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    at their keenest . The man walks through the streets and fields , with thoug hts occupied with his interests , pursuits , and cares ; The boy roams here and there with exploring eye , in the full but unconscious exercise of his growing powers of observation . On half-holidays , he has ho business to hurry him through town or country , or to make him heedless of what is before and around him . He will stand , in the sunny afternoon , at the door of the coach-office , heedless of the jostling aud objurgation of the porters , till the last passenger has got down ; or he will be nutting in the woods or the hill-side , madly grasping at the tantalising full clusters hanging just out of reach / heedless of napped face and scratched hands ; now

    swung off his legs , by the upsprihg of the bough ; now dropping to the ground , amid a shower of twigs and leaves , with the prize clutched in his trembling fingers . And so the features of both town and country will stamp themselves upon his mind , with a vividness which the impressions of after life can neither rival nor efface . Hence / as has been often observed , the localities in which poets have spent their youth , furnish them with their most natural and striking pictures , and give a character to the imagery they employ . Thus , Tennyson ' s poetry is full of the most exquisite bits of Lincolnshire landscape , each containing more nature than fifty pastoral poems ; the open wold , the breezy upland , the meadow , with its cuckooflowers , — -the pool , with its belt of grey willows , —alt are there .

    The school to which I went , in this old city , numbered about ten boys , and was conducted by an elderly man , who , though a sound classic , and compelled , in the exercise of his Craft , to keep up his acquaintance with the beggarly elements of Greek and Latin Grammar , had , for the last forty years , ceased to make any addition to his learning . After school , he read his newspaper , and smoked his pipe , and what was " Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba ? " , It has been truly said , by Dr . Arnold , that the instructions of a man of this sort , compared with those of one who is himself alive and interested in the pursuit of knowledge , are like water from a stagnant pool , compared with invigorating draughts from a fresh and running stream . Accordingly , my progress did not get beyond

    " The mere schoolboy ' s lean and tardy growth - " and the hours which I passed at my school-desk , were mostly spent in counting the marbles in my pocket , or in intense contemplation of a double-bladed knife , or day-dreams of adventurous pirates and jocular midshipmen , bred of some recent novel of Marryatt or Cooper . Owing to the circumstances under which I prepared it at school , I can never read Horace ' s

    " Vides ut altS stet nive candidum Soracte •" without vivid associations of a hot afternoon , and bites taken , by stealth , out of the juicy side of a Windsor pear . Oh ! what a mockery it Seemed to be , looking out nouns and verbs in Ainsworth's Dictionary , when the country was flooded with sunlight , and the dancing vine-leaves tapped against the school-room window , and reminded us that the cool evening airs were beginning to stir abroad . However , the restraint was afterwards compensated , by the way in which we used to burst through the town , to the meadows by the river-side . But Tom Hood has exquisitely described this very moment of schoolboy existence : — " It was a summer ' s evening , An evening calm and cool , And four-and-twenty happy boys Came bounding out of school ; There were some that leapt and some that ran , Like troutlets in a pool . # * # They came to a level mead , and there They pitched the wickets in ; Pleasantly shone the setting sun , Over the town of Lynn /'—Ballad of JEugene Aram . Like most boys , I had a great love for the water , and I love it still , in all its many shapes , —as it trickles from some " woodland urn , " and winds among matted grass and sodden dark-red leaves ; as it swells and deepens into still black pools , beneath bending willows ; as it washes the banks of some historic river , and rushes murmuring to the sea ; as it widens and spreads along the horizon , in a bright blue line , with a white sail or two bearing up in the distance , and a long dim smeav of smoke from some faroff packet . Near our city was a canal , made some forty years ago , with grassy banks , and rich country on either side , —broad , deep , and winding , with here and there a creek , filled with dark masses of weeds , in which you might sec " the great sulky pike , hanging midway down , " and shoals of lace leaping in the sunshine . It was visitedifcoooccasionallyby

    strange-, , , looking foreign craft , the trim-built American schooner , with her raking masts , —and the picturesque Dutch galliot , with its clean-scraped yellow jlcek and green-painted windows . This canal mingles largely in my recoltoctions . I have visions of it under all aspects of the day and year , r— on he fresh autumn morning , with the mist rising from the waters , —on the burning summer noon , when the sun was reflected from its surface , in sparkles of intolerable brightness , and the oar seemed to splash into molten Bold , —white and sulphur-coloured butterflies flitting about its banks , and « c heavy perch lying under the shadow of the bridge . There was a culvert , through which a small stream trickled into this j * nal , and , into this culvert , a schoolfellow of mine and I used to creep , wed to the knee , and endeavdur , with hand and foot , to prcMnlt ihe large

    eels from gliding into the deep water . We would sit in it for hours together , contentedly leaning against its damp and trickling walls , and were proud of it , as a sort of stronghold of ours , a dark and secret cavern . We even talked 6 f fortifying it—for what , and against whom , Heaven knows However , all such warlike intentions were frustrated , by the startling apparition , one day , of ah angry countenance , at its entrance , and the threat of " a good hiding . " One feat two schoolfellows and I performed on that canal , of which we were extremely proud . We , some time beforehand , planned an excursion to the other end of it , distant sixteen miles , where there was a gloriou *

    wide river , with rocks and sea-gulls , very captivating to our inland-nurtured imaginations . We started , big with resolution , in the grey of the morning , and the first few miles disappeared rapidly beneath our vigorous strokes ; but , as the day increased * and turned out intensely hot , there gradually appeared a tendency to prefer bathing to rowing ; and the relaxing influences attending the bath , induced in us a decided inclination to sit , half dressed * upon the bank . On returning to the boat , the planks of which felt burning hot , a tendency to sulkiness and recrimination showed itself , in two of us , while the third , who was an easy good-tempered fellow , and who had , withal , partaken largely of our bottled cider , proposed to lie there till the cool of the evening , and then never mind the boat , but walk quietly home .

    But it would be tedious to relate , how , at last , we reached our destination , with blistered hands and mahogany-coloured faces ; how we could get nothing there to eat ; how we hated the boat , which we had to get back again ; how often the cider-bottles were replenished ; how our good-tempered companion , aforesaid , became , in the afternoon , incapable of rowing or talking , but seemed to find a placid delight in trailing his coat-sleeves , in the water ; how , when half-way home , and it grew a lovely evening , we moored bur boat to the water-side , stepped across a few fields , to a quiet village-green , and enjoyed an amount of tea , and ham and eggs , that made up for all past labour ; how we pulled over the remaining seven miles ; how bridge after bridge , for a moment , shut out from view the broad full moon and stars , as we flew along , to the music of the rowlocks .

    Will the reader pardon the insertion here Of a few boyish verses , which I wrote a year 6 r two after this period ^ but the truth of which my heart still confirms ? - —

    I love thee well , old city , Standing in pleasant vale , Whether thou shinest in the sun Or sleep ' st in moonlight pale . I love thee well in winter , Thy streets all white with snow , Thine evening lamps lit one by one , Thy windows in a glow . When , like a hoary father , Thine old cathedral stands , Aiid seems , above his child ' s white pall , To spread his aged hands .

    I love thee when , in autumn , Deep rains upon thee beat ; I love thee when the distant hills Look misty with the heat . Beneath all skies I love thee , Rain ,. sunshine , hail , or snow , Thou hast no rival in my heart , Whithersoe ' er I go .

    As I was once standing in the streets of a quaint Flemish town , oppressed with that sense of isolation which one sometimes experiences in a strange place > the queer old jangling chimes suddenly struck out above my head , and touched me with a feeling of ineffable sadness , telling of the rapid flight of time , and all that he had done for me , and all that he had failed to do . But this mood passed off , and then I thought that here , too , time had been entwining , for his children , fond memories , around church and square , and market-place , and mill and meadow ; and the very strength of my own old associations , which had made me lonely , supplied me with sympathy for those of others , and I felt no longer a stranger . It is faith in the universality of this sympathy , that has induced me to set these scattered reminiscences before the reader .

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    KOYAL ITALIAN OPERA . Owing to tho indisposition of Vivian we present our ronders with an abstract of tho excellent criticism of tho Times upon the recent production , of Jessonda at Covont Garden ir— , " Spohr ' s romantic opera ' of Jessonda—tho third , and it may bo presumed th 4 lust , novelty of the present senson—w » s produced on Saturday night , for tho fir ^ fc time on tho Italian stage—not , us was stated in tho bills , for tho first time in thfa country , since it was performed many years ago ; with eminent succghs , by ft German company , ftt the St . James ' s Theatre , when the nftcrwurds famous baa * singer Staudigl made hia debd ' e in England an Trintan . Thnt tho Royal ttnlittty Opera is gradually advancing towards tho position owned by the great / musical establishment in the Ruo Lopellctior—tlmt of a national thontro , open to composer * and B > ngQr » of nil nations , the only difference boin < j that the Italian , instead , df tho vernacular tongue , is adopted as the aolo medium of oxpresBion ^—cian hardly bo ; < J ^ ed . A ghuico nt the available repertoire ifl enough tp estiibVutfi ttfwfc fjl ' cfc . We h * Vo no iougtoe aa ItfcHhn Offcrifr , proWly no calloo * ; and tno cause ixraai simfcly

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    Augitst 13 , 1853 . ] T ft E LfiADEi ^ 80

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• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 13, 1853, page 789, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1999/page/21/