rocked him in Greek, and carefully tended his fragile understanding, as we protect the flower of the tropic in the hot-house of our gardens. Their object was to form a prodigy, but they prepared a victim. These systematic educators wished to unite the student with the English gentleman, and success crowned their efforts; all the dangers of a public education were avoided, but how dearly was their success paid for! The irritable and nervous youth-preyed upon by hypochondriasis, habituated to the noiseless solitude of his cabinet and his garden, incessantly subjected to the professional injunctions of his guardians, skilled in Greek, and thoroughly versed in the Latin poets and orators,-received from his father at once one of the largest fortunes in England, and the incapacity of enjoying it. Oxford and Edinburgh, where he finished his education, failed to cure him: all this ill-directed training made the heir of the Dudleys a mere suffering and timid man of letters. The enthusiasts who crushed an intelligence and destroyed a happiness, knew not that talent. itself only acquires its proper vigour when bronzed under the experience of the world; and that the literary man who has not lived amongst his fellows is but a valueless pedant.

"Lord Dudley was made for another place in life, and he desired, but could never attain it. His recently published letters themselves evince the cruel fetters under which the youth of his mind had been overloaded and crushed. There is a timidity in the use of expressions, a constraint even in the elegance of his style, a formal grace, and a want of nerve and freedom, which are disagreeable and oppressive to the reader. Lord Byron, whose excellent prose has been lost sight of in the glare and splendour of his verse, admirably defined the talent of Ward in describing him as studious,

brilliant, elegant, and sometimes piquant.' Useless qualities these in a public assembly, but they were displayed to great advantage in the Review we have mentioned, which, according to the English practice, bestowed upon him, after his death, the loftiest of panegyrics.

"Never from infancy could his compressed and encr vated intellect recover its proper energy; distraction, gloom, absence of mind, and the habitual indulgence of a vague melancholy, plunged him into a state of languor, from which all the art of physicians and the resources of his fortune were unavailing to rescue him. Such had been the influence, or rather the tyranny of his education that, though a man of taste, he was altogether unsusceptible of the charms of music and painting. He had the sense to confess his incapacityWith respect to the fine arts,' says he, I am in a state of total and irrecoverable blindness-statues give me no pleasure, pictures very little, and when I am pleased it is uniformly in the wrong place, which is enough to discourage one from being pleased at all In fact, I believe that if people in general were as honest as I am, it would be found that the works of the great masters are, in reality, much less admired than they are now supposed to be.'

"Nothing can be more sad and tragical than the last letters of this amiable man, sacrificed to pedantic theories and foolish dreams of perfection-everything desirable was his-friendship, fortune, rank, talent, and renown; but he sank into himself, and, like those delicate leaves which fold up and shrivel in the hot sun, or the blasting wind, he withered and died. There was no misfortune, no passion, no debility, caused by excess of labour, or of pleasure. He died of the moral impossibility of living. At first he escaped the demon

which pursued him; subsequently, the attacks were renewed, and he sank in July, 1833, after a year's forced retirement, under the weight of mental alienation. His letters, speeches, and writings will doubtless be collected, and such elegant and polished productions will preserve their author's name from oblivion."

Lord Dudley commenced his political career as a Whig and terminated it a Tory. In allusion to this circumstance, Lord Byron being asked what it would take to re-whig Dudley, replied, "He must be first rewarded." Lord Dudley's speeches in Parliament were all elaborately prepared, and his lordship defended the practice by the example of Canning, and of far greater men even than him, in every branch of intellectual excellence. His reflections on the writings of his greatest favourite, Ariosto, in a letter written from Ferrara, are characteristic of his feelings on the point." The inspection of this MS. will greatly confirm the opinion of those who think that consummate excellence, united to the appearance of ease, is almost always the result of great labour. The corrections are innumerable; several passages, where, as they now stand, the words and thoughts seem to flow along with the most graceful facility, and the rhyme to come unsought for, have been altered over and over, and scarce a line of the first draught has been allowed to remain."

Lord Dudley died a bachelor on the 6th of March, 1833, when the Earldom of Dudley, and Viscountcy of Dudley and Ward, expired, while the Barony of Ward devolved upon his second cousin, the Rev. William Humble Ward, who died in two years after, and was succeeded by his elder son, the present LORD WARD.

THE COALSTOUN PEAR.

This

ONE of the most remarkable curiosities connected with ancient superstitious belief, now to be found in Scotland, is what is commonly known by the name of the Coalstoun Pear-an object whose history has attracted no small degree of interest, though little is popularly known regarding it. An interesting work, “The Picture of Scotland," gives us this curious narrative:— "Within sight of the House of Lethington (in Haddingtonshire) stands the mansion-house of Coalstoun, the seat of the ancient family of Broun of Coalstoun, whose estate passed by a series of heirs of line into the possession of the Countess of Dalhousie. place is chiefly worthy of attention here, on account of a strange heir-loom, with which the welfare of the family was formerly supposed to be connected. One of the Barons of Coalstoun, about three hundred years ago, married Jean Hay, daughter of John, third Lord Yester, with whom he obtained a dowry, not consisting of such base materials as houses or land, but neither more nor less than a pear. such a pear was never seen,' however, as this of Coalstoun, which a remote ancestor of the young lady, famed for his necromantic power, was supposed to have invested with some enchantment that rendered it perfectly invaluable.

Sure

Lord Yester, in giving away his

daughter along with the pear, informed his son-in-law, that, good as the lass might be, her dowry was much better, because, while she could only have value in her own generation, the pear, so long as it was continued in his family, would be attended with unfailing prosperity, and thus might cause the family to flourish to the end of time. Accordingly, the pear was preserved as a sacred palladium, both by the laird who first obtained it, and by all his descendants; till one of their ladies, taking a longing for the forbidden fruit while pregnant, inflicted upon it a deadly bite; in consequence of which, it is said, several of the best farms on the estate very speedily came to the market. The pear, tradition goes on to tell us, became stone-hard immediately after the lady had bit it; and in this condition it remains till this day, with the marks of Lady Broun's teeth indelibly imprinted on it. Whether it be really thus fortified against all further attacks of the kind or not, it is certain that it is now disposed in some secure part of the house [or, as we have been lately informed, in a chest, the key of which is kept secure by the Earl of Dalhousie], so as to be out of all danger whatsoever. The Coalstoun Pear, without regard to the superstition attached to it, must be considered a very great curiosity in its way, having, in all probability, existed five hundred years-a greater age than, perhaps, has ever been reached by any other such production of nature."