old age alone prevented him from pronouncing on her the severest sentence of the law. He ordered that she should pay a fine of 1s. and be imprisoned in the house of correction, and there kept to hard labour, for six calendar months.

INCREASE OF THE PRIVILEGED
CLASS.

When George III. came to the throne in 1760, the House of Peers was composed of 107 lay peers, besides the bishops. Even the revolution of 1688, which entailed so sensible an obligation on William, produced only three dukes and five earls, and none of inferior degree. But in 55 years the English peerage increased to 366 persons, deducting the 28 Irish peers for life, and 16 peers for Scotland, an ad

dition of 191 to the ranks of the no

bility in that short time-add to these

a new creation of Irish peers, who had not seats in the upper house, about 75 —and it makes a total of 266. Baronets have increased in a still greater proportion; for there were 398 English

baronets more in 1819 than in 1760.

THE JEWISH POETS.

Professor Eichhorn has long engaged in editing the preserved fragments of the Jewish political poets. He arranges their oracles in the chronological order of the events to which they relate, and is endeavouring to shew that they were all composed after the transactions to which they allude. Under the name of Isaiah, for instance, many poems have been brought together, which describe events occurring during the reigns of Cyrus and Darius Hystaspes. These, in the professor's opinion, were then first written, principally by Daniel, and had no place in the canon of the temple. They were according to him first inserted in that edition or translation of the sacred books of the Jews, which, for the information of the court of Shushan, was undertaken by Jeremian, Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and Ezra. It is this translation which we possess. Hebrew was the language of

the court of Shushan; but was at no period the vernacular dialect of Jerusalem. Cyrus and Darius were both descended from those Jews, whom Shalmaneser transplanted into the cities of the Medes; and when they acquired ascendancy in Persia, they set about establishing there the Jewish religion. This was completely accomplished at an early period of the reign of Darius, and by means of an exten

sive massacre of the idolatrous priesthood, called by Herodotus the Magophonia, and circumstantially related in the 9th chapter of Esther. The Jewish religion continued to be the established church of the Persian empire until the Jewish dynasty was overthrown by the conquests of Alexander the Great. To Ezra principally was confided the confection of the Scriptures, who, under the name Zoroaster is celebrated by the Greeks as the religious law-giver of Persia. The Medic title tsar, or prince, has coalesced with his name, Zoroaster being the Greek form of the words Ezra-tsar.

PRICE OF PICTURES.

It is well known that pictures of any considerable interest are not to be bought except by mere chance, and at the little Correggio at Dresden, a picture enormous prices. A hundred years ago, not a foot square, was sold for 13,000 gold ducats, and when a certain powerful monarch told the Duke of Tuscany that he would give him 8000 crowns for the Madonna della Seggiola at Florence, the duke replied that for his majesty 80,000. The small picture another such picture, he would give of Acteon, belonging to the late Mr. West and ascribed to Titian, sold for £2000, while Mr. West refused 10,0001. for his own last picture but one. TO FELTON IN THE TOWER.-1628. By BUTLER, Author of Hudibras. Enjoy thy bondage, make thy prison kuow Thou hast a liberty, thou canst not owe To such base punishments, kept entire,

since

doom,

To show thy virtue she has larger room: Yet sure, if every artery were broke, Thou wouldst find strength for such another

stroke.

And now I leave thee unto death and

fame,

Which lives to shake ambition at thy name, And if it were no sin, the court by it, Wou'd hourly swear, before the favourite, Farewell for thy brave sake we shall not send

Henceforth, commander, enemies to defend,

Nor will it ever our just monarch please To keep an admiral to lose the seas. Farewell- undaunted stand, and joy to be Of public sorrow the epitome.

Let the Duke's name solace and crown thy thrall,

All we in him did suffer, thou for all ; And I dare boldly write, as thou dar'st die,

Stout Felton, England's ransom, here does

lie.

The above, by the date, appears to have been one of the earliest effusions of Butler's muse, demonstrating great vigour of thought and diction, accompanied by the usual defect of early attempts, obscurity, and the want of a sufficient connecting and regulating power in the mind. It farther appears, an expectation then prevailed with the public that Felton would be put to the torture, according to the demand of the royal martyr, that was to be the decision of the judges.

AN ANT HILL.

In crossing a field lately, says a correspondent, I felt my foot suddenly

dent which, though it might appear harmless and indifferent, was fraught with consequences the most alarming and destructive. The unguarded step was followed by the slaughter of incal culable numbers, and the awful convulsions of a whole empire! It was a nest of ants; and the measures pursued by the citizens on this calamitous occasion were so curiously interesting as to arrest my attention for a whole hour. As soon as the first terrors occasioned

by the shock had subsided, I could surmise that an express was dispatched to the residence of the king, to acquaint him with particulars, and in less than two minutes he made his appearance on the scene of distress and ruin. He was a fine looking fellow, and though I could perceive his majesty was much agitated at this unexpected disaster, yet he convoked this senate without delay to deliberate upon the best means of retrieving the loss. There was a very full attendance of members, and one above all seemed to attract extraordinary attention, who was unquestionably the Nestor of the trade. This gallant officer rushed out of the assembly, galloped through thick and thin into the city, upset three or four old females with eggs on their backs, knocked down a fat pismire, and darted down a narrow lane that I afterwards fourd led to the corn-market; there I

lost him.

What a fine field was opened to the philosophical and contemplative persons to whom I recommend the further

study and application of the subject.

bridge dear, when the English lan-guage shall be what the Latin is now.

They are entitled to respect, on the grounds on which, as we have stated, they often claim it, viz. as a suitable abode for the aristocracy of the country, during the interval between the restraints of the school, and the calls of life. It has, it must have, a salutary effect on the future character of this important class of the community, thus to bring its members, from a score of family factions, together; to unite them, at least for a year or two, as members of one fraternity, before they plunge into the remorseless rivalries of government and life; and even though

the

the literary atmosphere of the place should be wholly left out of the account, though no consideration be had whatever of the enlargement and illumination of mind that must be caught involuntarily, in a two or three years' abode at an academical city, still to have redeemed so much time from the saloons, and the worse than saloons of the metropolis, is enough. No one can doubt that the want of some such nursery of character in France, the immediate transition from boarding-school and private tutelage, to the vices of the capital and the army, was one great cause of the degeneracy of the once gallant heraldry of that country; a degeneracy under which the spirit of the order was so wholly broken, that when the revolution came on, there was found scarce a member of the aristocracy, to assert their claims to more privileges and greater fortunes, than were ever swept away by a popular storm.

Lastly, the English universities are entitled to respect, as a great integral part of the church establishment; and when so considered, some objections often urged to them will lose their force. It is objected, for instance, that at one of the great English universities, subscription to the thirty-nine articles is necessary for admission, and at the other for a degree; and this, if you look upon the universities as we look on all public institutions in our country, as the property of the people, the common inheritance of all, seems a hardship. But if you consider the universities as a part of the religious establishment, to murmur against the privileges secured to the friends of the church in the universities, or to the children of the universities in the church, is to quarrel with an institution for supporting, encouraging, and upholding itself.

For ourselves, with the veneration we feel for the great masters of English literature, it is impossible not to transfer no little share of the sentiment to the seats of science, where their minds were formed. That American must have a temper, which we are happy not to be able to comprehend, who could go up into the tower over the gate-way of Trinity College, or walk round the gardens of Christ's, at Cambridge, and think that he was pressing the footsteps of Newton and Milton, without a thrill which no reasonings or cavils can keep down. We of America have here

an advantage over our English brethren, in that keen enthusiasm which we feel for the famous spots and abodes, that are consecrated to both alike, by the great names associated with them. To them the constant presence and familiarity of the scene blunt the edge of the feelings it excites in us, and Westminster Abbey and Stratford-on-Avon, awaken an enthusiasm in an American fancy, which the Englishman smiles at, as a sort of provincial rawness. Instead of assenting to those on both sides of the water, who have spoken of America as unfortunate in the want of ancient associations, as condemned to a kind of matter of fact, unpoetical, newness of national character, we maintain that never nation, since the world began, had so rich a treasure of traditional glory. Is it nothing to be born, as it were, with the birthright of two native lands; to sail across the world of waters, and be hailed beyond it by the sound of your native tongue? it nothing to find in another hemisphere the names, the customs, and the dress of your own; to be able to trace your ancestry back, not to the ranks of a semi-barbarous conqueror, or the poor mythology of vagrants and fugitives of fabulous days, but to noble, high-minded men in an age of glory, than which a brighter never dawned on the world? Is it nothing to be able, as you set your foot on the English soil, and with a heart going back to all the proud emotions which bind you at the moment to the happy home you have left, to be able still, nevertheless, to exclaim, with more than poetical, with literal natural truth,

Salve magna parens frugum, Saturnia tellus,

Magna virum!

Is

If there be any feeling, merely national, which can compare with this, it should be that which corresponds to it; the complacency, with which it were to be hoped the wise and good friends of British glory in England would regard this flourishing off-set of their own native stock; the pride with which they should witness the progress of their language, their manners, their laws and their literature, over regions wider than the conquests of Alexander; and that not by a forced and military imposition on a conquered land, but by a fair and natural inheritance, and still more by a voluntary adoption and choice; the joy with which they should

reflect

reflect, that not a note is struck at the centre of thought and opinion in the British capital, but is heard and propagated by our presses, to the valley of the Missouri, and that if the day should come in the progress of national decline, when England shall be gathered with the empires that have been, when her thousand ships shall have disappeared from the ocean, and the mighty chain of her wealth shall be broken, with which she has so long bound the European world to her chariot-wheels, and mustered the nations, from the banks of the Tagus to the banks of the Don, to march beneath the banner of her coalitions, that then there will be no unworthy descendant to catch her mantle; and that the rich treasure of her institutions and character, instead of becoming the unrescued prey of Huns and Vandals, and whatever uncouth name of barbarism laid waste of old the refinements of the world, will be preserved, upheld, and perfected in the western world of promise.

We have allowed our feelings to carry us too far from the subject which we were considering, and from the tribute of respect we wished to pay to the illustrious literary establishments of England. But we would have this tribute as honest as it is hearty and sincere; and we cannot therefore but express with it the opinion, that though the English universities do not profess to be simply schools of instruction, still that, even in this department, some improvements might be made, and that the youth of rank and fortune which resort to them, might fill up their time more profitably and usefully, as well as innocently, by a more zealous and extensive course of academical study, than we believe prevails at them. The unexampled success of Blackstone's lectures on the law, and the permanent service which they have rendered the study of that profession, ought to encourage a more frequent imitation of the example. On the continent, at least in those parts of it where public education is on a good footing, the children of the aristocracy pass the time of their residence at the university, in attending courses of lectures on the law, on history, geography and statistics, on the natural sciences, on diplomacy. These are thought to merit their attention, as those who are to fill the front ranks in society; while, at the English universities, the zeal and efforts of the same class are chiefly di

rected to general classical studies, or the abstract study of the mathematics, each of which is worthy of great attention, but neither nor both affording exclusively an adequate training for the future politician, statesman, legislator, or man of affluent leisure.

To, the Oxford lectures on Hebrew poetry, is unquestionably to be ascribed the first spring given to the study of the Bible, in the enlightened spirit of the modern school of sacred literature. The Latin language, in which they were written, secured them easy access to the German universities and schools, and an edition of them with annotations, and an appendix, was soon published by Michaelis, who stood at that time at the head of the biblical critics of his country; and who, as well as his successors, concedes to Bishop Lowth, the merit of having first penetrated into the spirit of Hebrew antiquity, and sets the example of the true mode of studying and enjoying its literary remains.

This affords one of many examples of the utility of a lingua doctorum communis. We suppose there are few scholars, who have had occasion to reflect on the subject, who have not had their doubts whether the disuse of the tongue, once common to scholars, be not upon the whole disadvantageous to the cause of letters. There was certainly something grand in this learned community of language; in this remedy, by no means inconsiderable, of the great catastrophe of Babel, which enabled the scholar wherever he went, to find his native tongue; and which, so long as it continued to be the depository of science and literature, emancipated him from this slavery of learning half a dozen languages. Let us consider, too, how much of our modern literature is translation, or the saying over in one language what had been better said in another, and still more that with all our translations, a mountain, a river, or an invisible political boundary, makes us substantially strangers to the efforts which the human mind has made and is making among our fellow men. One great blow to the universality of the Latin as a learned language, was abolishing the practice of lecturing in it, in the German universities. This was first done by Thomasius, a professor at Halle, in the beginning of the last century; and his example has so generally prevailed, that few or no lectures are now delivered in that tongue in Germany. In the Dutch universities the

practice

practice is still kept up, and all the lectures are delivered in Latin, even those on the national Dutch literature. This language too may there, oftener than elsewhere, be heard out of the lecture room. We have heard it more pleasantly, we presume, than accurately, said of Ruhnkenius, the last modern scholar, to whose name the venerable ius is permanently attached, that Latin was the only language he was able to speak. He was a native of Pomerania, and as such the German was his vernacular tongue. That he had lost in his long residence in Holland, without having had occasion to acquire the Dutch, as the whole business of his calling was discharged in Latin. A little bad French he had picked up for society, but Latin was his mother tongue. We happened to be present in the study of his late lamented successor, the illustrious Wyttenbach, at an interview between natives of America, England, Holland, and Greece, where the conversation was of necessity conducted in Latin, as the only common tongue. The Latin language was perhaps used for the last time, as a vernacular language, by the Hungarian diet. In 1805 it was abolished as the language of this diet, and the native Hungarian substituted. This took place in consequence of the efforts made by the Austrian government from the time of Joseph II. to force the German language upon the Hungarians, with the design of eradicating their own. This of course had the effect of making their own doubly precious in their eyes, and so much has it since been cultivated, that it has quite driven out the German and Latin from the schools and the diet; so that now the Hungarian people enjoy the great privilege of speaking, under the appellation of Magyar, a language wholly unique, associated neither with the Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, or Sclavonian stock, and of course the least likely to be learned by a foreigner, of any tongue in Europe. Such as it is, they pursue it themselves with singular zeal, and not a national press in Europe is more prolific of original works, as well as translations, than that of Pesth, the Hungarian capital.

It has appeared to us, if with a limited acquaintance we have a right to judge of the subject, that too much attainable good is sacrificed, at the English universities, by adherence to ancient prescriptions. We know not where else

in the world so munificent a patronagé of learning exists as the endowment of the fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge. It is said that the revenues of the richest fellowships are £800 a year, a salary as high, or higher, than that of the governor or chief justice of Massachusetts. The number of fellowships so rich as this may not be large, but the whole annual amount appropriated in this way to the support of men of learning, at the universities, is well known to be great; great even with the less frugal English notions of an appointment. And yet the manner in which these livings are attained, and the tenure by which they are held, prevent them, we apprehend, from rendering half the good to the cause of learning, of which under a different administration they might be made productive. Some fellowships indeed are open to all the world, as those of Trinity College, Cambridge; others are limited to certain districts of counties, others to single counties, to single parishes, to single schools. At Oxford, the Magdalen fellowships are said to be the best. Of these, five belong to the diocese of Winchester, seven to the county of Lincoln, four to Oxford, three to Berks, &c. At new college, Oxford, the fellows must be elected from Winchester school; and at King's College, Cambridge, from Eton school. This holds of scholarships, another class of establishments similar in nature, though subordinate in rank, to fellowships, and which should be considered as a part of the system, inasmuch as the fellows, if we are not misinformed, are chosen from among the scholars.

We suppose that when these establishments were originally founded, the literary and clerical profession, for these were then identical, could not support itself: and it was necessary that permanent provision should be made for those, who were to teach and preach, as there is now adays for those who fight. The colleges were founded, to afford such provision for the training and supporting of the clergy. Places of general education, we suppose, they were not; for there was nobody, at the period of the establishment of the more ancient of them, to be educated. It is only an improvement, forced upon them by the progress of society, that other scholars, besides the stipendiaries on the foundations, have been received at them to be educated. Now that the wealth acquired by the commercial and agri

cultural