have its "trappings and suits;" but they should be becoming-the occasion; and this they might be without a Hindoo-like expression of the sorrow which "will not be comforted." My mother's transformation was the more startling to me, because, not long before, my grandmother lost her husband; she being with us; he dying in the East Indies. I dutifully presume she grieved as became her; but she mourned in black, as "became " her too. She had not seen " "poor dear Alexander" for a long while, and he died a long way off; so she assumed a remarkably handsome bombasin gown, with a minimum garnish of crape; put a black ribbon to a cap of more than ordinary stylishness, and perhaps never looked so well in her life. The wearing of the "widow's weeds" has, it is to be presumed, originated in the same purpose which occasioned the weaving of Penelope's web, and which is the only recorded illustration of an ancient Grecian custom, mentioned in the "Spectator" (No. 606), where we learn that the advances of second husbands were prohibited, until the widow "had woven a shroud for her deceased lord, or the next of kin to him." Thus the durance of the "weeds was to be the significant prohibition of any coming wooer to the succession of the lady's favour.

But, what may be the love of a child—an only child to its mother, I can truly tell! Awakened to the apprehension of death, while my life knew no joy but her, I used nightly to pray that I might not outlive her! What letters have I since received, even from the after mistress of my desires, which brought with them the perfect joy of those I had from my mother, when I was a boarder in the Wolverhampton Grammar-School, five months at a time, and four times as many miles away from her! What sorrow so purely heartfelt and unselfish as that which tried my fortitude at leaving her! What joy so exaggerated as that which bewildered me on my return to the kiss of her beautiful face; for, strange to say, I had a singular sense of personal loveliness as her distinction among all other women. Though I never complained, I wondered she could send away one who so loved her. I need not say how these feelings gradually diminished; how I became first like other boys, and then like other men; nor need I perhaps add, that the condition of my heart became not much the better for it. But these things are, and must be ; and it is only now my best pride to think that the former and purer things are not forgotten.

A few years passed on, and the widow and her son found themselves not deserted nor friendless. Resignation preceded the return of a sobered happiness, and it became time to think of the future destination of the growing boy. He had from his infancy the "bumps of form" and "constructiveness" pretty fully developed on his cranium, and he was ever drawing towered churches and gabled houses. His rocks were exceedingly mural in their stratification, his trees rather wooden than woody, his waters of very pavement-like surface, and his figures of decidedly artificial build. He estimated highly no picture or print which had not a building as its more prominent object. He still possesses (in his fiftieth year) a volume of the "Beauties of England" (not Britton's), in which gentlemen in cocked hats and swords, and ladies in high caps and hooped petticoats, are walking between straight parallels of trees in pots, before the south front of the Royal Palace at Kew; and those plates are invariably the most thumbed which exhibit the most architectural pretension. At length his removal to London was decided on; and the

idea of seeing the veritable realization of the heretofore pictured "beauties of England," swelled his architectural yearnings into a state of the most feverish desire.

SCHOOL DAYS.

"You shall go with me: I've some private schooling for you.”

Midsummer Night's Dream.

Though my coming to London preceded the termination of my school days, it is fit that all records of the latter should be set down under a distinct and separate head; for no continuous history in progressive chapters is intended; but rather a collection of light and unpretending essays, entire in themselves, though bearing on each other. The acquired habits of an architect are necessarily those which induce the aim of individual perfectness; for he is too painfully aware of the severe judgment which admits no sense of general completeness to plead for partial defect.

Passing over the earliest days of my infant schooling, of which I recollect no incident save that of an affair with a hall door, which at once did me a fearful wrong and afforded me the amende satisfactory. A gust of wind suddenly opened it upon me as I was going out. It struck me on the nose, and the first blood I remember to have shed was the consequence. My kind mistress, however, with a thought, snatched out the great cold key, and putting it down my back, soon stopped the issue of the "crimson flood."

Having learned to read, I was put to a more advanced school, under a master, and began to study the history of my country in the pages of dear Oliver Goldsmith. A paragraph one day fell to my share, beginning with the words, "During this interregnum," &c. The meaning of the latter piece of Anglo-Latinity remained for a long while a mystery in my memory; but it was subsequently explained to me in a description I overheard, of an old clergyman, whose costume had often attracted my young notice. He wore no braces. His waistcoat and breeches did not meet; and the intervening object was alluded to as "an interregnum of shirt."

I am not perfectly clear as to the amount of my subsequent "Grammar-School" advantages at Wolverhampton. The main impression now remaining on my mind is, that the boys were chiefly engaged in the celebration of anniversaries of the 29th May and 5th November kind, and which, connected with many Saints' days, and thick-coming reasons for holidays of rejoicing on account of Wellington's victories and Bonaparte's discomfitures, left us to look upon our "grammar" studies as little else than an occasional "bore." It was not clear to me whom we were fighting against, or where we were doing battle, but I had an ubiquitous impression that Spain, Russia, and America were so many places in one. Our reverend head master was the greatest and most belligerent boy amongst us. He would come into the school-room with the "Courier" paper in his hand, and stimulate us to a hatred of Bonaparte and an admiration of Lords Wellington and Hill (for the latter was the hero of our parts), which utterly threw in temporary oblivion all the great warriors of Homer and Virgil, and sank into nothing Cæsar and his "Commentaries." The names, too, of Marshals Soult and Ney

were held up to our most hostile estimation, while those of Kutusoff and Blucher were made familiar to our honouring respect. Terrible woodcuts, on sheets as large as the folio of a newspaper, were purchased with our pocket-money, instead of sweatmeats, for they represented the victories of our side with the most graphic emphasis. Chief among these, I remember the grand spectacles of the siege of Badajoz, the battles of Salamanca and Leipsic, the burning of Moscow, the battle of Toulouse, and the glorious action of the "Shannon" and "Chesapeak." We exhausted our colour-boxes in painting them up with most positive red, blue, and yellow; greased their backs to make transparencies of them; and wafered them up against the windows on the night of each illumination. Our drawingmaster was engaged to paint a huge flag to hang from the front of the school. We were sent to the theatre at night to join in the chorus of "God save the King," and to hoot forth our delight at a comic song (sung, I remember, by one even of the Kemble name), in ridicule of "poor little frost-bitten Boney!" Stimulated by our master's enthusiasm, we drew down the ridiculing opposition of certain other rival schools of the town, and therefore attacked them as "Jacobins," not having an overclear understanding of the word. We were harangued on the battle of Toulouse, as the "finishing stroke," which left England nothing more to do but to enjoy herself. Then came the news of the visit of the allied sovereigns to London, with more wonderful woodcuts of the Chinese Bridge in St. James's Park, and the Temple of Peace and Concord, all enveloped in an astounding display of fireworks. I heard of old Blucher's kissing all the pretty English women; and, as my mother was then in London, I experienced some distressing sensations of jealousy at the idea of his kissing her.

But, lo!-the battle of Toulouse proved no "finishing stroke," for one day, while we were hard at those resumed studies which followed restored peace, the intelligence of "Boney's" escape from Elba came to disturb our classic pursuits! The holidays soon followed, and the charms of home made me, at least, careless of foreign doings. I was, however, one afternoon, and to my great delight, commissioned to mount a neighbour's pony and ride off to the post-office of the next town for the newspaper, so that it might be obtained some hour or two before it could be delivered by the pedestrian old "Johnny Postman," who, on ordinary occasions, was sufficiently expeditious for the quiet inhabitants of the village in which we resided. I had no idea of the exact purpose of my couriership; but no express ever travelled with less regard for the lungs of his steed, or for the safety of the old apple-women and congregated clodpoles, who crowded the market-place of the post town. They were as busy with their buying and selling as if there were no Bonaparte in the world to come and make his own market in merry England; and when I galloped among them, to the imminent peril of their persons and property, threatening premature death to screaming poultry, and destruction to the brittle crockery which occupied its beds of straw on the pavement, they hurled vituperation after me, thick as rockets over the retreat of an escaping foe. Reaching the post-office, I could hardly get at the door for besieging crowds. I was too absorbed in my own importance to heed the gabbling expressions of the surrounding applicants: but I could see numbers running off with newspapers, and many "reading as they ran."

The important object of my mission obtained, I galloped back again, avoiding the market-place, however, and duly arrived at my return-post,

the panting sides of my plucky little pony "stain'd with the variation of each soil between the extremes of my accomplished journey. The paper was delivered, wrenched open with all the impatience of eager-eyed avidity, and hurrahs of exultation issued instantly from the mouth of the possessor, who, after gasping for recovered breath, read aloud to his crowding auditors the news of the BATTLE OF WATERLOO !

Here, then, was the "finishing stroke" at last! Was it? O, these were "school days!" It was well all this occurred during the holidays; for otherwise the "Free Grammar School" would have been free of grammar for a fortnight at least. What with a mad master and a hundred maddened boys, the dark " welkin" of old lock-making Wolverhampton would have been "amazed with the broken staves of discomfited "Jacobins," and radiant with bonfires which had shamed the ever-burning and adjacent Bilston furnaces!

But I was destined to return to this seminary of classic and political principles no more. My mother had long put off her weeds. Her Penelope's web was woven, and her personal beauty and manners were too marked not to arrest the observation of the susceptible. This is a matter, however, for distinct comment. Suffice it at present to say, that she was shortly after married-to "a worthy man," of course—and we left the neighbourhood.

The first effects of London upon me will duly appear. After a few weeks' sojourn there, I was transferred to a large school at Tooting, where the more earnest purposes of study were much more seriously promoted. The entire machinery of the school was so much more sure, regular, and insistive, that I seemed never to have known before what systematic application really was; and my "little Latin and less Greek" left me to discover that I was justly obliged to take rank among my juniors, and, in fact, to submit to a sort of re-infantine training, before I could form one of any class. It is scarcely too much to say, that, until the age of thirteen, my time had been almost utterly thrown away; and I reflect with anger and disgust on the mere educated ignorance of the rantipole man of Oxford, whose business it was to seem to do something for the money he received, and to advance the honour of his country by getting tipsy at Pitt dinners.

The "Classics" were now put down, that some attention might be given to that course of study more immediately fitting my future destination as an architect. The mother-sickness was now greatly cured; and when I became a first class boy, with a silver palatte and a medal, for mathematics, hung round my neck on the "Speech-day," I felt that all "mamma-isms" were out of date. We had, however, yet to do with war; and, in the early autumn of 1816, we had an harangue but only a half holiday, in honour of Lord Exmouth's victory at Algiers. The succeeding holidays were enlivened with the sight of George, Prince Regent, going in state to open his parliament. There was a coach of gold and glass, inclosing a portly gentleman, with a capacious order-bedizened red chest, and a pair of snow white breeches on remarkably fat legs. To vary the circumstances which attended his progress through the streets, an occasional flight of stones and other missiles, hurled against the state carriage, gave additional emphasis to the popular feeling, which, having no foreign enemies to vent itself upon, practised a little recreation under the guidance of Mr. Henry Hunt and the Spa Fields Reformers. My "boyish days" were further illumined by the marriage of the Princess

Charlotte, and darkened again by her death! I left school " a sadder and a wiser" youth, to find London all astir with the acquittals of some traitors and the hanging of others.

But, the battle of Waterloo Was it the " finishing stroke?" A man of fifty asks the question. May the last chapter of these memoirs enable him still to trust in the belief that it was so. The anxieties which swayed the public in my boyish days are coming over us again. Rifles are in vogue, lest we get rifled in verity. "The cry is still, they come!" May the schoolboys of the present day be the peacefully possessed men of the future, and may their studies involve those principles which will form the stable assurance of our blessed, blessed Queen, when she shall be the oldest sovereign that ever sat on England's honoured throne !

THE LATE ROBERT BLACKWOOD, Esq.

The following notice of this eminent publisher appeared in the Edinburgh Courant:

We record with much regret the death, on Saturday, February 14th, of Robert Blackwood, Esq., of the firm of Messrs. Blackwood and Sons, the eminent publishers in this city.

An infirm and almost hopeless state of health had occasioned Mr. Blackwood's retirement from active life during the last two years. Until that time, he had sustained, for a period of fifteen years, a most onerous part in the business of his house, giving to the task a degree of application, of energy, and devotion, such as, it is to be feared, may have contributed to the causes of his too early withdrawal from the scene. The deceased gentleman possessed all the facility in business that could be derived at once from uncommon abilities, and from that manly choice of a direct and open course, which is alike the dictate of a simple heart and the sure means of avoiding much toil and trouble. Mr. Blackwood's avocations led him into much intercourse with literary men; and we believe that, while the power and rectitude of his understanding were felt by all, they were most warmly appreciated by those who were the most distinguished of the brilliant circle. He was by nature a man of high mind and fine feeling; and these qualities could not fail to commend him as no unworthy associate to the most cultivated men whose society he enjoyed. A better understanding, indeed, was never exemplified between author and publisher: on the part of the former, unbounded confidence, affection, and esteem-on the part of the latter, the utmost liberality, sagacity, and enterprise. Mr. Blackwood's friendships were sincere, and never disturbed by the shadow of a change. The same high qualities which led to his success in business, with others still more amiable, shed their light upon the circle of his private friends. Mr. Blackwood was in the forty-fourth year of his age.