pable, to a certain degree, of volition, and of the simplest operations of intellect. He is able to distinguish between two objects, and in distinguishing, to determine their respective worth, relatively to himself; accordingly, if one be presented to him he is pleased; if the other, he is displeased. The moment reason has advanced thus far, that moment, I say, the noral education should commence; and in nine cases out of ten, I have seen this progress of reason take place before the eighth month. Then begins our work; it is for us to determine what shall be grated and what denied, and to erect a barrier against the influence of caprice; to wrestle with the first contentions for mastery which betray themselves in every peevish tear that follows a refusal. Mothers and nurses, I know, will exclaim against the crucity of denying the poor little dear infant; pronounce you hardhearted, unfeeling. Mind it not. Let the storm rage, but proceed steadily in your path, and be assured, that every tear your infant sheds waters a bed of roses, which will bloom with captivating beauty; while every smile that succeeds the completion of capricious desire, is a hot and fecund sun which ripens into maturity the nettle and the weed."

In the superintendence and management of their offspring, parents should make a point of having their yea, to be indeed yca, and their nay to be unalterably nay. Here we approve what the author before us has written.

"Let your word be to your child as a wall of brass, impregnable to all assaults. What you have once asserted or commanded, let no entreaties, no tears, no prayers move you to retract. It is thus only that you can do justice to your offspring and yourself. If a child once succeed in making you go from your word, or alter your opinion, farewell to all future obedience from that child! He will always cherish the idea, that by imploring, he can induce you to retract; this idea will make him careless as to what you say, and in time generate even a contempt for your will. But remember, if you lift your hand in wrath against that child, you violate the rights of justice and humanity; for the disobedience you would chastise, you have fostered by your own inconsistency."

From the disquisition on education, we pass to one in which, under the idea of removing the shackles of the married state, wives are encou

raged in cherishing a friendship for others besides their husbands. This cause is advocated by Nubilia's father, who, in reply to a letter from a friend, expostulating with him on his intimacy with Julia (a married woman) exclaims:

"Does the human heart undergo a metamorphosis after the ritual ceremony of the church? Is the ring a magick circle, whose properties are potent enough to confound all feeling, to hoodwink the mind, to corrupt the natural sentiments of the bosom? Is there, in the words wife and husband, some invisible spirit that pierces through our nature, and curdles the genial current of human affection? Is the wide extended love, the sweet play of the heart, the general delight we take in our species, the natural emotions of the soul; are all these to vanish before the magical incantations of the altar? Are we to turn away from the world, and the world's concerns; are we to crush the kindling warmth, to forego the most endearing intercourse of life, to tear from our hearts the sweet band of union that linked us to our kind, to choak up the living stream of rich delight that gives unfading verdure to the path of life; must we shrink back with fear and horrour, and well disciplined disgust, from the mutual intercourse of the sexes, without which its highest pleasures only sullen cares? this world were but a barren desert, and

Must all this be done the moment two be. ings consent to strengthen the intimacy of a partial connexion? It is a vulgar and debasing idea, and it is degrading to the heart of man."

Of such rant we are not enamoured, nor can we perceive the utility that is likely to spring from its publication. Nubilia, who is wiser than her parent, confesses that he assumes as a principle a greater moral purity than is usually found in mankind; and she calls the picture of married liberty, for which her father contends, a sublime one.-When Nubilia is meditating on her entrance into the holy state, and on the character of a wife, she admits that "in her breast there is no room for effective friendship; that it would draw her from the more important duties of her state; that nature providentially foresaw this, and ordained that she should fix her whole soul on the man and their mutual

offspring."-Though, however, the young lady, in this respect, appears to have more prudence than her father, and unites herself to a virtuous young man, the sentiments of whose mind and the qualities of whose heart, were excellent, yet, at times, she is represented as very romantick; especially when contemplating the beau ties of nature. One extract will suffice:

"At other times softer and more ethe. real images arise. When I have beheld distant clouds strongly tinged with the sun's rays, and floating, as it were, in the whiteness of surrounding ether, steadily I have fixed my eyes upon them, and imagined, that resting on their fluid borders, or rolled within their fleecy folds, angels sit hymning to the Great Creator; and, with heavenly voices, joined to the dulcet melody of harps, sing their vesper chorus. I fancy that the aerial strains reach my ears; and for a moment I am transport ed among them. Then heaven opens on my eyes! I see transparent forms, whose milk-white wings fold, like a cincture, round their dazzling loins; they lean on golden harps; the blazing floor, spangled with stars innumerable, beams like a furnace; pendent, from vaulted roofs, hang starry lamps, burning sweet incense, whose odours, wafted through the balmy air, fill the delighted sense with gladness. Angelick shapes glide through Dorick columns inwreathed with many a spiral fold of flaming cressets, which, circling in magick dance around, reach a nameless height supporting roofs of fretted gold; these, as they move along, hold mutual discourse sweet, and look such dewy mild ness from their eyes, as heavenly spirits wont when they, of old, descended to converse with man, swift messengers of God's eternal word; still, as my fancy works, methinks I'm led, to softly breathing measures from viewless harps by airy minstrels played, along the space of heaven; odorous perfumes from ten thousand fanning wings are wafted round me: trembling i stand, even at the throne of God himself, whence angels turn, with softened gaze, away, so bright the effulgent glory which irradiates from the clouds that dwell, for ever, round the Omnipotent! The lost soul is lapped in ecstacy and big with unutterable feelings: mysterious visions sweep before my sight; and, in an ocean plunged of pleasures tempered to its state by the creative mind that formed them, it dies, dissolves away, and conscious only of mazing bliss. The shadows of approaching

night recall its wandering thoughts, and I awake to life, to misery and the world!"

If this be a specimen of that "elevated English prose," which we are promised in the preface, we shall only say, that it is much too elevated for us.

In Calebs, little in the shape of courtship occurs; and here also the parties show their predilection for each other by none of those little attentions which usually discriminate lovers. No frivolity marks Mr. Vaughan's character, and he becomes the object of Nubilia's preference in consequence of "dignity of mind."

"Mr. Vaughan," says the lady in search wholly exempt from the former. of a husband, "had the latter, and was

"Towards my own sex, his manners were far removed from that exuberant

devotion, which is a compound of deception, meanness and imbecility. If a lady dropped her glove, he exhibited no agonies till it was restored to her, nor did he rush, with impetuosity, to the spot, that he might be the happy individual who was to perform that duty. He believed a lady to be gifted with powers adequate to the avoided carrying her parasol for her, eitask. If he walked out with a female, he ther over her head, or under his own arm; to this labour also, he thought her equal. He always declined the distinction of attending them to a mercer's, a milliner's, or a linen draper's; and for all these offences (great ones they undoubtedly are in the eyes of many) I have heard him severely censured. For my own part, I considered them as evidences of a mind and character compounded of something more dignified than what is essential to the composition of a lady's man, as such animals are emphatically called. When, however, I behold the one sex offer, and the other receive, such unmeaning attentions, such vapid courtesies, I know not on which my contempt should fall most heavily. It is difficult to decide which is the most ab

icet, the fool who pleases, or she who is pleased."

After all, it is fair to ask, whether dignity of mind be inconsistent with attention to little things?" Man," as Jord Bacon says, "is a trifle, and his life is a trifle." And, in the interchange of social duties, especially between the sexes, a number of trifles must attract our notice. Civility and politeness are made up of trifles; and

more difficulty in ascertaining the several species of the Agrostis, than of all the others put together; we subjoin the following description of it.

Each plant consists of numerous strings [stolones] which are imine diately connected with the root; and these strings are knotted or jointed at intervals, of from three to five inches. From each joint a thin, grassy envelope issues in the direction of the string; within which, lateral sprouts shoot forth, nearly at right angles, to the joint. These sprouts, together with the extreme point of the strings, are of a most lively green colour. The strings themselves are much paler at all times, and in March, are nearly white. The envelope withers as soon as it has discharged its obvious office, of protecting the advancing sprout from the effects of the weather, and gives the whole a more decayed appearance than might be expected from its quantity, being itself a very thin membrane. The strings, which are the essential part, and constitute nine tenths of the crop, vary in length from three to seven feet; but are usually between four and five feet long. Their number is sometimes very great; and in one instance Dr. Richardson found one hundred and forty issuing from one spontaneous root, each of which had six buds. If the joints touch the ground, or even the damp mat formed by the intertexture of the strings, a sprout shoots upwards, and fibres strike downwards and form a root. Each joint is, therefore, a set, from which the plant may be propagated. So that the sponta necus root abovementioned, produced eight hundred and forty sets.*

who commanded the British cavalry in the late campaigns in the north of India, as soon as he saw the Fiorin, was struck with its exact resemblance to the Indian grass, and was satisfied they were of the same species. The characteristick mark of the Dúb, according to colonel Macan, is this, that from each joint a root strikes downwards, and a sprout shoots upwards. It is propagated in India, not by seed, but by scattering its strings on the surface, and dibbling them in. In the rainy season it creeps along. the ground, and runs to a considerable length, rooting at every joint; in the dry season it is much covered by the dust and flying sand, whence it derives its name, which, in the Persian language, signifies "hidden." Colonel Macan adds, that it is most industriously sought for, and preferred to all other grasses in India, on account of its superiorly nutritive quality, as food for cattle.

In sir W. Jones's catalogue of Indian plants, the Dúb is classed as a species of Agrostis; and the engra ving of it, which is copied from Dr. Roxburgh, represents it as a knotted or jointed grass, with fibres issuing from the lower, and sprouts from the upper side of each joint; but the panicle, or flowering part, is very different from that of the Fiorin, and resembles that of the Panicum dactylon, or creeping Panick grass; excepting that the spikes, which are there four in number, spread horizontally from the stalk.-We shall take the liberty of extracting from sir W. Jones's Botanical Observations on select Indian lants, contained in the second volume of his works, the following account of the Dúrvá or Dub.

The panicle, or flowering part of the Fiorin, judging from a drawing of it which

accompanies Dr. Richardson's first menoir, resembles that of the festuca pratensis or meadow fescue grass

the mere botanical description of this most beautiful grass, which Van Rheede has exhibited in a coarse delineation of its leaves only. Its flowers, in their perfect state, are among the loveliest objects in the vegetable world; and appear, through a lens, like minute rubies and emeralds in

constant motion from the least breath of air. It is the sweetest and most nutritious pasture for cattle; and its usefulness, added to its beauty, induced the Hindoos, in their earliest ages, to believe that it was the mansion of a benevolent nymph." Even the Véda celebrates it; as in the following text of the A't'harvana: "May Dúrvá, which rose from the water of life, which has a hundred roots and a hundred stems, efface a hundred of my sins, and prolong my existence on earth a hundred years!" But the excellence of the Fiorin, supposing it to be the Agrostis stolonifera, is neither unknown nor uncelebrated in the annals of English agriculture; although, from particular circumstances, its history has been hitherto involved in much obscurity. It constitutes a considerable portion of the produce of a meadow in Wilt shire, the uncommon fertility of which was noticed by herbarists more than one hundred and fifty years since. This meadow, which is situated near Orcheston, about twelve miles to the north of Salisbury, is spoken of in Howe's Phytologia Britannica, which was published in the year 1650; and in Merret's Pinax, published in 1667. And references are made to these authors respecting it, in bishop Gibson's additions to Camden. It is again mentioned in Stillingfleet's Miscellaneous Tracts. But no publick inquiry took place respecting it, till some years ago: the Bath Agricultural Society, struck by the accounts of its remarkable fertility, employed agents for the purpose of ascertaining the nature of its produce. Since that time it has been visited by several botanists, from whose accounts we have collected those circumstances of its history, which are most applicable to the present occasion. The meadow is situated in the lowest part of a very narrow, winding valley, sheltered on each side by gradual, but by no means lofty, acclivities of chalk. It is subject to frequent and continued inundations during the winter, and is rarely otherwise than

swampy throughout the year, being often submerged by the water of a spring, which rises at about the distance of half a mile. It has been constantly observed, that the earlier the spring swells, the more plentiful is the crop. The immediate soil of the meadow consists of a bed of small, loose pebbles, which are all of a silicious nature, with a scanty covering of mould; and though the herbage of the adjoining meadows is altogether very exuberant, yet this exuberance may be traced, increasing or declining, according as the soil varies, more or less, from that of the principal mea dow. The produce of the meadow consists of several grasses; the chief of which are varieties of the Poa trivialis, the Alopecurus pratensis, and the Agrostis stolonifera. It is mowed twice in summer, and, after a favourable season for watering, the first crop is nearly five tons from each acre; the second, about half as much. The first crop consists principally of the Poa trivialis; the last, of the Agrostis stolonifera. With respect to the grass of this celebrated meadow, it is observed, that all cattle eat it eagerly, and that horses will eat the hay made from it in preference to corn, mixed with chaff.

We have carried the foregoing observations, on the Indian and the Orcheston grass, further than to many may seem necessary; hoping they may help to elucidate the subject of the present memoir, of which we shall now give as short and connected an epitome as we are able.

The testimonies in favour of the excellent pasturage of Ireland are numerous, from Giraldus Cambrensis down to the present day. That which is most to our purpose we found in a letter, dated 1693, contained in a Natural History of Ireland; which was published at Dublin in 1726. This letter, in giving an account of the Giants' Causeway, and describing the neighbouring coast as elevated very far above the sea, but rising gradually on the land side, to the edge of the precipice, says, "that it is all covered