Cotgrave has, "La Croix de par Dieu, the Christ's-cross-rowe, or horne-booke, wherein a child learnes it;" and Florio, ed. 1611, p. 93," Centuruola, a childes horne-booke hanging at his girdle." In the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, at Middlehill, are two genuine Horn-books of the reigns of Charles I. and II. Locke, in his Thoughts on Education, speaks of the "ordinary road of the Hornbook and Primer," and directs that "the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments he should learn by heart, not by reading them himself in his Primer, but by somebody's repeating them before he can read."

Shenstone, who was taught to read at a dame-school, near Halesowen, in Shropshire, in his delightfully quaint poem of the Schoolmistress, commemorating his venerable preceptress, thus records the use of the Hornbook:

"Lo; now with state she utters her command;
Eftsoons the urchins to their tasks repair;

Their books of stature small they take in hand,
Which with pellucid horn secured are

To save from finger wet the letters fair."

Cowper thus describes the Hornbook of his time:

"Neatly secured from being soiled or torn
Beneath a pane of thin translucent horn,

A book (to please us at a tender age

'Tis called a book, though but a single page)

Presents the prayer the Saviour deigned to teach,

Which children use, and parsons-when they preach."

Tirocinium, or a Review of Schools, 1784.

We have somewhere read a story of a mother tempting her son along the cross-row by giving him an apple for each letter he learnt. This brings us to the gingerbread alphabet of our own time, which appears to have been common a century and a half since:

"To master John the English maid

A Hornbook gives of gingerbread;

And, that the child may learn the better,

As he can name, he eats the letter."-Prior.

An anecdote illustrative of Lord Erskine's readiness is related -that, when asked by a judge if a single sheet could be called a book, he replied, "The common Hornbook, my lord."

In Specimens of West Country Dialect, the use of the Hornbook is thus shown:

"Commether, Billy Chubb, an breng the hornen book. Gee ma the vester in tha windor, you Pal Came!-what! be a sleepid-I'll wake ye. Now, Billy, there's a good bway! Ston still there, and mind what I da za to ye, an whaur I da point. Now; cris-cross, girt a, little a-b-c-d. That's right, Billy; you'll zoon lorn the criss-cross-lain-you'll zoon auvergit Bobby Jiffry-you'll zoon be a scholard. A's a pirty chubby bway-Lord love'n!"

John Britton, who was born in the parish of Kington St. Michael's, Wilts, in 1771, tells us, in his Autobiography, that he was placed with a schoolmistress: "here," he writes, "I learnt 'the Christ-cross-row' from a Hornbook, on which were the alphabet in large and small letters, and the nine figures in Ro

man and Arabic numerals. The Hornbook is now a rarity." Such a Hornbook is engraved on the preceding page. It was met with in the year 1850, among the old stock of a bookseller at Peterborough, in Lincolnshire, and is thus described: Its dimensions. are 9 by 5 inches. The alphabet, etc., are printed upon white paper, which is laid upon a thin piece of oak, and is covered with a sheet of horn, secured in its place by eight tacks, driven through a border or mounting of brass; the object of this horncovering being to keep the "book," or rather leaf, unsoiled. The first line is a cross-row; so named, says Johnson, "because a cross is placed at the beginning, to show that the end of learning is piety."

The Hornbook was not always mounted on a board; many were pasted on the back of the horn only, like one used five-andforty years ago by a friend, when a boy at Bristol.

Such was the rudeness of the "dumb teacher" formerly employed at the dame-school, and elsewhere. It was, in all probability, superseded by Dr. Bell's sand-tray, upon which the children traced their own letters. Next came the "Battledore" and "Reading-made-Easy;" though the Spelling-book is considerably older than either. The Battledore, by the way, reminds us of a strategy of tuition mentioned by Locke: "By pasting the vowels and consonants on the sides of four dice, he has made this a play for his children, whereby his eldest son in coats has played himself into spelling."

PROGRESS OF EDUCATION IN THE REIGNS OF GEORGE IV. AND WILLIAM IV.

There is little to interest the reader in the early personal histories of these sovereigns. George the Fourth, the eldest son of George the Third and Queen Charlotte, was born at Buckingham House, in 1762. At the age of three years he received an address from the Society of Ancient Britons, and was made a Knight of the Garter. In a few months after, he was appointed by a King's letter, addressed to the Lord Mayor, Captain-General of the Honorable Artillery Company of the City of London. He learned his nursery tasks at Kew-house, or the old palace at Kew, where the royal family lived, as Miss Burney says, "running about from one end of the house to the other, without precaution or care.” The prince's first governor was the Earl of Holdernesse; Dr. Markham, Bishop of Chester (afterward Archbishop of York), was the prince's preceptor; and Mr. Cyril Jackson, sub-preceptor. These gentlemen, however, suddenly resigned their offices, it is believed from their having found some political works, which they considered objectionable, put into

the hands of their pupil by direction of the King. His next preceptor was Dr. Hurd, Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, afterward of Worcester; with the Rev. William Arnold as subpreceptor; both these tutors being Cambridge men. The prince was kept by his father in a state of unmitigated pupilage till he was nearly eighteen, soon after which he appeared in public, and fell into dissolute habits, which deeply embittered his after life.

George the Fourth affected patronage of painting and architecture; the results of the latter are best seen in the highly embellished western quarter of London. His encouragement of letters and learned men was narrow and partisan; he was the first patron of the Literary Fund, to which he contributed upward of 50007.; in the Society's armorial bearings is "the Prince of Wales's plume." By his bounty, the Latin manuscript of Milton, discovered in the State Paper Office in 1823, was edited, and a translation published. The King also chartered, in 1826, the Royal Society of Literature, and contributed from the Privy Purse 1100 guineas a-year to its funds; though it should be added, that he was committed to this large annual subscription by a misconception of Dr. Burgess, Bishop of Salisbury, the King intending a donation of 1000 guineas, and an annual subscription of 100 guineas; though his majesty cheerfully acquiesced,* and amused himself with the incident. He also granted the Society the Crown land upon which their house is built in St. Martin's-place; and as if to show that he did not restrict his patronage to the higher aim of letters, there is prominently inscribed upon the exterior façade of the Parochial School of St. Martin's, "built upon the ground the gift of His Majesty King George the Fourth.”

In this reign, in 1826, was founded the Society for "the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," under the chairmanship of Lord Brougham.† This was followed by the founding, in London, of University College and School, in 1828, for affording "literary and scientific education at a moderate expense," divinity not being taught; and in the same year was founded King's College and School, for education in the principles of the Established Church.

William the Fourth, next brother to George the Fourth, was born at St. James's Palace in 1764, and was educated at Kew.

*This costly munificence has not been followed by the successors of the sovereign.

† The name and title of the Society was, however, first written in conjunction with the author of the present volume, at Brighton, in the autumn of 1824; and early in 1825, Nicholson's Operative Mechanic was published "under the superintendence of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge."

When a child at play, his favorite amusement was floating a toyship, which one day led him to say, with prophetic boast, "If ever I shall become a king, I will have a house full of ships, and no other King shall dare to take them from me!" The King, his father, encouraged him to enter the naval service; and at the age of fourteen,* he swung his first hammock on board the Prince George, 98 guns, under the command of Admiral Digby, where he was furnished as scantily as any youngster of the mess. His entire service at sea extended nearly to eleven years; its most interesting incident was his intimacy with the gallant Nelson, from whom, in the prince's own words, his "mind took its first decided naval turn.” This predilection lasted throughout his long life; he was some time Lord High Admiral, and after his accession to the throne was familiarly styled “the Sailor King."

In his reign, in 1833, greatly through the influence of Lord Brougham and his party, upon the report of a Parliamentary Committee, the first annual grant for educational purposes was made by the Government; and in 1836 was formed the Home and Colonial Infant School Society, upon the principle that education must be based on the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, and as set forth and embodied in the doctrinal articles of the Church of England. In the following year was formed a “Central Society of Education," principally for the collection and publication of facts, and bringing prominently forward the distinction between general and special religious instruction.

Here this historic sketch of the Progress of Education in England may be closed. The history of National Education during the last twenty years scarcely belongs to the object of the present volume. It may, however, be interesting to quote a few of its leading events. In the autumn of 1838, Lord Brougham lamented what he considered as the final and hopeless failure of his life-long efforts in the cause of Popular Education.† But

* West painted the prince's portrait at this age, in a family picture now in Hampton Court Palace.

† Lord Brougham received his education at Edinburgh, which, in 1857, he declared in public, he looked upon as a very great benefit conferred on him by Providence. Within a few days of this occasion. at the opening of the University of Edinburgh, Principal Lee, in his introductory address, gave a short account of the school-days of Lord Brougham. "Though descended," he said, "from an ancient English family, he was born in Edinburgh, and his mother was a niece of Principal Robertson. In 1786, when seven years old, he entered the High School, in a class of 164 boys; and he had the advantage of being instructed by Mr. Luke Fraser, who was 40 years a favorite teacher, under whose inspection Sir Walter Scott had commenced his classical studies, along with the late Lord Melville, in the year 1777. The late Lord Jeffrey became a pupil of the same master in 1781. Among the school-fellows of Henry Brougham (amounting, as I have said, to