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after his dictation, at the previous lesson. | chiefly maintained by means of the parents, This done, he proceeded to put questions in whose attention is constantly called to their French, to each boy in turn, upon the last child's conduct and progress, by means of a two lessons, which questions they were called daily report made to each in writing. upon to answer in French; and in doing so, The following is a copy of the printed form gave proof, in general, of considerable pro- in which this report is made:ficiency, by the correctness of their idiom and pronunciation. The professor, keeping in view the double object of his instructions, was not sparing of illustrations and digres sions, thus rendering the subject more interesting to his youthful hearers, while they unconsciously caught the true Parisian idiom and accent. Geography is taught in the same manner, by a native of England, in his own language. These three exercises are confined to boys in the two highest classes, after they have already acquired, while in the lowest class, the rudiments of these two foreign languages. Taking a look into the third school-room, we found the youngest class receiving their introduction to the French language, and to the elements of natural history, (one of the most amusing subjects for children,) at the same time. This was done by the professor writing, in chalk, on a large slate, a few lines of French, on the important mineral coal. As he slowly pronounced each word, the children copied it into their writing-books, and then the meaning of each word, and of the whole sentence, was explained to them. Thus the first notions of the grammar and orthography of the language are learned practically, and there. fore with ease and pleasantly; and the same with English, so as to fit them, on entering the second class, to pursue their study of these languages by the exercises above mentioned.

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QUADRO RAPPRESENTATIVO.

Dei Meriti e Demeriti di SF, come Alunno d' ell' Instituto dei Padri di Famiglia.

No. 21.

The present course of instruction lasts about four years, and costs about 321. per] annum, with 27. entrance money. It is, however, in contemplation shortly to extend the range of instruction, by the addition of a further four years' course, which will include Latin, logic, and metaphysics, commercial jurisprudence, the theory and practice of commerce (by the medium of the German the most important studies of the school, it language,) algebra, chemistry applied to the arts, mechanics, and anatomy.

Children taught by methods so well adapt. ed to their ages, tastes, and pursuits, can be easily managed without the necessity of violent punishments, which are requisite where irksome employments are the constant cause of disgust and lassitude. The discipline is

In the above report, which comprehends

will be observed that each teacher is daily called upon to specify the conduct of each pupil whilst engaged in that branch of education which he has taught him. And, in judging the merits of a boy, a very just and important discrimination is made between his proficiency in his studies and his private conduct, so that the parent is informed whether

his child is merely negligent or dull in his lessons, or actually depraved in his moral character. The director may add his gene. ral observations on the pupil in the last column but one, and by the father's signature in the last column, it is ascertained that the report has been duly presented to him.

cular decision of the learned Frenchman, "wit does not exist among them "-and if he has moreover not forgotten in what according to the well-known Baron de Grimm, their notions of sprightliness consist-his surprise at learning that works professedly comic are to be found among the treasures of their early literature will be considerably increased, when he finds these hitherto almost neglected volumes so rich in shrewdness, wit, and humor, as to justify to the fullest the time spent in their perusal.

Leghorn is also remarkable for an infant school for children of the higher classes, the only one of the kind of which we have yet heard, but which we feel sure will shortly be established among ourselves, when ladies perceive with what ease and pleasure children It is not our intention to occupy with long acquire, in these institutions, an amount of dissertations on the manner in which these information which it would be the most dread- works arose, or the state of society which ful drudgery to both mother and child to gave birth to them, the space which may be teach them singly. So true is it that man is more profitably employed in the examinaa social animal (a Toλitikov (wor), that all his tion of the books themselves; but, we would faculties—moral, intellectual, and physical- first call attention to the fact, that at none of seem to be capable of their greatest and the other courts of Europe were professed most casy development by intercourse with jesters and merry-makers received with such his fellow-creatures, and this especially favor and encouragement, as were bestowed amongst the young. Imitation and example upon them by the princes of Germany. will lead children to consider as an amuse- Even the grave Rudolph of Hapsburg, who ment, and to acquire insensibly from one an. was the foremost to banish from his presence other, habits and knowledge which would on the court minstrel, was the first to number ly cause disgust and weariness were it at among his retainers the court fool,-the Pfaff tempted to instil them by solitary teaching. Cappadox, whom Cradelius mentions in his But our space warns us that the praises even celebrated Funeral Sermon on the Pomeraof infant schools must have their limits, and nian Jester, Hans Miesko, having held that we will only say to all who are not convin- office; an office which, being once establishced that they are the greatest invention of ed, existed for a considerable period. We the age in which we live: Betake yourselves learn from the " Theuerdank," that Maximiforthwith to the nearest infant school, and lian narrowly escaped being blown up in a after remaining there an hour, judge for castle in the Tyrol by one of his jesters; the yourselves.

ART. III.-1. Narrenbuch.

Herausgege. ben durch F. H. v. der Hagen. Svo. Halle.

2. Der ganz neue, weider erstandene Eulenspiegel, oder wunderbare und seltsame Geschichte des Till Eulenspiegels, eines Bauern Sohnes, geburtig aus dem Lande zu Braunschweig, &c. Munich, 1833. 8vo.

same who afterwards nearly blinded his mas. ter in a fight with snow-balls, by the violence with which he struck him in the eye with one of these sportive missiles. And "Fugger's Ehrenspiegel" has recorded how this chival rous monarch was rescued from the prison into which he had been cast by the men of Bruges, through the courage and ingenuity of his faithful jester, the well known Kunz von der Rosen; an incident which has been copied, almost literally, by Sir Walter Scott, into Ivanhoe, in that scene, so familiar to our rea. ders, where Wamba enters the prison as a shaven monk,-a scene full of pathos in the work of the novelist, but not more so than in the pages of the chronicler of Maximilian's danger and Kunz's fidelity.

THE reader who has been accustomed to contemplate the literature of Germany only If a love of fun and humor thus prevailed on that graver side, where a boundless ex- among the rulers of Germany, one of whom, panse of mystical and metaphysical learning Otto the Cheerful, took his distinctive appellies spread before him, far as eye can reach, laticn from the joviality of his disposition, it may experience some feelings of surprise is but reasonable to suppose that it obtained when he finds his attention called to the ear- with equal earnestness among all classes of ly comic writings of that country. And, if their subjects; and we can readily underhe remembers that Erasmus characterised stand that these "merry jests," the very anthe Germans as being especially fond of tipodes of the heroic romances, were not onbooks of magic-that, according to the oraly received with the highest favor generally,

those

but became special favorites with burghers and citizens, who, contemned and oppressed by the nobles, found a peculiar

"Er het hûs in Engellant,

In einer stat ze Trânîs,

Unt hiez der phaffe Amîs !”

gratification in the mocking irreverence and and which his name, Amis, or Ames, as it is biting raillery, scattered through the pages of now written, would seem to confirm.

these quaint old merriments, against every thing which those very nobles were wont to prize.

We should also bear in mind, that the majority of the Comic Romances of Germany, arose, or rather assumed their present form, in that merry century-that golden age of court jesters, the era of Gonella, of Brusquet and of Triboulet-the time when Kunz von der Rosen and Claus Narr were plying their sportive calling in the imperial court. At this period, tales of the nature of those which we are now considering would appear to have abounded, for in the curious Latin Poem prefixed to the "Paramia Ethica" (Francof. 1589) of Bruno Seidelius, mention is made of many popular histories then in vogue, some of which are now no longer known to exist.

"Quis non legit quid Frater Rauschius, egit? Et qui Smosmannum cupiunt audire per an

num

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"Full loth were him to cursen for his tithes, But rather wolde he yeven out of doute, Unto his poure parishens aboute Of his offring, and eke of his substance." As his living appears to have returned him something more than a mere living, his bishop, like some great men in our own times, proposed to appropriate to himself "the surplus revenues;" a proposal to which Amis, having the same old-fashioned notionsof right and justice which distinguished many of his successors, was by no means willing to accede. His refusal to resign this surplus irritated the bishop, who threatened to deprive him of his bene fice before taking this step, however he adopted the plan now so generally practised, of issuing a "Commission of Inquiry" touching the same. The bishop was, in this instance, "himself his own commission "--an example said not to be without a parallel in our days-and his examinaOf the stories here mentioned, that of Friar tion into the qualifications of the humble priest Rush alone has been long familiar to the En- was carried on so vigorously, that nothing glish reader, while 'the German version of but the firmness and ready-wittedness of the history has been but recently unearthed.* refractory delinquent saved him from all the Those of Smosmannus and Suarmus would pains and penalties of "an appropriation seem to have disappeared entirely, only to clause." The bishop's questions were not be recovered, if ever so, by some such fortui- of that pounds, shillings and pence character tous event as gave back to us the "Hundred Merry Tales" from which Beatrice was accused of having borrowed her good wit. With Pfaff Amis and the Parson of Kalenberg our readers shall forthwith be made acquainted.

Turpia dicentum, vel Suarmum spurca lo-
quentem?

Quique legunt Pfaffi Calenbergi facta vel
Affi?"

which such inquiries invariably assume in these utilitarian times, nor did they touch upon the articles of the church or the Targum of Onkelos: they were directed rather to fathoming the depth of the poor priest's "mother wit," and which very speedily proved to he far too deep for his reverence.

To judge from the form in which it has been handed down to us, the story of the Pfaff The questions, indeed, were the same Amis or Affis, as related by the Stricker, and which were afterwards proposed to Master which Benecke has printed in his "Beyträge+"" Owlglass," and which that merry knave from a manuscript of the latter end of the and our waggish priest have answered with thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth cen- wondrous unanimity. The bishop commen. tury, is the first of the series in point of age; ces as follows :and certainly the most interesting to us as Englishmen, from the fact of its hero being represented as a native of this country:

See Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 35. + Benecke, Beyträge zur Kenntniss der Alt Deutschen Sprache und Litteratur. Zweyte Hälfte. Seite 493-608. The poem, according to Docen, appears to have been printed in 4to, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and even earlier.

Answer straight-such is my pleasure,
How much does the ocean measure?
Think, for certes you'll find it ill,
To tell me too much, or too little-
For it would so much enrage me,
Nought but your Church could assuage me.”*

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Our priest, nothing daunted, undertakes to over with great facility, his reverence was solve the question :

"A hair's breath, I will not misstate it, But lest I should overrate it,

See, of all those streams that flow in,
That you let not one drop go in ;
I'll measure then and let you see
The quantum to a nicety.'

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fain to admit that the poor brute was getting on with his learning far more quickly than could reasonably be expected. And when the ass, on not finding any oats between the leaves, expressed his disappointment by bray. ing, and the bishop was told that he was pronouncing the first letter of the alphabet, A, (with the broad German sound), his belief in a good scholar was perfectly confirmed. The the priest's ability to turn the silly beast into

The bishop declined the task thus allotted to him, and proceeded to demand how many days had passed since the time of Adam.-death of the bishop, however, which followed "Seven," quoth the priest;

"And long as this world shall endure, There will be neither more nor fewer."+

This answer was no more satisfactory than the first had been; and the bishop having inquired angrily, "whereabouts the middle of the globe was to be found," was not much better pleased at being told, "the Church he coveted stood on the very spot, and that he might convince himself, if he had any doubt of the fact, by letting one of his servants make the necessary measurements."

The bishop, being repeatedly foiled, after the same fashion, by the ready answers which our hero made to all his inquiries, at length declared his willingness to believe in the correctness of those replies, provided Amis would promise to teach an ass to read: a task which the wily priest undertook as readily as Eulenspiegel did, when he received a similar proposal. "But," said he, "it takes twenty years to make a man read and reason properly; you, therefore, must not grumble, if I take thirty years to make the ass a scholar." And he said this, calculating that it was very improbable that they should all three, that is to say, the ass, himself, and the bishop, live thirty years, and the death of either of them would necessarily end the business. The bishop, having admitted the justice of this proposal, promised to call in a short time to see the progress of this extra. ordinary pupil. He kept his word, and made a very early visit, and great was his astonishment at beholding the advances which the poor ass had made in his studies, for Master Amis had fed him by putting oats between the leaves of an old book, which the animal of course readily turned over, for the purpose of getting at his food. Accordingly, when the bishop called, and a book was placed be. fore the ass, the leaves of which he turned

* "Ichn liugiu niht als umbe ein hâr.
Endunket es iuch niht vil war,
Sô machet il mir stille stê

Diu wasser diu dar in gen,
Sô mizzichz, und lâse iuch sehen,

Daz ir mir nach müezet jehen."-line 113-118.

"Swie lange disiu werlt stê

Ivn wirt doch minner noch mê." v. 129, 130.

shortly after this visit, released the ass from furtner study, and Amis from further fears, on account of the covetousness of his ec

cess.

clesiastical superior. But, like an unhappy suitor in the Court of Chancery, though he gained his cause, he was ruined by his sucHis reputation for wit and wisdom was spread far and wide, and brought him such crowds of visitors, that his means,though ample, were totally inadequate to the expenses which this celebrity entailed upon him. At length, being completely ruined, Amis, from being a man of unparalleled liberality and virtue, became at once a miserly ful experience, a good course of life highly knave and deceiver. Having found, by woprejudicial to his worldly interests, he renounced his former principles, and resolved to turn his cunning and shrewdness to good account, and to draw from them all the ad. vantages which circumstances might enable

him.

He commenced his career of roguery by becoming a dealer in relics, and, having prethe promise of half the offerings he should vailed on the priest of a certain country, by collect, to let him hold forth in his church, he displayed before a crowded congregation, as most precious relic, the head of St. Brandan, who had commanded him to collect moneys wherewith to found a monastery. He then called upon those who heard him to contribute liberally towards that holy object, but at the same time warned all those who had ever secretly violated the laws of virtue, to stand aside, and not to presume to offer their profane gifts. His discourse had the effect he intended it to have, and no sooner was it concluded, than all his hearers hastened to contribute with the greatest profuseness : those who had not the wherewithal borrowing of their neighbors, that they might avoid the stigma which the fact of their not giving could not fail to attach to them. The booty thus obtained proved a rich one; and, after sharing it with his fellow priest, he rode forth with a well-filled purse, and a reputation for piety and devotion, which enabled him to lay other congregations under contribution, with the same beneficial result.

After quitting Lorraine, he resumed his old calling of a pardoner,'

6

"And of his craft, fro Berwick unto Ware, Ne was there swich an other pardonere."

which he concealed under his cloak, he betook himself, at the close of evening, to the residence of a noble lady, and solicited refreshment and shelter for the night. Both were instantly granted; a fowl was readily killed for the supper of the wayfaring priest,

When all

Our adventurer now visited Paris, where by announcing his intention of killing the worst he announced himself to be a painter, so among them, that he might with his blood ef skilled in the mysteries of his profession, that fect the restoration to health of all the rest ; he could decorate a house or room with paint- an announcement which had the effect of ings, so curiously contrived that they should making all the invalids instantly confess them. be imperceptible to all who were not really selves cured-a confession which they all and truly legitimate. The king determined repeated to the duke, who thereupon paid to make a trial of his skill, and promised him Master Amis the stipulated reward. three hundred marks if he would paint a certain tower of the palace. Amis agreed, upon condition that he was well supplied with wine, fish, and meat of the best, during the time that he was so employed, and further, that no one should enter the tower before the While following this profitable calling, he work, which he expected would occupy him employed a confederate to discover where about six weeks, was concluded. The king there lived those persons who combined great readily assented to these conditions. The riches with a great fondness for religion. On six weeks passed, and at the end of that time one occasion, having procured a live fowl, his majesty was admitted to behold the handiwork of this extraordinary artist, and great was his dismay on finding that he could see nothing but the bare walls, a fact which con. vinced him of his mother's dishonor and his own illegitimacy. Fearful of the result of this discovery, if made known to his cour. and as readily devoured by him. tiers, he cunningly expressed his admiration had retired to rest, he put the live fowl in the of the pictures, and inquired of Amis what place from which the one he had supped on they were intended to represent. Amis de- had been taken, and at daybreak, when the scribed them as being the pictures of Solo- others began to crow, this did so likewise; mon, David, Absalom, Alexander the Great, whereupon Amis called up his attendant,bade and sundry other worthies, and the king pro- him fetch a light, and when they found the fessed himself to be so perfectly delighted fowl, he pronounced it a miracle, and a sign with his skill that, as a mark of his royal fa- wrought to manifest to the good lady that vor, he commanded all the nobles who came whatsoever she should bestow on him would to view these wondrous works of art to be- be restored to her two-fold; after which he stow some present on the artist, as a reward performed mass, and, as may be supposed, for his extraordinary talents. Money, jewels, was sent away loaded with gifts, raiment, swords and shields, were according. On another occasion, he obtained from a ly offered in profusion to Master Amis by the fair penitent in the absence of her husband, nobles, who were not less amazed than their a hundred ells of beautiful linen. On the royal master had been before them, when return of the knight, who held these mendithey found themselves unable to distinguish cant priests in little esteem, he fell into a desthe smallest trace of the paintings. Like perate rage at the manner in which his wife their sovereign, however, they had too much had been imposed upon, and, mounting his judgment to avow a blindness, which, by be. horse, rode after Amis, determined to get tokening their illegitimacy, would prove them back the cloth, and to punish him as an imto be the unlawful possessors of their several postor. Our adventurer, who always had principalities and dukedoms. They strove, his wits about him, no sooner perceived a therefore, as did their fair consorts too, to outvie each other in their praises of this incomparable artist; who took care to retire from Paris, with his riches and his honors blushing thick upon him, long before the cheat was discovered.

horseman giving him chase, than he suspected his object, and, being determined to turn his anger to good account, he struck a light, which he thrust into the middle of the linen cloth, and awaited the coming up of his pursuer. All turned out just as he had anticiFrom Paris he proceeded to Lorraine, pated. The knight reproached him with his where he gave himself out for a physician, imposture, and demanded the restoration of and was, as such, heartily welcomed by the the cloth, which Amis instantly handed to duke, many of whose subjects stood in great him, threatening him at the same time with need of the advice of one of that calling. the divine vengeance for his mal-treatment of Amis undertook, for a hundred marks,to cure a servant of Holy Church. The rider, dis. all the sick, and that within a week; and this regarding these threats, took the cloth and he accomplished after Eulenspiegel's fashion, rode away with it; but he had not proceeded

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