such amusement? Was drunkenness never heard of at a match of cricket, or wrestling, or rowing?

It is not here quite irrelevant to ask, why all this care for the morals of the poor? Would it not be well to devote some small portion of it to the regulation of the amusements of the rich? Do they want no reformation? What do our opponents think of the magnificent gaming-houses which adorn and disgrace the metropolis? What of that marvellously moral amusement the Italian Opera? Do no tainted characters gain admission within its immaculate walls? Or, passing from the audience to the stage, is every thing there perfectly unobjectionable? The style of dancing, for instance. What have they to say to the morality of a masquerade? What, to Sunday concerts, and Sunday at homes? Why will they confine their meritorious exertions to the poor? As far as morality is concerned, the rich have at least as much occasion for charity.

There are, indeed, persons who would afford to the poor no amusements at all; and the time seems fast approaching when their opinions will be pretty generally received. Labour is to be the unmitigated portion of the poor man,-nothing but labour. Industry he is to exhibit, but it is not to be cheerful industry. His station in life, which condemns him to subsist by the labour of his hands, is also to doom him to dwell in the cave of Trophonius. He must divest himself of feeling of every kind. Whatever his privations, he is not to complain, whatever his exertions, he is not to enjoy. If he is hungry, he is to be whipt. If he is merry, he is to be sent to amuse himself at the tread-mill, that notable engine devised by the humanity of prison reformers for his recreation. Whether he stay at home or go abroad, it is difficult for him to keep clear of the Vagrant Act:* and, as to amusement, that is a thing which he is not even to think of.

"Vagrancy appears from the returns to admit," as Sir Thomas Brown says, "of a very wide solution." By them we perceive that a magistrate may, if he pleases, commit to the House of Correction under the act, for the following, among other offences:-For begging alms, or begging ad libitum; for lodging in the open air; for sleeping in out-houses; for sleeping in ale-houses; for sleeping any where; for not having money to pay your reckoning; for threatening to leave your family; for playing at unlawful games; for wandering about as minstrels; for being sprightly in a workhouse; for not giving a good account of yourself when drunk; for being mad; for being idle; for doing nothing when you have nothing to do; for speaking improperly to the master of a workhouse; for being a street-walker; for speaking your mind to a landlady; for breaking out of a cage; for returning to a parish, after being sent to jail as a vagrant; for being found in a ditch without any visible means of subsistence; for pretending to be a gypsey; for being pennyless; for wandering abroad; for selling parish breeches; for taking steps to procure a new pair of leather breeches; for being in a state of pregnancy, and unable to proceed; for

It is not quite clear, indeed, that he has a right to take a ⚫ walk without asking leave.*

On the Continent, the poor have their seasons of enjoyment; and the village green is frequently the scene of festivity and mirth: but, in this country, it seems that no such thing is to be permitted;- a smile is to be petty larceny, and a horse-laugh, felony without benefit of clergy. It was not so of old in "merry England." The Christmas merry-makings, the May sports, the sheep-shearings, the Harvest homes, and all the other periodical returns of festivity, spread contentment and joy over the face of the country. These seasons were red-letter days in the poor man's calendar, and inspired him with a feeling that those above him cared for his happiness. He respected himself the more because he was cared for by his superiors; and was not only more happy, but more honest. What have we

gained by consigning the poor to perpetual sadness?— a discontented and repining population, instead of a cheerful and happy one. Is the change worth the trouble which it has cost to make it?

But by what title is it, that one class of society presume to forbid all amusement to another? Have not the poor an equal right with the rich to be as happy as they can? Is he who has little, to be restrained, by those who abound, from enjoying, in his own way, the small portion which he possesses of the good things of this life? Is enjoyment to be forbidden to laborious industry, and allowed only to opulent idleness? But you will give the labourer other amusements. It is not in your power! You may command him to be amused, but you cannot be obeyed. Why interfere at all? Will you admit his interference with your amusements? Will you give up Catalani and Pasta, because he admires them not? No! surely. Let him, then, continue to follow his own amusements, and do you adhere to yours; but do not exercise an impertinent

being deaf and dumb and hungry, and not giving a good account of yourself; for imitating of fits, &c.

"The above are vagrant crimes, or rather crimes which make a poor man a vagrant."

Addenda :

66

Having no means of gaining a livelihood at Chelmsford."
'Lodging under hedges, not having a legal settlement there.”-

"In the following commitment, we are not informed whether Mr. Cole was overseer or churchwarden.

66

WILLIAM COLE, having neglected to provide for and maintain himself, and has expended the parish money in drinking and other unlawful purposes."-London Magazine, January 1825.

* It is not many years since a man named GEORGE WILSON was apprehended for the crime of—walking on Blackheath.

"I'll walk to Blackheath, but I must'nt walk on it."

LISTON, loq.

and vexatious interference, which you would refuse to submit to. To suppress the public amusements of all classes, might be unwise, but would not be unfair. To prohibit those of one class only is monstrous. Shall the rich man lounge at an opera, and the poor man be denied permission to laugh at a fair? Where is the fairness, where the justice, where the charity, where the common sense, where the common decency of this?

LINES

TO THE MEMORY OF THE LATE

DR. ABRAHAM REES.*

SHALL titled folly claim the tribute lay

Shall ruthless conquerors rest beneath the tomb,
That rears its trophies to the eye of day;
And not one sacred leaf of laurel bloom
Over the relics of the wise and good?

What is the boast of birth-the pomp of power
The wreath of victory, dearly bought by blood?

The curse of earth-the phantom of an hour!

The Philomathic Institution has recently had occasion again to lament the loss of a distinguished friend, Dr. Abraham Rees, many years a member of the society, who departed this life on 9th June last, in the eighty-second year of his age. He was an honorary member of this Institution for upwards of twelve years.

This learned gentleman was a native of North Wales, and the son of a respectable dissenting minister. After having successfully laid the foundation of his excellent education, he was removed to the vicinity of the metropolis, and pursued his studies for five years at the dissenting college at Hoxton, under the superintendence of those distinguished divines, Dr. Jennings, author of a valuable work on Jewish antiquities, and Dr. Savage. The success with which he availed himself of the advantages to which he was thus introduced, was best displayed by his appointment to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of the former: and perhaps it is scarcely possible to imagine a more flattering mark of approbation, or to contrive a more appropriate reward, with which to honour a laborious and exemplary pupil. The duties of this office he discharged for twenty years,-indeed, until the dissolution of the establishment; and, on the formation of the dissenting college at Hackney, he was appointed to fill the divinity chair. Very important must be the services such an individual, in such influential stations, had it in his power to render to the cause of literature, by exciting in the minds of those committed to his care an increasing desire for knowledge; and, by the judicious and ample gratification of that desire, preparing them to become the enlightened teachers of the several societies and congregations over which they were destined

While thousands sleep unregister'd, unknown,
Whose spirits past a blessing o'er the earth;
Whose lives were spent for others' weal alone,
And pour'd around the light that mark'd their birth.
If man may claim remembrance in the grave,
Be it the sage who shed his mental light,
And lent the beam that heaven had given, to save
His wandering race from ignorance and night.
If partial hand may mould the featur'd bust,
Or private friendship raise the marble urn,
To show the form, or consecrate the dust

Of some lov'd being, who can ne'er return?
Shall not the grateful voice of public fame

Call from the mouldering records of the dead,
And speak with trumpet tongue, a REES's name,
And claim a wreath to twine his honour'd head?

to preside: accordingly, we find that many were the eminent characters he had the honour and happiness to prepare for useful life.

With his theological opinions and ministerial labours, an Institution, which requires no other qualification in its members than moral excellence, combined with literary talent, can have nothing to do. Suffice it to say, that after the termination of his collegiate appointments, he became the minister of a congregation meeting in Southwark, and subsequently of that assembling in the Old Jewry, more recently removed to Jewin-street, which station he held for more than forty years. His influence in the denomination of Protestant dissenters, to which he was attached, was such as might have been expected from his character and ability.

As a literary man, he is rather known as an editor and compiler than as an author, a remark which will not operate to his disparagement, when the qualifications necessary for able analysis and abridgment are considered; and, especially, when the degree of perfection to which he carried those powers in his extensive compilations are witnessed. He was, however, the author of four volumes of Sermons, and had been a frequent contributor to the Monthly Review. His enlarged edition of Chambers's Cyclopædia, in 4 vols. folio, was executed with the greatest judgment and ability, and procured him deserved celebrity. But the herculean task by which his name is destined to be perpetuated, is his New Cyclopædia, in 45 vols. quarto. For this elaborate undertaking his previous editorial labours had doubtless prepared him, and in its completion he necessarily received important assistance from contemporary scholars,-still, it was a stupendous undertaking; and to have lived ably to complete it, would have been sufficient alone to have conferred and secured literary distinction.

During the progress of these various labours, he was rewarded by numerous literary honours. Through the recommendation of the celebrated Dr. Robertson, principal of the University of Edinburgh, he was presented with the honorary degree of Doctor in Divinity; and, after the publication of his edition of Chambers's Dictionary, he was unanimously elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. On the establishment of the Linnæan Society, he was admitted a fellow, and also of the New Royal Society of Literature; while numerous were the literary and scientific bodies, both at home and abroad, that enrolled his name in the list of their members: indeed, it may be truly said, that such an individual rather conferred distinction on the societies with which he was connected than received it from them.

Yes! long as worth or wisdom shall be dear!

Long as below the beams of science last-
His name his virtues shall be cherish'd here,
While foud remembrance can recall the past.
One feeble lay at least shall speak his praise,
Whose mind capacious soar'd the fields of light;
And pour'd on man his intellectual rays,

And plumed his wings for loftier-prouder flight.

ON THE

PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DARKNESS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

THERE are many who, when they hear of the darkness of the Middle Ages, imagine that, during that eventful period, all was ignorance and superstition; that men thought of nothing but overrunning each other's countries, or cutting each other's throats; that all trades and manufactures, all arts and sciences, had fled from the face of the once-civilized world; that every comfort, and every pleasure, were banished from society; that every feeling of humanity was extinct; that every mental faculty was asleep; and that all men, then living, were brutes. Against such exaggerated notions of the middle ages, I enter my feeble protest. It is true that, if we compare these ages with those of Greece, from the time of Solon to that of Alexander and the Ptolomies, or with those of Rome, from Cæsar to Trajan and the Antonines; or with the condition of some of the more enlightened nations of present Europe, they were dark yet it is equally true, that, although the plastic arts were then neglected, most of those which are indispensable for the wellbeing of a civilized state were preserved and even perfected; and that, if a few were lost, many were invented which proved of more benefit to society; that, if some branches of literature remained uncultivated, such as natural philosophy, oratory, &c., others were never entirely thrown aside. Speculative philosophy and history, for example, almost always found their votaries, although the style in which they conveyed their ideas was not the most elegant; and the ideas they recorded were rarely original. The middle ages were the ages of poetry and romance, particularly among the infant nations of the north, who, in the vigour of their youth and freedom, represented