It is easier to to write upon. to write upon it.

say write than to fix a subject It is easier to fix a subject than We are at present in the first of these two predicaments, that of having received the vague command, and not having the faintest notion of what to do, with but little prospect of emerging into the still more difficult case, how to do it. It must be confessed that we enter the career of school authorship on rather hard conditions, both as to subject and style. "Awfully slow" says one, for whom Ivanhoe has had no interest; "Not half so good as Bell's Life" says another, whose notions of letter-press, exclusive of the Latin Grammar, are confined chiefly to that soul-improving periodical. On the other hand "trivial," "boyish," will be the epithets applied to our production by those who deign not to reflect that the bare fact of writing is, in itself, an incitement to escape from the worst part of boyishness, triviality. Further than this it would be hardly possible, certainly not desirable, that we should go; for though it might not be beneficial to carry out, in its perverted form, the motto "Puer sum nihil puerilis a me alienum puto," (we quote from the Latin Grammar) yet after all perhaps the worst of two evils is pedantry; as we see that early fruit blossoms are often frost bitten, and that late harvests fill more granaries than early ones.

However it is for our school-fellows we write, and if such efforts as school-boys can make, shall have any effect in drawing attention to subjects of general as well as school interest, and in doing away with some errors or prejudices incidental to school life, those efforts will have been repaid. This is not altogether impossible; for the fact of the pen and ink marks of their school fellows being immortalized in print, may induce them to read what, though dull in itself, may show that there are subjects which, in the minds of some, equal in interest the result of the Derby, and that there are books written in another style than the criminally-interesting, of which last we are thankful to say that our personal experience is confined to their red covers.

We beg to offer the town our congratulations on its late happy deliverance from the perils and dangers of the election. Certainly Rugby can no more lay claim to the epithets of "mildeyed" and "melancholy;" we shall hencefor

ward look upon it with distrust, even in its calmest moments, now we have once seen it in such a furious mood. Its state for the last week or two has reminded us of Eatanswill, as Mr. Pickwick describes it in his papers; nay more, we are persuaded that, under the fictitious name of Eatanswill, that gentleman depicted no less a place than Rugby itself. Our view is supported by the following passage, which occurs in the commencement of the thirteenth chapter: "In Mr. Pickwick's note book, we can just trace an entry of the fact, that the places of himself and followers were booked by the Norwich coach; but this entry was afterwards lined through, as if for the purpose of concealing even the direction in which the borough is situated." Here we have the editor's own testimony that the word was lined through; is it not then possible, nay, in the name of all the critics of all ages, is it not rather certain that Mr. Pickwick really wrote Warwick, and that the editor is mistaken in reading it Norwich? Nothing can be more probable; indeed we could ourselves write the word and line it through in such a way that no one should be able to tell which place we intended to desigAs to the editor's assumption that Eatanswill was a borough, we consider it altogether unwarranted. Granting then that our conjecture is true, we suppose that he took the Warwick coach to Southam, which is in the direct line between London and Warwick, and proceeded from that place on the top of our old friend the "Pig," to the Town Arms (or, what is the same thing, the Lawrence Sheriff) Inn, Rugby. Can anything be more satisfactory? Indeed we are so pleased with our critical acumen displayed in our happy emendation, that we should have forwarded it to the editor to be inserted in the next edition of the P. Papers had not the RUGBEAN appeared so opportunely to offer a more convenient medium for the speedy publication of this our first essay in the paths of criticism.

nate.

To the Editor of the Rugbæan. DEAR MR. EDITOR,

I am not a universal critic; I do not laugh at one fellow because he always wears a bad hat, nor at another because the patterns on his trowsers are large; but there are two classes

of fellows very common in the school, who are an object of my unlimited contempt.

He

The first of these is of fellows who pretend they are going into the Army. I will give you an example. There is Jenkins-Jenkins you know that great buck at Evans's. We all know who Jenkins is-he is the son of Jenkins —of the firm of Jenkins, Jones, and Co., Wine Merchants, who carry on a thriving trade in the city. When the old gentleman dies, young Jenkins, who is now flogged in the upper fourth, will step into the business (which I am assured by good authorities is a good £8,000 per annum.) But that will not satisfy this speedy young swell. He would as soon own to it as own that he was a thief- What does he do then? Why he wastes two or three hours a week learning how to storm entrenchments, and strengthen a fort a la Vauban. may constantly be seen walking in the close or quad., with a huge Vauban under his armand thus Jenkins has the reputation of going into the army. "Jenkins," says Smith?"oh bless you he's going into the army-he learns fortification"-how far wiser would it be if Jenkins were to learn book keeping, or how to use the ledger. The other class is of fellows who "would be clever if they worked." There is a fellow in the upper fourth (we will call him Snooks if you like). How often I have heard fellows say "Oh if he'd work, he'd have been in the 6th long ago." As it is the individual in question does not work, and so I have no opportunity of questioning the statement. Snooks came in 47, (straight from Dr. Canebairn's school at Brixham, of which he was head, and is reported to have been the strongest fellow there) he was placed in the lower fourth. Snooks is now in the upper fourth, and yet if I venture to assert that Snooks has been slow in getting out of his form, a dozen fellows at least cry out Snooks would be in the 6th if he had worked? Now if this is true it places the unhappy Snooks in a far more contemptible position than if his abilities were not over bright (which I believe and hope to be the case). I cannot help thinking that if fellows would leave off saying-such or such a one is clever if he would but work, because he has been in one form three years, it would be far better for their own and Snooks's reputation.

66

WIT AND HUMOUR.

Humour puts before us the character as a whole; wit seizes the salient points and turns them to its purpose. Humour cannot show malice; in wit, malice often, though not necessarily, is the chief ingredient. Humour represents component parts to us, as they are when united; wit brings into contrast things otherwise alien to each other, but makes them conduce to its one end-ridicule. Punning therefore belongs to a witty man. Butler is essentially witty, nor could a humourous man have ever written Hudibras. Humour would have been candid, and given us the many good, as well as the ridiculous points, which marked the character of the Puritans. Hence it is that humour (to borrow a phrase from the reviewers) borders upon pathos; aud the best chapters Dickens has written, show pathos as remarkable as his humour in other parts. Sir John Falstaff, and Sancho Panza, are perhaps the most humourous characters ever produced; the circumstances in which they are placed arise out of their characters, not their characters out of the circumstances. Humour in description of life will do more lasting good than wit. Somewhere in Burke, there is a picture drawn of the perfect equality among the clergy then existing; but when we remember the simple Adams in the purse-proud Parson Trulliber's kitchen, the vision is spoilt to us. Fielding's humour was greater than his wit; Smollett's wit, except perhaps in Humphrey Clinker, greater than his humour. Adams offers to walk 20 miles in order to read his sermon against vanity; an exquisite trait of humour. Captain Marryatt's heroes are wittily placed in a hundred predicaments, and as wittily got out of them. Sydney Smith was witty; his wit even bordered upon sarcasm.-Sed hactenus hæc.

A LEGEND.

The wind it howls round turret and tower,
All over the sky the black clouds lower;
In fact it is just that sort of a day
When (if we believe what the story books say)
One ought not to feel surprised in the least
At meeting a bogie, a ghost, or a beast.
On just such a day,

Be the time what it may,
That has not the least to do with my lay,

A cavalier gay

Was making his way

To where in the distance a manor house grey In the middle of rooks and of elm-trees lay; Now this old manor house it is time you should hear Had been thought to be haunted for many a year, And our brave cavalier, to show he'd no fear, Had accepted a bet, that despite of all sprites, Who always turn out of their bed in the nights,

In that self same house one night he would sleep,

In fact that he rather desired a peep

At the terrible barber, who every one said,
In a room of the turret had once lain dead.

He got to the house in the afternoon
And found his way to the dining room soon,
And thinking his courage t'was well to revive
The more that his appetite seemed all alive
He ordered a capital dinner at five.
The dinner was over before it was six,
And then he began some toddy to mix,
And after the toddy, till half-past nine,
He sat cosily sipping his neat port wine;
Now when one sits soaking three hours or more
One can't see quite so straight as before,
And so altogether, this poor fellows head-
Being none of the strongest, was fitter for bed
Than for wandering about in the passages dark
With the vague desire of enjoying a "lark."

The rain drops beat the roof full drearily,
And through the boughs the wind sighs wearily,
Amid the clouds the moon's pale fitful ray
Could scarcely pierce to where the mansion lay;
The owl whoops forth his melancholy cry
The casements rattle as the blasts rush by ;
When staggering up the stairs was seen
The cavalier with drunken mien;
He thought he reached the fearful door
Where that dread deed in days of yore
Was done; he turned the handle round,
There issued forth a mystic sound,
As though a man in mortal strife
Was gasping forth the breath of life;
This might have cowed a heart of steel,
But O, what must the stranger feel,
When in the richest Irish brogue
And with an oath then much in vogue,
A voice cried out-By gosh "I'll shave ye
Unless in quietude ye lave me";

He fell, and till the morning light,
In drunken sleep he passed the night.
And now, gentle reader, the tale 1 will tell
Of how all these awful adventures befel:

Our friend missed his way, went to the wrong room,
And instead of the barber, fell in with the groom.

Now of all this true story, the long and the short is, Don't sit drinking till nine, when you know that the port is

Too much for your head-Don't wander at night Through strange houses, at all events not without light,

And besides all these things may be gathered in fine
That Phantoms are often but "spirits of wine."

Silence reigns around us falling,
And the echoes of the day,
Mourning for their brief existence,
Die in darkness far away.
Silence reigns, and on the spirit
Steals the eloquence of night,
Picturing visions that we cannot
Image to a broader light.
Visions of the past and present
Blending gently into one,

Those who still are journeying onward,

Those whose race ou earth is run:

Angel wings around us hover,
Angel forms around, above,
For the midnight watch is given
To the spirits that we love.
Earth is silent, and the heaver 3
Wrapt in deeper silence far,
Show on their eternal pavement
Many a little golden star.

Thro' the tracts of ether journeying
Rides the crescent of the moon,
Craves she silence, redemanding
For her light an answering boon.
Craves she silence, and tis granted,
For in earth and air and sky,
There is one unbroken stillness,
One entire tranquility.

Now calm and smooth as summer seas, now undulant emotions

All its troubled depths upheaving, is the unread riddle -Love,

Undefiled as a dewdrop sliding down from silver stars, Ere it kiss the tainting earth, to the happy pure in heart,

Welling through the dormant energies that sleep but dims and mars

In the fallow human bosom, wedding severed part to part.

Wrapt in self we are but empty; rich, when truly single hearted

Friends can move to mellow music sweetly set in mutual veins,

Chiming alway, never jarring, yet distinct and clear as parted

From its silver sister treble deeper echoed bass remains.

"The moon sways ocean," &c.

—Bulwer Lytton's King Arthur.

THE THREE CHURCHES OF THE WEST.

On

There is not in the land we live in a more desolate tract than the whole north-western coast of Cornwall, from Tintazel, where stand the ruins of King Arthur's Castle, to the twin headlands and extreme points of England, Cape Cornwall, and the Land's End. entering this barren district cultivation almost ceases. Dark frowning hills and wild moors stretch away as far as the eye can reach; the towns are few and far between; the hand of man seems not to have touched, nor his foot to have trodden this solitary region. All is silent.

But there are spots even there pre-eminent for their desolation and loneliness, and the Bay of St. Piran is one of these. Of large size, it is bounded by two projecting points running out far into the sea, and opens inwards into a circle of which the inner wall is composed partly of tall cliffs and partly of hills of shifting sand; these latter rise to a height which quite equals, if not exceeds, that of the usual sea wall of stone, while between the two flows a stream of strongly metallic water. A few rude cottages of the fishers and miners, nestling as for protection beneath the rocks on one side of the bay, alone mark the presence of man for many miles. But it was not always so. Once there was not in all the land a more beautiful little tract than this; green meadows and stately oakwoods were there, with all those other sea-side beauties which still so often meet the traveller on the southern coast.

In the fifth century, A.D., so runs the story, an Irish Missionary, of the name of St. Piran, came from his native land to evangelize Cornwall. He landed in the bay which still bears his name, and while his companions became scattered through the length and breadth of the land, he fixed his abode where first he set his foot, close to a spring of water still called the Well of St. Piran: here, while he "drank of the brook by the way," he gave to the wild and savage Cornish men the water of life freely, and moreover, it is said, explained to them the mystery of reducing from their ores the metals which abounded in their neighbourhood. Thus did this true successor of the apostles found on

the lonely shore a little civilized and Christian community. A church was built close to the spring, and there they worshipped God all the days of St. Piran. And when the time came that he must die, he commanded his grave to be dug, and then, descending into it, he kneeled down and prayed, and fell asleep.

The

For many years after his death his British followers and their descendants continued to congregate in his little church, and in its seaside church-yard to bury their dead. Saxons and the Vy-king swept over and desolated almost the whole of England; but they came not to the dreary regions of the west, and the church of St. Piran remained by them unmolested. But another more mighty and irresistible enemy was each year compassing the ruin of the little remnant of the British Church which the hand of man had spared. The north-west wind, the tyrant of the coast, gradually heaped up the sand of the ocean over the devoted valley. The cultivated fields, the trees and the verdure were soon all destroyed but the sacred edifice, like the religion it represented, continued firm and unshaken, for it was founded upon a rock. And the sand, which was gradually heaped around it on every side rose higher and higher, till its submersion was at length completed. Nothing remained. to mark where once it stood as a bright and shining beacon light in those dark regions, but a swelling mound; nothing to tell of the holy lives and preachings of St. Piran and his successors but the voice of tradition, which ceased not to hand them down through the generations that came after; and St. Piran became indeed St. Piran Sabuloe-St. Piran in the sand.

After the total submersion of the ancient church, another and much larger one was built on a site further removed from the sea, protected from the encroachments of the sand by a stream of never failing water. During all the middle ages of England it continued to be the only church within a circuit of several miles, and could be seen far out at sea, beyond its belt of sand, by the many vessels which, even in those early days, navigated the Irish channel. Yet was it indeed no longer the church of St. Piran but in name; for the Cornish, like the rest of their countrymen, had bowed their necks beneath the yoke of the Papal apostacy. Their