and had, with the assistance of the master's
fiddle, The sea, the sea, in chorus, and likewise
All's well! In the course of which
latter piece our friend the deep-voiced boy
got a chance well known to, and appreciated
by, the amateurs of the last generation.
Finally, several smoking-hot legs of mutton
were served, and grace was said, and all sat
down to dinner with a self-restraint and
decorum perfectly wonderful.

There cannot be a doubt that these
Institutions are deserving of all encouragement
and support. They are truly humane, and
they also afford opportunities for a most
interesting study which may prove exceedingly
beneficial to mankind. The causes of idiocy
are as yet imperfectly understood. Little is
known of the origin of the disorder, beyond
the facts that idiocy is sometimes developed
during the progress of dentition, and that it
would seem to be generally associated with
mental suffering, fright, or anxiety, or with
a latent want of power, in the mother.
These causes, however, are complex, and
difficult to trace. A woman with two idiot
children happened to mention that her
husband was a drunkard and ill-used her. It
was then supposed that their condition might
be referable to his degraded habits and his
treatment of his wife; but, on pursuing the
inquiry, it appeared that these two children
had been born in his sober and kind days,
and that the subsequent children of his later
life were healthy and sensible.

The funds of the society who maintain
Park House and Essex Hall, are devoted in
aid of the maintenance and education of
idiots, for whom the parents pay a certain
annual sum. This is an admirable means of
helping those who help themselves, and who,
as the subjects of a peculiar misfortune, have
a pressing claim on such aid. But we hope,
through the instrumentality of these establishments,
to see the day, before long, when the
pauper idiot will be similarly provided for, at
the public expense. Then may some future
MR. COLLIER—if our friend in his zeal and
diligence be destined to have any successor
—find in some future annotated copy of
SHiAKSPEARE, the following happy emendation:

"A tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound instruction,
Signifying something."

THE BORROWED BOOK.

IN that delightful breathing time between
the school and the world, while yet the choice
of a profession hangs trembling in the balance,
I went down to spend a long holiday with an
uncle who was a Lieutenant in the Royal
Navy, and the chief officer of a little coast
guard station, at a spot called Borley Gap, on
the coast of Suffolk. I was in no hurry to
settle the question of a profession. Lord
Eldon himself could not have been more
inclined to " take time to consider " than I
was.

Several months passed; and our people at
home, who had been deliberating on this
question ever since I was born, were still
deliberating. I spent my time in horse-
riding on the sands; in deep sea fishing with
our chief boatmen; in spearing for eels in
salt ditches in the low parts; or in shooting
plover, or " pluvver," as we pronounced it, on
the heaths. Our station was a low range of
wooden buildings, black with pitch and
blistered by the sun, consisting of my uncle's
house and garden, and accommodation for
six men and their families. There were no
other houses near; except a kind of general
store, kept by a man named Bater, where the
farmers and some fishermen came sometimes
to buy whatever they might want. Round
about us for some miles were little hills and
dales of gorse and whin, in which adders
were said to be plentiful; and, just beneath
us, stretched the bay where there was a great
battle between the English and Dutch fleets in
Charles the Second's time. The cliff at this
part, was a kind of sandstone, upon which you
could cut letters with a penknife; and the
sea was incessantly wearing away its base,
bringing down sometimes great masses of the
upper cliff, and threatening to bring us down
too, at last, if we did not step back a little.
The boatmen used to point out a mound in
the water, at which they said our signal post
had stood not many years before, and some
old people could tell you of churches and
monasteries, and even towns, that now lay
under the sea. There were plenty of places
in which smugglers might have a chance of a
good run, if they were bold enough to try it.
I had some hopes of an encounter; the men
could tell traditions of desperate fights equal
to anything ever seen in a play. But the
age of bold smuggling, as well as the age of
chivalry, is fled. Mr. M'Culloch reduces it
to a science, and shows the laws that govern
it to be the same as affect all other
professions, in which risk and profit are nicely
balanced. Old Martin, one of our men, who
knew my anxiety to see a living specimen of
a smuggler, did wake me up early one
morning with the exciting intelligence that
one had been caught and was actually in the
kitchen. I dressed, like a cabin passenger
who hears that the vessel has struck upon a
rock, and rushed down the stairs. I found
our servant Hester—who was a sickly girl,
subject to fits—in the kitchen, and asked her,
breathlessly, Where the smuggler was?
"That's him, sir," said Hester, turning and
pointing to a man sitting quietly on the
edge of a chair, in the corner of the room.
He was as thorough a country lout as
you would meet in a show at a fair—a
thin, stooping, knock-kneed, freckle-faced,
grinning, squinting, red-haired young fellow,
in a smock frock, with a Napoleonian tuft of
hair in the middle of his forehead, which he