by Edward the Third, and were set up at the
small town of Manchester, in the midst of a
wild and barren country, to spin and weave
woollen stuffs. Shirts were in those days woven
of hair, and gowns were woollen. And for two
hundred years the woollen fabrics of Manchester
were known to our ancestors as cotton. The
words cot, cottage, cot-house, the English coast,
and the French côte, and the term cotton, all
mean things laid alongside of each other, like
the straw in thatch, the fibres in thread, and the
sea and land on the shore. Many other things
besides cotton have obtained their names from
the way of working them. The Romans called
rushes "juncus," from jungo, I join, because
they were joined together in ligatures and
cordage. Two hundred and fifty years after
the arrival of the German colony of cotton
spinners of woollen stuffs, the hairs of the
Gossipium found their way from Turkey into
England, and were wrought into Manchester
goods. Although a vegetal had replaced an
animal material, the old name of the
manufacturing process stuck to the new fabric. The
Arabic word " kutn" having the same signification,
the name may be as old as the process.

POOR UNCLE PHILIBERT.
I.

A BOOK has been published by M. GANDON,
with the title, L'Oncle Philibert, Histoire d'un
Peureux—The History of a Timorous Man. It
has a double purpose, which the writer has
skilfully combined in his one small volume. First,
he gives a memoir, or picture, of local events at
Lure, which occurred between 1800 and 1815.
Secondly, he teaches a moral lesson of the
greatest importance to the whole civilised
world: namely, that excessive severity,
exaction, a system of incessant forcing, applied
to children, is a cruel and foolish mistake.

How many clever and precocious children
(and young men, too) have been pushed on,
and pushed on, until they were brought to a
sudden stand-still by death or imbecility! How
many would-have-been wonders have sighed out,
in full career, " We can no more; give us rest
in the grave!" This is the theme of M. Gandon's
narrative, and he is right in having taken
it up. His text is: True genius will make its
way without being overtasked in infancy.

Uncle Philibert was the title familiarly given
towards the close of his life, by friends and
neighbours, to the hero of M. Gandon's story.
He was born on the 26th of March, 1796.

Philibert's father was a schoolmaster, who
taught his scholars himself instead of doing it
by deputy, and who determined to make of his
own child a pupil quite out of the common way;
consequently, he determined to begin in good
time. Unfortunately, Philibert's father was
excessively and unduly severe. His pupils
occasionally complained to their parents; the
schoolmaster, on receiving a rebuke which was
too often well deserved, would complain in turn
of the parents, whose culpable indulgence
impeded their children's education.  In his son,
he had a pupil whom no one had a right to
screen.

Uncle Philibert, when five years of age, was a
charming fair-haired blue-eyed boy, very gentle
and obedient, never wilful, enjoying excellent
health and a perfect digestion, and most carefully
brought up by an affectionate mother, whose
only son he was. The ground was admirably
prepared by nature to bear an abundance of
good seed. The schoolmaster rejoiced aloud on
beholding the boy, on whom such great hopes
were founded, thrive so admirably. The mother,
who dreaded her husband's well-known
harshness if he persisted in his resolution to
undertake the whole charge of Philibert's education
as soon as he should be six years old, made
more than one attempt to defer the appointed
epoch until he had reached the age of ten.

"Till ten years old!" exclaimed the schoolmaster.
"At that age I expect him to speak Latin and
Greek; and how will you manage to
teach him languages which you only know by
name? I give you credit for having taught
Philibert to read; but with my system of
instruction, I might perhaps, in a shorter time,
have obtained still more satisfactory results."

"More satisfactory!" gently replied the
mother, with strange emotion in her voice."
More satisfactory—but at what a sacrifice!"

The poor woman, at the stated day and hour,
was compelled to yield her offspring to the
tyranny of his paternal pedagogue.

The reader must be informed that Philibert
had an elder sister, Eugénie, very pretty and
very clever, who had been entirely educated by
her mother: with such success that, immediately
after passing a brilliant examination, she
was engaged as teacher in the establishment of
one of the lady-examiners.

Philibert's schooling was pushed on with
vigour, thus: At the end of his first scholastic
year, namely, when entering his seventh year,
the pupil was suddenly questioned one Sunday
morning by his father. The schoolmaster and
his son were alone in the court, which the child
was crossing to go to his mother, who had
promised to take him to see Eugénie.

"Philibert, come here. Where are you
going?"

"To kiss mamma, and accompany her to
Eugénie's school."

"Very well. Do you know your Gospel for
the day?"

"Yes, papa; in French and in Latin."

"Say it to me."

Philibert, without making the slightest
mistake, recited the Gospel in French and in
Latin.

"Very well," said the schoolmaster. " And
now, can you say it in Greek?"

"In Greek, papa? You remember that I am
to begin Greek next year."

"I am not scolding you; but with your quick
study, and if you had not forgotten that you
are a schoolmaster's son, you might have
endeavoured to give me an agreeable surprise by