courage, dilates upon it, her daughter smiles, and says, "I could a tale unfold."

We are not aware, however, that she is in the habit of doing so, or of telling people in what way the Dormer Family Compact was carried out.

A. L.

A HEROIC OF MODERN DAYS.

Sing, O Muse, the delights, the pleasures of much toiling schoolboys;

Sing what I saw in my dream at the School of Lawrence the

Grocer,

For methought I beheld, and the roofs of the rooms were
uplifted,
There upon
benches hard, and in order like diligent oarsmen—
Oarsmen that cleave with their sounding oars far-echoing ocean
Seeking for unknown lands, green islands that stud the green
billows-

So they sat in their order; and there as sayeth Homerus,
(Father of poets was he and hard to construe for dullards !)

Him I saw, and him, and him so runneth my story

Him, the sweeper of studies, with broom hard-labouring small boy,

Fag to one in the sixth, a just and merciful master,

So the laws ordain and the constitution of Rugby

Manifold truly I ween were his works, and none of them well

done;

Ever he scrummaged by day and oft neglected his lessons,

Foolish, for Fate awaits with punishment certain the idle.

Sometimes the master uplifts the bamboo product of Indies,
And upon either palm falls the rod, and Echo resounding,
Telltale ever betrays his fate; as when in the spring time
Falls from some elm tree a branch, and leaves its parent
disfigured;

Round on the grass are scattered the new built nests of the jackdaws,

And the unfledged young brood take the form of a pancake at
Shrovetide;

Them no mother returning or father with delicate morsels
Ever shall feed again, full cramming their crops to repletion,
But their breath is departed and Night has covered their eyelids.
So on the small boy's palm falls the bamboo, product of Indies.
Sometimes alone he sits at a punishment wearily working,
Lines of Ovid or Virgil transcribing, illegible always—

Sometimes a School is his grave, and the man with the keys of his office

Sternly leaves him alone and shuts the School up behind him;
Evil then is his fate, and he prays with fervent devotion
Unto the god of the bat to open the window and free him;
Pitiless oft is the god, and hears not beseechings of mortals.
Sometimes a heavier fate and a darker prison await him,
And up a weary stair, while his heart knocks loud at his bosom,
Goes he, nor then alone, where just fate has taken her station;
This however I saw not, but if Fame truly reporteth,
Thence assuredly bears he the mark of his punishment on him.
These are the small boy's troubles, and these Fate's just
retributions;

Yet is he happy and noisy, his pleasures who may recount them?
In short winter days at punt-about player incessant,

And when the summer arrives, with buttercups many and daisies, Cricket delights his heart and a plunge in clear-flowing Avon; So he is floored and is happy though little wisdom he learneth, Care came near him never save when in a foolish ambition

Once he wended his way to the far-famed garden of Batley;
There he essayed to inbale the perfume of English tobacco-
But much choking and coughing oppressed him and violent
headache,

Until Night's soft wings hushed the grief of his heart and its sickness.

TIME.

N. or M.

6

THE author of an excellent article in a late number of the New Rugbeian, entitled "The Disadvantages of possessing a Watch," must surely be one who holds in very little esteem that excellent quality, which in these railroad days has become one of the highest moment, viz., Punctuality. But not to enter into Personalities surely the virtue, the defence of which was suggested to me by the above-named article, is one of no secondary importance-order,' says the proverb, is heaven's first law'; and nature has doubtless implanted in the mind of man some fixed principles of order, though in some in greater proportion than in others, as a fit, and in some degree a necessary adjunct to his reason; from these first principles others take their rise, which when more fully developed give rise in their turn to theories, at first obscure and abstruse, but which unfold by degrees, and in that process exhibit at every stage so much that is new and beautiful that men's minds are captivated as much now by its simplicity, as they were before deterred by its abstruseness. To such an origin as this we can easily refer the sciences of

Mathematics and Rhetoric, which however dry and uninviting at first sight contain inexplicable beauties, reserved for their more diligent admirers, and also the quality to which our subject recals us. Punctuality. For it is highly natural to suppose that a rational being endued with such fixed principles of order would direct those principles in the first place to the division and arrangement of that most valuable of his new possessions, Time. There seems an innate anxiety in the heart of man about the passage of Time; a desire "to understand the measure of his days, what it is." Even the poor captive in the dungeon before he casts himself down on his pallet of damp straw etches with his rusty fetters another notch on his calendar of sticks, and adds it to the mournful heap. From the very creation then, up to the present time the systematic arrangement of Time has always been a thing of the utmost national and social importance. In the. palmy days of Greece and Rome the regulation of the calendar was thought worthy to be placed on a par with religious ceremonies, and was jealously guarded in the hands of the Pontiffs, who could alter and arrange it to suit their private ends; the consequence was of course almost inextricable confusion, which together with their absurd superstitions has been most happily ridiculed by Aristophanes in his comedy of the Clouds. He there shows how deplorably the fasts and festivals were disarranged, and how unpleasant the effect was on the gods in particular, who dwelling out of the world were of course far behind the march of the age. The savour of the sacrifices on which they were supposed to live came up to them either when they were asleep or not hungry, and was withheld at those regular intervals, at which they had been

accustomed to break their fast; so had it not been for a store of nectar and ambrosia reserved for special emergencies, their immortality would have run the risk of being quenched by vulgar starvation! Such a state of things is now however happily at an end, about four hundred years after Aristophanes wrote this Julius Cæsar made the first attempt at correcting the calendar; and, notwithstanding the vigorous opposition of the Pontiffs, and indeed of the mass of the people, who were strongly opposed to any change however useful in the existing order of things, gained his end, and the calendar thus amended actually remained in general use among the western nations, until finally revised by Pope Gregory in A.D. 1582: and we can now rest at ease with the consciousness of having our year correct to within .007736, or about 1-125th part of a day, an error which would amount to little more than a week in a thousand years. Such then is the accuracy of our calendar, an accuracy indispensable indeed for the nicer purposes of science; but taking the case of the world in general, we should properly find the use made of it to be a very inadequate recompense for the labour of reducing it to a state so nearly approaching perfection. In the course of our daily labour we often hear, and that too without much wonder, of people being late for a train or packet, of frightful accidents occurring on railways, &c., from want of punctuality, in the one case we feel inclined to laugh, in the other we blame the officials, but very rarely if ever do we bring the lesson home to ourselves, or see a wit more clearly our own failings in that respect and it is not only to the early practice of punctuality that I would recommend my readers, but also to that of its twin sister, method or order. Without a due appreciation of the great

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