belonged to each. In the colony he became one of the most thriving settlers; skilful in making roads, erecting mills, draining, cattle-breeding, &c."* As we, in the words of Mr. Lewes, call both the child clever" who learns his lessons rapidly, and the child "clever" who shows wit, sagacity, and invention, this ambiguity of phrase has led to surprise, when the child, who was "so clever" at school, turns out a mediocre man; or, inversely, when the child, who was a "dunce" at school, turns out a genius in art.†

Well and wisely writes old Roger Ascham, of schoolboys and the way to treat them in school, that if one by quickness of wit take his lesson readily, another by hardness of wit taketh it not so speedily, and the first is always commended, the second commonly punished, whereas a wise schoolmaster should rather consider discreetly the right disposition of both their natures, and not so much weigh what either of them is able to do, as what either of them is likely to do hereafter. For of this Roger Ascham is thoroughly convinced, not only by reading of books in his study, but also by experience of life abroad in the world, that "those which be commonly the wisest, the best learned, the best men also, when they be old, were never commonly the quickest of wit when they were young. Quick wits commonly be apt to take, unapt to keep. Some are more quick to enter speedily than able to pierce far, even like unto over sharp tools, whose edges be very soon turned." It has been suggestively remarked, however, on the general subject of youthful promise, that one great secret of the exaggerated notions entertained about promising youths is the confusion of conduct with capacity, of goodness with power the grounds on which a lad earns a reputation for promise being, in an ordinary way, exclusively moral grounds; industry, perseverance, docility, good manners; the always knowing his lessons, and never being insolent or quarrelsome. People are accordingly said to form their judgments of a man's future from one or two moral qualities, which in truth have much less to do with the kind of future they are thinking about than the intellectual qualities which they have scarcely any trustworthy means of measuring. "We nearly always find in the biographies of distinguished men, that at school or college they gave no remarkable sign of their future power; and even where this is not the case, the predictions of greatness may commonly be traced to a time after the greatness had been achieved." The child may, it is owned, be father of the man, in a certain sense-nor will anybody of judgment deny that we are born with peculiar temperaments and our own individual predispositions. But, character being the compound product of predispositions and experience, "you cannot predict anything of the product until you know something of the second of these factors." Hence the impossibility of being quite sure how a boy or a young man will turn out after he has stepped into the world beyond the class-room. "Some whom, on account of their schoolroom virtues, their friends insisted on raising aloft on pedestals, no sooner get fairly out into the big world than they seem to be scared by the size of things, and to be utterly lacking in that intrepidity of the intellect which is so needful for great successes." Others, again, it is added, whose intellectual energies have hitherto passed for * Whately's Annotations on Bacon's Essays, No. vii. p. 68. † G. H. Lewes: Life of Goethe, book i. ch. ii. Roger Ascham, The Schoolmaster (published 1670).

second-rate, and of whom nobody entertained very sanguine hopes, have their imagination excited, their faculties braced, all their powers stimulated, by the novelty and bustle, and Brobdingnagian dimensions of the new scene to which they are introduced.*-If not the same essayist, another of the same school, dilates on the comparative non-success in after-life of the pattern boy who always obeys his masters when at school, and his aunts when at home for the holidays, and is altogether pronounced a paragon of a schoolboy,-who, nevertheless, is doomed so often to see the scapegrace gain the front and keep it, when both are fairly started on the race of life. For a long time the paragon may go on comforting himself with the reflection that the success of his aggravating contemporary is an accident and a mistake; but as years wear on, it becomes more and more difficult to keep up this innocent little piece of self-delusion. "A cold perspiration breaks out on the paragon's forehead one fine morning, when the newspaper informs him at breakfast-time that the wicked scapegrace has attained celebrity and greatness." Mrs. Gore's Marquis, who owns to having been a monstrous stupid dog at Eton, and to have studied nothing at Cambridge but smoking and snipe-shooting, comforts himself with the conviction that your precocious heroes often fail in the proof; and " a young Roscius sometimes dwindles into a scene-shifter." Mr. Caxton perplexes his wife and Mr. Squills by complacently asserting his little boy, Pisistratus, to be now, at eight years old, as great a blockhead as most boys of his age are what else did he go to school for? Infant prodigies are Mr. Caxton's abhorrence. "These thaumata, or wonders, last till when, Mr. Squills ?" The richer a nature, says Mr. Carlyle, by way of moral to a fable of his composing, the harder and slower its development. "Two boys were once of a class in the Edinburgh grammar school: John ever trim, precise, and dux; Walter ever slovenly, confused, and dolt. In due time, John became Bailie John of Hunter-square, and Walter became Sir Walter Scott of the Universe." The quickest and completest of all vegetables, Mr. Carlyle pithily adds, || is the cabbage.

Mr. Thackeray illustrates in the boyhood of John James Ridley the seeming dunce who will turn out a genius. "At school he made but little progress," and his own father "thought him little better than an idiot," though little Miss Cann prophesies the world will hear of that boy, who has got more wit in his little finger than Ridley senior in all his big person. "That boy half-witted! . . . I tell you that boy is a genius. I tell you that one day the world will hear of him." As it has done. In another and lighter work Mr. Thackeray declares himself —at least, Mr. Michael Angelo Titmarsh does-to have always had a regard for dunces. Those of his own school-days, he bears record, were amongst the pleasantest of the fellows, and have turned out by no means the dullest in life; whereas many a youth who could turn off Latin hexameters by the yard, and construe Greek quite glibly, "is no better than a feeble prig now, with not a pennyworth more brains than were in his head before his beard grew."**

* See the essay on Youthful Promise, in vol. xxi. of the Saturday Review. Essay on Paragons, ibid., vol. xxii. p. 753.

The Hamiltons, ch. xviii.

Miscellanies, vol. ii.: Four Fables.
The Newcomes, ch. xi.

§ The Caxtons, part i. ch. vi..

**Doctor Birch, p. 14.

82

THE ORIGIN OF THE "DEVIL'S OWN."

BY WILLIAM JONES.

I.

THE Pope sat in his easy chair

"Twas one of the cosiest-still some care
Shaded the brow of the saintly man,
Amidst the pomp of the Vatican.

In truth, he was jaded, and troubled, and vex'd,
And many grave matters his mind perplex'd;
Some crusty old cardinals stood in his way,

And had snubb'd him, point blank, in a conclave that day;
A new batch of saints for canonization
Had led to a warm infra dig. altercation,
Unseemly for men of immaculate station;
Each cardinal having a saint for a client,
Instead of due gravity,

Gentle suavity,

That would render things easy, and supple, and pliant
(And gives to a pigmy the strength of a giant),
Each clung to his hobby, of others defiant.
The miracles told were of wondrous variety,
Strongly flavour'd and spicy with fibs to satiety:
One saint, it was told, à la manière St. Denis,

Had travell'd, though old, from Palermo to Venice
With his head off his shoulders, tuck'd under his arm;
Another, aspiring,

When cold, without firing,

Made a cloak of a sunbeam to keep himself warm;
Some had traversed the ocean

By a queer locomotion

(Like St. Patrick himself, or I have a wrong notion),
On a boulder of stone, or the back of a whale;
One, with rapid digestion
(Which is rarely a question

Between saints or sinners), turn'd acorns to pork:
A useful conception,
Without an exception,

When larders are empty, and cooks out of work;
And to moisten the meat he changed water to ale.
But similar feats had been done long before;
For instance, St. Mochua (a name rather jocular)
Had feasted a party with ven'son just caught-
Highly flavour'd they were, such saint-favour'd deer-
Not a cutlet remain'd of the savoury cheer;

And after the skins and the bones had been brought,
He sew'd them up tight, and a miracle wrought,
By driving them, living, to covert once more.
In fine, ev'ry claimant to saintly distinction
Had earn'd the feu sacré, nor dreaded extinction.
As might be expected,

The Pope, bullied, dejected,

Saw no name on the list could be safely rejected.

The number was large, and the calendar swelling,

That St. Peter himself might be shock'd, there's no telling;

But the best plan, perhaps, was to yield à outrance,

And leave the result to the future, or chance.

So the Pontiff, poor soul,
With a sigh sign'd the scroll,

And a copy was sent both to Spain and to France:
Still he felt in a huff,

Took some pinches of snuff,

And mutter'd what might be translated, "All stuff."

II.

The Pope, as I stated, reposed in his chair;
No doubt it contributed more than a share
To make him feel happy-'twas made for a nap;
But light was his sleep; he soon woke, for a rap
At the portal, and then a slight wave of the arras,
Show'd some one at least felt "at home" in the palace.
A head first peep'd in, then appear'd the intruder,
To one without passport sure nothing was ruder;
But the visitor had a full privilege giv'n
To see unannounced the Vicegerent of Heav'n.
'Twas Evona, the lawyer of Brittany;

No casuist more renown'd than he.

There was not his equal, so subtle, discerning,
Unrivall'd in shifting, and sifting, and turning;
At quibbles and fencing no cunning could catch him,
At reading the Codes not a pundit could match him;
In precedents, customs, and church hocus-pocus,
He brought ev'ry point to a critical focus.
So great was his skill in affairs international,

So broad were his margins, so trenchant, so rational,
That monarchs requested him (quite as a favour)
To draw up their treaties for future behaviour.
The Pope was, especially, largely his debtor,
For he wrote ev'ry Bull and encyclical letter;
In fact, was the Papal factotum in cases

How to make of one countenance two distinct faces,
Blowing hot, blowing cold, as occasion required,
No matter the means so the end was acquired-
A trifle Loyola-ish, still, if you please,
'Twas the readiest method to guarantee ease.
He was also the doyen in giurisprudenza,
And in matters of morals a Brutus-like censor;
In cases of law that were doubtful, obscure,
He knew how to make the result pretty sure;
In pardons, indulgences, rights of the Church
(As Delfico explains in his clever "Richerche"),

He contrived that no friends should be left in the lurch.
'Tis true he fail'd sometimes, as one might expect,
But what system of law can be call'd truly perfect?

Strange 'tis to say, that Evona, this day, Wanted pluck, and was timid, quite out of his way, So changed from his dash and forensic display. "Holy father," he said, reverentially kneeling, "I have that within me which urges revealing. True servant I am of the Church and its master"— (Here the words of Evona grew thicker and faster)— "I have work'd all my life for the good of the nation, For the weak and the poor, as the highest in station, With fees badly paid-'tis a Christian oblation That warrants me now in requesting a favour, And I beg you will give it pontifical savour.

My conscience upbraids me,
Reproves and degrades me,

That the lawyers have not got a saint to protect them.
Ev'ry craft I could mention,
Great or small in pretension,

Have a tutelar guardian to help and connect them,
While we, who are plodding in wearisome labours,
Ofttimes 'gainst the grit of our souls, for our neighbours-
Say no more, my good friend," interrupted the Pope;
"To grant your request is to hope against hope.
There are too many saints as it is, I much fear;
Whether some should be so, does not seem very clear;
But for lawyers, you know, there's a prejudice strong,
And I doubt if a saint would reign over you long;
You would question his title-deeds, find them all wrong,
Attack them, like mice, with a nibble and gnaw;
Nor would you once fail to discover a flaw,
So uncertain alike are both lawyers and law,
That the best-natured saint you could possibly find
To take such a post would be scarcely inclined-
Try and manage without one." Evona look'd sorry.
"I am grieved, holy father, to give you this worry,
But let me beseech you to grant my request,

For without it my conscience will never find rest.”
"Since your suit," said the Pope, "is so urgently press'd,
And I owe you some kindness it must be confess'd,

I will do what I can to arrange for the best.

To the Lateran go, San Giovanni befriend you,
And choose, but blindfolded, the saint he
may send
Pax vobiscum, my son, all good wishes attend you!"

III.

you;

Those readers who make the grand tour must well know
The famous basilica, San Laterano,

The oldest in Rome (if I am not mistaken),

By Constantine founded, then left long forsaken,

But revived in great splendour in subsequent ages

(Though Murray's "Handbook" tells you all in its pages).
Be this as it may, at the time of my story
The statues of saints were its principal glory;
In marble, of course, of the choicest Carrara,
No gems in the fine arts were finer or rarer.
Evona came thither-not alone, for the rumour
Brought crowds to the church in inquisitive humour,
To see who, a lawyer so wise and sagacious
Would select for an order consider'd ungracious,
Despoilers, turmoilers, embroilers, rapacious.
With an "Ave Maria" and "Ora pro me,"
Evona advances; right cautious was he,

For the bandage was tight, not a gleam could he see,
Not a hand to direct him while groping around.
He seizes a figure: "The saint I have found,"
Shouts the lawyer, exulting; "our patron is here!"
His eyes were unbound ;--an ironical cheer

Swell'd through the building: "Ay, sure he is there,
No choice could be better," cried the crowd, with a leer.
"Confusion! why this is the Devil's great toe,"
Gasp'd the lawyer, dismay'd, and in accents of woe.
He had stopp'd where St. Michael, his weapon uprearing,
The fiend at his feet seems about to be spearing,