when you are told, that what is impressive and pathetic in the
Drama of Human Life has passed with a past age of Chivalry and Romance,
remember Jane Langley, and quote in contradiction the story of the TWIN
SISTERS!

* * * * *

When about nine years old, Southey attended a school at Bristol, kept by
one Williams, a Welshman, the one, he says, of all his schoolmasters,
whom he remembered with the kindliest feelings. This Williams used
sometimes to infuse more passion into his discipline than was becoming,
of which Southey records a most ridiculous illustration. One of his
schoolmates--a Creole, with a shade of African color and negro
features--was remarkable for his stupidity. Williams, after flogging him
one day, made him pay a half-penny for the use of the rod, because he
required it so much oftener than any other boy in school.

From Fraser's Magazine.

ALFIERI.

Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti, a city of Piedmont, on the 17th of
January, 1749,--the year in which his great contemporary, Goethe, first
saw the light. His father, Antonio Alfieri, was a nobleman of high rank
in his own country; his mother, whose name was Monica Maillard di
Tournon, was of Savoyard descent. At the time of Vittorio's birth his
father was sixty years of age; and as until then he had had no son, the
entrance of the future poet into the world was to him a subject of
unspeakable delight: but his happiness was of short duration, for he
overheated himself one day by going to see the child at a neighboring
village where he was at nurse, and died of the illness that ensued, his
son being at the time less than a year old. The countess, his widow, did
not long remain so, as she very shortly married again, her third husband
(she was a widow when the count married her) being the Cavalier Giacinto
Alfieri, a distant member of the same family.

When about six years old, Alfieri was placed under the care of a priest
called Don Ivaldi, who taught him writing, arithmetic, Cornelius Nepos,
and Phaedrus. He soon discovered, however, that the worthy priest was an
ignoramus, and congratulates himself on having escaped from his hands at
the age of nine, otherwise he believes that he should have been an
absolute and irreclaimable dunce. His mother and father-in-law were
constantly repeating the maxim then so popular among the Italian
nobility, that it was not necessary that a gentleman should be a doctor.
It was at