in correct heraldic phrase. Surprised at any appearance of an acquaintance with such subjects in the poor cow-herd, Forster, who was a lawyer, entered into conversation with him, and was so much struck by his information and intelligence, that he both supplied him with a number of books and maps, and instructed him in the manner of studying them. Some time after this, he was found by another stranger sitting at the foot of a tree, and apparently absorbed in the contemplation of a map which lay before him. Upon being asked what he was about, he replied that he was studying geography. And "whereabouts in the study may you be at present," inquired the stranger. "I am seeking the way to Quebec," answered Duval. "To Quebec? What should you want there?" "I wish to go to continue my studies at the university of that city." The stranger belonged to the establishment of the princes of Lorraine, who, returning from the chase, came up with their suite at the moment; and the result was, that, after putting a great many questions to Duval, they were so delighted with the vivacity of his replies, that they proposed to send him immediately to a Jesuit's college in the neighbourhood. Here he continued for some time, until he was at last taken by his patron, the Duke of Lorraine, afterwards the Emperor Francis I., to Paris, where he speedily distinguished himself, and eventually acquired a high place among the literary men of the day. He never forgot, however, either his early benefactors, or departed from that simplicity of character and manners which the humble nature of his origin and first fortunes had given him. It is gratifying indeed to have to tell, that even after he had become a courtier, and was living in intimate familiarity with the emperor, he took a journey to his native village, purchased the cottage in which his father had lived, and erected on its site at his own

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expense a commodious dwelling-house for the parish schoolmaster. He always kept up a correspondence, too, with the good hermits at Lunéville; and, in particular, on paying a visit to Brother Marin, who had taught him writing, and not finding his hut so comfortable as he could have wished, left with him a sum of money to rebuild it.

Men are proud, and it is very intelligible why they should be so, of an illustrious ancestry; but to those who have achieved their own advancement in the face of disadvantages such as the individuals we have named, and many others, have had to struggle with, the obscurity of their origin is their most honourable distinction. Nothing, therefore, can be weaker, or more absurd, than the vanity which has led even some distinguished men, of humble, or at least not high birth, to attempt to conceal their real extraction from the world, by the most unfounded, and sometimes ridiculous fictions. BANDINELLI, the Italian sculptor, was the son of a goldsmith, and the grandson of a common coalman; but. having in the course of his life acquired great wealth, and having been created by the Emperor Charles V. a knight of the order of St. James, he is said to have repeatedly changed his name, in order to hide his parentage, and to have fixed at last upon that by which he is generally known, in order that he might appear to have sprung from the noble family of the Bandinelli of Sienna. A similar anxiety to secure for himself the reputation of noble descent is also recorded to have been one of the foibles of the celebrated Spanish dramatist, LOPE DE VEGA. But, perhaps, the most extravagant pretensions of this kind that were ever brought forward were those advanced by the famous JULIUS CESAR SCALIGER, one of the greatest scholars and critics of the sixteenth century. This eminent person actually took the trouble

of composing an elaborate memoir of his own life, in which he pretended to be the last surviving descendant of the princely house of La Scala, of Verona, and consequently the lineal heir of that sovereignty, which having been some time before conquered by the Venetians, had been incorporated by them with their own territory. In order to support this story, he went the length of inventing a series of adventures, which he said had befallen him, giving out that having been preserved by his mother from the general persecution of his race, he had, after being carefully educated, been presented at the court of the Emperor Maximilian, who made him one of his pages. He added that he subsequently distinguished himself greatly; first in the wars of Italy, and then, in the service of France, in Piedmont: till, after passing through a succession of other fortunes, which we cannot afford space to relate, he was induced by the solicitations of La Rovère, Bishop of Agen, to accompany that prelate to his episcopal seat, and thus at last to terminate his vain endeavours to recover his lost principality. Now the truth is, as has been since abundantly proved, that Scaliger's real name was Bordoni; that he was in all probability the son of a miniature painter who resided at Padua; and that he never even assumed the name of Scaliger till he was pretty far advanced in life, having borne it only in conjunction with his own in his forty-fourth year, when he obtained letters of naturalization in France, which are still extant. Even at this time it would appear that the fable of his descent from the house of Verona, if it had entered his head at all, had certainly not been conceived in any thing like the form which he afterwards gave it. It was, at least in all its wilder improbabilities, the romance of his old age. He persisted in it, however, as long as he lived, and left it as a legacy to his son, the learned Joseph Justus Sca

liger, who, with an excess of filial observance, both maintained its truth as obstinately as his father had done, and augmented it by many additional fictions of his own invention.

It is a wiser and nobler spirit which, without despising such distinctions where they really exist, considers it more honourable to have achieved fame and eminence without the advantages of high birth than with their assistance; and does not disdain, therefore, where they have not been possessed, to find its best triumph in their absence. Such was the feeling in which the old Greek painter PROTOGENES acted, who, having passed the earlier years of his life in such obscurity and poverty, that he was obliged to spend the greater part of his time in merely painting the coarse ornaments on the prows of ships, was so far from shewing himself ashamed of his humble origin, when he rose at last to fame and more honourable as well as lucrative employment, that he was wont to introduce representations of the different parts of ships round his pictures, as symbols and memorials of his old occupation. BENEDICT BAUDOUIN, one of the learned men of the sixteenth century, went still further than this. His father had been a shoemaker, and he had himself worked for some years of his life at the same profession-circumstances which he was so little anxious to have forgotten, that, many years after, he wrote and published a very elaborate work on the Shoemaking of the Ancients, in which we find the history of that craft traced, with a profusion of erudition, up to the time of Adam himself. But, perhaps, the most extraordinary example on record of indifference to such matters, is that afforded by the conduct of the celebrated Italian writer GELLI, who, even after he had obtained so much distinction by his writings as to have been elected to the high dignity of consul of the Florentine Academy, and ap

pointed by the grand duke to deliver a course of lectures on Dante, still continued to work at his original profession of a tailor, which he had inherited from his father. He alludes to the circumstance, with much modesty and even dignity, in the introductory oration of his course, which he delivered before the Academy, and which has been published.

It would be easy to continue to a much greater length our enumeration of individuals who, smitten by the love of knowledge, have nobly surmounted the impediments thrown in the way of its acquisition by a humble birth or early indigence. Many of the most remarkable of these cases we shall have an opportunity of introducing under other heads of the subject; but, at present, we may merely mention a few of those which we may not afterwards find so convenient an occasion of noticing. The celebrated Italian poet METASTASIO was the son of a common mechanic, and used when a little boy to sing his extemporaneous verses about the streets. The father of HADYN, the great musical composer, was a wheelwright, and filled also the humble occupation of sexton, while his mother was at the same time a servant in the establishment of a neighbouring nobleman. father of our own painter, OPIE, was a working carpenter in Cornwall. The following is the account that Dr. Wolcot, better known by his assumed name of Peter Pindar, gives us of the circumstances in which he discovered the uneducated artist. Being on a visit to a relation in Cornwall," he observes, "I saw either the drawing or print of a farm-yard in the parlour, and after looking at it slightly, remarked that it was a busy scene, but ill executed. This point was immediately contested by a she cousin, who observed that it was greatly admired by many, and particularly by John Opie, a lad of great genius. Having learned the place of the artist's abode, I immediately

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