With so Repp. 11. Case of the Fellows of Mag. Coll. many guides to direct him, how can the reader fail to determine, whether the qualification for the freehold voters should be exalted to 50s. or debased to 20s.? But if diligence of so extraordinary a nature be required from the writer of a mere ephemeral pamphlet, or political diatribe, it is a hundred-fold more essential to the writer of history. To this recommendation indeed all historians lay claim. The toil, that they have undergone in quest of new matter, the courtesy of the officials at Paris, the rudeness of the subordinate officers at Berlin, the vain search for an important MSS., the fears, the perils, and the hair-breadth escapes of the sincere seeker after historic truth, is the matter which the preface contains. Improved engines, we are told, have been employed on old mines; and many valuable veins hitherto concealed have been for the first time brought to light. No quotation has been taken at second-hand, no fact on trust. Nay, if we mistake not, one historian has gone so far as to render the public an account of the number of hours, which he every day devoted to his task, and to excuse himself for not accomplishing more in the evening, on the ground that the candle-light was injurious to his eyes. Surely our country has reason to be proud of exertions such as these! Surely we ought to be deeply grateful for the fruits of such untiring energy Valuable, however, as such labour is, it will be useless, unless accompanied by an unswerving impartiality. The historian must ever bear in mind, that his office is purely objective. Truth, which is merely subjective, he must reject: his search must be for that which is objective. One so constituted, or so trained, as to keep his eyes steadily fixed on these objects, is, it will be allowed, seldom to be found. Those too who would willingly endeavour to bring themselves into the required condition may fail through the want of rules and principles to direct them. There may be others, whose diffidence would lead them to assay the material of their mind, before they commence to coin and utter it, and who may not be provided with the means necessary for accomplishing their purpose. To meet the requirements of such persons, we will endeavour to enunciate a few practical rules. Imperfect, and incomplete they will necessarily be, but they may not be entirely useless. Because distance-marks are not placed along the roads at intervals of 10 yards, it would not therefore be an improvement to pull up the mile-stones. If any one shall feel conscious that his mental formation coincides with the type that we shall delineate, let him by all means commence a work, which few but he are able to perform. Most gladly shall he hail the arrival of the rightful owner, who will hold as his own possession, what others have only taken upon lease. To him, then, who aims at perfection we would offer our advice in some such terms as these. First as to mental training. Read nothing which can excite the imagination, or move the heart. For you let Milton to no purpose have been touched with fire from God's own altar, let Shakespeare warble his native woodnotes wild' unheard by you; let the wisdom of Bacon, the smoothness of Addison, and the sonorous eloquence of Burke be to you as though they were not. For such trifles you will have no time. Your life must be spent in perusing, and reperusing the Saxon Chronicle, in collating the Doomsday book, and in grubbing amongst the musty parchments in the Chapel of the Rolls. When you commence to write let the impassive quiescence, which such conduct will naturally produce be clearly visible. Take this for your principle so to write, that men may doubt whether what they read is really the work of a human being, or the production of some newly-invented fact-recording machine. Let nothing move you to tears, or rouse you to indignation. Fling aside the various lessons, which history will almost obtrude upon you. Avoid deducing any truth, which will be unpalatable, or paradoxical. Right principles may be marked by a train of light, wrong principles by a trail of blood. But shut your eyes to all such indications, and let them not disturb the even tenor of an impartial narrative. Shed no tears for the unfortunate Charles, or his more unfortunate grandmother. Feel no pity for the murdered Huguenots, or for the authors of that horrid massacre. If in spite of all your efforts your own sentiments will sometimes break forth, bear this in mind, that to differ from every one else is always the mark of a superior and impartial disposition. Prove therefore this awful crime to have been an act of exemplary virtue, and hold up its contrivers as examples of earnest, though mistaken, piety. Look on with indifference at the struggles by which Society passed from its Mediæval to its Modern form see without pity nation after nation contend for a freedom that they cannot preserve; their strength consumed by fruitless efforts, their hearts wearied by hopes deferred, and themselves at length crushed beneath the irresistible weight of military despotism. Nor let it call forth any sound of joy, that your own country's liberties were not shipwrecked in those tremendous storms, that though when the waters subsided every where else were to be seen fragments of free constitutions, and the ruins of noble laws, the flood which covered the highest mountains of the Continent, did not reach to our island. Such expressions of feeling will be out of place in an impartial Historian. In short though you will call your book a history, let it really be a ledger. THE RETURN, (from Catullus.) GEM of all isles and capes that sleep So blithe and glad to thee I fly, The plains of Asia left behind, How blest to set our cares at ease! What time the mind throws off her load, Worn out with toil beyond the seas, When on the longed-for couch at last Hail, lovely spot! thy master greet "T. G." GRAPPLING. READER! have you ever had a good day's grappling? There's nothing in the world like it, believe me. Angling indeed! a worm at one end, and a fool at the other, as cynical old Sam said. Boating perhaps-nonsense!-a mere superficial amusement. Cricketing, you suggest-tush! the elder sister of marbles. Grappling must be at least as old as the creation; I have not consulted the Talmud, or I have little doubt we should read of Adam's grappling the feeders of the Hiddekel; or the MSS. of the Rolls Office, or I would tell how Caractacus and Vortigern spent their Eostre Monday up to their knees in a beck. Grappling! why angling is nothing to it. If old Isaak had known what the feeling is of a live trout under a stone at the tips of his fingers, he would have flung his rod into the Dove, and set off at a brisk walk for the hills and becks of bonny Cumberland. Angling is all very well for philosophic youth, (Paley was exceedingly fond of it, and he was a philosopher), and for stout old gentlemen in drab coats and gaiters; but give me grappling. A Southron, poor fellow, cannot expect to know much about such things; when we go to London sight-seeing we submit to be lionized, and treated like children: a man may tell us the way to St. Paul's, and the price of a Hansom per mile without fear of retaliation; but let him beware; if he jump into our cab and talk about fishing and sports, we turn and sternly ask our poor Cockney, what is grappling? Why bless us! he looks pale and glances out of the window for a policeman-we don't mean to hurt you, little 'un, grappling is nothing more than tickling trout. Nothing more—" only that and nothing more;" you have it all in one word. What the Pope's eye is to lovers of mutton, Exeter Hall to the musicians, the Eagle to the lovers of light and instructive reading, that is grappling to your lover of nature, and manly sports. I have never even put finger into a brook since leaving those dear old becks in the North; it seems profanation of my skill and skin to dip my pickers and stealers into a slow Dutchman of a ditch, crawling over chalk or limestone or mud. What is the use of grappling a stream between neatly kept grass banks, with here and there a bridge and a mill, or, it may be, a village and sheepwash, and such abominations to the grappler, and never a hollow bank, or a stone that Ajax Telamon could not play marbles with. And I never will dip finger into a brook (except for purposes of ablution, potation, &c.) till I can find such another as Gray and Dick Metcalfe and I with our fags grappled three years ago last Easter Monday. We were then scholarlads, as the bucolics called us, at the Fellside Grammar School, and Easter Monday had been from time immemorial devoted, as the first day of the season, to grappling. Fear not, ye tender-hearted, when you read of our fags: not Tom Brown, (though he has written a preface about it) not you would object to such fagging as this: weeks and weeks beforehand had Toby and little Gray and Jim Tostletree sidled into our sitting-room, to know if they might carry coats for us on this day, and Gray had run after breakfast to the turnpike every blessed morning for a month to put himself in training for it. They knew what grappling was, and what fagging was too, for in the reign before Gray's there had been sharp work among them as tradition said. However they lived to tell the tale. Houghillbeck tumbles into the Rother at a most charming spot about six miles from the school. There is a slight bend in the river, which is there rather deep, and flows silently between two gradually steepening banks of red and brown pudding-stone, clothed with luxuriant moss, and crowned with tall ferns and ash trees, which almost intertwine their branches over the still stream: higher up, and just within sight is a long bank of shingle athwart the current, over which the water sparkles in the sun, and makes melodious music; and just at the bend foams down the gully it has worn, the Houghill beck. "Here is a spot to dream of "sunny hair and eyes, and float away in the memory of bygone "wanderings by brookside, &c.," says our spooney friend. "Glorious place for flyfishing," says the practical man, "and that ledge just above the surface of the water, what "a station for a nooser!" Verily ye are both quite right; of the two, Spooney has the best of it; but we came here for grappling; and if all the Naiades and Nymphs |