Brigantes. Most probably it was in the widely-extended forest of Hatfield that the defeated King of the Brigantes and the remnant of his army found an asylum: this magnificent forest was the stronghold of the Britons in this part of the kingdom. The common Roman road passed from Lindum (Lincoln) to Agelacum, (Littleborough,) upon the Trent to Danum, (Doncaster,) where the Romans kept a standing garrison of Crispinian horse. This was only a few miles from Hatfield-forest, swarming with Britons, who were continually sallying forth and annoying the Roman garrison, intercepting the provisions, destroying their carriages, &c., which so exasperated the Romans that they resolved to destroy the forest. In order to accomplish their purpose, they marched against the Britons and the wood, and encamped on the moor near Finningley, where the remains of the fortification still appear. That they had an engagement on Finningley-moor is exceedingly probable, in which the Romans were victorious; and then, taking the advantage of a south-west wind, set fire to the pitch-trees, of which the forest was chiefly composed, the principal part of it was thus destroyed. Then the Roman soldiers and captive Britons cut down the remainder, except a few large trees which they left standing as memorials of the destruction of the magnificent forest of Hatfield.

As the Romans destroyed Hatfield-forest, so they did the great forests in Cheshire, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, Somersetshire, &c. But the Romans never visited Wales, Ireland, or the Isle of Man. The Cambrian forests were cut down at a much later period. From Hollinshed and others we learn that Edward I., not being able to subdue the Welsh, because they concealed themselves in the woods, commanded the woods to be destroyed by fire and the axe; and no doubt the subterraneous trees mentioned by Cambrensis, in Pembrokeshire, were the relics of the forests which were then destroyed. When Suetonius Paulinus conquered Anglesea, he ordered all the woods there to be cut down.

And it is expressly asserted that Henry II., when he conquered Ireland, commanded all the woods to be cut down

which grew in the low countries, the better to secure his possession of ancient Erin.

With regard to the Isle of Man, some facts might be adduced to show that it is extremely probable that the peatmossy part of the county called the Curragh, which lies a few miles west of Ramsay, where very many fine subterraneous trees have been dug up, was overflowed by the sea since the commencement of the Christian era. Perhaps in ages gone-by long ago, the island might have been sunk by the action of subterraneous fires, and then again elevated by the expansive force of a similar agency. If the wood was cut down in time of war, there is no record of that event, and tradition does not furnish any intimation to that effect.

Galen, the Physician, tells us that the Romans kept their soldiers continually employed in cutting down woods, draining marshes, and constructing public roads, &c. The captive Britons were employed in the same work. Dion Cassius says that Severus lost fifty thousand of his men in a few years in this employment.

Some light will be thrown on the formation of peat-mosses by the following statement, made by the then Earl of Cromartie, in 1651. His Lordship, then nineteen years of age, was passing through the parish of Lochbrun; he observed, by the side of a high hill, a plain covered with fir-wood, which was so old that not only the trees had no green leaves, but the bark had fallen off. Some old men residing near the place, remarked to His Lordship that in a few years more the trees would cast themselves up by the roots, and lie in heaps. Some fifteen years after this, His Lordship passed by the same way again: the old trees had all disappeared, and the plain was covered with a green moss. He inquired who had carried away the old wood. The reply was that nobody had been at the pains to do so; that the trees had been uprooted by the high winds, and that the water coming down from the high hills above, stagnated on the plain, forming a peat-moss in which the ancient wood was all embedded. In the year 1699 the neighbouring people were digging turf on this plain. No doubt many other peat-mosses have been formed in a similar way, where no human agency

had been employed to cut down the wood which originally occupied the respective localities where those peat-mosses are now found.

The kindness of Providence appears even in this matter. Those extensive forests supplied our remote ancestors with wood for fuel; and when cut down by the Romans, and by others, at different subsequent periods, they composed the ground-work for the formation of peat-mosses, which have supplied abundance of turf for the same purpose, in the absence of coal. That coal is of vegetable origin is now almost universally admitted. No doubt the immense beds of coal found in Great Britain and other countries, have been produced from the vast forests of the world before the flood, which were overwhelmed by the universal deluge. Birstal. CHARLES RADcliffe.

LETTER TO A YOUNG WRITER.

(For "The Youth's Instructer.")

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,

I FIND, and I am glad to find, that, during the last few years, you have been diligently employed in devoting what leisure hours you have had to the important task of mental improvement. It seems that you had what is commonly called a plain English education, but that you have since endeavoured to increase your stock of knowledge, so as not only to acquire the means of spending your time pleasurably and profitably when alone, but also to be able to engage in conversation with those of your own age whose early advantages may have been greater than your own, and, in addition, occasionally to furnish an essay upon some useful subject to a society of young men with which you are connected, and which has for its object the intellectual advancement of its members. This last employment, properly conducted, is calculated to be very beneficial to you.

I

say, properly conducted; and for this your object must be, not a vain, foolish display, (no good can ever come from this,) but the communication of useful knowledge on the

proposed subject. And for this it is supposed that you possess the knowledge; for no one can give what he has not. Reading, therefore, and reflection, are indispensable. An essay ought to be the statement of the writer's own knowledge. He may have acquired this by reading in the first instance; but when he only remembers what he has read, and writes what he remembers, the essay is not properly his own, but that of the author or authors whom he has consulted. To reading, therefore, such reflection must be added, as shall make what he reads thoroughly his own. By the process of digestion the food we take passes into the system, and becomes identified with the living blood already there. So is it (as far as between mind and body an analogy may be instituted) with reflection. By reading, or the observation of facts, we supply the mind with food: by proper reflection it passes into the mental system, and becomes a part of that living knowledge which the mind possesses.

If you constantly act on the principle thus suggested, you will be in no danger of falling into an error (I might use a much stronger word) which I have sometimes had occasion to notice, and against which I wish to put you on your guard. Thoroughly educated writers, whose minds are well stored with literary information, as well as general knowledge, often show this by the passing allusions which they make, or the quotations, particularly the classical quotations, which they give, and which, as given by them, are generally both emphatic and ornamental. An imperfectly educated writer, more influenced by vanity than he would be willing to acknowledge, often tries to imitate this, and in doing so, seldom fails to make himself ridiculous. Such a method of writing never succeeds except when it proceeds from a real mental exuberancy. A true scholar at once perceives when this is the case; and he sees, too, when it is mere imitation. A writing is disfigured, not ornamented, by allusions which the writer has evidently picked up, and which plainly have no residence beyond his memory. Allow me to give you an instance or two, that you may avoid all such displays of bad taste, and that you may obtain the confidence of your readers by the conviction that you understand what you write, and

that you only write what you understand. I once heard this conversation. A decisive step had been agreed to in a meeting. One of its members said to another, "We have passed the Rubicon." "We have neither the Senate with its decrees, nor Brutus with his dagger, to fear," was the reply. The reply was not understood. The "Rubicon' allusion proceeded, therefore, from no historical knowledge. A speaker on a platform once wished to ask as to the benefit of a particular proceeding. He had seen this done in Latin, and therefore said, “Cu-i bono?" His speech bewrayed him. A Latinist would have pronounced the pronoun very differently. Another wanted to say very learnedly that truth was great, and would prevail, but could not do it without two glaring errors. Magnus est veritas, et prevalebit. The adjective was wrong in its gender, and the verb improperly pronounced. A writer wished to say that a certain matter remained as it was. He had heard this done in Latin, but thought the three words in statu quo, were only one, and therefore wrote, instatuco. Another, wishing to say that there were certain periods which certain histories did not describe, wrote of them as being hiati. He had heard that hiatus was Latin for an aperture, a gap, and took for granted that its plural was formed by the termination which he gave the word. Had he mastered the five declensions of the Latin grammar, he would have known that a noun of the fourth declension (as hiatus is) forms its plural very differently from nouns ending in us, belonging to the second. Dominus makes domini, but hiatus does not make hiati. Then there is another way of falling into this evil. Grammatical rules are illustrated by examples; and these furnish tempting tit-bits for quotation. Yet it is very dangerous. They are often from the poets, and the slightest alteration in a syllable destroys the delicate symmetry of Latin verse. I could give instances of this, but I have said enough to show you that the young writer should never go out of his depth. Let him say what he knows, but let him say no more than he knows. Such attempts at display are as dangerous as they are offensive against good taste. The detection of such errors as those which I have pointed out, destroys all confidence in