a few fields, and the house at Mount Pleasant, where their son William was born. Though exempt from the evils of actual poverty, it cannot be supposed that the honest couple were able, or in the first instance desirous, to afford their child any thing above the commonest education. At six, he was sent to a day school kept by a Mr. Martin, and two years afterwards removed to the seminary of Mr. Sykes, then in considerable repute as a commercial academy. Young Roscoe was by no means remarkable for diligence or proficiency at these schools. The books then selected (if in truth there was any selection at all) for elementary instruction were little attractive, and Roscoe's mind was not one of those that are peculiarly delighted with the science of numbers. Yet as he was found qualified, at sixteen, for an attorney's office, we may conclude that he was a respectable penman, and discovered no inaptitude to figures. At twelve, he was taken from school at his own request, and from that period was mainly his own instructor. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and a little geometry, were then all his acquirements. Perhaps he had learned all that was taught in the usual routine of Mr. Sykes's establishment. If so, he displayed his early good sense in voluntarily withdrawing from it. Mutual instruction was not yet in vogue; and perhaps even at this time it may be proper to remind parents, especially those of humble rank in easy circumstances, that a day school is a very dangerous lounge for either boy or girl past childhood, whose time is not fully occupied in the business of that school. It is too much the practice to permit youth of both sexes to remain at school, not because they are doing any good there, but because their parents do not know what else to do with them. With regard to females of the higher class, this may not be objectionable: the intermediate state between pupilage and companionship in which young ladies continue with their schoolmistresses has its advantages; the articles of female education are so multifarious, that it can hardly ever be said to be completed. A ladies' boarding-school approaches to a domestic establishment; and wherever there is a home, a female need never be idle. But for the infinitely larger class, whose destiny is labour, and indeed, for males of all classes, a school becomes almost prejudicial as soon as it ceases to be necessary. The higher education of England will never be what it ought to be, till there is some institution for the youths who are too old for Eton or Harrow, and not old enough for Oxford or Cambridge. In the mean time, we think it the less evil, that they should go too early to the University, than that they should continue too long at the school. From twelve to sixteen, young Roscoe continued under his father's roof, employing his time partly in reading, and partly in assisting the labours of the farm. He also paid frequent visits to a porcelain manufactory in the neighhourhood, where he amused himself with china-painting. His reading was desultory, as that of a boy left to himself always will be; but it could not be very miscellaneous, for his command of books was extremely limited, and the few volumes to which he had access, were rather such as chance threw in his way, than what his unaided judgment would have recommended. There was, however, no lack of good matter among them. His favourites were Shakspeare (an odd volume most likely), Shenstone, the Spectator, and the poems of Mrs. Katherine Philips. Perhaps these were all the books of a poetical or imaginative cast which his library afforded. The names may now seem oddly grouped; yet if the merit of a writer be measured by the plaudits of contemporary pens, the fame of Mrs. Katherine Philips,* alias "the matchless Orinda," would soar high * Mrs. Katherine Philips, whose maiden name was Fowler, was born in London, baptized on the 11th of January, 1631, at the church of St. Mary, Woolnoth; educated at Hackney, by Mrs. Salmon, (thus early was Hackney the seat of the educational Muse); married James Philips, Esq.; accompanied the Viscountess Dungannon into Ireland; died in 1664; and was buried in the church of St. Bennet's, Sherehog. Cowley wrote an ode on her death, to which she probably owes whatever little celebrity she may retain. Her poems were published, without her consent, not long before her death. In 1667 appeared another and fuller edition of "Poems, by the most deservedly-admired Mrs. Katherine Philips, the matchless Orinda;" and a third, in 1678. Whether any later has been called for we cannot say. She translated the Pompey, and four acts of the Horace of Corneille: the former was acted, and honoured with a prologue by Lord Roscommon, an epilogue by Sir Edward Deering, and a copy of commendatory verses by Lord Orrery, in which his Lordship not only declares "the copy greater than the original," but asserts that "Rome too will grant, were our tongue to her known, There is rather more sense and propriety in the panegyric which Sir Edward Deering bestows in the epilogue : "No nobler thoughts can tax These rhymes of blemish to the blushing sex; As chaste the lines, as harmless to the sense, As the first smiles of infant innocence." She seems, indeed, to have been a woman of perfectly blameless life, though she entered into a sort of Platonic correspondence with Sir Charles Cotterel, which produced a series of letters between Poliarchus and Orinda. It is said by one of her panegyrists, that she wrote her familiar letters with great facility, in a very fair hand, and perfect orthography, then we may suppose a rare accomplishment. As a specimen of her poetry, we give her epitaph on her infant son Hector, buried in the church of St. Bennet's, Sherehog. It has been said, "Men laugh in a thousand ways, but all weep alike." See how a mother dropped her poetic tears in the seventeenth century: above Addison himself, and poor Shakspeare and Shenstone must hide their diminished heads. There are few school-girls now who could not write better verses than her's; but then mediocrity was not so easy in the 17th century as in the 19th. We are disposed to hope that it will become so easy, that none will tolerate it, even in themselves. If we might indulge a conjecture as to which among these was Roscoe's favourite, we should be tempted to fix upon Shenstone. Boys who have any thing of a poetical turn themselves, are often better pleased with verses which they think that they can imitate, than with those that defy emulation. No boy ever imagines himself a poet while he is reading Shakspeare or Milton, The thoughts, too obviously, are not his own. But Shenstone has much to charm, and nothing to overpower, the mind of boyhood. His pastoral imagery is pretty, and must have been new to Roscoe, though it was not to Shenstone. His versification is smooth and imitable; his sentiments, sometimes plaintively tender, and sometimes breathing disdain and defiance to the world, find a ready sympathy with those whose warmer feelings are just beginning to glow; and he has much of a temper with which all ages are ready to sympathize-namely, discontent. The elegant memorialist, to whom this article is so largely indebted, "What on earth deserves our trust? Youth and beauty both are dust: A son, a son, is born at last, So exactly limb'd, and fair, Full of good spirits, mein, and air, Yet in less than six weeks dead; Can't with Hermes' seal resist And so the sun, if it arise Half so glorious as his eyes, Like this infant takes a shroud, Buried in a morning cloud." Yet it is probable that the Poetess felt her loss as keenly as one who would have expressed herself with the most pathetic simplicity. remarks upon this part of Roscoe's life: "It is curious to trace his attachment to botany and the fine arts to this early period. The phænomena of vegetation, and the cultivation of plants, appear to have made a deep impression on his youthful mind, and in the little cultivator of his father's fields we can trace the embryo botanist, to whose ardent enthusiasm in after years we owe our botanic garden, the world the new arrangement of Scitamineæ, and the superb botanical publica tion on the same beautiful order of plants. The early essays in painting china-ware seem also to have first inspired him with a love of the fine arts, and drew him on to cultivate his taste in the arts of design, in which he not only displayed the knowledge of an intelligent amateur, but such practical proficiency as might have led to eminence, had his genius not been directed to other channels, as several slight but spirited etchings by his hand amply testify."* All this is very agreeable to contemplate, and true it is, that the embryo botanist will often be found in the field and the garden, by the hedge-row, and in the thicket. The embryo artist, if he cannot procure brush, or pencil, or crayon, will make "slight but spirited" sketches with chalk, or charcoal; or carve fantastic heads on walking sticks. But a fondness for plants by no means clearly foretells the botanist. All children are fond of flowers, (they would be little monsters if they were not); and all who possess any life of mind are curious to observe how plants grow, and feel wonder and delight when the peas begin to peep above the ground. It is a pity that this happy curiosity is so seldom made an inlet to useful knowledge; but it has no connection with scientific botany. A child wishes to know the name of every thing it sees: this is nature; but arrangement and classification are works of reason, of reason trained and informed by education. Again, we hardly ever knew a boy that had not a turn for the arts of design, if a passion for scratching and daubing, for lake and gamboge, is to be called by that title. Some children, in their juvenile efforts, display a truth of eye and * From a "Memoir of William Roscoe, Esq. by Dr. Thomas Stewart Traill, F.R.S.E. read before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, in October 1831, communicated by the author to Dr. Jameson's 'Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal."" As Dr. Traill was the bosom friend and medical adviser of Mr. Roscoe in the latter years of his life, (the acquaintance commencing in 1806,) there can be as little doubt of the accuracy of his information, as of the warmth and sincerity of his attachment, and the justice of his admiration. His memoir, though necessarily short, is perhaps the fullest that has yet appeared of its illustrious subject. To this, and to the earlier notices of the Rev. Mr. Shepherd, a long and endeared intimate of Roscoe, we are chiefly indebted for the materials of our life of that excellent man. obedience of hand of which others are quite destitute, yet the pictorial passion is equally strong in the latter. Still it must be granted that the painter, unlike the poet, always exhibits the bias of his talent in early life. You cannot, from the rapid improvement and enthusiastic devotion of the boy, securely prophecy the excellence of the future artist; for some soon arrive at a certain degree of imitative skill, and then never advance a step further; but it may safely be assumed that the man who, with any sort of opportunity, has not produced something of promise before his fifteenth year, will never be even a tolerable painter. Nevertheless we cannot quite agree with Dr. Traill in referring Mr. Roscoe's intelligence as a connoisseur to his youthful love of china painting, though that certainly might contribute to give him a dexterity of hand, which, diligently cultivated, would have enabled him to execute as well as to judge. Youths, even of less stirring intellects than Roscoe, like to attempt every thing they see doing, and young eyes are almost sensually delighted with brilliant colours. Porcelain-painting is a gorgeous, an ingenious art, but it remained for Wedgewood to make it a fine, i. e. an intellectual art. Imitating the gaudy grotesques on china dishes was much more likely to spoil Roscoe's eye than to improve it. But Heaven had given Roscoe an inward sense of beauty, a yearning after the beautiful, which would have made him a botanist, had his father not possessed so much as a box of mignonette; which would have led him to admire and criticise the productions of the pencil, the graver, and the chisel, had there been no china manufactory out of the Celestial Empire. We are not intending to charge Dr. Traill with the sophism, of which Dr. Johnson seems to have been guilty, of ascribing the original direction of genius to the accidents upon which it is earliest exercised. What he says is just, as it is pleasing; it is against the false inferences of others that we are guarding. Of this stage of his existence Mr. Roscoe speaks thus in his earliest publication, the poem entitled "Mount Pleasant:" "Freed from the cares that daily throng my breast, Again beneath my native shades I rest. These shades, where lightly fled my youthful day, E're fancy bow'd to reason's boasted sway. Untaught the toils of busier life to bear, To paint the prospects that around me rise, |