1825.] On Parochial Settlement.-State of Education in Ireland. 231 both her hands, in the act of adoration, IT has lately been my lot very frequently to notice, how much hardship, expense, and inconvenience arises from the law as it now stands, allowing Parish Settlement to be gained by hiring and service; and I hope you will allow me a small space to state a few reasons why I think such a mode of gaining a settlement would be better done away with. or returns a pauper to his own parish to live upon its scanty pittance, dragging out a miserable existence, when he might honestly and happily have eaten the sweet bread of his own industry. Labour is the only commodity the poor man can bring to market, and he has a right to its full value; but being restrained and shackled by this mode of gaining a settlement, he cannot obtain it; for those to whom his labour is now valuable, are afraid he should become a future burden. Out of these laws arise the greatest part of those expensive litigations between parishes, upon which so much money is unprofitably expended; as those country gentlemen, who are called upon as Justices to attend the Quarter Sessions, can well attest. From this source also spring those little arts and quibbling evasions, so much practised in hiring servants, to prevent their gaining a settlement. Perhaps this may meet the eye of some gentleman who may have power, upon due consideration, to propose the remedy-a repeal of those statutes by which a settlement is gained by hiring or service. Such a repeal I am sure would be a great blessing to the industrious lower orders, and a benefit to all. I am at a loss to know what objections can be made, but I think they can be of no greater weight than dust in the balance. Yours, &c. A TRADESMAN. STATE OF EDUCATION IN IRELAND. The moral character of the labour-for inquiring into the state of education ing classes, particularly in the country, is much affected by it, and any measure likely to benefit their morals is well deserving the attention of those enlightened Members of the Legislature, of whom this country has reason to be proud. In some instances farmers are bound by their leases not to make any settlements in their parish; and if the master and servant are ever so well satisfied with each other, they are obliged to part before the end of the year; and even where no written agreement exists, the fear of increasing the number of paupers has the same effect. The servant is therefore compelled to seek another service, perhaps a worse; or finding good conduct of no avail, he has recourse to dishonest practices, Engraved in vol. xix. p. 121.. Edit. in Ireland, which has lately issued from the press, extends to upwards of one hundred pages. The Commissioners are decidedly averse to the continuance of the present system, and recommend the establishment of Schools for the education of children of all religious persuasions. The school-rooms are recommended to be opened for the instruction of Roman Catholic and Protestant children alternately. The following facts gleaned from the Report will afford our readers some idea of the worth and respectability of Irish Schoolmasters in general. It is intended to dismiss many of them from their situations. But there are some who are likely to be visited with a severer punish 232 State of Education in Ireland. of violent and ungoverned passions, and that the boys were most severely and cruelly punished, not only by him, but also by his son, and by a foreman in the weaving department, and that these punishments were inflicted for very slight faults. The habitual practice of the master was to seize the boys by the throat, and press them almost to suffocation, and to strike them with a whip, or his fist, upon the head and face, during the time his passion lasted. One boy had black eyes at the time of our visit, caused by blows of the master's fist; and the punishment of another boy, who had received, many years ago, by an accident, a severe and permanent injury in his eyes, was attended with circumstances of peculiar violence. The anger of the master was chiefly excited by the boys performing less work than he expected in the weaving shop (of which the master had the profit), or by their not weaving well; they were obliged to get up at five, or sometimes four o'clock in the morning, when there was a pressing demand; one little boy had been severely punished for complaining of this violation of the rules of the society. The fear of the master generally deterred the boys from stating their grievances to the catechist, to the local committee, or to casual visitors. At the School of Stradbally, the boys, eighty-three in number, were accustomed to experience the same brutal treatment from the savage appointed to instruct them. They had been deterred from disclosing the practices of this barbarian from the fear of provoking his further vengeance. From the evidence taken on this occasion, it was sufficiently proved, that about three weeks before the first visit, one boy had been flogged with a leathern strap nine times in one day, his clothes being taken down each time, and that he received in the whole near a hundred lashes, all for "a sum in long division." On the same day another boy appears to have received sixty-seven lashes, on account of another sum in arithmetic; another boy, only thirteen years old, had received seventeen stripes with a rope. On the 8th of October, the day before the second visit, eight boys had been so severely punished, that their persons were found by one of the Commissioners in a shocking state of laceration and contusion. The offence with which these boys were charged by the usher was "looking at two police-men playing at ball in the boy's ball alley." The instruments of punishment were in the first case, a leathern cat and a rope; and in the latter, branches from elm trees. These severe punishments were all inflicted by the usher in the absence of the master, and without his knowledge. The man was too much occupied with farming to devote any of his attention to his school. He was found to be the holder of three farms, containing together nearly one hundred and thirty acres, of which [Sept. twenty-nine only belonged to the Society. One farm of nearly sixty acres was two miles and a half distant from the school, and the boys were occasionally taken there to work. In the School at Castlecomer, the Commissioners found that the master took very little part in the instruction of the boys. They complained of being ill-fed and cruelly beaten, both by the master and mistress. Two boys had recently been very severely punished by the master. They stated that they had been set to work in the garden, and having had but little breakfast, they were hungry, and had eaten a raw cabbage; that the master, who appeared to be a man of violent passions, caught them, and flogged them for this offence severely; that one of them received sixteen stripes in the usual manner, and six blows with a stick on the head, which continued cut and bruised when the school was visited by the Commissioner. The other boy had eloped in consequence of the beating. On visiting the Charter School at Longford, the children were very squalid and wretched, having been half-starved. The master was in a state of hopeless fatuity. In the School at Lintown factory, it was found that, out of twenty-one youths present, only thirteen could read. There were only six copy-books for the whole school. The master did not teach, and there was no usher. In the School at Newport, which in 1819 was converted into a day school, there were found only twelve children (three or four of whom were of the master's own family), and a large pile of unused books. At the Charter School at Clonmel, which also is a day school, were found only two children, and no book, except a few fragments of Testaments. The master is a cripple from rheumatism; he receives fifty pounds a-year, and has a house rent-free; he also rents twenty-four acres of land from the Society, at twenty-five shillings an acre. At Clonmel, in 1817, the boys appeared to have been punished with great severity by the usher, who used on all occasions a common horsewhip. It was stated that he often gave four dozen lashes with his utmost strength, and that the boys have been beaten till the blood ran down upon the flags. A boy was once knocked down by the usher, and kicked so severely, that two of his ribs were broken, and the ear of another boy was nearly pulled off. At New Ross the same severe mode of punishment is stated still to exist; two boys have been punished for complaining, one of them with peculiar cruelty. Their common employment was wheeling dung in hand-barrows. Fifty had eloped in the course of the last nine years. Many other abuses, scarcely less flagrant than these we have quoted, were discovered by the Commissioners. 1825.] [233] REVIEW OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. 45. Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. F.R.S. &c. &c. 2 vols. 4to. Colburn. F the value of these ponderous tomes bore but slight proportion to their bulk, it might be fairly predicated of them that they form one of the most important publications of the present century. But although we are free to confess that their Noble Editor has done the world some service by rescuing the matter of these volumes from the obscurity in which it has so long lain, yet we are not disposed to estimate this service quite so highly as do many of our contemporaries. Of their historical importance we think little, for they refer to a period too recent for obscurity, and too well explored for much further elucidation. Yet is it pleasant as a curiosity to read the personal narratives of men who lived in times and scenes familiar to us in history; and it is amusing to observe how sensibly they were influenced by events which at a distance appear to us trivial or disproportioned to the effect produced. From the short biographical notice prefixed by Lord Braybrooke, it appears that Samuel Pepys was descended from a respectable family in Cambridgeshire, and from a hint in his Diary, we collect that he was distinguished when a boy as a violent Roundhead. It appears that his father was a tailor, in London. The son was educated at Cambridge, but whether he graduated or not, we are not informed. Through the interest of Sir Edward Montague, afterwards Earl of Sandwich, he obtained some official situation in the Admiralty, at the Restoration of Charles the Second, and was soon after appointed to the office of Secretary. It is just previously to this appointment (1659-60) that he commenced his Diary, which was carried on with scarcely a hiatus to the summer of 1669, a period of nine years, and embracing three remarkable events, the Plague, the great Fire, and the successful enterprise of De Ruyter against Chatham-events, each causing the utmost consternation and alarm, and each detailed by Pepys with much minuteness and extraordinary fidelity. This indeed is the great charm of his GENT. MAG. September, 1825. Diary, for independently of strong internal testimony to his veracity, the facts which he relates, of which we have contemporary history, are so accurately given, as to leave the strongest conviction of the truth of the whole. This it must be confessed is a rare quality in a Placeman, who had so many temptations to swerve, and so many interests to bias him from the truth, and it is a quality for which his Noble Editor praises him; but yet, when we consider that this Journal was intended for no eye but his own, the praise may be spared. 66 The character of Pepys, as exhibited in his Diary, is that of a shrewd, prudent, money saving-man, of sufficient pliability of temper for his temporal interests, and of integrity enough to bear him on in a straight forward course of upright dealing, and to guard him against those temptations to wrong, to which his office and the evil example of those around him more immediately exposed him. Surrounded by the profligate creatures of a profligate age, and within the verge of the merry Monarch's" dissipated court, his prudence supports him from the contagion; he sighs, and shakes the head of disapprobation at proceedings which he cannot correct; but his caution never permits his virtuous resentment to endanger his own safety. with the Powers that were. The gossiping spirit which so thoroughly pos-' sessed him, induced him to put down many particulars which a stronger mind had rejected as trifling; and from these straws, thrown up at random, it is that we collect many entertaining pictures of his times. A constant playgoer, and an ardent admirer of theatrical entertainments, he has thrown considerable light on the dramatic history of his age; and it is not the least remarkable of his many peculiarities, that with a mind overburthened as he would represent it, with business, there seems to be hardly a sight worth the seeing, of which he was not a spectator. Of his powers as a dramatic critic,. we do not think much. Of Shakspeare he appears to have had no admiration. We will proceed to give a few ex tracts 234 REVIEW.-Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. tracts from the Diary, merely premis- The former part of the Diary is and "This day I put on my silk suit, the first that I ever wore in my life. Home, and called my wife, and took her to Clodins to a great wedding of Nan Hartlib to Mynheer Roder, which was kept at Goring House with very great state, cost, and noble company. But among all the beauties there, my wife was thought the greatest." Vol. i. P. 64. Every suit is minutely recorded, and the first wearing of his perriwig is discussed with laughable gravity. He casts his care upon Providence, with true Christian humility. "To my Lord Crewe's, and there dined with him. He tells me of the order the House of Commons have made for the drawing an Act for the rendering none capable of preferment or employment in the State, but who have been loyall and constant to the King and Church; which will be fatal to a great many, and make me doubt, lest I myself, with all my innocence during the late times, should be brought in, being employed in the Exchequer, but I hope God will provide for me." Vol. i. p. 216.' 'Again: "This day, by the blessing of God, I have lived thirty-one years in the world: and by the grace of God I find myself not only in good health in every thing, and particularly as to the stone, but only pain upon taking cold, and also in a fair way of coming to a better esteem and estate in the world, [Sept. than ever I expected; but I pray God give me a heart to fear a fall, and to prepare for it." Vol. i. p. 282. He appears, from his Diary, to have been constant in his attendance at Church; and living as he did in an age when Religion was not only neglected but ridiculed, his devout impressions were very strong. Of his worldly prudence, take the following sample: "To St. Paul's Church-yard, to cause the title of my English Mare Clausum to be changed, and the new title dedicated to the King to be put to it, because I am ashamed to have the other seen dedicated to the Commonwealth." Vol. i. p. 212. His whimsical lament at his extravagance : "To my great sorrow find myself 431. worse than I was the last month, which was then 7601. and now it is but 7171.-But it hath chiefly arisen from my layings out in clothes for myself and wife; viz. for her, about 121. and for myself 554 or thereabouts, having made myself a velvet cloak, two new cloth skirts, black, plain both, a new shag gown, trimmed with gold buttons and twist, with a new hat, and silk tops for my legs, and many other things, being resolved henceforward to go like myself; and also two perriwigs, one whereof costs me 31. and the other 40s. but will begin next week, God willing." I have worn neither yet, Vol. i. p. 257. During the alarm occasioned by the success of the Dutch fleet in its attack on Chatham, Pepys dispatched his wife into the country, with a sum amounting to 13004, in gold, directing her to bury it for security. His anxiety, on discovering the slovenly operation, and his distress, are irresistibly ludicrous : "Sept. 10, 1667. My father and I with a dark lantern, it being now night, into the garden with my wife, and there went about our great work to dig up my gold. But, Lord! what a tosse I was for some time in, that they could not justly tell where it was; but by and by poking with a spit, we found it, and then begun with a spudd to lift up the ground. But, good God! to see how sillily they did it, not half a foot under ground, and in the sight of the world from a hundred places, if any body by accident were near hand, and within sight of a neighbour's window, only my father says he saw. them all gone to Church before he began the work when he laid the money. But, I was out of my wits almost, and the more from that, upon my lifting up the earth with the spudd, I did discern that I had scattered the pieces of gold round about the ground 1825.] REVIEW.-Memoirs of Samuel Pepys, Esq. ground among the grass and loose earth; and taking up the iron head-pieces wherein they were put, I perceived the earth was got among the gold and wet, so that the bags were all rotten, and all the notes, that I could not tell what in the world to say to it, not knowing how to judge what was wanting, or what had been lost by Gibson in his coming down, which, all put together, did make me mad; and at last I was forced to take up the head-pieces, dirt and all, and as many of the scattered pieces as I could with the dirt discern by candle light, and carry them up into my brother's chamber, and there lock them up till I had eat a little supper: and then, all people going to bed, W. Hewer and I did all alone, with several pails of water and besoms, at last wash the dirt off the pieces, and parted the pieces and the dirt, and then began to tell them by a note which I had of the value of the whole (in my pocket). And so find that there was short above a hundred pieces; which did make me mad; and considering that the neighbours' house was so near that we could not possibly speak one to another in the garden at that place where the gold lay (especially my father being deaf) but they must know what he had been doing, I feared that they might in the night come and gather some pieces, and prevent us the next morning; so W. Hewer and I out again about midnight (for it was now grown so late), and there by candle-light did make And shift to gather forty-five pieces more. so in and to cleanse them: and by this time it was past two in the morning; and so to bed, and there lay in some disquiet all night' telling of the clock till it was day-light. "11th. And then W. Hewer and I, with pails and a sieve, did lock ourselves into the garden, and there gather all the earth about the place into pails and then sift those pails in one of the summer-houses (just as they do for dyamonds in other parts of the world); and there to our great content did by nine o'clock make the last night's fortyfive up seventy-nine; so that we are come to about twenty or thirty of what I think the true number should be. So do leave my father to make a second examination of the dirt; and my mind at rest in it being but an accident, and so give me some kind of content to remember how painful it is sometimes to keep money as well as to get it, and how doubtful I was to keep it all night; and how to secure it to London. About ten o'clock took coach, my wife and I, and Willet and W. Hewer, and Murford and Bowles (whoin my lady lent me to go along with me my journey, not telling her the reason, but it was only to secure my gold) and my brother John on horseback; and with these four I thought myself pretty safe. My gold I put into a basket, and set under one of the seats; and so my work every quarter of an hour was to look to see 235 whether all was well, and I did ride in great fear all the day.... "12th. By five o'clock got home, where I find all well; and did bring my gold, to my heart's content, very safe, having not this day carried it in a basket, but in our hands; the girl took care of one, and my wife another bag, and I the rest, I being afraid of the bottom of the coach, lest it should break." The following are his remarks on Hudibras: To the wardrobe. Hither come, Mr. Bathusby, and we falling into discourse of new book of drollery in use, called Hudibras, I would needs go find it out, and met with it at the Temple-cost me 2s. 6d, but when, I come to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter Knight going to the warrs, that I am ashamed of it, and by and by meeting at Mr. Townsend's at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d." Vol. i. p. 189. He tries it again: 1 "To a bookseller's in the Strand, and there bought Hudibras again, it being cert tainly some ill humour to be so against that which all the world cries up to be the example of wit, for which I am resolved once more to read him and see whether I can find it or no." Vol. i. p. 197. He appears to have purchased a second part more in compliance with fashion than from judgment, for he calls it, "The book now in the greatest fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies." P. 266. Of Mr. (afterwards Sir Peter) Lilly (Lely), he thus speaks: "After I had done with the Duke, with Commissioner Pitt to Mr. Lilly's the great painter, who came forth to us: but believ ing that I come to bespeak a picture, he prevented it by telling us that he should not be at leisure these three weeks, which methinks is a rare thing; and then to see in what pomp his table laid for himself to go to dinner; and here, among other pictures, saw the so-much-desired-by-me picture of Lady Castlemaine, which is a most blessed picture, and one that I must have a copy of." P. 171. The following notices of the introduction of tea are curious: "1660. I did send for a cup of tea (a China drink), of which I never had drank before." P. 76. And seven years after he writes, "Home, and there find my wife making of tea, a drink which Mr. Pelling the Potticary tells her is good for her cold and defluxions." Vol. ii. p. 85. Of |