cal meeting of the three choirs of Worcester, Hereford, and Gloucester, in the cathedral of Worcester, and the other upon a public fast-day; the former of these, the learned Dr. Hurd, now Bishop of Worcester, said was" ingenious and eloquent, the latter pious and animated." Although Rugby school is not of royal, yet it can boast a very ancient foundation, and has produced several very distinguished characters both in church and state; the late valiant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who received the whole of his education there, ever retained a grateful affection for the place, and expressed his intentions of visiting it again in a letter to a friend and school-fellow of his, who still resides there, in case he had lived to return to his native country. Dr. James was introduced to his Majesty a few years ago, and had the honour of walking on the terrace at Windsor with him in company with Dr. Heath, provost of Eton, when his Majesty heartily congratulated the former upon his enlargement and improvement of Rugby school; "but it is no wonder (continued the King) you have been so successful, having been yourself educated at Eton;" a very neat compliment, of which Dr. Heath might certainly claim a moiety. MR. EGERTON BRYDGES. AMONG the public characters of the day may justly be reckoned those who have either informed or amused amused their contemporaries by the genius or the elegance of their writings, or who have forsaken the paths of wealth and ambition for the less substantial but more generous acquisitions of mental superiority. There is a vulgar sort of celebrity arising out of rank, fortune, or success in the world—from a gaudy establishment-from fluttering at public assembliescourting a numerous acquaintance, and outvying others in every fashionable folly-which, in the ideas of the ordinary herd of mankind, high or low, overshadows the modest claims of mental excellence. To such, a man whose person is known but to few, whose voice has never been heard in the senate, whose carriage does not glitter at St. James's or in Bond-street, and whose name is not echoed in every newspaper; but who utters from the silent recesses of rural solitude the dreams of his fancy, or the effusions of his heart, appears unworthy to be recorded. But it is the duty of literature to plead its own cause; to counteract the more obtrusive, yet less sterling, claims to worldly reputation; and to enforce the elegant words of Gibbon, that " in the estimate of honour we should learn to value the gifts of nature above those of fortune; to esteem the qualities that best promote the interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the latest posterity." Samuel Egerton * Brydges, F. A. S. whose poems He derived these names from his godfather and near relation Samuel Egerton, Esq. of Tatton-park in Cheshire, who represented that county in parliament from 1754 till his death in 1780. and and novels are well known to the public, is the younger son of a country gentleman, and descended from a distant branch of a family of ancient nobility, whose peerage, on a failure of the immediate line, having been claimed by his elder brother, became the subject of fourteen years litigation in the house of lords. His mother is a coheir of a near branch of the illustrious house of Bridgewater. His paternal grandmother was a Gibbon, of the same family as the historian of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." He was born in November 1762, as appears by one of his sonnets. His childhood was spent in the quiet of a country mansion, amid the enchanting scenery of nature, under the shade of umbrageous groves, among hills, and vallies, and woodlands. It was this, probably, that gave the first and predominant colour to his mind, and fixed his greatest delight in rural imagery, in descriptions of solitude, and the charms of lonely contemplation. The exchange of these scenes for the rudeness and clamour of a public school was the most bitter and trying circumstance of his life. The agonies he felt at first finding himself removed from his beloved home, are not to be related; and for a long period every return from it seemed almost to rend his heart asunder. Yet thus was he necessitated to pass nine tedious years, to which all the reputation he attained there, although it much softened, could not entirely reconcile him to his fate. At length, in October 1780, he was sent to Queen's College, Cambridge, with the character of a good classical scholar, who excelled in the composition of Latin, as well as English poetry. But the habits of a Cantab were not congenial to the turn of his mind. and his attainments: exclusive attention was given, and exclusive honours were paid, to mathematics. At his time Dr. Isaac Milner, whose pre eminence in this science is well known, was one of the tutors; but unfortunately it fell to his lot to give lectures, not on the subjects in which he so much excelled, but in the classics, for which neither his early education, nor the frame of his mind had fitted him. These circumstances generated a disgust in the mind of Mr. Brydges, which, during the time he remained at the university, he never conquered. The consequence was a total neglect, not of mathematics, but even of those acquirements in classical literature, relative to which a little attention would have conducted him to celebrity. But as nothing could suppress his avidity for reading, he gave himself up to all the luxurious idleness of the modern belles-lettres: he lounged over Spenser, and Shakespeare, and Milton; he indulged in every wild romance or affecting novel which he could obtain, and he pored over biography and history with a careless and undirected curiosity. These occupations, together with his shyness and apparent reserve, were but little calculated to acquire for him a large acquaintance; he passed his time, • See his character in vol. II. of Public Characters, p. 129.Archdeacon Carlyle, lately deceased, was at this time a junior fellow of the college, but was not then known to have commenced those oriental studies by which he afterwards distinguished himself. See an account of him in Public Characters, vol. V. page 338. therefore, as English poetry. and novels are well known to the public, is th He was born in Nov of his sonnets. His of a country mansi of nature, under among hills, an probably, tha' MR. EGERTON BRYDGES. 251 congeal to the turn of his mind But the habits of a dont whode, que erinence in were gain, to mathematics. At exclusive attention was given, , and r left coly tired, and bes new society. But him, and the course of d, were of all others the most the profession in which he was now The coarse jargon, in which this science it can be called) is clothed, the ners and customs of its professors, were utabhorrent to his taste: it could scarcely be exad of him to go and write like a clerk at the desk a special pleader: if he went into the courts, be to his mind imagery, i of lonel scenes was life pected could ge. neither understand their arguments, nor even comprehend their terms; and a practical knowledge of the law has seldom, it is presumed, been obtained from solitary study even by the few who have had the patience to persevere in it. Here, therefore, he just kept his terms, with a sullen inattention to his neighbours, spending the greater part of the day among his relations in the western part of the town, and escaping as soon as possible back into the country to the house of |