room, he naturally turned to study, and at length to authorship, as a resource, and in 1787, he produced his first book. This was a series of sketches intended to show the power of religion over the mind, especially in time of misfortune or at the approach of death, and was illustrated by examples ranging from Socrates, Confucius, and Saint Paul, to Richelieu, Cæsar Borgia, and Dr. Doddridge. This he published anonymously, and distributed it gratuitously amongst his neighbours; but the book thus modestly introduced became very popular, and eventually ran through eighteen editions.

Some of his friends having established a school at York for "the guarded education of young women," Mr. Murray delivered some informal lectures to the teachers on the methods of imparting a knowledge of the English language. These little lectures or addresses he, at their request, expanded into book-form, and so, in 1795, his "English Grammar" was offered to the public. Its success was immediate and unmistakeable; and, thus encouraged, he wrote a book of Grammatical Exercises, followed by a Key; and, in 1797, made an Abridgement of the Grammar, which, even in his own lifetime, reached its eighty-sixth edition.

Next appeared an "English Reader," and in 1800, a "Sequel," or more advanced volume, which was very highly and deservedly praised. It was an enormous improvement on the books of a similar kind then existing. Its selections, which aimed at being interesting as well as instructive, were marked by judgement and taste, and comprised such poems as "The Traveller," "The Deserted Village," "Gray's Elegy," and "Grongar Hill," with shorter extracts from Thomson, Milton, Cowper, Crabbe, and Prior.

In 1802 he wrote "Le Lecteur François;" a few years later, an "Introduction" to the same; and, in 1804, an English Spelling Book, and also a small Primer for very young children.

The Spelling Book was as well and carefully executed as his other books, and met with similar acceptance. Nearly fifty editions have been called for, and it has been published, not alone in England and America, but at Calcutta and even at Cadiz.

His other writings were few and unimportant. A small tract against theatrical and frivolous amusements appeared at Philadelphia in 1799, and a "Doctrinal Compendium for Young Members of the

Society of Friends," a little book inculcating the duty of daily perusing the Bible, and pamphlet biography of a religious friend of his, Mr. Tuke, from time to time issued from his pen. This, with a volume of extracts from "Horne's Commentary on the Psalms," was all he ever wrote; but these productions did not terminate his literary activity. He considered it his duty to make such additions and improvements as were found necessary in those works which had received so large an amount of public favour.

Urged by his London publishers he issued, in 1808, a library edition in two volumes of his Grammar, with its Exercises and Key, and personally superintended the alterations and revisions which were called for by an interminable series of new editions. This he did from a sense of moral obligation, and not influenced either by desire or prospect of profit, for he had disposed of his copyrights on terms and for objects equally creditable to himself.

At the present day, when the rival claims of publishers and authors are so hotly canvassed, it is interesting to read his account of the commercial side of his literary experience. He says of his publishers, "they gave a liberal price for the books; and, I must say, that in all our transactions together - which have not been very limited-they have demonstrated great honour and uprightness, and entirely justified my confidence and expectation. I have great pleasure in knowing that the purchase of the copyrights has proved highly advantageous to them; and though it has turned out much more lucrative than was at first contemplated, they are fully entitled to the benefit."

For his Grammar, Abridgement, Exercises, and Key, he obtained eight hundred pounds; for the Reader, Introduction and Sequel, seven hundred and fifty; for his French books, seven hundred pounds; and for his Spelling Book and Primer, five hundred pounds. He at one time contemplated a kind of expurgated edition of the poets; but, happily perhaps for his reputation, never attempted to carry it into effect. His means being sufficient for his simple mode of life, and having no family, he devoted all his literary income to charitable and benevolent objects. He furnished a brief autobiographical sketch in a series of letters, which comprise the history of his life down to 1809; and this forms the basis of the volume of Memoirs published after his death. From this date, the

record of his history is almost devoid of incident. In 1810 he was admitted an Honorary Member of the Historical Society of New York, and in 1816 of the Literary and Philosophical Society of the same city. These were the only literary or academic distinctions he ever received. Indeed, so retired was the life he led, from temperament as well as necessity, that many of those acquainted with his writings were either altogether ignorant of, or very imperfectly informed as to, the facts of his existence; and Dr. Blair, who corresponded with him, shared the most generally received opinion that he was a schoolmaster. The Edgeworths, and a few other visitors of social or literary distinction, called on him in his retreat; and were much impressed by his kindly manner and dignified appearance, and by his powers of conversation, so far as his weakness of voice permitted him to exercise them.

Of his works it is not necessary to say much. Their merit is proved by the permanence as well as the width of their popularity; and their general utility has never been called in question. Their plan and method have been gradually superseded by the more logical and scientific system of our own time; and even technical inaccuracies have been pointed out by Mr. Moon and other critics. The dreadful" and which" whose discovery in "The Heart of Midlothian" has so shocked Mr. Andrew Lang, is also to be found in the Grammar of Lindley Murray. We smile, too, while we differ from his dictum, that as a matter of gender we perceive an impropriety" in calling a woman a philosopher or an astronomer, though "we can say she is an architect, a botanist, a student," so that a correct designation might be given to Bess o' Hardwick, while it was denied to Mrs. Somerville. But, even if his errors and inelegancies were ten times more numerous, they could not seriously detract from the solid value of his achievement. His closing years were passed in great pain; but his intellect was always clear, and he never ceased altogether from work. True, he laboured in English, and not in Greek; and his work was synthetic and constructive, rather than analytic and critical. Otherwise, he is like enough to Mr. Browning's hero:

So, with the throttling hands of death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro' the rattle parts of speech were rife:
While he could stammer.

He settled Hoti's business-let it be !
Properly based Oun-

Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic De,
Dead from the waist down.

His maimed and suffering existence was prolonged until the sixteenth of February, 1826, when he expired somewhat suddenly, in the eighty-first year of his age. Through all the long illness which made up his life, attention by his wife, to whom, on the he had been nursed with the most careful anniversary of their wedding, which was also her birthday, he never failed to present a little literary offering of tenderness and

affection.

With sweetest memories mingled, and with hope.

She survived him for some years, and on her death, his property was, according to his will, devoted to the manumission and education of negro slaves, and to missionary efforts amongst the American Indians. He never took any part in politics, and would, perhaps, have experienced some difficulty in choosing a side; for, though he loved America, and regretted his enforced exile, he was also warmly attached to England; and of that British Constitution under which he lived, he expressed the opinion, "it has stood the test of ages and attracted the admiration of the world." He was neither a genius nor a hero, not even in the strict sense, a scholar; but there is an actual and an abiding character of usefulness in his effort to lighten "the long and tedious track of slavish grammar." was a good man; patient, benevolent, tolerant, with a quick intelligence, vivid and active sympathies, and an energetic tenacity of will- graft of American hickory upon English oak.

LONDON SHOWS.

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THE streets festooned with flags; the roar of the City traffic stilled, and instead only the tramp of countless footsteps; windows filled with faces-children's faces, young women's faces, all kinds of faces where, in a general way, nothing is to be seen but wire blinds and dusty ledgers; mud and slush on the pavements, and everywhere a great spread of umbrellas glistening with rain; such is the general aspect of things to one waiting patiently for the Lord Mayor's Show on the edge of a damp kerbstone by Ludgate Circus. It needs, indeed, the sight of great Saint Paul's showing hazily from the top of the hill, and little Saint Martin's spire

that does not reach its big neighbour's shoulder, to convince the spectator that he is really within the limits of London City, so unfamiliar is the aspect of the scene. The Circus is a whirlpool of turbid humanity, prevented from settling into a compact mass by the benevolent efforts of a few mounted police, who circle round and round. But, in pauses of the general uproar of the shouts, yells, whistling, hooting, shrill cries, may be heard the bells ringing out in full volley overhead; sounds which alone, amongst all the turmoil, have retained the ancient note of free and careless rejoicing.

Certainly, a London crowd of to-day takes nothing very seriously. There is a mocking, bitter laugh for the most venerated institutions, and the manytongued voice has an acrid, cynic accent. The steady, respectable element, indeed, holds its tongue, and keeps an anxious watch over its pockets; and it is the looser, wilder members of the crowd who are seen and heard the most. But how numerous these last, how threatening, and how quickly increasing and gathering strength, it only needs an occasional day in the streets to realise. And the most discouraging part of the business is the immense contingent of idle youths; most of whom have passed under, what ought to have been, the civilising effects of education in the Board Schools, but who certainly show to no greater advantage than the roughs and loafers of a former era. Indeed, the clamorous voices of the swarms of idle or half-idle youth who will earn no daily bread, nor even the pinch of salt that should accompany it, to whom any real apprenticeship to any decent craft, or trade, or mystery, or any reliable way to earn an honest living, is altogether inaccessible, seem to reproach us for all the pains and parade which we have given to teaching. Perhaps it is in deference to the keen unfriendly commentary of the streets, that the pageant of to-day assumes a somewhat apologetic character. Here are emblems, if you please-if only the driving rain will permit us to see them--emblems of the benefits conferred by the wealth of the great city, open spaces, Epping Forest, Burnham Beeches, with wood rangers, hawking parties, shepherds, and shepherdesses: here is Education, far more handsome, genial, and smiling, than she generally appears to her enforced votaries; here is Charity distributing her dole; nurses to bind up the wounds of the suffering,

emblems of the far-reaching beneficence of our noble hospitals. But for all this does anyone care of all the loose disorderly crowd that, hustling, yelling, screeching, whirls along in heedless turmoil ?

Truly here is a contrast, if one could realise it, between such a hurly-burly as this, and the dignified, somewhat solemn function of earlier days. The first beginning of the stately progress of the Chief Magistrate of the City was to accompany His Lordship, not only in respect for him and his office, but to make sure of his coming back again in safety. It was in the last year of King John, or the first of his successor, that the first record of the practice appears, and at that time the City went solidly for the Magna Charta; Barons against the King and the Pope; and the march to Westminster was a display of force as well as an official pageant.

once

It was long after this-indeed just before the beginning of the Wars of the Rosesthat the progress by water was first inaugurated. Then Sir John Norman built a richly ornamented barge for his own use, and the twelve great City Companies followed his example; and this, too, was something of a demonstration of the City's power over the river. The water progress continued till well into the present century; and as one of the most picturesque and taking features of the show, it seem a pity that it was ever abandoned. Now that the Embankment affords a fine and uninterrupted view of the river from Blackfriars to Westminster, it is to be regretted that there is so little to be seen on the grand historic stream. Even the bustling traffic of the penny steamers is in danger of ceasing altogether; and the river from London Bridge to Lambeth, once gay with every kind of boat, with courtiers, cavaliers, and citizens in brave apparel, with pageants of all kinds, with games and water frolics, where sometimes a King might be seen in his gilded barge, on his way to the palace; sometimes a noble hurried along with muffled oars to Traitor's Gate and the frowning mysterious Towerthis gay, bright, and yet darksome and terrible river is abandoned now to tugs and coal barges, or now and then a noisy, fussy launch, or quiet, grim police boat. And what a quiet pleasant passage it would be for the incoming Lord Mayor! And if he could make up his mind to return the same way, what dangers to the peace of London and the safety of her peaceful citizens would be altogether avoided!

And recalling the old London streets, their quaint gables and overhanging timber structures, quiet often enough, and yet often surcharged with life; with nobles, citizens, apprentices, handsome City dames and pretty maidens, old greybeards in their starched ruffs, the liverymen in their gowns -all the quaint pageant passing through as a thing supremely respectable and desirable; ah! it is the chivalry of old as compared with the rough-and-tumble of a

street row.

But even compared with the days of our youth, how great a change has come over the spirit of the scene! Advanced spirits might have criticised the affair with cynicism; but there, to old and young, was a pleasant, goodly show that all liked to look upon; a show with a flavour of Gog and Magog about it, with the men in veritable armour, even if sometimes they staggered and swayed in their saddles from the weight of it, and though the horses themselves might scarcely show the blood and bone of the knightly destrier.

Still, it was all delightful for the boys with their shining faces and great white collars! And what pretty girls they met, those boys! and how they all feasted together, in emulation of the Lord Mayor's banquet, and danced and flirted in those days before the deluge, the screaming, howling, roaring, blaspheming deluge: and then there was the drive home at night through the merry, glittering streets; not so bright with gas and electricity, but how much more radiant in the light of love and hope, and in the glow of the good time that was coming!

THREE CAROLINES.

"THE fierce light that beats upon a throne," has scorched up many reputations. Our Carolines suffered, as did our Catherines; but in a somewhat different way. For levity and indiscretion, Henry the Eighth had the axe and block; while George the Fourth employed a still much more cruel weapon, "the delicate investigation."

But against the first of our Carolines, her of Brandenburg Ansbach, no one ever breathed a word of scandal. Her early bringing up was not good for a girl. Her mother, widowed when she was four years old, married Elector John George of Saxony; and morals at Dresden were lower than at Louis the Fifteenth's Court,

without even the poor varnish of French refinement. John George was meditating open bigamy when he died in 1694, and his stepdaughter was taken in hand by Sophia Charlotte, daughter of the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and wife of Frederick the First of Prussia.

Sophia Charlotte was no ordinary woman; she was able to hold her own with her mother's friend, philosopher Leibnitz; and to her Caroline owed the philosophic bent which marked her in an especially frivolous age.

Of course the first thing to do with a German Princess, high-born, serene, a "durch-laucht" (light through and through), was to get her eligibly married. Then, as now, religion in such a case was a matter of indifference. So, when Archduke Charles, afterwards Emperor Charles the Sixth, and titular King of Spain, appeared as a possible suitor, Father Orban, a Jesuit, was set to prepare Caroline for the dignity of marrying into the House of Hapsburg. But Caroline had a will of her own, and, when argument failed, she disconcerted the good Jesuit with floods of tears; and she was backed up by her grandmother, the old Electress Sophia, who meant to marry her to her grandson, the Electoral Prince of Hanover. Leibnitz, too, aided her in resistance, dictating the letter in which she broke off the negotiations. So she married her Hanoverian, who, in due course, became our George the Second; "Providence," as Addison expresses it, "having kept a reward in store in order that such exalted virtue and pious firmness might not go unrequited even in this life." It seems to have been a love match; she was pretty and engaging, and small-pox, which attacked her two years after, did not destroy her charms. In politics, she was George Augustus's right hand.

Queen Anne was still alive; but the question of the succession was being fiercely debated, and George Augustus was much more anxious about it than his father, whom it more immediately concerned. Caroline studied the workings of parties, puzzling to one accustomed to the straightforward despotism of petty German Courts. It must have puzzled her, too, after the amiable laxity of German beliefs, to find people actually making religion a political weapon, and crying out against her as Calvinist, who would not take the Sacrament."

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She may not have understood that sacrament-taking was an indispensable qualifica

tion for any office, much more for that of Queen, and was probably scandalised to learn that men of openly irreligious lives, who never entered church at any other time, took it when they were made taxcollectors or clerks to justices.

The report was untrue. She, doubt less, conformed to English usage, and to talk of Leibnitz's pupil as a Calvinist is to misuse words. With her old master she still corresponded. When the Electress Sophia died, he had been handed over to her as a legacy, and was certainly not slighted. Indeed, everything proves that the Duchess of Orleans was right in saying, "Caroline has a heart-a rare thing as times go."

The quarrel between George the First and his son put her in an awkward position. George extended his anger to "cette diablesse Madame la Princesse," and turned them both out of St. James's Palace-in fact, he was planning to send them off to America. Caroline found the plan in his cabinet.

Richmond Lodge became, in her hands, a centre of attraction for wits and beauties. It had its "Merlin's Cave," a grotto with a library, and figures of Merlin and others, and Stephen Duck for librarian. Grottoes were the fashion. Pope's, at Twickenham, would nowadays be considered a very poor place, despite the "Cornish spars as bright as gems" sent by Dr. Borlase. But an artificial age was not exacting in such matters. Pope and Tickell sang its glories; Lord Harvey and Walpole wrote about it. The only fly in Caroline's ointment was the presence of Mrs. Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk. Strangely enough, she was able to get on with this lady, and to retain the chief influence over her husband. Indeed, when, long after George Augustus had succeeded to the throne, he and his mistress quarrelled, Caroline wrote that she was "glad and sorry," fearing that the lady's successor might be unbearable. But though Caroline prudently tolerated Mrs. Howard, she was implacable towards those who, like Lord Bathurst, tried to form a Howard party. Sir Spencer Compton was to have been Prime Minister, but he had erred in this way; and, moreover, Walpole, who supplanted him, was really a far abler man, by taking up with him showed Caroline's insight. Besides, he offered the Queen a substantial reason for favouring him by promising to double the fifty thousand pounds a year which Compton had proposed as her

jointure. Her husband she managed thoroughly: first, by making herself beautiful for his sake; next, by her strange complaisance for his foibles; lastly, by the tact which made his immense vanity fancy that he was managing everything. It was Pope's

Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, Yet has her humour most when she obeys. The wits were puzzled at the admirable way in which they got on; her alkali, it was said, corrects the acid of his temper. She and he were thoroughly at one in hating their son Frederick. She refused to see him on her death-bed, an extreme way of treating a certainly unloveable child. English institutions, he used to praise, but not sincerely. To the last, she was a German Princess, "always partial to the Emperor, jealous of the prerogative, and as fond of troops as the King himself.”

Her anxiety for Hanover led her more than once to try to worry Walpole into going to war.

It was a hard and joyless reign; and her one compensation was that she tried to influence every appointment. The King always made her regret when he went to Germany-another ground of quarrel with the Prince of Wales. During such times she took care to live quietly at Kensington, avoiding all display.

In appointing Bishops she was very active, though she could not get a see for her favourite, Dr. Samuel Clarke. For Bishops, as Bishops, she had scant reverence, roundly rebuking the whole Bench for opposing the Quakers' Tithe Bill; but for some of them, as individuals, she had a strong regard.

Butler's "Analogy" she used to have read to her while her hair was being dressed up in the preposterous fashion of the time.

Very few Queens, none in this country, have had weekly gatherings of learned men-Sherlock, Hoadley, Berkeley, Clarke

for reading and discussion. Clarke, by her wish, got into controversy with Leibnitz about time and space. "They are only imaginary existences," said the latter-"subjective" as we should say nowa-days. "No," replied Samuel Clarke, "that space and time really exist follows as a necessary consequence from the existence of God. To annihilate time and space is beyond even the power of Omnipotence." All this is poor stuff, worthy of Pope's sneer about "Clarke's high à priori road." But they were better than