one of Solomon's proverbs, may aptly conclude with an amende honorable to the wise King, by quoting and exemplifying the truth of another of his often repeated axioms, that "there is nothing new under the sun." Cobbett, in his English Grammar, delights to illustrate his grammatical rules by references to the persons or politics of his own time; and this was regarded by his contemporaries as a new and objectionable feature, especially after having been accustomed to the elegant insipidities of Lindley Murray, such as "Mary arises in the morning fresh and vigorous, and after having accomplished her labours retires to her well merited repose in the evening." Contrast this with Cobbett's examples: "The Attorney General, Sir Vicary Gibbs, whose malignity induced him to be extremely violent"; or, "The Borough Tyrants, generally speaking, are great fools, as well as rogues." It was, however, only the pungency-we might almost say the truculence of expression, and not the mode of illustration, that was new in Cobbett's case. for in the Latin Grammar constantly enjoined to be used in the old statutes, partly written by and bearing the name of Lilly, the first master of St. Paul's School, we find in the illustrations constant allusions to the events of his own day. The prosecution of Empson and Dudley is referred to in the phrase, "Regum est tueri leges; refert omnium animadverti in malos." Nay, one edition may be distinguished from another by its special allusions; thus, that of 1513 is identified by the illustration, "Imperator meruit sub rege in Gallia," relating to Maximilian having served under the banner of Henry VIII. at the siege of Terouenne. During the present generation these statutes, products of mature thought in their own day, have in most instances undergone supervision and adaptation to new wants; but again what remains is to be cast into the crucible, and old forms are to pass away. Every locality that possesses one of these institutions has the privilege, by the Endowed Schools Act of last session, to aid in building up the old foundations. The Grammar School of St. Bees has a descent as clear, more ancient, and more noble than that of the Palæologi. Founded in its present aspect by one of the Fathers-almost one of the Martyrs of the Reformation, it is literally built with the stones, and represents the best spirit, of an old ecclesiastical foundation, itself the child and heir of one of those curious evangelising centres of the ancient Culdees, and so through them bringing us within ear-shot of the Roman, almost of the Apostolic age. Money is not required, thoughtful assistance and suggestion only are wanted, to aid the Governors and School Commissioners in the great task of adapting the venerable foundation to modern requirements.* Beneficial results are generally proportionate to the amount of labour and thought bestowed upon the original conceptions; and we never can expect our School of St. Bees to effect the good it should and could do, without we aid with heart and brain in the Recasting of the Bell. "Wall'd securely in the ground, Stands the mould of well-baked clay; Sweat must run, I trow. Would we have our work commended, See "Archbishop Grindal and his Grammar School of Saint Bees," in the second volume of this collection.-ED. II II. On the Enfluence Geological Surroundings Exercise on the Entellectual Tendencies of Communities. Read before the Whitehaven Scientific Association, Jan. 19, 1871. M AN, in an absolutely barbarous state, has but little connection with the geological phenomena which environ him; it signifies little to him whether or no his cabin stands upon clay or rock, whether or no ores of copper, iron, or gold abound, or are totally absent within the sphere of his wanderings; the abundance or scarcity of the animals or fish on which he feeds, and the propinquity or absence of other tribes whose enmity his own has incurred, form the leading, almost the exclusive, subjects of his thoughts. Unfurnished by nature with formidable claws, and inferior in strength to many of the ferocious animals which lurk in his vicinity, the dawn of his intellect was perhaps first indicated by his furnishing himself with weapons fashioned from the harder rocks which he met with in his incessant ramblings; and he, too, soon discovered that the axe or the hammer with which he had despatched the wild beast prowling round his hut might be used against some rival of his affections, or some adversary who opposed his claim to a hunting ground. "The restless savage ever prone to range," according to Dryden, may attain to this point, but he cannot be expected to examine minutely his surroundings until his abode has become a fixed one; and thus we find even the pastoral tribes of Arabia and Tartary, who rove from place to place over a vast extent of the earth's surface, remain in much the same state as they are described in the pages of the Bible, or the accounts of Herodotus ; their unsettled habits preventing them from receiving all the advantages of that civilisation whose outskirts they touch, and a portion of which, as far as their habits will permit, they have certainly absorbed. It was necessary that Abraham's children should cease to be wanderers, and become denizens of the promised land, before they could participate fully in that civilisation which the fixed nations around them possessed, much less fructify and develop those germs of higher thought even then lurking within them, and destined hereafter to produce such mighty results, and raise man from earth to heaven. There is a limit, as we have said, to that form of civilisation which can be attained by the pastoral tribes, but it by no means follows that all modes of mental development are closed to them; on the contrary, the nomad tribes have always, up to a certain point, been prone to astronomical observation, to which they have naturally been led by their nocturnal ramblings. Astronomy was, perhaps, for this reason the first-born of all the sciences, and man has hitherto regarded it as the most noble; but it will be found, on consideration, that all real and sustained progress is based upon a science which was without a name until our own day--I mean geology in its widest sense. It was only when man became a settler, and concentrated his attention on that portion of the earth's surface upon which he had located himself, that true civilisation arose; then it was that he discovered that what he lacked his neighbour was able to supply, and so commerce, which has been called the handmaid of civilisation, had her feeble beginnings. But as each district has its special geological peculiarities, each community, therefore, has its special problems, upon the solution of which its master minds, by the very law of their existence, instinctively dwell, ever opening out new vistas of thought, which soon stretch far beyond the mere industrial fields in which they originated, and ever pressing onward with an attraction powerful as that of gravitation to the great centre and originator of all that is true and good. We could scarcely find a more interesting district anywhere than our own, nor an apter illustration of our theory than is to be found in the life of Dr. Brownrigg, one of its almost forgotten inhabitants. We will, therefore, first dwell a little upon the peculiarities of the former, and then show how some of its problems were put in the way of elucidation through the efforts of its indwellers, more particularly of the latter. Iron and coal, the two great characterisers of our age, are found in remarkable abundance in our district. Could we but trace the history of the former, I have little doubt but that we should find that in the prehistoric period, and in the latter portion of the so-called iron age, the ore, which exists so abundantly and approximates so closely to a pure metal, exercised a remarkable influence upon its development; but, alas, the very name of prehistoric indicates that no record exists of those times; yet I would not despair, if only careful observations be made of any early workings that may be found, but that discoveries of very high archæological importance might result. Whether or no these speculations as to the high antiquity of the workings be correct, it is certain that Bloomeries existed in this district in the middle ages, and it may not be uninteresting to you to remark incidentally that the iron mines at Langhorn, now belonging to and carried on by Lord Leconfield, were worked by Thomas Addison, a near relative of the immortal Joseph Addison, the essayist, 170 years ago, under the proud Duke of Somerset. For a time, however, the importance of this district was obscured, and it was not till nearly our own day that its rich ores regained the attention they have been found to merit. The mineral deposit of coal, of which such abundant stores exist beneath our locality, though more tardily developed, has exercised perhaps a more important effect upon the commercial history of the world than the metallic, and, if my supposition be a correct one, has had at least corresponding results on its intellectual and scientific history. That the utility of coal as a fuel was known to the Romans is evidenced by stores of it having been discovered in many of their cities, Uriconium affording a notable example; and I think that ashes were found by the Rev. George Wilkinson in his |