master said he did not know how he could properly receive it, since he had given nothing in exchange for it. I said that he really must take it: that I could not possibly carry it back to my father. "Well," replied he, "if I am to take it, at all events I must give you something for it: so come here." And, upon my going up to him, he took the money with one hand, and with the other gave me a box on the ear which sent me reeling against the wainscot; -and that was the way I first learned to write.'

After this, the writing master seems to have been more vigilant. 'I think,' said Lord Eldon to Mrs. Forster, I write remarkably well considering how I played truant from the writing school. I remember Harry and I, going home. one evening, found my father in the dining-room. "Harry," said he, "were you at the writing school to-day?”—“Oh, yes, papa," answered Harry.—“ And were you there, Jack?"-Now you know my elder brother had said yes, so what could I do but follow his example? so I said "Yes, papa."—" And were you there yesterday ?"-"Yes, sir." "And the day before?"-"Yes, sir.""And the day before that ?"-"Yes, sir."-" Walk out Mr. Benson:"--and from behind the door out walked our writing master, who had come down to complain that we had not been at his school the whole week. We were twice flogged for that, once by my father, and once by Mr. Benson.'

'Between school hours we used to amuse ourselves with playing at what we called "cock nibs"--that was riding on gravestones, in St. John's churchyard, which, you know, was close to the school.-Well, one day one of the lads came shouting "Here comes Moises "-that was what we always called him, Moises,— so away we all ran as hard as we could, and I lost my hat. Now if you remember, there were four or five steps going down to the school, a sort of passage. Unfortunately a servant was coming along with a pudding for the bake-house, and in my hurry, when Moises was coming, I jumped down these steps and into the pudding. What was to be done? I borrowed another boy's great coat, and buttoned it on, over my own coat, waistcoat, pudding, and all, and so we went into school. Now when I came out, I was in an unforeseen dilemma, for this great coat had stuck to my own; another boy's coat sticking to me, and my own hat lost! here was an unfortunate situation !-with great difficulty the coat was pulled off; but my father was very angry at my losing my hat, and he made me go without one till the usual time of taking my best into every day wear.' Mrs. Forster adds, 'Lord Eldon, on this occasion, went three months, Sundays excepted, without a hat.'

'I remember,' said Lord Eldon, 'my father coming to my bedside to accuse Harry and me of having robbed an orchard: some one had come to complain. Now my coat was lying by my bed with its pockets full of apples, and I had hid some more under the bed-clothes, when I heard my father on the stairs; and I was at that moment suffering intolerable torture from those I had eaten. Yet I had the audacity to deny the fact. We were twice flogged for it. I do not know how it was, but we always considered robbing an orchard as an honorable exploit. I remember once being carried before a magistrate for robbing an orchard; "boxing the fox," as we called it. There were three of us, Hewit Johnson, another boy, and myself. The magistrate acted upon what I think was rather curious law, for he fined our fathers each thirty shillings for our offense. We did not care for that, but then they did: so my father flogged me, and then sent a message to Moises, and Moises flogged me again. We were very good boys, very good, indeed: we never did any thing worse than a robbery.'

Mrs. Forster adds, 'When any of his boys were not down stairs at the proper time in the morning, Mr. Scott used to ascend to their room with a pair of leather taws, which he laid across the delinquents' shoulders. Harry and Jack being rather fond of their beds, and apt to receive the chastisement pretty often, determined upon stealing the taws, an exploit they successfully achieved. From that time Mr. Scott, who never replaced them, used to go to their room with his hand under his dressing-gown, as if ready to inflict the usual punishment, while the boys lay still until the last moment in secure enjoyment,'

'These taws, a piece of strong leather cut into several thongs, were produced every year at my grandfather's (Henry's) house, when my uncle (Lord Eldon)

was with him, and they used to recount, with the greatest glee and triumph, this exploit of stealing them, and their amusement in seeing the old gentleman enter their room with his hand under his dressing-gown.'

'I believe,' said Lord Eldon to Mrs. Forster, 'I have preached more sermons than any one who is not a clergyman. My father always had the church service read on Sunday evenings and a sermon after it. Harry and I used to take it in turns to read the prayers or to preach: we always had a shirt put on over our clothes to answer for a surplice.'

"I

'I should have been a very good dancer, only they never could get this left arm to conduct itself gracefully: and yet I had eight dancing masters. I remember one of them complaining that I took no pains with that left arm. do not know how it is," said he; "Mr. Moises says you are a very good boy, but I do not find you so." I had the impudence to look him up in the face and say-" but you are not Mr. Moises, sir." "

Mrs. Forster. But I remember, uncle, hearing of Master Jacky being celebrated for the hornpipes he danced at Christmas: there was an old keelman in the hospital at Newcastle who talked of your hornpipes.'

Lord Eldon.-'Oh, yes, I danced hornpipes: at Christmas, when my father gave a supper and a dance at Love Lane to all the keelmen in his employ, Harry and I always danced hornpipes.'

Mrs. Forster adds, 'the supper which, about Christmas, Mr. Scott used to give his keelmen, was what was called a binding supper; that was a supper when the terms on which they were to serve for the ensuing year were agreed upon. Patterson, the last surviving keelman in Mr. Scott's employment, dined in our kitchen every Christmas day until his death, about ten years ago. He expatiated with great delight upon the splendid hornpipe that Master Jacky regularly danced for their amusement after these suppers.'

This veteran was not destitute in his old age; and Lord Stowell made him an annual present to add to his comforts at Christmas.

'I believe,' said Lord Eldon to Mrs. Forster, 'no shoemaker ever helped to put on more ladies' shoes than I have done. At the dancing school, the young ladies always brought their dancing shoes with them, and we deemed it a proper piece of etiquette to assist the pretty girls in putting them on.-In those days, girls of the best families wore white stockings only on the Sundays, and one week day which was a sort of public day:-on the other days, they wore blue Doncaster woolen stockings with white tags.'

'We used, when we were at the Head School, early on the Sunday mornings, to steal flowers from the gardens in the neighborhood of the Forth, and then we presented them to our sweethearts. Oh, those were happy days-we were always in love then.'

The successes of the elder brother (William, Lord Stowell) at Oxford laid a foundation for the fortunes of the younger also. When John approached the completion of his studies at the High School, his father, who had formed a design of qualifying him for his own business of a fitter, was making arrangements to that effect, with which he acquainted William, then at the university. In answer to this communication, William wrote to his father dissuading from his design. Send Jack up to me,' he said: 'I can do better for him here.' He was sent accordingly, and on the 15th of May, 1766, was matriculated as a member of the University of Oxford, by Dr. Durell, the Vice-Chancellor, having, on the same day, been entered as a commoner of University College. 'I was entered,' he notes in his Anecdote Book, 'under the tuition of Sir Robert Chambers and my brother Lord Stowell.'

'I have seen it remarked,' says Lord Eldon in his Anecdote Book, 'that something which in early youth captivates attention, influences future life in all stages. When I left school, in 1766, to go to Oxford, I came up from Newcastle to London in a coach then denominated, on account of its quick traveling as traveling was then estimated, a fly; being, as well as I remember, neverthe less, three or four days and nights on the road: there was no such velocity as to endanger overturning or other mischief. On the panels of the carriage were painted the words "Sat cito, si sat bene:" words which made a most lasting im pression on my mind, and have had their influence upon my conduct in all subsequent life. Their effect was heightened by circumstances during and immediately after the journey. Upon the journey, a Quaker, who was a fellow-traveler, stopped the coach at the inn at Tuxford, desired the chambermaid to come to the coach door, and gave her a sixpence, telling her that he forgot to give it to her when he slept there two years before. I was a very saucy boy, and said to him, “Friend, have you seen the motto on this coach?” "No."" Then look at it: for I think giving her only sixpence now is neither sat cito nor sat bene." After I got to town, my brother, now Lord Stowell, met me at the White Horse in Fetter Lane, Holborn, then the Great Oxford house, as I was told. He took me to see the play at Drury Lane. Love played Jobson in the farce, and Miss Pope played Nell. When we came out of the house, it rained hard. There were then few hackney coaches, and we got both into one sedan-chair. Turning out of Fleet street into Fetter lane, there was a sort of contest between our chairman and some persons who were coming up Fleet street, whether they should first pass Fleet street, or we in our chair first get out of Fleet street into Fetter lane. In the struggle the sedan-chair was overset with us in it. This, thought I, is more than sat cito, and it certainly is not sat bene. In short, in all that I have had to do in future life, professional and judicial, I have always felt the effect of this early admonition, on the panels of the vehicle which conveyed me from school, “Sat cito, si sat bene." It was the impression of this which made me that deliberative judge-as some have said, too deliberative; and reflection upon all that is past will not authorize me to deny that, whilst I have been thinking “sat cito, si sat bene," I may not have sufficiently recollected whether "sat bene, si sat cito" has had its due influence.'

Mr. John Scott took his Bachelor's degree, in Hilary term, on the 20th of February, 1770.

'An examination for a degree at Oxford,' he used to say, 'was a farce in my time. I was examined in Hebrew and in history. "What is the Hebrew for the place of a skull ?" I replied, "Golgotha."-"Who founded University College?"-I stated (though, by the way, the point is sometimes doubted), "that King Alfred founded it."-"Very well, sir," said the examiner, "you are competent for your degree."

In the year 1768, the Earl of Litchfield, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, had instituted two annual prizes there, for the best compositions in English prose and Latin verse respectively: the prize for Latin verse being limited to members who had not exceeded four years from their matriculation: and that for English prose to members who had exceeded four years but not completed seven, and who had not taken the degree of Master of Arts, or of Bachelor of Civil Law. The subject, in 1771, was 'The Advantages and Disadvantages of Foreign Travel;' and, in the Trinity term of that year, the prize, of the value of 207., was adjudged to the essay bearing the motto of 'Non alibi sis, sed alius.' This essay was written by John Scott while yet under the age of twenty

years.

AN ENGLISH STUDENT AT HOFWYL.

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY ROBERT DALE OWEN.*

EMANUEL VON FELLENBERG AND HIS SELF-GOVERNING COLLEGE.

GROWING up and educated, to the age of sixteen, in the country, and in the quiet and genial atmosphere of a domestic circle, I was isolated from a thousand temptations that are wont to assail boys in schools and cities. It was a civilizing circumstance, too, that our family consisted chiefly of cultivated women.

But the situation had its serious drawbacks also. It lacked bracing, case-hardening influences. While it nourished self-esteem, it failed to give self-assertion. I was in danger of reaching manhood devoid of that sterling quality, specially prized in England-pluck; and this the rather because of the excessive sensibility which that grave fit of sickness had left behind. I was then little fitted to hold my place in the world as it is. What effect a sudden transition to the buffetings of some such public school as Eton or Harrow, with its fag-tyranny and its hazing, and its squabbles settled by the fist, might have had I cannot tell. At all events, I think it fortunate that I was spared the trial; and for this I am chiefly indebted to an excellent man, Charles Pictet (de Richemont) of Geneva. An enlightened agriculturist and firm friend of education; an intimate associate of Cuvier, La Place, and other distinguished scientists; one of the editors of the Bibliothèque Britannique; a diplomatist, too, trusted by his countrymen,-Pictet had been sent by the Swiss Republic as Envoy Extraordinary to the Congress of Vienna in 1814, and to that of Paris in 1815. In 1817 he visited New Lanark; and he and my father contracted a warm and lasting friendship. They agreed to travel together to London, Paris, and Geneva; and afterwards to visit in Switzerland a certain institution, the most remarkable of its kind then in the world, of which Pictet had been the historiant from the inception of the enterprise in the * Robert Dale Owen, the son of Robert Owen-who, in spite of his sh rt comings as the organizer of new communities, and the readjuster of the relations of capit 1 and labor, was a wise Practical Educator (See Barnard's Practical Educators)—was born at New Lanark, on the Clyde, in 1804, and emigrated to Indiana in 1825, where he achieved marked success in political and literary life. He was elected to Congress in 1843, and appointed Chargè d' Affairs to Naples in 1853. His New Views of Society. Footfalls on the Boundaries of Another World, The Wrongs of Slavery and The Rights of Emancipation, etc, have had a wide circulation.

In 188 the French ambassador to "witzerland had a public correspondence with Pictet on the subject. Count de Capo d'Istria, who was the Russian envoy to the Con. gresses of Vienna and Paris, made to the Emperor Alexander, in 18 4, an ex ended report on Hofwyl, which, being widely circulated in bo k form, brought M. de Fell n. berg's ideas into notice all over Europe. There were also published, about the same time, a R port made to the Swiss government by a pecial commission appointed to that effect; another by M. Hoffman, special envoy of the Princess of Swartzenberg Fudolstadt; observations thereon by M. Thaer, Councillor of State of the King of Prussia; a

first years of the present century. It embraced the various establishments of M. de Fellenberg on his estate of Hofwyl, two leagues from Berne, consisting of a primary school, a college, an industrial school, and workshops for improved agricultural instruments.

That journey had an important influence on all my after life; for my father was so much pleased with all he saw that, on his return, he engaged a private tutor to teach my brother William and myself German, and sent us to Hofwyl in the Autumn of next year (1820), my brother being upward of fifteen, and I upward of sixteen years old.

We entered the college, then having rather more than a hundred students, natives of every part of Europe, and from fifteen to twentythree years of age. But, as it was early in August and during vacation that we reached the place, we found only three or four of its inmates there. We were placed in charge of one of these, a Prussian two or three years older than I, named Carl Bressler. I shall never forget the considerate forbearance with which this good young fellow treated two raw Scotch lads, childish for their age, and the pains he took to correct in us any habits that might have exposed us to ridicule.

Before the remaining six weeks of vacation had expired and the college began to fill again, we had already, in a measure, settled down into the ways of the place, and understood pretty much all that was said to us, a few slang phrases excepted. Then began for me a marvellous life.

Self-Governing College.

I found the students living under a Verfassung (constitution) which had been drafted by a select committee of their number, five or six years before, adopted by an almost unanimous vote of the whole body, and approved by Mr. Fellenberg's signature. This constitution and the by-laws supplemental to it (drawn up by the same committee) were subject to amendment, Fellenberg retaining a veto; but during the three years I remained at college, scarcely any amendments were made.

This embraced the entire police of the institution. Neither the founder and president nor the faculty issued any rules or regulations. Our professors had no authority whatever except within their class-rooms. Our laws, whether defining official duties, or relating to household affairs, hours of retiring, and the like, or for the maintenance of morality, good order, cleanliness, and health, were stringent, but they were all strictly self-imposed. A breach of the laws was an offence against the Verein; and as to all such we ourselves had sole jurisdiction. I cannot doubt that Fellenberg kept unobtrusive watch over our doings; but while I remained at Hofwyl he never openly interfered with our legislation or our domestic proceedings, by veto or otherwise.

And while punishment by the college authorities held no place, as restraining motive, among us, neither was any outside stimulus or reward, or even of class rank, admitted. Emulation was limited among us to report by M. Schefold, Commissioner of the King of Würtemberg; and various others. Sandry articles of Fellenberg himself, in German, were translated into French by Pictt, and attracted much attention. [William C. Woodbridge in the American Annals of Education made the school and views of Fellenberg widely known to American readers. See Barnard's Journal of Education, III., and Swiss Pedagogy.]