lieve grandmother loves all babies better since she died; so don't be afraid of intruding." Moved by such kindness, the widow in an under tone told her painful errand to her new friend. "Ah, ah!" he said, "well your relative is a kind man, if you go at him just the right way, and folks say I know how to manage him as well as any. In the morning I'll drive you over there and present your case in the most judicious manner. Never fear; he'll be kind to you, so keep up good heart my poor friend." Overcome by such unlooked for kindness she wept out the tears which had all day been gathering in their fountain, under the cold look and sarcastic words of those around her. Miss Trimmer, who, when not in a hurry or a crowd, was a really kind-hearted woman, looked compassionately at the faint effort the young widow had made toward wearing black for the dead. “Won't you call at my shop with the lady, as you go by in the morning, Mr. Bond?" she asked: "I should like to speak with her; and again she glanced at the straw hat, with its bands of thin black ribbon, with an expression which promised a new one. 66 Well, here we are, my friend," cried the man, as the coach stopped before an old brown mansion, "and there is grandmother in the door waiting for us." The little belle offered to hold the baby while the mother alighted, and the softened Squire handed out her carpet bag and basket. "Good night,"-crack went the whip, and the cheerful travellers rode on to their own homes. Light and warmth, and a cordial welcome for the night, and prosperity on the morrow awaited the lonely widow; "and all," so said her noble friend, "because a baby had a tooth, and his little brother told of it." CHAUCER lived in the fourteenth century, a Sir John Mandeville, an ancient Baron Muncontemporary of Wicliff, the English Reformer chausen, and in the same age with the monk John Langland, and with John Gower, whom Shakspeare terms "the ancient Gower;" the latter, first a friend, afterwards a jealous contemporary of Chaucer, ranks next to him as a poet and writer. Chaucer is an intelligent and discriminating ant and communicative, though not garrulous observer, a rare wit, a talented writer, a pleascompanion, a thorough reader, a rare student of character; but,-for we must append a "but," notwithstanding his advice on this point,† Chaucer is not always sufficiently deliries are truly disgusting. Still, as we may cate in his allusions; nay,—some of his stolook with pleasure upon a beautiful river withit casts up along its shores, so we may turn out contemplating the decaying carcases which the really good and pure creations of his masover a leaf upon the bad, while we look upon ter mind. The Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer have justly rendered him famous. They consist of different class, linked together in an ingenious a Prologue and twenty-four tales, each of a manner, abounding in skillful descriptions of nature, of character, and of incident, delicately tinted with wit and satire. In form, the stories, except two, are in verse; each line contains a certain number of syllables, the accent is not strictly uniform; the lines generally rhyme in couplets, and are not disposed in ONE pound of gold may be drawn into a wire that would extend round the globe. So one good deed may be felt through all time, and cast its influence into eternity. Though done in the first flush of youth, it may gild/the form of stanzas. the last hours of a long life and form the only bright spot in it. Ir has been calculated by Professor Bache, that the waves of the sea travel at the rate of six and a half miles a minute. *Born about A. D. 1328; died A. D. 1400. "Some man preiseth his neighbour by a wicked en tente, for he maketh alway a wicked knotte at the last digne of more blame than is worth all the preising.”. ende: always he maketh a BUT at the last ende, that PERSONES TALE. The reader in the Prologue, is introduced tending to be jealous of his ever true and into the Tabard Inn, at Southwark, where faithful wife, treats her coldly, and even takes Chaucer, with several other guests, are en- away from her their loved child. Still, no tertained by their obliging Host, and pass the complaint escapes the heart of Griselda,—her evening in conversation and merriment. In love to her lord continues the same; kind, the course of the night and on the next morn- gentle and forgiving she remains, until the ing, the guests becoming acquainted and com- birth of a second child, to whom she becomes municative, find that they are all journeying even more fondly attached than to the first. in the same direction-to the tomb of Thomas Now comes a greater trial still. The second à Becket, in Canterbury; so, securing the is wrested from her, and the intelligence company of their Host, whom they appoint reaches her ears that it is dead. Sad, but not umpire of all their disputes and conductor of complaining, Griselda remains true to her lord. the party, they agree to go on together. As At last, in a strange mood, as if to try her love they start, and while they ride, Chaucer de- and her patience to the utmost, he causes her scribes the pilgrims,-men and women, thirty to be disrobed of her beautiful garments, and in all, including the Host and the Poet;-some to be sent home to her cottage to her aged well, some ill mounted, and some on foot, all father, in disgrace. Yet she complains not. of whom he delineates with a master pen, and Her father receives his daughter: she, without with the description ends the Prologue, in itself a murmur, resumes her peasant life, grieving, a poem. Here the story begins, made up of but still faithful to her lord. Then the rich distinct tales told by each member of the party, knight repented: he had tried the gold and who prefaces a prologue of his own. So they found it pure. He called the weeping but ride on, conversing and telling their tales as faithful wife to his castle; at a grand banquet they are called on by the Host. restored to her, in the presence of the noble and great, her manly boy and her beautiful daughter, whom, at first sight, before she knew, she loved, and whom the harsh lord said he was to wed that day. So great was her joy when she knew that they were her long lost loved ones, that Griselda swooned, but, The persons belonging to the party exemplify the Chivalry, the Owners and Improvers of the Soil, the Middle Classes of Society, and the Peasantry, Ecclesiastics,-a large and interesting group,-the Educated and Professional men, the Traders and Manufacturers, the Aristocracy, and the Lower Classes as they ex-recovering, clasped her children to her arms, isted in England in the reign of Edward, the Black Prince. Spalding enumerates but twenty-nine: add to these the "noanes preeste," who is ranked with the Monk and Friar among the "precstes three" accompanying the men, or consider the reader the wanting member, and the score and a half is made up. was again received into the heart and the home of her lord, and passed with him and her children, the rest of a long, peaceful and happy life. Chaucer's description of the grief of Griselda, and her disgrace when sent home to her father, his reproaches, and her meek and quiet demeanor, is more than beautiful. There is nothing gross within it to mar its beauty or its purity. The two tales in prose are the "Tale of Melibee," and the "Persones Tale." The former is the story told by the poet himself; The best story is one told by the "Clerke of Oxenford." It is the story of Griselda. A noble and rich lord, dwelling in a splendid castle, falls in love with a peasant girl named Griselda, who lives in a cottage with her aged father. The rich knight gains the heart of the maiden, and surprises her by an offer of mar-it is dull and tedious; the latter, which is the riage. Griselda, in the presence of the envious maidens of the village, in beautiful attire, meets her lordly bridegroom, is united to him in wedlock, and goes home to the beautiful castle to live. For a time, the lord and his lady enjoy, in peace, the society of each other, but after the birth of the first-born, he, pre concluding tale, is, in reality, a sermon, arranged under different heads, and teaching the doctrines of Romanism, treating of the seven sins and their remedies. To read this patiently, without experiencing the effect of dull sermons of the nineteenth century, requires a continued action of the will. Pre suming that few readers of this article have read Chaucer's "Persones Tale," the Schoolmaster gives a few extracts, which will bear examination on account of the lesssons they convey. This advice the parson gives to the angry: "Thine enemy shalt thou love for Godd's sake by his commandement; for if it were reson than man shuld hate his enemy, forsoth Godd n'olde not receive us to his love that ben his enemies. forsoth nature driveth us to love our friends, and parfay our enemies have more nede of love than our friends, and they that more nede have, certes to hew shall men do goodnesse." The doctrine, though old, is fresh and vig orous as ever. Honesty is commanded, and the use of the negative in old writing is illustrated in: "Thou ne shalt not also make no lesing in thy confession." An illustration under the head of remedium irae is taken from the school-room: "A philosopher upon a time, that wold have beten his disciple for his gret trespas, for which he was gretly moved, and brought a yerde to bete the childe, and whan this childe saw the yerde, he sayd to his maister, What thinke ye to do?' 'I wol bete thee,' said the maister, 'for thy correction.' Forsoth,' sayd the childe, 'ye ought first correct yourself, that have lost all your patience for the offence of a child.' Forsoth,' said the maister all weping, thou sayest soth have thou the yerde, my dere sone, and correct me for min impatience," It may be well for most "maisters" of the common schools of the present enlightened age to think of the child's remark when they are disposed to judge harshly the transgressions of their pupils. Chaucer is rare. Few libraries have the complete edition, for the good reason that few readers ever take the trouble of reading him. Those who love the old poetry easily accustum themselves to its rythm, and find their curiosity fully repaid by newly discovered beauties which, like those in the paintings of the old masters, gather interest from their ven erable associations. J. W. O. For the Schoolmaster. Fragments Picked up at Sea. BY JOHN Dudd. FOUND afloat-an old book from which we extract the following reflections touching: HUMAN LIFE.-How rapidly does each individual object vanish and disappear! The individuals themselves are respectively absorbed in the immensity of the universe, and the memory of them, by the lapse of time, is sunk in oblivion! and the reveries of the mind are as a vapor and Everything relating to us is fleeting and transient, a dream-Antonius. "Then what is life! 'Tis but a flower A wave that breaks upon the shore, Thus generations pass away "Tis childhood and old age;- Are swept from off the stage." Reader, is it true? After a few sighs and tears over our cast-off clay by a few friends at most, are we straightway forgotten? Is the world no better (let us hope it is no worse) for our having lived in it? Looking beyond the grave for an immortality, may we not hope for it on this side also-on this side where we "cast off this mortal coil" and cast aside the thousand little affections that we have culled along the path of life? where we must leave unfinished so many little works that we had hoped our fellow men might thank us for? where we must leave unbuilt-upon so many well-laid foundations on which we had hoped for time and strength to build fair temples for human good, that generations yet to come might bless us for? Must we all die, in every sense, so far as the things of earth are concerned, and become as if we had never been? No,-a thousand times no! Let us not believe in such utter annihilation, for there is nothing like it awaiting us. There is an im A CRITIC is always more feared than loved. mortality for the humblest son and daughter of earth, not beyond the grave alone, but here, where we have lived and loved and wrought. Our names may fade from the minds of men, be obliterated, indeed, from the stone with which affection has marked our last resting place, the stone itself may have crumbled into dust, a vast city with its ceaseless din, with its unbounded influences, may have been reared above our ashes-nay, that city may have passed away, may be known only through the pages of a forgotten history upon the shelves of some bibliomaniac fortunate in its rare possession, or its existence even may be called in question, and scholars regard the dim traditions that have come down to them as only fictions or myths, as our scholarssome if not all of them-regard the stories that have reached us of Troy's mysterious power and grandeur-it matters not, we "still live!" In the great ocean of mind, bounded only by the boundless Infinite, we still exist and have our influence. In the gardens of the Vatican there is, or not many years ago there was, a fragment of a statue of Hercules, which was "long the favorite study of those great men to whom we owe the revival of the arts, Michael Angelo, Raphael, and the Carracci." The name of him who wrought what is, in its very ruins, so great a wonder of perfection, which furnished for such minds studies so prolific, which studies, recited in marble by such noble pupils, have in their turn furnished our own, and will supply all future artists with models -his name only is lost to us. But names are mere words, and words are perishable. His work still exists, an everlasting monument to the genius that created it. The ideas it embodies will pass from chisel to chisel and be handed down-unrecognized, it may be-from age to age. Unlike his name, they are imperishable; they emanated from his mind and appeal to other minds-mind being immortal. If modern art is indebted to that statue, how much more is modern literature indebted to Homer, philosophy to Plato? And if we owe so much to those who lived two or three thousand years ago, may we not involve in our debt, those who are to live two or three thousand years after we have passed away? It is not so hard a matter. If the sculptor may immortalize himself by impressions made upon marble that may be ground into dustimpressions which may only be preserved by transfer from block to block-how much more secure is the immortality of him who trains aright the mind of a child and leads it in the path of virtue! And that child, in his turn, becomes a teacher, and transfers the ideas, maxims and morals received from his master, to the tender minds of others. And it is not possible to stay these good deeds. These minds have received an impulse that will be felt by all future gen-* erations. He who gave it may be forgotten, but his contribution to the intellectual ocean will swell every and the last wave that shall break upon the shore of Time. For the Schoolmaster. Parting Words. (Style of Hiawatha.) BY ELLEN, SHOULD YOU wonder whence this essay. Whence this farewell composition, I will answer-I will tell you 'Tis the gushing warm outpouring, 'Tis the murmur, timid, pleading, 'Tis the farewell sad and tearful Of a heart to you devoted, Of a spirit true and loyal. As I gaze upon your faces, Faces bright and fair and sunny, Your loved faces, O, my classmates, Memory with her magic pencil, Dipped in tints of glancing sunbeams, Paints afresh the merry pastimes Of the olden glowing hours, Hours of childhood past forever, Hours which vanish all too quickly. Then as I remember fondly All your kindness and affection, All your kind and gentle actions, . I have lifted to our Father, Our kind Father, the "Great Spirit," Prayers sincere and undivided That from out the deep blue heavens, Pillared domes of purest azure, Still may fall the choicest blessings, And your path on earth be pleasant, Strewn with roses blooming, thornless, And that when the grim "Death Angel," In the silent watch of midnight, Strikes his arrow swiftly, surely, And the quivering breath is ceasing, Then from out the world above us, Crowded full of ghosts, of shadows, And to you, our faithful teacher, Who through showers and through sunshine, Pours upon the billowy ocean Rays of light and and heat effulgent, Of the "Roots of higher powers," Of the laws which bind the scholar. Now I'll breathe for you the wishes, And when on its heavy hinges, Open wide the massive archways Of the dread yet longed for "High School," Vanish from your care away, Breathe a prayer, though short, yet holy, For the welfare of your scholars, For their happiness and blessing, Has, perhaps, waxed long and tiresome I will cut it short, and utter That sad, tearful word, FAREWELL. Benefit Street Grammar School, For the Schoolmaster. On the Want of Success. DEAR SCHOOLMASTER: WILL you allow an old friend to say a few words? They may take the Essay form, or they may be more like gossip; but as I cannot exactly promise anything before I get to the end of my scrawl, it will probably be safest for you to make me no promise till you have read what I have written. I am a very quiet person, not fond of talking, farther than answering questions when I am asked, in a good-natured way, by a very good friend. I am modest even to bashfulness, and like best of all things to place myself in a retired corner, when company is present, and do nothing but look on and listen; to see what is done and hear what is said, and speculate on the motives and principles that actuate the men and women around me. In this way I fancy I have picked up at one time and place or another, a great deal of, to me, very pleasing information and knowledge of human nature. But as I am not fond of talking this is locked up in my own breast, and does, I fear, really profit my fellow men nothing, while it makes me suspicious and shy, and afraid to move, lest I fall into the same condemnation that I mentally pass upon other men. |