or Surely, my honest reader, you must be bigotted to the popular veneration for prizes and "show-pennies," you must be an unintentional traitor to your own memory, if you tell me that you have not seen humility defaced, friendly confidence impaired, the sense of shame misused, obedience dethroned from her rightful heart-rule, and the precept of preferring one another in honour, almost blotted out, by the manifold workings of this secular and usurping motive. You must have learnt how dangerous and unhealthy is a fitful thirst for applause-how unworthy of him that is striving to be essentially a man is that eagerness for display, which our popular incentives so frequently engender. But if you do deny all this, either wholly or in part, yet suffer me at least to vouch for my own experiences-and believe me that I have found this emulation of ours as a motive, insufficient and unstable; as a guide, purblind and wayward; as a staff to support me, untrustworthy; but as a rod to chasten me, most irritating and venomous. I do not go so far as to say that emulation is but a conventional term for envy, or that it is of necessity associated with corrupt feelings in all cases. But I do say that it is more fit for the elevation of depraved human nature into the kaλokȧyalía beyond which pagans could not aspire, than for the nurture of those, for whose cdification, our anointed and saintly Founder—our true lowly-hearted Plantagenet-reared this hallowed structure. Earnestly, and almost passionately do I say, that we are in our daily practice, relying too much on a weapon forged out of man's unregenerate propensities, instead of * "Schaupfennig,” the German term for "medal," seems to me a happily sarcastic word. belg ovent with the armoury poce stiead up for us, vieran le arms brighter than what Noma is falued to sare reserved from the sky. We have grown cod in the territories of our heather step-fathers abrorum, et Duty-a word for which Greeks and Romans have no oppivalent is not with us so living in substance, or so Amilar in sound, as it would be if we were more habitually ometrained to perseverance on the score of responsibility, and taught to compare ourselves, mot so much with our school-fellows, as with cur former selves, and with what ought to be our future selves, and above all, with that che cbject of imitation, which ought to absorb all caribly aspirations. S do we persist in being on every possible occasion, competitors for praise; were it not wiser to seek, without having respect to the relative chances and advantages of those who are seeking the same? We are always hastily assuming the title of candidates for this and that; were it not worth while in this our novitiate, to be more emphatically candidates, as young probationers, clad in the white robes of patience, modesty, and docility? Let us suppose our fond hopes realized. By the time that every well-nurtured boy has within his reach the acquisition of such honorary presents as sweeten his toil by the assurance of his teacher's approbation, the privileges of the merely clever will have dwindled down, the vulgar temptations to judge of what is praiseworthy, only through the medium of odious companions, will have been lessened; and our showy distinctionism will be giving place to a more uniform and disinterested allegiance to duty. Things seem, if I may dare conjecture, to be tending this way. Our παιδαγωγοί * are year by year becoming more parental in their rule, and strengthening their influence into a more stringent and penetrative control. More frequently now than formerly, are prizes aimed at in mere submission to the wish of the authoritative adviser, by those, whose chief wish is not so much to show off their endowments, as to work upon a prescribed plan with chivalrous obedience. Competitors of this stamp are even now, I fear, as few as they are unobstrusive. May they in coming years increase and multiply, till duty displaces emulation, and honorary rewards become mere proofs of obedience, and stepping stones in our moral progress. Thus might the next generation of Etonians, even though poorer in such rare instances of brilliant scholarship, as we are wont to boast of, wear a more sober and uniform garb of academical diligence, and walk more steadfastly in the ancient ways marked out for them by their Royal and Christian Founder. FOR EVER. For Ever!-Pause we as we think on ever- Now the envenom'd sting which never Hope softens, Mercy soothes, or Time destroys. For ever! has no end, no mean, no birth- While agony unmixt its boon to hell. * Shame on us that our low notions of education have made " pedagogue" so contemptuous a term, that one must have resort to the Greek. For Ever, sank into the soul of Eve, When, broken-hearted, yet to heaven resign'd, She sigh'd," and must I leave thee, Eden? leave The flowers that knew my wanton locks to bind?" On Tajo's shore how pants that soul for death, But vainer still to paint the lover's throes, His soul-O sad infinity of woes! For one in whom he lived now lives no more. Who, but an angel dare to tell or think What harmony divine enchants the breast To where appall'd the dying sceptic lies, From these we lingering turn our sadden'd sight; See fiendish passion sparkle in his eyes, While torn from earth the soul yet stays her flight. While Ignorance fears, and guilt recoils from death, Frowns it on ransom'd souls so ghastly? Never. Ye angels, as I yield my latest breath, Teach me to smile, and smiling, say, For ever. EUR. BACCHE. VS. 850. I'll dance—I'll dance the live-long night, I'll leap with ancle bold and bright In glad and holy revelry, Glancing up at the dewy sky And tossing on high my waving hair, As free as the fawn that has baffled the snare, And bounded from her foes, to taste The meadow's sweets-while on they haste- Through vales and banks and greenwood flees * * Mr. Editor, Sævit nuda manus, paucæ sine vulnere malæ, Juv. I cannot call to mind anything that ever gave me so much pleasure as the perusal of your announcement concerning the "Eton Bureau." Independently of the growing taste for literature which it bespeaks, and to which the more general study of modern languages, (I allude particularly to that one of "poetry and love,") has unquestionably given birth; it furnishes a medium for giving publicity to abuses, which I fear are daily taking deeper root in the constitution of our " Alma Mater," and consequently cry loudly for reform. The chief of those, |