energy and decision of character. When Chatterton published the produce of three years of systematic forgery, he proved himself to be the slave of a former bad impulse-a great mind with but a faint perception of liberty and he "perished in his pride." Charles I. was, I think, the victim of a former good impulse, which showed itself in a false perception of right, and he perished in his humility. Of the highest character, which is greater than itself, of yesterday, there are many instances as shown by the faint impressions of their lives that they have left behind, but it requires a thorough knowledge of his private character to mark out any one individual as an instance. But the principle is one which we should all endeavour to act upon. Energy is sometimes natural, but it is also to be acquired. A strong wresting of the will from a natural proneness to take things as they come, constitutes energy of a high order. We ought to rise out of the past while we live and feed upon it: looking upon it as an instructor-not bowing to it as a despot. Perfection is above us, and we should strive to mount the ladder, knowing that men may " rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.' It is not therefore at all inconsistent with present energy to look back into the past, though to fall back into it is. In consequence of the many changes which are continually taking place, not only without, in the world's relation to us, but also within, in our relation to ourselves as well as to the world, this look ing back must often be a very interesting as well as very profitable duty: the retrospect will throw brightness on the prospect, if we take our best acts and impulses, and strive to excel them. "Let the dead past bury its dead," but let it engrave memorials on the tombstones of worthy acts, that the present may read and learn. To act in the living present is not the whole duty of man, but so to act as to be inwardly sensible of advance. The mere moving round in a petty circle of old habits is action, and maybe freedom; but it is a very French species of liberty, if we do not prevent old feelings from becoming our rulers. The horse that works the thrashing-machine moves round ever over the same ground, but man should keep widening his eternal circle.

A DESCRIPTION.

A placid, waveless lake, bosomed in sedge,
With dark brown woodlands sloping to its edge,
Whose lengthened shadows darken o'er the clear,
And sadden all the corners of the mere.
A plain of calm still waters, crystal-clear,
In which, as in a mirror, do appear
Shingles, and mossy stones, and gravel-deeps,
And mazes, where the tangled duck-weed sleeps.
And overhead a sky of deepest blue,
Fretted with fleecy clouds, which shining through,
The sun looks downward with a milder light
Upon a spot so lovely and so bright.

A little fancy skiff, with mimic oars,
That scarcely sips the waters in its course,
Wherein to sit and muse away the day,
Watching the airy clouds upon their way;
Seeing the whirling bubbles in your wake,
And peering in the bosom of the lake.
And now and then, when impulse bids, to slide
The tiny oar over the shallop's side,

And plunge it in the tranquil, sleeping stream,
So still, so quiet, it did impious seem
To ruffle it. To hear the rowlock's sound
Re-echo o'er the water-waste around,
And dying smothered in the woodland shade;
And then to pause again, and lift the blades
Out of the margent water, and to see
The pearly pendants shining goldenly,
And dipping in sweet circles, widening o'er
The lake's broad bosom, to the reedy shore.
To hear the waters bubbling at the keel
With soothing softness, onward as you steal.
Delicious idleness. Beneath the trees
One well might fancy Nymphs and Dryades
Forth issuing from the scented woodland brake
To bathe and greet their sisters of the lake.

We beg to inform our subscribers that the numbers 14 to 17 inclusive, are to be obtained either from Messrs. Whittaker & Co., Ave Maria Lane, London; Mr. Vincent,. Oxford; or of Messrs. Crossley and Billington, Rugby.

No. XIX.

HONOUR.

And

Sir Walter Scott says somewhere that the ancients had no idea of the law of honour, as we understand it, but that it was the essential growth of the age of chivalry. If this be so, of course it is not a natural feeling implanted in every human breast, in some less, in others more, but entirely artificial. One instance of something like honour that I recollect among the ancients, is in the 24th book of the Iliad, where Antilochus refuses the prize because he had upset Ulysses in the chariot race, who would otherwise have gained it. It is true the greatest of the Homeric heroes, more however, generally speaking, when portrayed by the tragedians than by Homer himself, have no objection to any dirty work. Plato thinks it worse to be cheated than to cheat. Virgil gives the epithet "generosus," the nearest word in Latin for "a man of honour," to an individual who, he tells you a few lines lower, poisoned his arrows. But still I do not think that Sir Walter Scott's diction is true in its fullest extent; doubtless it was fostered and brought more prominently forward by chivalry, but still I do not think it was altogether the growth of it. For I scarcely think a man could draw the character of Neoptolemus in the Philoctetes, without some idea of honour; the whole play turns on it. Besides, one of the most beautiful stories of honour I know is one of low life, as it is called; and not only of low life, but among the wild, simple, and barely civilized inhabitants of the Highlands of Scotland. It is this: Among the chiefs who were exiled and had their property confiscated after '45, was Lochiel, the chief of the Camerons; his tenants were of course obliged to pay the rent to the government agent, but, poor as they were, they also continued to send a second rent to their rightful though exiled chief. The most pleasing aspect of honour is when we see it defending right and succouring distress. The idea of

gentleman is certainly the offspring of the age of chivalry; it appropriated honour to itself; and thus it was, I imagine, that honour came to be considered as only of the same age.

A strange thing is this honour: many persons are moved by this word honour who are not by anything else; are prevented from doing wrong, not because it is wrong, but because it is dishonourable; although of course what is wrong must always be dishonourable also. But there is a great misuse of honour's name; a false kind of honour, that has usurped the name and passes current in the world for the true coin. This kind of honour is somewhat

in vogue among us here, and it is in allusion to it, I suppose, that Hartley Coleridge, in a poem on Dr. Arnold, says of public schools

Where the lawless will erects

Honour's gay temple in the place of God. But it was not this kind of honour or gentlemanliness that Dr. Arnold meant when he said that he wished his boys to be "Christian gentlemen," surely not.

There is a most beautiful story told of Diocles the Syracusan, which is something very much like honour, though perhaps rather what Grote would call "constitutional morality" very much developed; perhaps it is not much to the point here, but I hope its beauty will excuse its irrelevance; and it will not be an unfitting termination to this very rambling and pointless article.-Diocles had caused a law to be passed that nobody should appear in the market-place in arms, on pain of death. On the news of a hostile invasion he marched out with his fellow citizens to oppose it. Suddenly recalled by a rumour that the enemy were in the city, he rushed back, found them in the forum, and eventually dislodged them. After the battle a friend remarked to him that he had thus broken his own law, by appearing in the forum in arms. Nay rather," said he," I will satisfy it thus," and stabbed himself to the 'heart.

66

my

Does the world lack new subjects? or does brain lack originality? All the roads along which I might ride my broken-winded Pegasus are crowded with so many much better steeds, that one feels ashamed of a wretched jade of a horse. Shall I call one of the sacred nine from the lofty heights of holy Parnassus toto-broken down, by jingo

-the narrow

space of a Rugby study? Far be from me such profanation; rhymes ever fail me, and my rhythm is not over-melodious. Some laugh at us for presuming to criticise the productions of far greater genius than our own; others laugh at us because our productions are not equal to what they fancy their own would be: some because we are too ponderous; others because we are light and silly; some because we are too local; others because we are too universal; some despise us as a Rugby Magazine; others as a Rugby newspaper. Seeing therefore that diversity of opinions hath, in colloquial phrase, stumped us up, that if we touched upon the hero of the large forehead, and Elizabethan coat, called Shakspere, we should be termed presumptuous, if upon Ma's and Pa's parental feelings, spooney and mild would be the epithets given to us, if upon any -ology in the world, impudence and humbug would be imputed to us; seeing then we are in such wretched plight, let us try a subject never tried before, and say what we may have to say about

·The Rugby Register and the Rugby Cricket Scores, interesting as such publications as these always must be, both to us who are here now, and to those who, with their names left recorded here, have themselves long since deserted the scene. It is true that, though the second has an everlasting hold on Rugby from the pleasure we feel in reading of our ancient cricket deeds, yet that in the first the greater part of the early names seem to us a dull blank catalogue. But if we can only now imagine to ourselves the delight that some years hence we might find in casting our eyes over the same part that pleases us now, but which will seem dull to the next generation, certainly we shall not grudge the space allotted to olden times.

But as we draw nigher to our own age what a picture presents itself at almost every name : now we may come across two who were new fellows the same half, and whom we remember as connected thenceforth by the closest friendship; there is the name of him whose sunny look yet dwells in our memory, and seems to chase away the grief we may feel for another, whom we once know, and who now has past away; there may be the name of him who did us good in days when we would have done ourselves harm, whose kindness we then slighted, but can now look back upon with regretful gratitude; there may be the name of one who stands yet vivid before us as a leading spirit for evil, and who has much wrong to answer for here; we may not have heard of him since; but we recall what good he had in him, and willingly bring ourselves to the belief that he has changed; and above all, the names of our own friends, who have acquired by absence tenfold power over our thoughts, and whose names thus met here recall many a pleasant walk, many a free open conversation, much good mutually imparted and received. surely this is a far higher and purer pleasure than, in conning the pages of the Cricket Scores, calling to mind the eleven of one year, the batting of another, or the fielding of a third.

Again, turning over to the last pages of the Register, and to the names of those who have gained prizes here, we may feel a far nobler pride in seeing among them men who have since reflected much honour on Rugby and more on themselves, than in contemplating the self-complacent record of our victories at Lord's. At the same time nothing is further from my intention than to disparage cricket, an enjoyment to me fully as much as to any one else; besides the Eugby Cricket Scores have been my frequent study. Only let it not be valued above its due right; and if many of us knew what far greater and better pleasures there are, which are even easier to lay hold of, it never would be. It may be that in this article the feelings may seem to have been over strong to many; but many too, I would fain hope, have experienced something like them.

Leave to bring in the Reform bill was obtained by a majority of one. By the same small majority a motion was carried in French States-general in '89, which proved one of the chief causes of the revolution: I allude to the one which decided that the three estates should meet in one chamber, thereby giving the superior numbers of the Tiers Etat an undue preponderance. But there is one of these seemingly trivial, though really important circumstances, which appears to me not to have received the notice that was due to it, and that it must produce effects, even if it has not yet done so, of the last importance, both to the world in general and England in particular, no true Rugbæan can doubt. In fact, so little notice has it received from historians that it rests almost entirely upon tradition; but uni versal tradition is always allowed to have truth in it; and if this tradition is not universal now of course it will be as soon as it is published. The fact that I am alluding to is, that Rugby School owes its existence to a pair of silk stockings; and this is how it came to pass: In the days of good Queen Bess there lived in London a certain grocer, in a small way of business, Lawrence Sheriffe by name; he happened to have a relation a sailor, who, on his return one day from foreign parts, presented Lawrence Sheriffe with a pair of silk stockings as a great curiosity, they were in fact the first ever seen in England. Now it struck Lawrence Sheriffe very forcibly that if he presented the aforesaid stockings to the Queen he might do himself much good: this he managed to do:

CLASSICAL EDUCATION.

It is a very common question, one indeed which we meet with almost daily in our intercourse with others, namely, "What use in life is served by the education, I mean the classical part of it, with which we are occupied in our school discipline ?" The apparent difficulty of meeting this objection supplies, I am persuaded, a weighty argument in the favour of those who wish to silence their reason with a plausible defence of that against which almost common sense rebels. And perhaps the difficulty is more than merely plausible, and one which requires more attention than might be anticipated, for it does seem extraordinary that those who do not intend to perfect and mature at the university that career of which the rudimentary portion has been commenced at school, still are kept employed with Latin and Greek authors, at which too many will never look after leaving here. With regard to mathematics, it is at once obvious that the objection will not hold good, and so it is rarely produced; for that is a science whose influence is extended over every department of political life, and social intercourse of man with man. Of this branch of the subject, therefore, we shall say nothing, but turn at once to the more usual and more valid exception which is taken to a classical discipline at school. Those who are averse to this kind of reading generally tell you that they never intend to be reading men; and never purpose to have anything to do with Greek and Latin in future life. If interrogated as to the cause of this, they will probably reply,-We intend to live a life of ease and quiet, perhaps as a country gentleman on our own property, perhaps in any other line or profession, frequently mercantile. And it is not to