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miracle for an elephant to be as small as a flea, or for a flea to be as big as an elephant, and whether the chimera humming through the void of nature could devour second intentions. As for the old logical technicalities, Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferison, Baralipton, they are now legends. Nobody now reads the thick volumes of Bovellius on that which is below (or next to) nothing. He was a mathematician, and his topic was not quite so foolish as it seems. The lawyers were as acute in those days as any of their neighbors. Among their problems for ingenious

decided that the Latin Q should be pronounced like the Q in French, and solemnly cut off from its body a heretic member who ridiculed such Latin as kiskis and kamkam. "Here," said somebody to Casauban, as they entered the old ball of the Sorbonne, "Here is a building in which men have disputed for four hundred years." "And," asked Casauban, "what has been settled ?" It was the common boast of a grammarian, who wanted as much fame as he could get, that he understood some fabulous number of languages. Postel said he understood fifteen; his adversaries said he did not under-discussion, were the questions: Could a crimstand so much as one. André Thevet was thoroughly grounded, he said, in twentyeight, and spoke them all fluently. Joseph Scaliger is said to have claimed knowledge of all there were, though thirteen is the number commonly ascribed to him, and most likely with greater truth. The man who professed to understand all languages might as well have said at once that he came down from the third heaven of Mahomet, where every inhabitant has seventy thousand heads, and every head has seventy thousand mouths, in each mouth seventy thousand tongues, all singing praises at one time in seventy thousand idioms.

Of orators, it will be enough to cite that practice in exterior eloquence which is kept up to this day, and which Francius first taught his pupils to keep up before a good Venetian mirror. Of the poets, every one has tales to tell; they are animated, like beasts, by a blind love for their own offspring, and are led, when they are weak-minded, into an infinite number of odd fopperies. We will cast anchor, finally, upon the Hæccities and Quiddities of an extinct order of logicians. They could be matched, indeed, with the concretes, I's and not I's of the present day; but we are not personal to any man's opinions or practice, and retire firmly upon the past. The logicians of old used to discuss gravely whether it would be a greater

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DEATH OF MRS. SOUTHEY.-CAROLINE SOUTHEY, widow of Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, died on the 20th August, at Buckland, near Lymington. She was daughter of the Rev. Dr. Bowles, a canon of Salisbury Cathedral, and was highly graced with intellectual accomplishments. She was married to Dr. Southey in 1839, about a year and a half after the death of his first wife, Edith Fricker, to whom he was united on the day he left England for a six months' sojourn at Lisbon. The Rev. C. C. Southey,

inal who recovered his life after decapitation, be again subject to have his head cut off? Who is the owner of an egg laid in a nest frequented by the fowls of many households? If the wife of Lazarus had married again after his death, could he have claimed her on his resurrection? In those days (only in those days, observe) hairs were split by lawyers; advocates, by brass, and by bon mots, and by force of cunning, dragged lawsuits out and prolonged them to the ruin of both litigants-even prolonged them, when there was much wealth, into a second and third generation. In that way the lawyers (of those days) throve, and many became famous.

In the midst of all this foppery and quackery, a great deal of study went to produce small results. It is recorded of a learned man, whose very name is forgotten, though his reading was so deep, that in his lectures he would quote by the page from books written in many languages, never opening one, but having them all on his lecture-table with an open sword. "Here," he said, "are the books; follow me in them when you please, and if I misquote by so much as a syllable, stab me; here is the sword." It is certain that an obscure man of letters, whose name has been handed down, read Tacitus in this way. To so much antecedent toil, men added so much folly and bravado for the sake of fame.

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vicar of Ardleigh, in his "Life and Letters" of his father, says, When the day was fixed for the travellers (Southey and Hill) to depart, my father fixed that also for his wedding-day; and on the 14th of November, 1795, was united at Radcliffe church, Bristol, to Edith Fricker. Immediately after the ceremony they parted. My mother wore her wedding ring hung round her neck, and preserved her maiden name until the report of the marriage had spread abroad."

From the Daily News.

THE MONUMENT TO THOMAS HOOD.

ON Tuesday, a public tribute of respect | was paid to the memory of the late Thomas Hood, by the inauguration of a monument at Kensal Green Cemetery, in presence of a large number of persons, including some intimate friends of the deceased. Hood was one of those who not only enriched the national literature, but instructed the national mind. His conceptions, it is true, were not vast. His labors were not, like those of Shakspere, colossal. But he has produced as permanent an effect on the nation as many of its legislators. If he had not done this, the ceremony of yesterday would have been an inane display. Englishmen are the wiser and the better because Hood has lived; and, therefore, Englishmen can listen reverently to a public eulogium on his memory. Mr. Monckton Milnes, M.P., delivered an address upon the occasion. The monument was covered with a piece of cloth during the simple ceremony. Mr. Milnes said that eulogistic orations at the tombs of their friends were not, he thought, congenial to English taste; yet, on particular occasions, they could not be improper. The oration would appear tame to those accustomed to hear similar discourses on all occasions on the other side of the Channel. But there was sound sense and feeling in all that he said: and this was enough. He spoke with great delicacy and kindness of Hood's personal characteristics, and with much taste upon the artistic value of the dead humorist's works. He touched with great felicity and subtlety upon the value of humor. He defined its province, and showed how closely it was connected with the highest forms in which genius manifests itself. Mr. Milnes spoke, however, more as a friend than as a critic, and his genial utterances excited emotions in the hearts of his hearers which told how deep was their sympathy both with the orator and the subject of his eulogium. There were not many dry eyes amongst his hearers when he

quoted one or two exquisite portions of Hood's poems. It was evident that the greater part of the audience were well acquainted with the works of the poet, and were delighted to hear the quotations from poems which had afforded them exquisite gratification in the perusal. At the close of the address the monument was uncovered. It has been executed by Mr. Matthew Noble, and consists of a bronze bust of the poet, elevated on a pedestal of polished red granite, the whole being twelve feet high. In front of the bust are placed wreaths in bronze, and on a slab beneath the bust appears that well-known line of the poet's which he desired should be used as his epitaph:

He sang the song of the shirt. Upon the front of the pedestal is carved this inscription:

In memory of Thomas 1798, died 3d May, 1845. scription, A.D. 1854.

Hood, born 23d May, Erected by public sub

At the base of the pedestal a lyre and comic mask in bronze are thrown together, while on the sides of the pedestal are bronze medallions, illustrating the poems of the "Bridge of Sighs" and the "Dream of Eugene Aram." This ceremony is very significant, as showing the disposition that exists amongst Englishmen to recognize the value of their great authors. It tells us that the nation has arrived at the conclusion that there are other influences than legislation and war which operate upon our happiness or shape our destiny. The oration pronounced over Hood is a fact which proves an advance in the public estimation of what true greatness is. The rarity of such exhibitions adds to their value; and although we should be sorry to see funeral orations become common, it is creditable to the nation that we should have recognized the justice of pronouncing a discourse over Thomas Hood.

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FOR Some ten or twelve years at least, the I name of Hugh Miller has been known all over Scotland, and also in not a few circles out of it, as that of one of our most remarkable men. It was in 1840 that he came from his native district of Cromarty to settle in Edinburgh as the editor of a newspaper, then established to advocate, with a moderate amount of whiggism in general politics, the cause of the non-intrusion party in the Scottish Church. The fame that preceded him to Edinburgh on this occasion was that of a man who, having worked the greater part of his life as a common stone-mason in the north of Scotland, had in that capacity exhibited very unusual powers of mind, and, in particular, such unusual abilities as an English prose-writer, as to have attracted the notice not only of local critics, but also of men of eminent public station. Of his last and best known production-a pamphlet on the non-intrusion question-no less a person than Mr. Gladstone had said, that it

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showed a mastery of pure, elegant, and masculine English, such as even a trained Oxford scholar might have envied. Apart from Mr. Gladstone's opinion, Scottish readers of the pamphlet were able to see that its author had beaten college-bred clergymen and lawyers in his own country, as a popular writer and reasoner on the national question of the day. It was, therefore, with a ready-made reputation as a self-educated prodigy from Cromarty, that Mr. Miller settled in Edinburgh as editor of the Witness. He was then thirty-seven years of age. During the fourteen years which have elapsed since then, he has largely increased his reputation, and, at the same time, considerably modified its character. As a Scottish journalist his place has been one of the highest, and his method almost unique. Without that sharp immediate decisiveness which enables some of the best of his brother-editors to write currently and well on topics as they momentarily occur, he has exercised a weighty influence, by sending forth a series of leading articles remarkable for their deliberate thought, their elevated moral tone, their strong Presbyterian feeling, and their high literary finish. These essays, as they may

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