Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/67

  entrusted with the superintendence of a body of readers. One day, I observed from a distance that the boys, who were ostensibly reading by turns Goldsmith's "Abridged History of Rome," were all shaking with laughter, which they scarcely attempted to suppress, but which was utterly unnoticed by their auditor. What could it mean? To my delight I was summoned to take a place in the class, and the boy whom I found next to me immediately solved the mystery by whispering into my ear, —

"Such fun! Whenever a word ends with 'ing,' say 'ink ' instead. We're all doing it, and he don't find it out."

I entered at once into the scheme, which was, indeed, productive of much amusement. When we had to utter such words as "approachink" or "considerink" the mirth was mild; but when it fell to the lot of one fortunate youth to state that Tarquin was "kink" of Rome, there was almost a roar. Still our excellent old gentleman never discovered that anything abnormal had occurred; and, when we were dismissed, no doubt he confessed, in his inward heart, like England in the old sea-song, "that every man that day had done his duty."

As might be supposed, corporal punishment was not much in vogue at a school so extraordinarily lax in discipline. What would have been the fate of the audacious "kink-maker" under the rule of Mrs. Jackson I dread to conjecture. But the learned doctor did not wholly ignore the use of the cane, though it might be observed that this was regulated rather by the state of the doctor's own temper than by the degree of a boy's delinquency. One peculiarity showed at least that he had studied his Roman history to some advantage, and had taken the elder Brutus for his model. Among the pupils were his two sons; and if ever the cane was in requisition with an exceptional vigor, what clouds of dust rose from the jackets of those devoted lads! If we — chosen few — who stood at the head of the classical scholars, had been passed into the first part of the Æneid, we should at once have been reminded of the illustrious Trojan concealed in a cloud by his divine mother. But we knew of no book but the second.

All things considered, I am of opinion that, if any of the pupils at the academy which I have tried to describe, and of which I saw the end, are alive now, they still look back with a kindly feeling upon the figure of Dr. Saunders himself. His notions of instruction were detestable; but, in spite of occasional outbursts of anger, he was essentially a good-natured, kindly man, endowed with much native humor; and, in his most cheerful moods, he loved to tell droll stories that would make the benches rock with laughter. And as for his gloomier moments, it must be remembered that he had a very large family, and that he was very poor.

 

 From The Saturday Review.

is the origin of the divinity which "doth hedge a king"? Why is it that in some countries kings and chiefs are fabled to be descendants of the gods, or to have power to hold converse with the gods, or to be able to control the weather, or, even in recent history, to heal with their touch certain diseases? No one answer will suffice to settle all these questions. The sacredness of royalty, and of other ranks lower than that of royalty, has been an affair of slow growth. Among different peoples different causes have contributed to the belief. The transcendent attributes ascribed to the king of England were partly derived from ecclesiastical ideas and ceremonies, partly from an adoption of the notions of Roman imperialism. But these notions, again, had grown out of instincts still further back in the development of the human mind, and we may perhaps trace the divinity of Divus Julius and the rest to the superstitions which serve savages for physics and metaphysics.

Mr. Herbert Spencer's last volume has some matter bearing on this topic; but an important worker in the field is almost forgotten. Towards the end of the last century a learned and ingenious writer, Professor Millar of Glasgow, composed, at the suggestion of his friend Adam Smith, a treatise on the origin of rank. Millar adopted the comparative method now so fashionable, though he was of course guiltless of the word sociology. "By real experiments," he wrote, "not by abstracted metaphysical theories, human nature is unfolded." For his real experiments he went to a collection of the reports of travellers: "When illiterate men, ignorant of the writings of each other, and who, unless upon religious subjects, have no speculative systems to warp their opinions, have in different ages and countries described the manners of people in similar circumstances, the reader has an opportunity of comparing their several descriptions, and, from their agreement or 