learnt in the schools. It has been well said,
"Everybody improvises when he talks." But
the silence of an auditory, when once a speaker
perceives it, produces a very contrary effect
to the interruption of conversation. " All
eyes being fixed on him, he is embarrassed, he
stammers, and at length becomes dumb; but
this is not a defect of genius, it is merely a
want of self-possession. He is a weak man;
he is not master of his palpatating heart; he
has lost his self-possession; his calm judgment
has abandoned him; hence he sees nothing that
he ought to see; he can compare nothing; he
has lost the standard by which he ought to
measure himself and others; he has lost genius,
because he has lost the balance of judgment.
Hence the first rule of improvisation, acquire
the mastership of your own feelings." Mr.
Robert Lowe's recent recommendation to the
middle-classes to study the English language
culminated in the assertion, that he had found
the power of speaking that language with
precision and force to be the most useful of his
accomplishments.

If the ruling spirits at Cogers' Academy
can turn out a fluent speaker in a few
months, it is surely a disgrace to Eton and
Harrow that they allow their pupils to come
and go, and fail to make them speak ten
consecutive words in public without breaking
down? There are few more lamentable
spectacles than that presented by a gentleman
of well-trained mind and varied knowledge
stammering feebly, and retiring ignominiously,
before a handful of people who are immeasurably
his inferiors in all that pertains to mental
discipline and education. Their charitable eagerness
to cheer him whenever a lame and floundering
sentence is brought to an impotent
conclusion is positively insulting. The applause
when he sits down, the hand-clapping, and the
foot-stamping fill him with shame; for he knows
himself to have talked nonsense, and to have
talked nonsense cumbrously. " Men are never
so likely to settle a question rightly," says
Macaulay, " as when they discuss it freely;"
and though an older writer cynically tells us
that as " we have two ears, and but one tongue,
we may hear much and talk little," even he
could give no good reason why we should not
talk that little well. What the Cogers can do
is of course within the reach of every schoolmaster,
and the wise man who teaches the art of
speaking the language with, as the old grammars
say, " elegance and propriety," will confer a
boon on England. We left the hall while a
gentleman was convicting, entirely to his own
satisfaction, a previous speaker of ignorance of
his subject; our friend, the landlord, meeting us
with the courteous hope that we " had been
interested, though the speaking ain't been nothin'
tonight to what it is sometimes." The landlord
regards the Cogers affectionately as his adopted
children, but rather startles us by giving,
"I won't have none of it here" as his mode of
checking a debate when freedom degenerates
into licence. It appears that the ardent
liberalism of some advanced Cogers has
occasionally led to language which a feeble-minded
magistrate might disapprove, and it is perhaps
with an ulterior eye on licensing-day that mine
host constitutes himself the unseen arbiter of
the limits of debate. Upon the whole,
however outspoken and revolutionary the bolder
Coger spirits may occasionally be, the ancient
society has a comfortable respect for order
and propriety, and maintains, as its rules and
our experience testify, a decent self-respect and
self-restraint which might sometimes be
imitated with advantage in another place.

ENGLISH ROYAL AUTHORS.

Two works which, though not distinctly
acknowledged, are perfectly well known to
emanate from a royal source, have lately
attracted much notice. The latter of these
especially, " Our Life in the Highlands," has
been so much discussed, that it seems only
rational to suppose that the interest which
has been manifested by all sorts of people in
a particular specimen of royal authorship may
be associated with some curiosity about royal
authorship generally, and that those who have
been eager to read what has been written
by Queen Victoria may care also to hear a
little about what has been written hundreds
of years ago by Queen Victoria's predecessors
on the throne.

The question, which among our English rulers
was the first whom we may regard as having
belonged to the literary brotherhood, is involved
in a good deal of obscurity. Legends are in
existence of literary compositions produced by
Alfred the Great, by another Alfred (King of
Northumberland), by Canute, Boadicea, and even by
King Bladud, discoverer of the medicinal virtues
of the Bath waters. The works of these
distinguished sovereigns have however—if they ever
existed at all—disappeared entirely from among
the records of the past.

The first work of an English royal author on
the authenticity of which reliance can be
placed appears to be a poem or ballad
composed by Richard the First in the French or
Provençal dialect, and of which more than one
translation has been attempted. Of this ballad,
written in prison, it may certainly be said that
there is, pervading the whole, a tone of sadness,
and a sense of desertion and loneliness, which are
not without beauty. One or two verses, selected
at random from this poem, may interest the
reader. We give them first in the curiously
attractive old French dialect, and then as
translated, not very successfully, by a learned
antiquary of the last century. Between the two
some idea may be formed of the nature of the
ballad. In the first verse quoted, Richard speaks
of his own clemency to prisoners who had fallen
into his power, in former times, and makes that
a reason why similar leniency should be shown
to him. The old French runs thus:

      Or sachon ben mi hom et mi baron,
      Engles, Norman, Pettavin, et Guascon,
      Qe ge n'avoie si povre compagnon,