there comes, "Horatio, or do I forget myself;
give you good den, how goes the world, sir,
now." Address another, familiar with the
boards of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee,
in the accents of the north, and you evoke,
"Stands Scotland where it did?" Inquire as
to the parentage of a little boy who is playing
on the green, "The last remaining male of
princely York." Invite one to the tent to
liquor, and it is, "I charge thee, Pistol, in a cup
of sack." Press him to take another cup, and
you are rebuked with "I'll drink no more than
will do me good for no man's pleasure."

I managed to get an invitation to visit one of
the houses. I found an old actor and his wife
comfortably domiciled in a suite of three
apartments, consisting of sitting-room, bedroom,
and kitchen, with other conveniences, such as a
scullery and coal-cellar. The sitting-room was
a good-sized airy apartment, overlooking the
grounds, furnished in oak, the walls adorned
with portraits of the occupant, as he appeared
in the various characters with which his theatrical
fame was identified in years gone by. The
bedroom was as nice a white little nest as any
dainty maiden would desire to lie in. If the
walls of the passages had only been plastered,
instead of partaking of the rough garden-wall
order of architecture, the place would be
perfect.

There are already built ten houses, each one
containing accommodation for two families, and
there are two outer doors for each, one for the
below-stairs tenant, and one for the tenant above,
lest at any time they should dispute as to their
artistic merits, and come to temporary
loggerheads. At the present time the college
is tenanted by twenty pensioners; in fact,
the house is "full," and no more can be
admitted until some of the present
occupants shuffle off their mortal coils. At the
last election there were only sixteen candidates,
and nine of these were elected; so
that the college, while fulfilling the original
design of its founders, very nearly meets the full
extent of the claims upon it. Not one of the
recently elected pensioners was under threescore,
some were threescore and ten, and one or two,
fourscore. The allowance to each pensioner,
besides his furnished apartments, is ten shillings
per week, with coals and candles. Medical
attendance and medicine are provided gratis, and
also the services of a nurse when required. A
bakery and a bath-room are attached to the building,
and a bit of garden-ground for the cultivation
of vegetables, or flowers, has been allotted to each
pensioner. There is no separation of man and
wife, as in a certain " home " that we all wot
of; but wives are permitted to live with their
husbands, and husbands with their wives.
Maybury has long had a reputation for being a
healthy spot, and this is borne out in a remarkable
manner by the fact that all the pensioners
have greatly improved in health and strength
since they have become inmates of the Dramatic
College. I only heard of one invalid, and the
medicine prescribed for him by the doctor is one
bottle of good sound spirit weekly, which is duly
dispensed by the committee.

These are great results, and highly honourable
to the actors themselves, through whose
exertions—directed by the unceasing energy of Mr.
Webster, and assisted by pecuniary help from the
public—they have been entirely achieved.

THE STAFFORDSHIRE RENAISSANCE.

THERE are questions which it is impossible
to "consider too curiously;" and, among these,
few are of more general interest than those
which relate to the development of the arts.
We find, for the most part, that the fine arts
are evolved from the useful arts; and that the
useful arts (evolved in their turn from the
necessities of the human race) may be traced
back to primitive types, the origin of which is
matter for speculation only.

Could we look far enough into the obscure
past, we should probably find ourselves indebted
to pure accident for most of the useful and
beautiful adjuncts of modern civilisation. Many
myths point significantly to this truth. The
pretty story told by Vitruvius, of the origin of
the Corinthian capital, and the legend of Hermes
and the lyre, will occur to every one.

Roughly speaking, we may generally assume
that modern discovery is the result of effort, and
early discovery of accident. Modern workers,
armed with the tools of generations of
predecessors, are set down, as it were, on a road
already carried far towards completion. They
start with a definite question before them, and
experiment for the answer. Primitive man, on
the contrary, knowing nothing, having nothing,
and ignorant even of his wants, stumbles on
discovery, and turns accident to profit. It is
incredible, for instance, that the aboriginal
Australian should have invented a projectile
dependent on laws so complex and profound as
the boomerang. The first boomerang was
probably a mere fragment of burnt or broken wood,
which, being accidentally caught up and hurled,
discovered properties so singular and valuable
as to cause its reproduction for offensive
purposes.

Thus, in like manner, Councillor Goguet, who
was born a hundred years too soon, and wrote a
book for which the age he lived in afforded no
adequate material, conjectured that the first
potter made his first pot by chance alone. Using,
perhaps, a cocoa-nut shell for his kettle, he
plastered it with damp clay to preserve it from
burning; and so, finding the clay harden over
the fire, discovered the key to the ceramic arts.
The simplicity of this supposition carries with it
almost the conviction of proof; added to which
we have the corroborative evidence of those
modern travellers who actually found the
remains of clay vessels moulded over gourds in the
ancient kilns of the Mississippi valley.

Adequately to write the history of pottery
from its first rude beginnings in the hands of
M. Goguet's wondering savage to its culminating