reason that the age and the spirit of chivalry have proved so attractive a theme for the strains of eloquence and poetry. Its institutions were calculated to entwine the graces of life around the manly, but somewhat rugged virtues, which grew up in a rude condition of society; and if men's first advances from barbarism were the result of their mutual wants, it may fairly be said that, in modern Europe at least, their farther progress in refinement was due to their sense of the beautiful. The natural effect of this system, thus appealing to the imagination, was to raise up a class whose aim it was to foster the finer impulses of humanity, till they grew into passions, and even into principles, to strive to elevate their own natures to a sublime dignity, and to invest their virtues with the dazzling graces which their fancy delighted to depict. This class constituted the heroes of the chivalrous period, and with them must Sir Philip Sidney be numbered. He lived in an age of transition. The noble adventurers, the dreamers of bright dreams, the enthusiasts in loyalty and devotion, were fast quitting the scene; the energy and variety of individual character were disappearing in the increased activity of social development; the tributary streams that gushed and bounded in picturesque forms, each within its own bed, were on the point of being swallowed up and swept away in the broad and rapid current of civilization. But Sidney still wore the graceful form that the human mind assumes when it is left to shoot forth in native vigour and luxuriance. An earlier age claims him for her youngest and noblest son; and all the fascination with which chivalry invests those who enter its magic circle, gives an additional lustre to his many and admirable virtues.

It is rarely that we can obtain more than an incomplete picture of the illustrious men of former days. Imagination is left to fill up the unfinished lineaments, and invest the imperfect sketch with reality. If we would learn more of Sidney than can be gathered from the records of his life, we must remember how many wise and good men loved and esteemed him; how warm was the affection of his friends, how unanimous the praise of his contemporaries, how he won the regard even of his country's enemies. His manly and polished bearing, his elegant accomplishments-even his advantages of person, are not to be forgotten, when we consider him as scarcely less adorned by the graces of life, than dignified by its highest virtues, and as much formed to conciliate the good-will of strangers, as to gain the solid esteem of those who were able to appreciate his worth.

Over those heroes of earlier days, with whom we have compared him, he possessed one great advantage, due to the age in which he

lived, the intellectual cultivation which he was enabled to obtain. Educated in the venerable halls of Learning, and at all times the friend and patron of scholars and poets, he was himself an author of great merit, and devoted with pleasure to elegant literature, the leisure hours of a life early initiated in the laborious duties of politics and war. We have already mentioned the circumstances under which the Arcadia was composed. This celebrated fiction relates the history and adventures of princes and shepherds, of sovereigns and simple swains, who dwelt or travelled in that favoured land. The personages are, for the most part, highminded and valorous men, far excelling ordinary mortals, or women of rare loveliness; all endowed with uncommon sensibility to the softer passions, and full of romance and the spirit of adventure. They are also, generally speaking, of an exceedingly argumentative turn, and very much given to moralizing. Among these more exalted characters are mingled others of a coarser clay, who play the part of court fools, and enliven with their buffooneries the solemn etiquette of their stately neighbours. The sentiments expressed in the Arcadia are uniformly those of a high and honourable mind, and though it breathes no fervid tone of inspiration, and bears few marks of creative power, it contains much sweet and pleasing imagery, and has, no doubt, furnished many a happy thought to subsequent poets and romancers.

The general nature of the narrative will be understood from the portion of the plot which we select as a sample. Basiliss king of Arcadia, having received a warning from an oracle, retires from the helm of the state, which he commits to a worthy nobleman, and secludes himself with his wife, and Philoclea one of his daughters, in a pleasant rural retreat. His other daughter, Pamela, is placed under the care of Damoetas, a clown of coarse mind and manners, but whom his master values for the blunt honesty he is supposed to possess. The king, owing to the oracle before mentioned, is determined to prevent his daughters from marrying. Meanwhile Pyrocles, a young prince who is travelling in disguise, happens to see the fair Philoclea, and is smitten with a violent passion; but knowing that in his own character he would have no chance of admission to his fair one, he puts on woman's attire, and announces himself as Zelmane, the niece to the queen of the Amazons; and in this character he is very hospitably entertained by the old king. While wandering about one day in his woman's dress, he meets his dear friend Musidoras, who rebukes him indignantly for his unworthy disguise, and a long discussion on love ensues. Musidoras at first treats the weakness of Pyrocles with the greatest disdain, and at one time they are very near quarrelling, but finally he takes compassion on his

friend, and promises to assist him to the best of his power. While watching for the means of doing so, he happens to see Pamela, and himself becomes a victim to the tender passion. The scheme that suggests itself to his inventive mind is to send off Menalcas, a shepherd in the neighbourhood, to Thessaly, his own native place, with letters which contained instructions not to let the bearer go until further orders. He then disguises himself as a shepherd, and presents himself to Damoetas the rude guardian of his fair one, as Dorus, the brother of Menalcas, who had died on a visit to his paternal home, and who had left a legacy to Damoetas, at the same time requesting him to take his brother into his service. The scheme succeeds; and the royal party, with Zelmane as their honoured guest, Damoetas, and his servant Dorus, go out one evening to see the shepherds at their sports; when suddenly a lion appears, which makes for Philoclea; and then a bear, which runs at Pamela. Zelmane cuts off the head of the lion, and Dorus kills the bear; the disguised friends receive the thanks of their unconscious mistresses; Damoetas, who had crept into a bush on the appearance of the monsters, and closed his eyes, "like a man of very kind nature," as Pamela satirically observes, "resolved not to see his own death," exhibiting great satisfaction at the prowess of his new servant, and chanting a triumphal strain, the burthen of which is,

"If my man must praises have,

What then must I that keep the knave?"

On the whole, readers in our days, who are accustomed to more exciting fictions, would probably find the Arcadia rather tame and tedious. But it is written with much elegance and grace, and is no unworthy production of the leisure hours of a man of genius, whose end, as Sir Fulke Greville tells us, was not writing, even while he wrote; nor his knowledge moulded for tables or schools, but both his wit and understanding bent upon his heart, to make himself and others, not in words or opinion, but in life and action, good and great."

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Sidney's poems are rendered very pleasing by his affectionate heart, amiable disposition, and elegant fancy. His "Defence of Poesy" is perhaps the best of his works. It is a most able, spirited, and agreeable production, and deserves to be generally read. The object is to assert the claims of poetry, which he complains was generally decried in his day, to public respect. The highest aim of man he assumes to be the improvement of the mind in virtue. This, he tells us, the poet has more power than any other to effect. The only persons who could contest the palm with him, are the moral philosopher and the historian;

and the latter is inferior, because he is confined to what actually has been, while the poet ranges into the higher sphere of what ought to be; the moral philosopher, though the substance of his lesson be the same as the poet's, is conversant only with dry abstractions, and is incapable of exciting an equal love and enthusiasm for the virtues which he inculcates.

Sidney defends poets with much spirit from the charge of deluding men with falsehoods. To those who accused them of deceit in giving names to their fictitious characters, he says, "Doth the lawyer lie, then, when under the names of John of the Stiles, and John of the Nokes, he putteth his case? But this is easily answered; their naming of men is but to make their picture the more lively, and not to build any history. Painting men, they cannot leave men nameless; we see we cannot play at chess but we must give names to our chessmen; and yet, methinks he were a very partial champion of truth, that would say we lied for giving a piece of wood the reverend title of a bishop. The poet nameth Cyrus and Æneas no other way, than to show what men of their fame, fortunes, and estates should do."

On the creative faculty, on the possessors of which the Greeks conferred the name of Poet, he expatiates in a strain of a higher mood. Speaking of all arts and sciences which take their subject matter as they find it, "only the poet," he says, "disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow, in effect, into another nature; in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demigods, cyclops, chimeras, fairies, and such, like so he goeth hand in hand with nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden."

Nations in which the fervour of youth has passed away, and which have attained the settled calmness of maturity, generally look back with delight to the children of their early days, their elder sons, in whom they seem to trace an exuberant vigour denied to the generations that come after them. But the glow and animation with which even the coldest recur to England's heroic age, and recall the names of those who rendered it illustrious, springs from a purer source. No desire can be so noble as that of promoting the general happiness of mankind; and whoever has that end sincerely at heart deserves the gratitude of

his fellows. Yet such a man may be conversant only with theories, may fall into dangerous errors, and may fail materially to improve either himself or others. But fidelity and generosity, valour and self-devotion, admit of no misconception. Whoever earnestly seeks to excel in these, is sure of attaining some success, and of serving the world by bequeathing it a noble example. And if, like Sidney, he scales the difficult heights of excellence, and comes near to their unattainable summit, though an early fate may intercept the blessings which his virtues would have bestowed upon mankind, his name will yet be transmitted, embalmed by the praises of his contemporaries, to the fond affection of posterity.

ART. IX." WHAT TO TEACH, AND HOW TO TEACH IT. PART I.-BY HENRY MAYHEW."

A PAMPHLET with the above title has been sent to us, printed in a cheap form for general circulation. We propose to take a future opportunity of entering at length into the general question of education, but we are desirous at present to make a few observations upon the views advanced by the author of this work, differing as they do widely from those which are generally acted upon, and containing, as we think, with much that is excellent, important errors in the principles which are sought to be established in their stead.

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Education has for a long time past been the subject of discussion,— and naturally enough. Within these ten years its benefits have been much more widely extended, attention has been drawn to it, and it was but reasonable that the systems which had so long sufficed for the few should have their pretensions to teach the many thoroughly investigated. In many respects they were found faulty. Hereupon arose Educationquacks in great numbers, each with his separate nostrum, and all demanding belief of their infallibility, on the ground of certain supersubtle principles, which as nobody could understand, nobody was likely to answer. Some objected to the subjects of education, some the time, and all the method. Some said the memory had been forced in the old systems and laid out systems in which it should lie fallow for ever; some still relied on memory, but seemed to think 'words' the only thing worth remembering. But one common characteristic ran through all-an opposition to whatever views were acted upon. They were all