drawn in that attitude by a skilful painter; and this drawing served as a pattern for the tomb. The monument might be raised to the light of day at a trifling expense; but it seems that no part of the revenues of the church are to be expended for its decoration. Here too is buried the flower of chivalry-Sir Philip Sidney; and here you are shewn the coffin of the great English Admiral Nelson, the glory of their navy;-but characters like Sidney and Nelson belong to mankind in general; and no inhabitant of any country can look without some inward stirrings of emotion upon the mortal remains of departed heroism. Here, also, in an obscure corner of the same vaults, beneath a common flagstone, are interred the remains of Sir Christopher Wren; and on the wall above is an inscription written by his son, concluding with the following words, which, however, have no appropriateness in the dark hole where they are placed :

Lector, si monumentum requiris,
Circumspice.

The founder of the fabric surely merited a more conspicuous record of his

name and honours. Why should not the "after-thought" which his son has given in the "Farentalia," be suitably engraved, and occupy its proper place under the great dome ?

Lector, si tumulum requiris,
Despice.

Ti monumentum,
CIRCUMSPICE.

* I have been much interested during my residence in London by visiting different places of education. I have already explored Westminster and the Charter-house, and I hope soon to make excursions to Eaton and Harrow.

The Bell system of instruction is established at the Charter-house; but however well adapted this plan may be for communicating quickly and generally the first rudiments of knowledge, it seems very ill calculated for the higher branches of education. I have heard the extraordinary success of the Charter-house scholars at Oxford and Cambridge adduced to prove the advantages of this mode of teaching; but I am inclined to believe this success has been rather in spite of the system, than in consequence of it, and that it may with justice be attributed to the ability of the present masters, and to their unwearied exertions to supply, by private lessons those deficiencies which must necessarily be inseparable from a system of mutual instruction amongst the boys themselves. But the peculiar excellence of the Charter-house, in my estimation, consists in its rejection of corporal punishment. Will it be believed, that in the year 1821, the common practice in the public schools of England, is to subject the scholars of all ages, from nine to nineteen, to the daily infliction of a species of chastisement, at which decency revolts, and common sense is shocked. The question of the necessity of corporal punishment has been often agit ted. There are many who contend, from the mixture in the composition of our nature, that while there is a portion of man to be instructed, there is something also of the brute to be chastised. This is surely a wrong view of the subject, for we find the fiercest and most untractable of the brute creation are ta

med and taught, not by blows and violence, but by a patient perseverance in the mild arts of persuasion. I cannot believe that there is any human being so much more untractable than the brutes, as to be governable only by the fear of the lash. But, however this be, it will scarcely be denied by the warmest advocates of the birch, that the rod ought to be confined to that early age, when the child is unable to comprehend a better argument; or, if ever resorted to afterwards, that it should be limited to such offences as may seem to deserve a degrading and disgraceful punishment. Solomon's memorable apothegm, which the child may"rue that is yet unborn," sufficiently defines the age marked out for this mode of correction, and it must not be forgotten, that his maxim is addressed to parents, whose feelings may fairly be touched to mitigate a too literal interpretation of his meaning. In England, however, it is not to the age of froward infancy, nor to flagrant derelictions of morality, that the infliction of the rod is confined. It is the regular, orthodox, established discipline; and whole schools, from the highest class to the lowest, are daily and hourly stripped, exposed, and flogged, by dozen. So much, indeed, is it taken for granted that no merit can ensure an escape from all share of flagellation, that I am told, birch forms a regular item in the yearly charge for the education of every boy who is sent to Eton.

The consequences of persevering in this system of flogging, have been, in some instances, melancholy enough. It is only a short time ago that a scholar of Westminster, belonging to the highest class, cut his throat, out of shame at having been subjected to what he considered so ignominious a humiliation; and though the act of suicide was incomplete, it was quite sufficient to indicate the effect produced by the punishment upon the mind of the sufferer. There has since been a more fatal catastrophe at the same seminary; though it is not equally certain that this was connected with the same cause. Nothing shews more strongly the difficulty of changing long-estab

lished customs, than the continuance of such a system of scholastic discipline to the present time. As long as the reign of Charles the Second, the eloquent South, in a sermon composed expressly to be preached before the King at a school-meeting in Westminster-abbey, pours out a torrent of reprehension on this subject, which, if preaching could ever effect any thing, must long since have led to some reformation in this particular. After doubting whether there may not be some natures, in which "austerity” must be used, he proceeds:-" But how to do this discreetly, and to the benefit of him who is so unhappy as to need it, requires, in my poor opinion, a greater skill, judgment, and experience, than the world generally imagines, and than, I am sure, most masters of schools can pretend to be masters of-I mean those Plagosi Orbilii, those executioners rather than instructors of youth; persons fitter to lay about them in a coach or a cart, or to discipline boys before a Spartan altar, or rather upon it, than to have any thing to do with a Christian school. I should give those pedagogical Jehus the same advice which the poet says Phoebus gave his son Phaeton-parcere stimulis. Stripes and blows are the last and basest remedy, and scarce ever fit to be used but upon such as have their brains in their backs; and have souls so dull and stupid, as to serve for little else but to keep their bodies from putrefaction.

For

"Let not the punishment of the body be so managed as to make a wound which shall rankle and fester in the soul; that is, let not children whom Nature itself would bear up by an innate generous principle of emulation, be exposed to the scorn and contempt of their equals and emulators. this is, instead of rods, to chastise them with scorpions; and it is the most direct way to stupefy and besot, and make them utterly regardless of themselves, and all that is praise-worthy, besides that it will leave on their minds such inward regrets as are never to be qualified or worn off."

And yet such is the force of habit, that in a large company, where this subject was lately discussed, I could