BY JOHN GAY. All upstarts, insolent in place, make their first entry into a language by familiar phrases, I dare not answer for these THE BUTTERFLY AND THE SNAIL that they will not in time be looked upon as a part of our tongue. We see some of our poets have been so indiscreet as to imitate Hudibras' doggerel expressions in their serious compositions, by throwing out the signs of our substantives, which are essential to the English language. Nay, this humour of shortening our language had once run so far, that some of our celebrated authors, among whom we may reckon Sir Roger L'Estrange in particular, began to prune their words of all superfluous letters, as they termed them, in order to adjust the spelling to the pronunciation; which would have confounded all our etymologies, and have quite destroyed our tongue. We may here likewise observe that our proper names, when familiarized in English, generally dwindle to monosyllables, whereas in other modern languages they receive a softer turn on this occasion, by the addition of a new syllable. Nick in Italian is Nicolini, Jack in French Janot; and so of the rest. This There is another particular in our language which is a great instance of our frugality of words, and that is the suppressing of several particles which must be produced in other tongues to make a sentence intelligible. often perplexes the best writers, when they find the relatives whom, which, or they at their mercy whether they may have admission or not; and will never be decided till we have something like an Academy, that by the best authorities and rules drawn from the analogy of languages, shall settle all controversies between grammar and idiom. I have only considered our language as it shows the genius and natural temper of the English, which is modest, thoughtful, and sincere; and which perhaps may recommend the people, though it has spoiled the tongue. We might perhaps carry the same thought into other languages, and deduce a greater part of what is peculiar to them from the genius of the people who speak them. It is certain the light talkative humour of the French has not a little infected their tongue, which might be shown by many instances; as the genius of the Italians, which is so much addicted to music and ceremony, has moulded all their words and phrases to those particular uses. The stateliness and gravity of the Spaniards shows itself to perfection in the solemnity of their language; and the blunt honest humour of the Germans sounds better in the roughness of the High Dutch, than it would in a politer tongue. Spectator. As, in the sunshine of the morn, His now forgotten friend, a Snail, "What means yon peasant's daily toil, "What arrogance!" the Snail replied; PEACE. Lovely lasting Peace below, THE JESTER'S SERMON. [George Walter Thornbury, born 1828. He was educated for the church, but at the age of seventeen he began his literary career as a contributor to the Bristol Journal. In 1851 he became connected with the Athenarum; and since that date he has been a constant contributor to the principal London magazines, and has produced numerous works in prose and verse, of which we may note:-Poetry: Lays and Legends of the New World: Songs of the Cavaliers and Roundheads (from which we quote, and of which one critic said, "Those who love picture, life, and costume in song will here find what they love"); Two Centuries of Song, being lyrics, sonnets, madrigals, &c., edited by Mr. Thornbury, with numerous valuable notes. Novels: Ecery Man his own Trumpeter: True as Steel; Wildfire; Tales for the Marines; Great Heart, &c. Miscellaneous: Shakspeare's England; Life in Spain, Past and Present; Turkish Life and Character: British Artists from Hogarth to Turner: The Life of J. M. W. Turner, R.A.; Old Stories Re-told: Old and New London, &c. One of his critics says: "He has all the enthusiasm of an antiquary combined with poetical insight and great literary ability, enabling him to put forward whatever he undertakes in the most picturesque and inviting form."] The Jester shook his hood and bells, and leaped upon a chair, The page played with the heron's plume, the steward with his chain, And when they grew a little still, read half a yard of text, And waving hand, struck on the desk, then frowned like one perplexed. "Dear sinners all," the fool began, "man's life is but a jest, A dream, a shadow, bubble, air, a vapour at the best. In a thousand pounds of law I find not a single ounce of love: "Let no man haloo he is safe till he is through the wood; "The friar, preaching, cursed the thief (the pudding in his sleeve). Be always first man at a feast and last man at a fray; "When the hungry curate licks the knife there's not much for the clerk; See Casquet, vol. ii. p. 25. THE TOWER OF LONDON. that room in which Cranmer, Latimer, and Ridley searched the New Testament together? The Tower has an attraction for us akin to that of the house in which we were born, the [William Hepworth Dixon, born in the West Rid-school in which we were trained. Go where ing of Yorkshire, 30th June, 1821. He has earned distinction and popularity as a biographer, historian, traveller, and critic. He became a member of the Inner Temple in 1846; was one of the most active of the deputy-commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851; was editor of the Athendum from 1853 till 1869; in the latter year was appointed one of the magistrates of Middlesex; and in 1870 was elected to the London School Board. His principal works are: John Howard and the Prisonworld of Europe; Life of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania; Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea; Life of Lord Bacon: The Holy Land: New America; Free Russia; The Switzers; and Her Majesty's Tower, from which we take the following extract. Of Mr. Dixon as a writer the Edinburgh Review says: "His style is good and easy. There is life in his narrative and vigour in his descriptions."] Half-a-mile below London Bridge, on ground which was once a bluff, commanding the Thames from St. Saviour's Creek to St. Olave's Wharf, stands the group of buildings known in our common speech as the Tower of London, in official phrase as Her Majesty's Tower; a mass of ramparts, walls, and gates; the most ancient and most poetic pile in Europe. Seen from the hill outside, the Tower appears to be white with age and wrinkled by remorse. The home of our stoutest kings, the grave of our noblest knights, the scene of our gayest revels, the field of our darkest crimes, that edifice speaks at once to the eye and to the soul. Gray keep, green tree, black gate, and frowning battlement, stand out, apart from all objects far and near them, menacing, picturesque, enchaining; working on the senses like a spell; and calling us away from our daily mood into a world of romance, like that which we find painted in light and shadow on Shakspeare's page. Looking at the Tower as either a prison, a palace, or a court,-picture, poetry, and drama crowd upon the mind; and if the fancy dwells most frequently on the state prison, this is because the soul is more readily kindled by a human interest than fired by an archaic and official fact. For one man who would care to see the room in which a council met or a court was held, a hundred men would like to see the chamber in which Lady Jane Grey was lodged, the cell in which Sir Walter Raleigh wrote, the tower from which Sir John Oldcastle escaped. Who would not like to stand for a moment by those steps on which Ann Boleyn knelt; pause by that slit in the wall through which Arthur De la Pole gazed; and linger, if he could, in we may, that grim old edifice on the Pool goes with us; a part of all we know, and of all we are. Put seas between us and the Thames, this Tower will cling to us like a thing of life. It colours Shakspeare's page. It casts a momentary gloom over Bacon's story. Many of our books were written in its vaults; the Duke of Orleans' Poesies, Raleigh's Historie of the World, Eliot's Monarchy of Man, and Penn's No Cross, no Crown. Even as to length of days, the Tower has no rival among palaces and prisons; its origin, like that of the Iliad, that of the Sphinx, that of the Newton stone, being lost in the nebulous ages, long before our definite history took shape. Old writers date it from the days of Cæsar; a legend taken up by Shakspeare and the poets, in favour of which the name of Cæsar's Tower remains in popular use to this very day. A Roman wall can even yet be traced near some parts of the ditch. The Tower is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle, and a Saxon stronghold may have stood upon the spot. The buildings as we have them now in block and plan were commenced by William the Conqueror; and the series of apartments in Caesar's Tower,-hall, gallery, council-chamber, chapel,―were built in the early Norman reigns, and used as a royal residence by all our Nor man kings. What can Europe show to compare against such a tale? Set against the Tower of London-with its eight hundred years of historic life, its nineteen hundred years of traditional fame-all other palaces and prisons appear like things of an hour. The oldest bit of palace in Europe, that of the west front of the Burg in Vienna, is of the time of Henry the Third. The Krem lin in Moscow, the Doge's Palazzo in Venice, are of the fourteenth century. The Seraglio in Stamboul was built by Mohammed the Second. The oldest part of the Vatican was commenced by Borgia, whose name it bears. The old Louvre was commenced in the reign of Henry the Eighth; the Tuileries in that of Elizabeth. In the time of our civil war Versailles was yet a swamp. The Escorial belongs to the seventeenth century; Sans Souci to the eighteenth. The Serail of Jerusalem is a Turkish edifice. The palaces of Athens, of Cairo, of Tehran, are all of modern date. Neither can the prisons which remain in fact as well as in history and drama-with the one |