9th February

Born: Daniel Bernouilli, a celebrated Swiss mathematician, 1700, Gröningen; C. F. Volney, French philosopher, 1757.

Died: Agnes Sorel, 1450, Memel; Bishop Hooper, burnt at Gloucester, 1555; Dr. Rowland Taylor, burnt at Hadleigh, 1555; Henry Lord Darnley, consort of Mary Queen of Scots, murdered, 1567; Dr. John Gregory, author of A Father's Legacy to his Daughters, 1773, Edinburgh; Dr. William Boyce, 1779; Benjamin Martin, philosophical writer, 1782; Nevil Maskelyne, astronomer-royal, 1811, Flamstead House.

Feast Day: St. Apollonia, virgin martyr at Alexandria, 249. St. Nicephorns, martyr at Antioch, 260. St. Attracta, virgin in Ireland, 5th century. St. Theliau, bishop of Llandaff, circ. 580. St. Ansbert, archbishop of Rouen, 695. St. Erhard, of Scotland, 8th century.

DANIEL BERNOUILLI, THE EMINENT MATHEMATICIAN

This eminent man, one of a family which is known in the history of mathematics by the services of eight of its members, was the second son of John Bernouilli, and was born at Gröningen, February 9, 1700. His father, though highly famous as a mathematician, was jealous of his own son: it is related that, one day, he proposed to Daniel, then a youth, a little problem to try his strength; the boy took it with him, solved it, and came back, expecting some praise from his father. 'You ought to have done it on the spot, was all the observation made, and with a tone and gesture which his son remembered to the latest day of his life. That Daniel in mature life was not deficient in ready power is proved by the following anecdote. Koenig, another great mathematician, dining with him one day, mentioned a difficult problem which had long baffled him; but he added with some pride, 'I accomplished it at last.' Bernouilli said little at the moment, but went on attending to his guests, and before they rose from table he had solved the problem in his mind.

The elder Bernouilli, John, was succeeded in the Academy of Sciences by Daniel, at whose death, in 1782, his brother John succeeded him. Thus for ninety years the Academy never wanted a Bernouilli in its list of members. Daniel spent a great part of his life in Basle, where he was held in such esteem that it was part of the education of every child to learn to take off the hat to him. The fact of so peculiar a talent passing from father to son, and spreading into so many branches, is very noteworthy; and it will be found that the subject is followed out in a paper a page onward.

THE EXPERIMENT AT SCHIEHALLION

Dr. Maskelyne, the astronomer-royal, amongst many investigations in astronomy and general physics, distinguished himself in a special manner by one which had for its object directly to ascertain the attraction of mountains, and remotely the mean density of the earth. The scene of this great labour was the mountain Schiehallion, in Perthshire. Arriving there in the latter part of June 1774, the philosopher and his assistant, Mr. Burrow, had a station prepared for themselves half way up the south side of the hill; afterwards another on the north side. It is a long bare mountain of 3,500 feet in elevation, in the midst of a country purely Alpine, and subject to the dreariest climatal influences. Three weeks elapsed before the learned investigator got a clear day for the ascertainment of a meridian line wherein to place his astronomical quadrant. Amidst the greatest difficulties-for the season was the worst seen for several years -he was just enabled, before November, to fix approximately the declination which the plumb-line made from the perpendicular on the respective sides of the mountain, being 5' 8' whence it was afterwards deduced by Dr. Charles Hutton, that, if the rock of the hill be taken as that of free-stone, or 2.5 of water, the earth's density will be 4.5 of the same measure (subsequently corrected by Professor Playfair into 4.867).

The writer of this notice has often amused himself by reflecting on what would be the feelings of the English philosopher, fresh from the Greenwich Observatory, and Crane-court, Fleet-street, on finding himself in a wilderness, whence, but thirty years before, there had poured down a host of half-naked barbarians upon the plains of his native country, and where there had recently died an old Highland chief and bard (Robertson, of Struan) who had been out with both Dundee and Marr. What, also, would be the conception of his enterprise, his instruments, his measurements and surveyings, adopted by the Clan Donnochie, of the Moor of Rannoch? What would they think when they were told that a man had come to Schiehallion to weigh it,-nay, to weigh the earth? Maskelyne tells us, however, in his paper in the Philosophical Transactions, that:

The mountain Schiehallion was adopted for the experiment, because it was a lofty and narrow one, whereof the longer axis lay nearly east and west, thus giving a small difference of latitude between the two stations in proportion to the bulk of the mass lying between. Maskelyne himself, and even his geological friend and visitor Playfair, might have felt some additional interest in the affair, if they had known that the mountain had been shaped for their purpose by the great ice-flow of the glacial period, the marks of whose passage can be clearly traced along its sides and ridge, up to nearly the summit.

MURDER OF DAVID RIZZIO-PERMANENCY OF BLOOD-STAINS

On the evening of the 9th March 1565-6, David Rizzio, the Italian secretary of Mary of Scotland, was murdered in Holyrood Palace, by certain Protestant leaders of her court, with the assistance of her husband, Lord Darnley. The poor foreigner was torn from her side as she sat at supper, and dragged through her apartments to the outer door, where he was left on the floor for the night, dead with fifty-six wounds, each conspirator having been forced to give a stab, in order that all might be equally involved in guilt and consequent danger. The queen, who was then pregnant of her son (James I of England), deeply resented the outrage: indeed, there is reason to believe that it affected her so as to become the turning-point of her life, giving her in the first place a strong sense of the unworthiness of her husband, who perished less than a year after.

The floor at the outer door of the queen's apartments presents a large irregular dark mark, which the exhibitor of the palace states to be the blood of the unfortunate Rizzio. Most strangers hear with a smile of a blood-stain lasting three centuries, and Sir Walter Scott himself has made it the subject of a jocular passage in one of his tales, representing a Cockney traveller as trying to efface it with the patent scouring drops which it was his mission to introduce into use in Scotland. The scene between him and the old lady guardian of the palace is very amusing: but it may be remarked of Scott, that he entertained some beliefs in his secret bosom which his worldly wisdom and sense of the ludicrous led him occasionally to treat comically or with an appearance of scepticism. In another of his novels-the Abbot-he alludes with a feeling of awe and horror to the Rizzio blood-stain: and in his Tales of a Grandfather, he deliberately states that the floor at the head of the stair still bears visible marks of the blood of the unhappy victim. Joking apart, there is no necessity for disbelieving in the Holyrood blood-mark.

There is even some probability in its favour. In the first place, the floor is very ancient, manifestly much more so than the late floor of the neighbouring gallery, which dated from the reign of Charles II. It is in all likelihood the very floor which. Mary and her courtiers trod. In the second place, we know that the stain has been shewn there since a time long antecedent to that extreme modern curiosity regarding historical matters which might have induced an imposture: for it is alluded to by the son of Evelyn as being shewn in 1722. Finally, it is matter of experiment, and fully established, that wood not of the hardest kind (and it may be added, stone of a porous nature) takes on a permanent stain from blood, the oxide of iron contained in it sinking deep into the fibre, and proving indelible to all ordinary means of washing. Of course, if the wearing of a blood-stained, floor by the tread of feet were to be carried beyond the depth to which the blood had sunk, the stain would be obliterated. But it happens in the case of the Holyrood mark, that the two blotches of which it consisted are out of the line over which feet would chiefly pass in coming into or leaving the room. Indeed, that line appears to pass through and divide the stain,-a circumstance in no small degree favourable to its genuineness.

Alleged examples of blood-stains of old standing both upon wood and stone are reported from many places. We give a few extracted from the Notes and Queries. Amidst the horrors of the French Revolution, eighty priests were massacred in the chapel of the convent of the Camelites at Paris. The stains of blood are still to be seen on the walls and floor. 'At Cothele, a mansion on the banks of the Tamar, the marks are still visible of the blood spilt by the lord of the manor, when, for supposed treachery, he slew the warder of the drawbridge.' 'About fifty years ago, there was a dance at Kirton-in-Lindsey: (luring the evening a young girl broke a blood-vessel and expired in the room. I have been told that the marks of her blood are still to be seen. At the same town, about twenty years ago, an old man and his sister were murdered in an extremely brutal manner, and their cottage floor was deluged with blood, the stains of which are believed yet to remain.'

TALENTS-FROM WHICH PARENT USUALLY DERIVED?

There is a prevalent, but nowhere well-argued idea, that talents are usually, if not always, derived from the mother. One could wish that a notion so complimentary to the amiable sex were true: but it scarcely is so.

There are, certainly, some striking instances of mother-derived abilities; none more so than that presented by the man perhaps the most distinguished for general abilities in our age-Henry Lord Brougham, whose mother, a niece of Principal Robertson, was a woman of the finest intellectual properties, while the father was of but ordinary gifts. Of like notableness is the case of Sir Walter Scott: the mother sagacious in an extraordinary measure, the father a plain good man, and no more. But look, on the other hand, at two other able men of the last and present epochs, Lord Macaulay and Robert Burns. In their cases, the phenomenon was precisely the converse: that is, clever father, ordinary mother.

It is only too easy to point to instances of father and son standing as noted for talent, while we hear nothing of the mother. Binitics like Bernardo and Torquato Tasso, John and Daniel Bernouilli, William and John Herschel, James and John Stuart Mill, Chatham and William Pitt, George and Robert Stephenson, Carlo and Horace Vernet, abound in our biographical dictionaries. Another fact, connected less pointedly with the subject, but in itself of some value, is also pretty clearly hewn in these compilations: namely, how often a man of eminence in the world of thought and taste is the son of a man who was engaged in some humble capacity connected with the departments in which his son excelled:-Mozart, for instance, the son of a capell-meister; James Watt, the son of a teacher of mathematics.

There are, however, instances of the descent of superior mental qualities through a greater number of generations than two, with a presumable transmission from the father to the son, while mothers are unheard of. The amiable Patrick Fraser Tytler, who wrote the best history of Scotland extant, was son to the accomplished Alexander Fraser Tytler (commonly styled Lord Woodhouselee), who wrote several books of good repute, and was, in turn, the son of William Tytler, author of the Enquiry into the Evidence against Mary Queen of Scots.

The late Professor William Gregory, a man of the highest scientific accomplishments, was the son of Dr. James Gregory, a professor of distinguished ability, author of the well-known Conspectus Medicince, who was the son of Dr. John Gregory, author of the Father's Legacy to his Daughters, and other works; whose father, an eminent Aberdeen professor, was the son of James Gregory, right eminent as a mathematician, and the inventor of the reflecting telescope. It is, however, to be remarked that the talents of this last gentleman, and of his scarcely less distinguished brother David, are supposed to have been inherited from their mother, who was the daughter of an ingenious, busy-brained man of some local celebrity.

Not less remarkable is the series of the Sheridans. It seems to have started as a line of able men with Dr. Thomas Sheridan, of Dublin, the friend of Swift: who was the son of another Dr. Thomas Sheridan. and the nephew of a Bishop of Kilmore. Next came Mr. Thomas Sheridan, of elocution-teaching memory, a man of lively talents: next the famed Richard Brinsley; next Thomas Sheridan, in whom there were brilliant abilities, though through unfortunate circumstances they never came to any effective demonstration. Among the children of this last, we find Lady Dufferin and the Hon Mrs. Norton, both brilliant women: and from Lady Duflerin, again, comes a son, Lord Duflerin, whose Arctic yacht voyage has given his name the stamp of talent at a very early age. Of the five Sheridans, who stand here in succession, we hear of but one (Richard) whose mother has left any fame for abilities.

With these facts before us, and it would be easy to multiply them, it must plainly appear that the inheritance of talent from a mother is not a rule. At the utmost, it is a fact only possible, or which has an equal chance of occurring with its opposite. Most probably, people are led to make a rule of it by the propensity to paradox, or by reason of their remarking mother-descended talent as something unexpected, while they overlook the instances of the contrary phenomenon.

Let us speculate as we may, there are mysteries about the rise of uncommon abilities that we shall probably never penetrate. Whence should have come the singular genius of a Lawrence-son to a simple inn-keeping pair on the Bath-road? Whence the not less wonderful gifts of a Wilkie-child of a plain Scotch minister and his wife-the mother so commonplace that, hearing how David was so much admired, she expressed surprise at their never saying anything of George-a respectable young grocer, who, being of goodly looks, had more pleased a mother's eye? Whence should the marvellous thought-power of Shakspeare have been derived -his parents being, to all appearance, undistinguished from thousands of other Stratfordians who never had sons or daughters different from the multitude?

SHROVE TUESDAY

Shrove Tuesday derives its name from the ancient practice, in the Church of Rome, of confessing sins, and being shrived or shrove, i.e. obtaining absolution, on this day. Being the day prior to the beginning of Lent, it may occur on any one between the 2nd of February and the 8th of March. In Scotland, it is called Fasten's E'en, but is little regarded in that Presbyterian country. The character of the day as a popular festival is mirthful: it is a season of carnival-like jollity and drollery-'Welcome, merry Shrovetide!' truly sings Master Silence.

The merriment began, strictly speaking, the day before, being what was called Collop Monday, from the practice of eating collops of salted meat and eggs on that day. Then did the boys begin their Shrovetide perambulations in quest of little treats which their senior neighbours used to have in store for them-singing:

When Shrove Tuesday dawned, the bells were set a ringing, and everybody abandoned himself to amusement and good humour. All through the day, there was a preparing and devouring of pancakes, as if some profoundly important religious principle were involved in it. The pancake and Shrove Tuesday are inextricably associated in the popular mind and in old literature. Before being eaten, there was always a great deal of contention among the eaters, to see which could most adroitly toss them in the pan.

Shakspeare makes his clown in All's Well that Ends Well speak of something being 'as fit as a pancake for Shrove Tuesday.' It will be recollected that the parishioners of the Vicar of Wakefield 'religiously ate pancakes at Shrovetide.'

Hear also our quaint old friend, the Water Poet-'Shrove Tuesday, at whose entrance in the morning all the whole kingdom is in quiet, but by that time the clock strikes eleven, which (by the help of a knavish sexton) is commonly before nine, there is a bell rung called Pancake Bell, the sound whereof makes thousands of people distracted, and forgetful either of manners or humanity. Then there is a thing called wheaten flour, which the cooks do mingle with water, eggs, spice, and other tragical, magical enchantments, and then they put it by little and little into a frying-pan of boiling suet, where it makes a confused dismal hissing (like the herniae snakes in the reeds of Acheron), until at last, by the skill of the cook, it is transformed into the form of a flipjack, called a pancake, which. ominous incantation the ignorant people do devour very greedily.'

It was customary to present the first pancake to the greatest slut or lie-a-bed of the party, 'which commonly falls to the clog's share at last, for no one will own it their due.' Some allusion is probably made to the latter custom in a couplet placed opposite Shrove Tuesday in Poor Robin's Almanack for 1677:

In the time of Elizabeth, it was a practice at Eton for the cook to fasten a pancake to a crow (the ancient equivalent of the knocker) upon the school door.

At Westminster School, the following custom is observed to this day:-At 11 o'clock a.m. a verger of the Abbey, in his gown, bearing a silver baton, emerges from the college kitchen, followed by the cook of-the school, in his white apron, jacket, and cap, and carrying a pancake. On arriving at the school-room door, he announces himself, 'The cook;' and having entered the school-room, he advances to the bar which separates the upper school from the lower one, twirls the pancake in the pan, and then tosses it over the bar into the upper school, among a crowd of boys, who scramble for the pancake: and he who gets it unbroken, and carries it to the deanery, demands the honorarium of a guinea (sometimes two guineas), from the Abbey funds, though the custom is not mentioned in the Abbey statutes: the cook also receives two guineas for his performance.

Among the revels which marked the day, football seems in most places to have been conspicuous. The London apprentices enjoyed it in Finsbury Fields. At Teddington, it was conducted with such animation that careful house-holders had to protect their windows with hurdles and bushes. There is perhaps no part of the United Kingdom where this Shrovetide sport is kept up with so much energy as at the village of Scone, near Perth, in Scotland. The men of the parish assemble at the cross, the married on one side and the bachelors on the other: a ball is thrown up, and they play from two o'clock till sunset. A person who witnessed the sport in the latter part of the last century, thus describes it: 'The game was this: he who at any time got the ball into his hands, ran with it till overtaken by one of the opposite party: and then, if he could shake himself loose from those on the opposite side who seized him, he ran on: if not, he threw the ball from him, unless it was wrested from him by the other party, but no party was allowed to kick it. The object of the married men was to hang it, that is, to put it three times into a small hole on the moor, which was the dool, or limit, on the one hand: that of the bachelors was to drown it, or clip it three times in a deep place in the river, the limit on the other: the party who could effect either of these objects won the game: if neither one, the ball was cut into equal parts at sunset. In the course of the play, there was usually some violence between the parties: but it is a proverb in this part of the country, that 'A' is fair at the ba' o' Scone.''

Taylor, the Water Poet, alludes to the custom of a fellow carrying about 'an ensign made of a piece of a baker's mawkin fixed upon a broom-staff,' and making orations of nonsense to the people. Perhaps this custom may have been of a similar nature and design to one practised in France on Ash Wednesday. The people there 'carry an effigy, similar to our Guy Fawkes, round the adjacent villages, and collect money for his funeral, as this day, according to their creed, is the burial of good living. After sundry absurd mummeries, the corpse is deposited in the earth.' In the latter part of the last century, a curious custom of a similar nature still survived in Kent. A group of girls engaged themselves at one part of a village in burning an uncouth image, which they called a holly boy, and which they had stolen from the boys: while the boys were to be found in another part of the village burning a like effigy, which they called the ivy girl, and which they had stolen from the girls: the ceremony being in both cases accompanied by loud huzzas.

These are fashions, we accompanied opine, smacking of a very early and probably pagan origin. At Bromfield, in Cumberland, there used to be a still more remarkable custom. The scholars of the free school of that parish assumed a right, from old use and wont, to bar out the master, and keep him out for three days. During the period of this expulsion, the doors were strongly barricaded within: and the boys, who defended it like a besieged city, were armed in general with guns made of the hollow twigs of the elder, or bore-tree. The master, meanwhile, made various efforts, by force and stratagem, to regain his lost authority. If he succeeded, heavy tasks were imposed, and the business of the school was resumed and submitted to: but it more commonly happened that all his efforts were unavailing. In this case, after three days' siege, terms of capitulation were proposed by the master and accepted by the boys. The terms always included permission to enjoy a full allowance of Shrovetide sports.

In days not very long gone by, the inhumane sport of throwing at cocks was practised at Shrovetide, and nowhere was it more certain to be seen than at the grammar-schools. The poor animal was tied to a stake by a short cord, and the unthinking men and boys who were to throw at it, took their station at the distance of about twenty yards. Where the cock belonged to some one disposed to make it a matter of business, twopence was paid for three shies at it, the missile used being a broomstick. The sport was continued till the poor creature was killed out-right by the blows. Such tumult and outrage attended this inhuman sport a century ago, that, according to a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine, it was sometimes dangerous to be near the place where it was practised. Hens were also the subjects of popular amusement at this festival. It was customary in Cornwall to take any one which had not laid eggs before Shrove-Tuesday, and lay it on a barn-floor to be thrashed to death. A man hit at her with a flail; and if he succeeded in killing her therewith, he got her for his pains. It was customary for a fellow to get a hen tied to his back, with some horse-bells hung beside it.

A number of other fellows, blind-folded, with boughs in their hands, followed him by the sound of the bells, endeavouring to get a stroke at the bird. This gave occasion to much merriment, for sometimes the man was hit instead of the hen, and sometimes the assailants hit each other instead of either. At the conclusion, the hen was boiled with bacon, and added to the usual pancake feast. Cock-fights were also common on this day. Strange to say, they were in many instances the sanctioned sport of public schools, the master receiving on the occasion a small tax from the boys under the name of a cock-penny. Perhaps this last practice took its rise in the circumstance of the master supplying the cocks, which seems to have been the custom in some places in a remote age. Such cock-fights regularly took place on Fasten's E'en in many parts of Scotland till the middle of the eighteenth century, the master presiding at the battle, and enjoying the perquisite of all the runaway cocks, which were technically called fugies. Nay, so late as 1790, the minister of Applecross, in Rossshire, in the account of his parish, states the schoolmaster's income as composed of two hundred merks, with 1s. 6d. and 2s. 6d, per quarter from each scholar.

The other Shrovetide observations were chiefely of a local nature. The old plays make us aware of a licence which the London prentices took on this occasion to assail houses of dubious repute, and cart the unfortunate inmates through the city. This seems to have been done partly under favour of a privilege which the common people assumed at this time of breaking down doors for sport, and of which we have perhaps some remains, in a practice which still exists in some remote districts, of throwing broken crockery and other rubbish at doors. In Dorsetshire and Wiltshire, if not in other counties, the latter practice is called Lent Crocking. The boys go round in small parties, headed by a leader, 'who goes up and knocks at the door, leaving his followers behind him, armed with a good stock of potsherds-the collected relics of the washing-pans, jugs, dishes, and plates, that have become the victims of concussion in the hands of unlucky or careless housewives for the past year. When the door is opened, the hero,-who is perhaps a farmer's boy, with a pair of black eyes sparkling under the tattered brim of his brown milking-hat,-hangs down his head, and, with one corner of his mouth turned up into an irrepressible smile, pronounces the following lines:

Sometimes he gets a bit of bread and cheese, and at sonic houses he is told to be gone; in which latter case, he calls up his followers to send their missiles in a rattling broadside against the door. It is rather remarkable that, in Prussia, and perhaps other parts of central Europe, the throwing of broken crockery at doors is a regular practice at marriages. Lord Malmesbury, who in 1791 married a princess of that country as proxy for the Duke of York, tells us, that the morning after the ceremonial, a great heap of such rubbish was found at her royal highness's door.

OLD GRAMMAR-SCHOOL CUSTOMS

Mr. R. W. Blencowe, in editing certain extracts from the journal of Walter Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield, in the Sussex Archaeological Collections, tells us that the salary of the Mayfield school-master was only £16 a-year, which was subsequently increased by the bequest of a house and garden, which let for £18 a-year. There were none of those perquisites so common in old grammar-schools, by which the scanty fortunes of the masters were increased, and the boys instructed in the humanities, as in the Middle School at Manchester, where the master provided the cocks, for which he was liberally paid, and which were to be buried up to their necksto be shied at by the boys on Shrove Tuesday, and at the feast of St. Nicholas, as at Wyke, near Ashford, Mr. Graham had bequeathed a silver bell to May-field, as he had done to the school at Wreay in 1661, to be fought for annually, when two of the boys, who had been chosen as captains, and who were followed by their partisans, distinguished by blue and red ribbons, marched in procession to the village-green, where each produced his cocks; and when the fight was won, the bell was suspended to the hat of the victor, to be transmitted from one successful captain to another.

There were no potation pence, when there were deep drinkings, sometimes for the benefit of the clerk of the parish, when it was called clerk's ale, and more often for the schoolmaster, and in the words of some old statutes, 'for the solace of the neighbourhood:' potations which Agnes Metiers, avowess, the widow of a wealthy bellfounder of Nottingham, endeavoured, in some degree, to restrain when she founded the grammar-school in that town in 1513, by declaring that the schoolmaster and usher of her school should not make use of any potations, cock-fightings, or drinkings, with his or their wives, hostess, or hostesses, more than twice a year. There were no 'delectations' for the scholars, such as the barring out of the schoolmaster, which Sir John Deane, who founded the grammar-school at Wilton, near Northbeach, to prevent all quarrels between the teacher and the taught, determined should take place only twice a year, a week before Christmas and Easter, 'as the custom was in other great schools.' No unhappy ram was provided by the butcher, as used to be the case at Eton in days long gone by, to be pursued and knocked on the head by the boys, till on one occasion, the poor animal, being sorely pressed, swam across the Thames, and, reeling into the market-place at Windsor, followed by its persecutors, did such mischief, that this sport was stopped, and instead thereof it was hamstrung, after the speech on Election Saturday, and clubbed to death. None of these humanising influences were at work at Mayfield: there was not even the customary charge of 5s. to each boy for rods.

No such rules as those in force at the free grammar-school at Cuckfield prevailed at Mayfield. They were not taught 'on every working day one of the eight pearls of reason, with the word according to the same, that is to say, Nomen with Amo, Pronomen with Amor, to be said by heart; nor as being a modern and a thoroughly Protestant school, were they called upon before breakfast each Friday to listen to a little piece of the Pater Nester, or Ave Maria, the Credo, or the verses of the Mariners, or the Ten Commandments, or the Five Evils, or some other proper saying in Latin meet for babies.' Still less, as in the case of the grammar-school at Stockport, did any founder will 'that some cunning priest, with all his scholars, should, on Wednesday and Friday of every week, come to the church to the grave where the bodies of his father and mother lay buried, and there say the psalm of De Profundis, after the Salisbury use, and pray especially for his soul, and for the souls of his father and mother, and for all Christian souls.' Neither did the trustees, that they might sow the seeds of ambition in the minds of the scholars, ordain, as was done at Tunbridge and at Lewisham, 'that the best scholars and the best writers should wear some pretty garland on their heads, with silver pens well fastened thereunto, and thus walk to church and back again for at least a month.' A ceremony which in these days would infallibly secure for them all sorts of scoffings, and probably a broken head.'

It is deemed appropriate to append hereunto a memorial of one of the ancient grammar-school customs, more honoured in the breach than the observance, but which nevertheless still retains a certain hold. It is the stool or altar of punishment which was formerly in use at the Free School of Lichfield-the school at which Addison, Ashmole, Garrick, Johnson, and Wollaston received thew education. When our artist visited this venerable temple of learning a few years ago, there was a head-master receiving a good salary, but no scholars. The flogging-horse, here delineated, stood in the lower room, covered with dust.