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St. Rumon.

Alban Butler informs us, from William of Malmsbury, that he was a bishop, though of what nation or see is unknown, and that his name is in the English martyrology. Cressy says, that his body was buried at Tavistock, where, about 960, Ordgar, count of Devonshire, father to Elfrida, the second wife of king Edgar, built a monastery "very agreeable and pleasant, by reason of the great variety of woods, pastures, and rivers abounding with fish." St. Rumon consecrated the church. About thirty years afterwards, the monastery was destroyed and burnt by the Danes. It is memorable, that Edulf, a son of Ordgar, buried in that monastery, was a man of gigantic stature, and of such wonderful strength, that going to Exeter, and finding the gates shut and barred, he broke the outer iron bars with his hands, burst open the gates with his foot, tore the locks and bolts asunder, and broke down part of the wall.

CHRONOLOGY,

1568. On the 4th of January Roger Ascham died, and was buried at St. Sepulchre's church, London. He was born in Yorkshire about 1515, and is celebrated for his learning, for having been tutor and Latin secretary to queen Elizabeth, and for having written "the Scholemaster." This work originated from mention having been made at dinner that some Eton scholars" had run away from school for fear of beating." Ascham expressed his opinion that young children were sooner allured by love, than driven by beating, to attain good learning." He then retired up stairs" to read with the queen's majesty: we read then together that noble oration of Demosthenes against Æschines, for his false dealing in his embassy to king Philip of Macedon; sir Richard Sackville came up soon after." Sackville took Ascham aside," A fond (silly) schoolmaster," said sir Richard, "before I was fully fourteen years old, drove me so, with fear of beating, from all love of learning, as now, when I know what difference it is to have learning, and to have little, or none at all, I feel it my greatest grief, and find it my greatest hurt, that ever came to me, that it was so my ill chance, to light upon so lewd (ignorant) a schoolmaster. The whole conversation was very interesting and so im

pressed Ascham with its importance, that he says, he "thought to prepare some little treatise for a new-year's gift that Christmas," but it grew beneath his hands and became his "Scholemaster, showing a plain and perfect way of teaching the learned languages." The best edition of this work, which Ascham did not live to publish, is that edited by the Rev. James Upton, 1743, octavo. The book was first printed by Ascham's widow, whom with her children he left in distress. It was eminently serviceable to the advancement of teachers and pupils, at a period when it was the fashion to flog. Its most remarkable feature is the frowning down of this brutal practice, which, to the disgrace of our own times, is still heard of in certain seminaries, both public and private. The good old man says, "Beat a child if he dance not well, and cherish him though he learn not well, ye shall have him unwilling to go to dance, and glad to go to his book: knock him always wher. he draweth his shaft ill, and favour him again though he fault at his book, ye shall have him very loth to be in the field, and very willing to go to school." He observes, "If ever the nature of man be given at any time, more than another, to receive goodness, it is in innocency of young years before that experience of evil have taken root in him. For the pure, clean wit of a sweet young babe, is like the newest wax, most able to receive the best and fairest printing; and like a new bright silver dish never occupied, to receive and keep clean any good thing that is put into it. Therefore, to love or to hate, to like or contemn, to ply this way or that way, to good or to bad, ye shall have as ye use a child in his youth." He exemplifies this by a delightful anecdote of the young, beautiful, and accomplished lady Jane Grey, who shortly afterwards perished by the axe of the executioner. Ascham, before he went into Gerinany, visited Broadgate in Leicestershire, to take leave of her. "Her parents, the duke and duchess, with all the household, gentlemen and gentlewomen, were hunting in the park. I found her," says Ascham,

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in her chamber, reading Phædo Platonis in Greek, and that with as much delight, as some gentlemen would read a merry tale in Boccace. After salutation, and duty done, with some other talk, I asked her, why she would lose such pastime

in the park? Smiling, she answered

me:

"I wist, all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure that I find in Plato. Alas! good-folk, they never felt what true pleasure meant.'

"And how came you, madam,' quoth I, 'to this deep knowledge of pleasure? And what did chiefly allure you unto it, seeing not many women, but very few men, have attained thereunto?'

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"I will tell you,' quoth she, and tell you a truth, which perchance you will marvel at. One of the greatest benefits that ever God gave me, is, that he sent me so sharp and severe parents, and so gentle a schoolmaster. For when I am in presence either of father or mother, whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry, or sad, be sewing, playing, dancing, or doing any thing else, I must do it, as it were, in such weight, measure, and number, even so perfectly, as God made the world; or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, yea presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and other ways (which I will not name for the honour I bear them)

so without measure misordered, that I think myself in hell, till time come that I must go to Mr. Elmer; who teachetl me so gently, so pleasantly, with such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time nothing, while I am with him : and when I am called from him, I fall on weeping, because whatsoever I do else, but learning, is full of grief, trouble, fear. and whole misliking unto me: and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it, all other pleasures in very deed, be but trifles and troubles unto me.""

Surely this innocent creature's confession, that she was won to the love of learning and her teacher by his gentleness, and the disclosure of her affliction under the severe discipline of her parents, are positive testimony to the fact, that our children are to be governed and taught by the law of kindness: nor let it detract from the force of the remark, that in connection with her artless feelings and blameless deportment, if her hard fate call forth a versified effusion

INSCRIBED BENEATH A PORTRAIT OF LADY JANE GREY

Originai.

Young, beautiful, and learned Jane, intent

On knowledge, found it peace; her vast acquirement

Of goodness was her fall; she was content

With dulcet pleasures, such as calm retirement

Yields to the wise alone ;-her only vice

Was virtue in obedience to her sire

And lord she died, with them, a sacrifice

To their ambition: her own mild desire

Was rather to be happy than be great;

For though at their request she claimed the crown,
That they, though her, might rise to rule the state,
Yet, the bright diadem, and gorgeous throne,
She view'd as cares, dimming the dignity
Of her unsullied mind, and pure benignity.

1815. On the 4th of January, died Alexander Macdonald, Esq., who is no other way remarkable, than for a chivalrous devotion to the family of Staart. He raised a monument in the vale of Glenfinnyn, at the head of Lochshiel, in the county of Inverness, with a Latin, Gaelic, and English inscription, to commemorate the last open efforts of that family, for the recovery of a crown they had forfeited by innumerable breaches of the laws, and whose aggressions on life and property being suffered, till

"Non-resistance could no further go,"

they were excluded from the throne of the people, by the aristocracy and commor.alty of England in parliament assembled. As evidence of the spirit that dictated such a memorial, and of the proper feeling which permits that spirit to be expressed, in spite of its hostility to the principles that deposited and continued the diadem of the commonwealth in the custody of the house of Hanover, the in scription on the monument is placed in the next column. It stands in English in these words:

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VOL. I.

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ST. SIMEON STYLITES, HERMIT OF THE PILLAR.

ter at the top, so that he could not lie extended on it: he had no seat with him; he only stooped or leaned to take a little rest, and bowed his body in prayer so often, that a certain person who counted these positions, found that he made one thousand two hundred and forty-four reverences in one day, which if he began at four o'clock in the morning and finished at eight o'clock at night, gives a bow to every three-quarters of a minute; besides which he exhorted the people twice a day. His garinents were the skins of beasts, he wore an iron collar round his neck, and had a horrible ulcer in his foot. During his forty days' abstinence throughout Lent, he tied himself to a pole. He treated himself as the outcast of the world and the worst of sinners, worked miracles, delivered prophecies, had the sacrament delivered to him on the pillar, and died bowing upon it,in the sixty-ninth of his age, after having lived upon pillars for six and thirty years. His corpse was carried to Antioch attended by the bishops and the whole country, and worked miracles on its way. So far this account is from Alban Butler.

week. Heliodorus required Simeon to be more private in his mortifications; "with this view," says Butler," judging the rough rope of the well, made of twisted palm-tree leaves, a proper instrument of penance, Simeon tied it close about his naked body, where it remained unknown both to the community and his superior, till such time as it having ate into his flesh, what he had privately done was discovered by the effluvia proceeding from the wound." Butler says, that it took three days to disengage the saint's clothes, and that "the incisions of the physician, to cut the cord out of his body, were attended with such anguish and pain, that he lay for some time as dead." After this he determined to pass the whole forty days of Lent in total abstinence, and retired to a hermitage for that purpose. Bassus, an abbot, left with him ten loaves and water, and coming to visit him at the end of the forty days, found both loaves and water untouched, and the saint stretched on the ground without signs of life. Bassus dipped a sponge in water, moistened his lips, gave him the eucharist, and Simeon by degrees swallowed a few lettuce leaves and other herbs. He passed twenty-six Lents in the same manner. In the first part of a Lent he prayed standing; growing weaker he prayed sitting; and towards the end, being almost exhausted, he prayed lying on the ground. At the end of three years he left his hermitage for the top of a mountain, made an enclosure of loose stones, without a roof, and having resolved to live exposed to the inclemencies of the weather, he fixed his resolution by fastening his right leg to a rock with a great iron chain. Multitudes thronged to the mountain to receive his benediction, and many of the sick recovered their health; But as some were not satisfied unless they touched him in his enclosure, and Simeon desired retirement from the daily concourse, he projected a new and unprecedented manner of life. He erected a pillar six cubits high, (each cubit being eighteen inches,) and dwelt on it four years; on a second of twelve cubits high he lived three years; on a third of twentytwo cubits high ten years; and on a fourth of forty cubits, or sixty feet high, which the people built for him, he spent the last twenty years of his life. This occasioned him to be called stylites, from the Greek word stylos, a pillar. This pillar did not exceed three feet in diame

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Without mentioning circumstances and miracles in the Golden Legend, which are too numerous, and some not fit to be related, it may be observed that it is there affirmed of him, that after his residence on the pillars, one of his thighs rotted a whole year, during which time he stood on one leg only. Near Simeon's pillar was the dwelling of a dragon, so very venomous, that nothing grew near his cave. This dragon met with an accident; had a stake in his eye, and coming all blind to the saint's pillar, and placing his eye upon it for three days without doing harm to any one, Simeon ordered earth and water to be placed on the dragon's eye, which being done, out came the stake, a cubit in length; when the people saw this miracle, they glorified God, and ran away for fear of the dragon, whe arose and adored for two hours, and returned to his cave. A woman swallowed a little serpent, which tormented her for many years, till she came to Simeon, who causing earth and water to be laid on her mouth, the little serpent came out four feet and a half long. It is affirmed by the Golden Legend, that when Simeon died, Anthony smelt a precious odour proceeding from his body; that the birds cried so, much, that both men and beasts cried; that an angel came down in a cloud; that

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