As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings, and sailed off screaming, into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check-apron, but, woeful sight! found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it! Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She had probably attempted to deal with the black man as she had been accustomed to deal with her husband; but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however; for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree, and found handsful of hair, that looked as if they had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodman. Tom knew his wife's prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders, as he looked at the signs of a fierce clapper-clawing. "Egad," said he to himself, "Old Scratch must have had a tough time of it!" Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property, with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude towards the black woodman, who, he considered, had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success: the old black-legs played shy, for, whatever people may think, he is not always to be had for calling for: he knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game. At length, it is said, when delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick, and prepared him to agree to any thing rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening, in his usual woodman's dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp, and humming a tune. He affected to receive Tom's advances with great indifference, made brief replies, and went on humming his tune. By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to baggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure. There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours; but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was inflexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic; that is to say, that he should fit out a slaveship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused: he was bad enough in all conscience; but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave-dealer. Finding Tom so squeamish on this point, he did not insist upon it, but proposed instead, that he should turn usurer; the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of usurers, looking upon them as his peculiar people. To this no objections were made, for it was just to Tom's taste. "You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month," said the black man. "I'll do it to-morrow, if you wish," said Tom Walker. "You shall lend money at two per cent. a month." "Egad, I'll charge four!" replied Tom Walker. "You shall extort bonds, foreclose mortgages, drive the merchant to bankruptcy-" I'll drive him to the d-1," cried Tom Walker, eagerly. "You are the usurer for my money!" said the black-legs, with delight. "When "Done!" said Tom Walker. So they shook hands, and struck a bargain. Tom becomes usurer accordingly,-grows immensely rich; and at last, having rendered himself independent of this world, begins to think how he may contrive to cheat the black-legs with regard to the next. He becomes a violent church-goer,-prays in the corners of the streets,—and talks of putting down Quakers and Anabaptists. Still, in spite of all this strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. That he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat-pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting-house desk, and would frequently be found reading it when people called on business. On such occasions he would lay his green spectacles in the book, to mark the place, while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain. Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had his horse new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost; because he supposed, that, at the last day, the world would be turned upside down; in which case he should find his horse standing ready for mounting, and he was determined, at the worst, to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take such a precaution, it was totally superfluous; at least, so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner : On one hot afternoon, in the dog-days, just as a terrible black thunder-gust was coming up, Tom sat in his counting-house, in his white linen cap and India silk morning-gown. He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land-speculator, for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor land-jobber begged him to grant a few months' indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated, and refused another day. "My family will be ruined, and brought upon the parish," said the land-jobber. "Charity begins at home," replied Tom. "I must take care of myself in these hard times." "You have made so much money out of me !" said the speculator. Tom lost his patience and his piety. "The d-l take me," said he, " if I have made a farthing." Just then there were three loud knocks at the street-door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse, which neighed and stamp. ed with impatience. "Tom, you're come for!" said the black fellow, gruffly. Tom shrunk back, but too late. He had left his little Bible at the bottom of his coat-pocket, and his big Bible on the desk, buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose: never was sinner taken more unawares. The black man whisked him like a child into the saddle, gave the horse a lash, and away he galloped, with Tom on his back, in the midst of the thunder-storm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears, and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning-gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerks turned to look for the black man, he had disappeared. Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman, who lived on the border of the swamp, reported, that in the height of the thunder-gust, he had heard a great clattering of hoofs, and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window, he just caught sight of a figure such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills, and down into the black hemlock swamp, towards the old Indian fort; and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction, which seemed to set the whole forest in a blaze. The good people of Boston shook their heads, and shrugged their shoulders; but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins, and tricks of the devil in all kind of shapes, from the first settlement of the colony, that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of gold and silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings; two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses; and the very next day his great house took fire, and was burnt to the ground. Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-gotten wealth. Let all gripping money-brokers lay this story to heart. The truth of it is not to be doubted. The very hole under the oak trees, from whence he dug Kidd's money, is to be seen to this day; and the neighbouring swamp, and old Indian fort, are often haunted in stormy nights by a figure on horseback, in morning-gown and white cap, which is, doubtless, the troubled spirit of the usurer. In fact, the story has resolved itself into a proverb, and is the origin of that popular saying, so prevalent throughout New England, of" The Devil and Tom Walker." The other tale, Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams, contains some capital portraits, and some interesting scenes, but rather lags on the whole. Still, however, it could not have been written by an ordinary hand. On the whole, we suspect the book is not likely to make a strong impression, nor altogether to sustain that high character which the author has already attained. Its chief fault, we think, arises from the adoption of certain classes of subjects, unsuited to the powers of the author; since, when he resumes his more peculiar walk, he manifests in a great measure his former powers. In one point, we have been both surprised and disappointed. We cannot conceive how, in the course of his German tour, he could have overlooked the multitude of popular legends and fantastic stories connected with every part of Germany, and which are evidently so susceptible of comic effect, and so congenial to his talent. We hope, that, like the gen tleman with the haunted head, he has only given us the result of one-half of his tour, and that he has still a large magazine of wonders in reserve. ESTIMATE OF CLASSICAL LEARNING," WITH A VIEW TOWARDS A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF THE GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS, AND OF EDUCATION IN LETTERS FROM A PLAIN MAN TO THE EDITOR. THEREIN. SIR, Letter I. YOUR readers will discover in me an old acquaintance, and one, too, who comes forward occasionally, as he trusts, for their good: I am to my countrymen what the old-fashioned brownie was to those Highland families to which he took a liking, for, on important emergencies, he made his appearance always to their advantage. Besides, as he frequently changed his shape, and showed himself in different places, so do I; for, in your Magazine, I treated to them of the improvement of our Scotch Judicatories, and the noted Entail case of Agnew of Seuchan: before that, in the New Edinburgh Review, I illustrated to them the Scotch Poor Laws, and the state and future prospects of the Landed Interest; and at still a remoter period, in the year 1816, under the signature which I have written below, I addressed them in a series of letters on the then important subjects of Corn and Money, which, being copied from one Newspaper into another, found their way into almost all the Journals of Scotland. In those letters, Sir, I mentioned what I am; but as most people are apt to forget their friends, especially if they have been obliged to them, I must recall my history a little to their remembrance. Like the greatest part of boys about Edinburgh, in the middling ranks of life, I was an alumnus of the High School of your city. My first four years were passed there under the tuition of the stern, but accurate Cruickshanks, from whose tawse Latin "nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions," passed into my aching and unfortunate fin gers, just as the electrical fluid does into the body of a patient submitting to the working of the machine; and I can tell you, too, they did so with as smart sensation. "In the course of the rolls," as a writer would say, I came under the charge of Rector Adam. His merits, both as a classic and disciplinarian, are too well known to need comment; but to the last of these I can bear ample testimony, for I have frequently been made by him to ride the strongbacked-cuddy, and undergo the ameliorating operation of cocking. Oh, ye who teach the ingenuous youth of nations, Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain, I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals-never mind the pain. So sang Lord Byron, in an after day. But in due time I escaped from such nurture, and came to play ball in the College, instead of the High-School-Yards; yet I neglected not my studies, for, under our excellent Latin Professor Hill, I read portions of Livy, Horace, and Virgil, and the famous 10th Satire of the 4th Book of Juvenal-Omnibus in terris, &c. I could give you the whole of it, Sir, would it not fatigue your readers, but I shall spare them. We were, besides, well instructed in the niceties of synonimes, and heard also from the chair many delightful puns and jokes, most of which we recollected better than the graver disquisitions we got on Roman Antiquities; so necessary is it, or at least proper, to join the utile with the dulce. With our able Greek Professor, Dal zell, I began with alpha, beta, gamma, &c.-went through the grammar, and a few chapters of John,-listened to the song of Anacreon, whose lyre would sound nothing but love-a most important lay to youth of fourteen or fifteen,-got acquainted with Chryseis and Briseis, in the First Book of the Iliad,—and became quite satisfied that Achilles was the greatest hero, Agamemnon the greatest general, and Homer the greatest poet that ever existed; and all of them far superior to what degenerated human nature can possibly produce in these puny modern times. These, Sir, were the bounds of my classical instruction. But I threw not my learning at my heels, as many do, when no longer subject to the ferula, or under the regulations of the hen-class for what was so well driven into my tail, has never escaped from my head; and I have kept up my acquaintance with the ancients and their languages more than almost any man does who has bustled so much in the world as you will see in the sequel that I have done. I have been anxious to tell you these things, for, had they been otherwise, there would have been not a little presumption in my now addressing you on this topic. So far as to my bookish education-my knowledge of accounts I got from my worthy writing-master Allan Masterton, whose name will never die, as it stands in the imperishable verses of my old friend Burns; he having been one of the social three who joined in drink ing the brewing of Willy Nicol's peck o' maut. That information, however, was but very limited; it being then generally the idea, that the knowledge of the quantity of a few Latin words, or the translation of a few ancient verses, which would likely be never recited more, was far more important to a lad setting out in the modern world, than Practice, Tare and Tret, and the science of Double Entry. This notable fancy was founded on the dictum of an eminent pedagogue who wielded the split-leather-thong in the town of Dunse for forty years, and who was wont to say, with not a little selfgratulation on his own success,"As for a young fellow, rot him, -(which was a favourite phrase of VOL. XV. the old gentleman's) cram him well with Latin and Greek, and pack him off to the West Indies, and there will be no fear of him." ap Before coming to Edinburgh, I had been taught penna, regnum, and even amo, in that place. My father was a friend of this schoolmaster; and it was on his maxim, though reared, as I afterwards was, in the great city, that I was educated in the manner I have described, and sent off to Jamaica to reap the fruits of my pursuits. On my arrival there, I was appointed a book-keeper; and I began to fear that my friends had mistaken the matter a little, for it did seem to me that less Latin, and more of debtor and creditor, might have been better for me. There peared, however, no help for it then; but I still hoped, like Gil Blas, when he rode his uncle's mule to Madrid, that I would bring my Latin and Greek to good account. You have probably heard, Sir, of a scramble in the West Indies,-something like what boys occasionally make when they come huzzaing out of durance vile, after the hour of dismissal has struck; but the West-India one was a far more serious thing. Importation of negroes into our colonies is now over, but it was not so then; and when a cargo of living human flesh was brought in by our traders, we white men scrambled, as we called it, to lay hold of and buy it. We rushed all at the same time on the poor creatures, who were generally in the utmost terror, for they had no doubt but we were to devour them alive; such having been the fate which their insidious native priests in their own country had told them awaited them. Now, I being a stout young fellow, my master permitted me to try my hand at one of those marts, and part of my purchase I found to be a male and a female negro from the northern part of Africa. "The "Tis all well," thought I. Hellenes and the Pelasgi, the original Grecian tribes, came from thereabouts, and in all probability these people can speak Greek." I therefore addressed the girl, (and a smart young huzzy she was,) out of the Anacreon, with thelo, thelo phelesai; but gallant though my speech was, she stared at me in perfect ignorance. To the Tt negro fellow I spoke from my_acquaintance, the First Book of Homer, but soon found, not a little to my surprise, that he knew nothing of the matter. Again it occurred to me- —Of what use is all my Greek to me?-I then gave him a touch of Latin, quoting extensively from Terence, because he was an African, and had been a slave; but they answered me with their own gibberish, which I began gravely to suspect was just as good as my own. But to proceed with my narrative. Strange is the perversion of language! The term book-keeper, which designated my office, does not, in the colonies, mean, as one would suppose, a person who keeps books, but one who drives negroes. With a long whip, I often conjugated the Greek verb tupto over the back and shoulders of poor blacky,-a practice which, I am happy to learn, is greatly diminished now; for that harshness which so frequently exist ed towards the slaves is very much over. As we gentlemen of the lash, however, were not then under such salutary restraint, I was resolved that my education should not be alto gether thrown away; besides, I recollected the excellent lessons of flogging, which, to my cost, I had received in my youth, though I could not practise it in the same manner as I was wont to see it done, having no such aid as our Rector had from the patient and excellent cuddy. It is needless here to recite all my plantation life. Suffice it to say, that I thrived like a green-bay tree planted by a river-made much sugarrealized my property-and came home, undevoured by musquitoes, and in tolerably good health, notwithstanding all my broiling. My fortune, however, was moderate, but I was contentus parvo, (you see, Sir, I have not forgot all my Latin even yet.) I bought a neat house and garden in my native village, and married a wife, an honest man's daughter in the neighbourhood, by whom I have two sons, Jock and Tom, whom, as Roderick Random said of his family, I devoutly believe to be my own. My days are spent in walking about, and reading a little, and my evenings frequently in playing a hit at backgammon, or a rubber at whist, with a few good-natured, social neighbours, who are well pleased to come in to me, as we generally have a welsh rabbit, and a jug or two of warm toddy, made from some of the best rum that ever came from the West Indies, and which I had caused to be manufactured for my own use. Sir, should you happen to come our way, we will be most happy to see you, and you shall taste it. In my former letters, I mentioned a little club which we have. It consists of the minister, the schoolmaster, the exciseman, the doctor, and an extensive farmer or two, living within a mile; and gasb, sensible fellows they are, for being self-educated, they have more knowledge than learning. We have also two other persons, one of whom was a merchant, and the other an advocate; but who having passed through the warfare of life, have now hung up their armour, and retired. We meet at the sign of the Harrow, in honour of agriculture; and patriotically moisten our clay with ale and whiskypunch for the good of the revenue, unless when I occasionally present the party with a few gallons of my excellent Jamaica. The subjects of our cracks, Sir, are all the current topics of the day, to which we are led by our daily perusal of the newspapers, and of your Magazine; and frequently we have sent to us any of the new pamphlets which seem the most interesting. Among these, we have found "A Letter to the Patrons of the High School, and the Inhabitants of Edinburgh, on the Abuse of Classical Education; and on the Formation of a National School, adapted to the spirit of the age, the wants of Scotchmen, and the fair claims of other branches of education; by Peter Reid, M.D.” That Letter, with all that we see going forward on the subject, has made these matters very much our topic of late, and sundry most important questions on it have been started amongst us; as, 1st, What is the precise value and worth of classical learning as we have it? 2d, While threescore-and-ten, or, at most, four-score years, do" sum up" the life of man, (though by far the greatest part of the human race tumble through the trap-door long ere they reach such ad |