Alas! regardless of their doom, No sense have they of ills to come, Yet see how all around 'em wait And black Misfortune's baleful train! Ah, show them where in ambush stand To seize their prey the murth'rous band: Ah, tell them they are men! These shall the fury Passions tear, Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear, And Shame that sculks behind; And Envy wan, and faded Care, Ambition this shall tempt to rise, And grinning Infamy. The stings of Falsehood, those shall try, And keen Remorse with blood defiled, Lo, in the vale of years beneath The painful family of Death, More hideous than their Queen: This racks the joints, this fires the veins, That every laboring sinew strains, Those in the deeper vitals rage: Lo, Poverty, to fill the band, That numbs the soul with icy hand, And slow-consuming Age. To each his suff'rings: all are men, The tender for another's pain, Th' unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate! Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. THE ALLIANCE OF EDUCATION AND GOVERNMENT. A FRAGMENT. As sickly plants betray a niggard earth, Spread the young thought, and warm the opening neart : Of nature idly lavishes her stores, If equal Justice with unclouded face And scatter with a free, though frugal hand This spacious animated scene survey, From where the rolling orb, that gives the day, His sable sons with nearer course surrounds To either pole, and life's remotest bounds. Th' event presages, and explores the cause; While mutual wishes, mutual woes endear The social smile and sympathetic tear. Say, then, through ages by what fate confined Has Scythia breathed the living cloud of war; And, where the deluge burst, with sweepy sway Her boasted titles and her golden fields. With grim delight the brood of winter view A brighter day, and heavens of azure hue, Th' encroaching tide, that drowns her lessening lands; And sees far off with an indignant groan Her native plains, and empires once her own. Who, conscious of the source from whence she springs, By reason's light, on resolution's wings, Spite of her frail companion, dauntless goes O'er Lybia's deserts and through Zembla's snows? Another touch, another temper take, Suspends th' inferior laws, that rule our clay: Not but the human fabric from the birth To brave the savage rushing from the wood, What wonder, if to patient valour train'd They guard with spirit, what by strength they gain'd? And while their rocky ramparts round they see, The rough abode of want and liberty, (As lawless force from confidence will grow) What wonder, in the sultry climes, that spread, THE SCHOOL AND THE TEACHER IN LITERATURE. WILLIAM COWPER. 1731-1796. WILLIAM COWPER,* the most popular poet of his generation and the best of English letter-writers was the son of Rev. John Cowper, D.D., rector of Great Barkhampstead, Herts, and was born at the parsonage house in 1731. His mother died when he was six years old, and her sweet presence, and his happy childhood, he has embalmed forever in the "Lines" suggested by his mother's picture, a gift from his cousin later in life." "Oh that those lips had language! Life has pass'd The same that oft in childhood solaced me; Voice only fails, else how distinct they say, 'Grieve not, my child, chase all thy fears away!' My mother! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, And, turning from my nursery window, drew A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu! But was it such ?-It was.-Where thou art gone, May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, The parting word shall pass my lips no more! Oft gave me promise of thy quick return. By expectation every day beguiled, Dupe of to-morrow even from a child. Thus many a sad to-morrow came and went, Till, all my stock of infant sorrows spent, I learn'd at last submission to my lot, But, though I less deplored thee, ne'er forgot. Where once we dwelt our name is heard no more. Children not thine have trod my nursery floor. Drew me to school along the public way, Still outlives many a storm, that has effaced A thousand other themes less deeply traced. Thy nightly visits to my chamber made, That thou might'st know me safe and warmly laid; This sketch is taken substantially from Timb's "School-days of Eminent Men." Thy morning bounties ere I left my home, The fragrant waters on my cheeks bestow'd By thy own hand, till fresh they shone and glow'd: All this, and more endearing still than all, Thy constant flow of love, that knew no fall, Ne'er roughen'd by those cataracts and breaks, All this still legible in memory's page, And still to be so to my latest age, Adds joy to duty, makes me glad to pay Perhaps a frail memorial, but sincere, Not scorn'd in heaven, though little noticed here." In the year of his mother's death, he was, as he himself describes it, "taken from the nursery, and from the immediate care of a most indulgent mother," and sent out of his father's house to a considerable school kept by a Dr. Pitman, at Market-street. Here for two years he suffered much from ill-treatment by his rough companions: his sensibility and delicate health were the objects of their cruelty and ridicule; and one boy so relentlessly persecuted him that he was expelled, and Cowper was removed from the school. Cowper retained in late years a painful recollection of the terror with which this boy inspired him. "His savage treatment to me," he says, "impressed such a dread of his figure on my mind, that I well remember being afraid to lift my eyes upon him higher than his knees; and that I knew him better by his shoe-buckle than by any other part of his dress." To the brutality of this boy's character, and the general impression left upon Cowper's mind by the tyranny he had undergone at Dr. Pitman's, may be traced Cowper's prejudice against the whole system of public education, so forcibly expressed in his poem called "Tirocinium; or, a Review of Schools." About this time Cowper was attacked with an inflammation in the eyes, and was placed in the house of an oculist, where he remained two years, and was but imperfectly cured. At the end of this time, at the age of ten, he was removed to Westminster School. The sudden change from the isolation of the oculist's house to the activity of a large public school, and the collision with its variety of characters and tempers, helped to feed and foster the moods of dejection to which Cowper was subject. His constitutional despondency was deepened by his sense of solitude in being surrounded by strangers; and thus, thrown in upon himself, he took refuge in brooding over his spiritual condition. This tendency had first manifested itself at Dr. Pitman's school, and next at Westminster. Passing one evening through St. Margaret's churchyard, he saw a light glimmering at a distance from the lantern of a grave-digger, who, as Cowper approached, threw up a skull that struck |