THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.
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BOYHOOD OF CRANMER—SCHOOLS BEFORE THE REFORMATION.
Cranmer received his early education from a parish-clerk. This may seem singular, for he was of gentle blood, and was entered at Cambridge amongst "the better sort of students." But probably such shifts were not unusual before the Reformation. The monasteries indeed had schools attached to them in many instances. In Elizabeth's time a complaint is made by the Speaker of the Commons, that the number of such places of education had been reduced by a hundred, in consequence of the suppression of the religious houses. Still it must often have happened (thickly scattered as the monasteries were) that the child lived at an inconvenient distance from any one of them; mothers, too, might not have liked to trust less robust children to the clumsy care of a fraternity; and probably little was learned in these academies after all. Erasmus makes himself merry with the studies pursued in them; and it is remarkable that no sooner did the love of learning revive, than the popularity of the monasteries declined. For thirty years before the Reformation, there were few or no new religious foundations, whilst schools, on the other hand, began to multiply in their stead; a fact which sufficiently marks the state of public opinion with regard to the monasteries as places of education—for education began now to be the desire of the day. Schools, therefore, in the present acceptation of the term, in Cranmer's boyhood there were scarcely any; and it was the crying want of them in London that induced Dean Colet to establish that of St. Paul's, which, under the fostering care of Lily, the first master, not only became so distinguished in itself, but set the example, and prepared the way, by its rules and its grammar, for so many others which followed in its wake. Edward VI.; with the natural feeling of a boy fond of knowledge, and himself a proficient for his years, was aware of the evil, and projected the remedy. Colet might be his model—but he was embarrassed in his means by courtiers, who were for ever uttering the cry of the horse-leech's daughters; and, besides, his days were soon numbered. Cranmer, who perhaps remembered the obstacles in his own way, and who certainly foresaw the great calamity of an ignorant clergy, pressed for the establishment of a school in connexion with every cathedral—a school, as it were, of the prophets—where boys intended for holy orders might be brought up suitably to the profession they were about to adopt, and where the bishops might ever find persons duly qualified to serve God in the church. But Cranmer was overruled, and a measure, which might have helped to catch up the church before it fell into that abyss of ignorance which seems to have immediately succeeded the Reformation, (the natural consequence of a season of convulsion and violence,) was unhappily lost. It was not till the reign of Elizabeth that the evil was at all adequately met, nor fully indeed then, as the deficiency of well-endowed schools at this day testifies. Still much was at that time done. The dignitaries and more wealthy ecclesiastics of the reformed Church bestirred themselves and founded some schools. Many tradesmen, who had accumulated fortunes in London, (then the almost exclusive province of commercial enterprise,) retired in their later years to the country-town which had given them birth, and gratefully provided for the better education of their neighbours, by furnishing it with a grammar-school. And even the honest yeoman, a person who then appears to have appreciated learning, and often to have brought up his boy to the church, united in the same praiseworthy object. In such cases application was usually made to the Queen for a charter, which was granted with or without pecuniary assistance on her own part; and whoever will examine the dates of our foundation schools, will find a great proportion of them erected in that glorious reign.
Thus it came to pass (to revert to our text), that Cranmer was sent to college in his fourteenth year, Oxford and Cambridge being at that time the substitutes for the schools which have succeeded them, and being considered the two great national receptacles for all the boys in the country. There they were subjected to corporal punishment. The statutes were framed with a reference to the habits of mere boys; it is forbidden, for instance, in one of the Cambridge statutes, to play marbles on the senate-house steps; and the number of the students was so enormous (still for the same reason), that Latimer, in one of his sermons, speaks of a decrease in those of his own time, to the amount of no less than ten thousand.—Quarterly Review.
A TRUE STORY OF MAGIC IN THE EAST.
The dragoman then concluding, that instead of waiting to cross over himself, he was expecting the arrival of some one from the opposite side of the Golden Horn, stepped into his cäik, which instantly glided from the quay and shot across the port. The boats at Constantinople are all very light and sharp, and go with astonishing speed, even when propelled with one pairs of oars; but people of high consideration, like dragomans, generally have two pairs to their cäiks, and at this time M. —— being in a very great hurry, told his two rowers to pull as fast as they could.
When about half way on his short aquatic journey, M. —— turned his head and looked back, and then he saw at the end of the quay, just where he had left him, the tall African standing starch and motionless, like a granite statue before an Egyptian temple.
The dragoman's boat continued to cleave the waves; it neared the opposite shore—no cäik had passed him on his way—when lo! as his own came in concussion with the wooden piles of the Divan-kapi-iskellesi, and he rose from his seat to step on shore, he saw the identical African wizard standing there before him, and gazing calmly over to the opposite quay where he had just left him, and whence it was impossible he could have proceeded by mortal agency!
The dragoman rubbed his eyes, as well he might; but there was the Maugrabee, with his large leaden eye gazing across the Golden Horn, and fixed on the wharf of the dead, just as he had been left behind there gazing at the Divan-kapi-iskellesi. M. —— felt a sort of flesh-shivering at this undeniable proof of the wizard's power; he remained for better than a minute in the position he was, when the tall African first struck his eye, spell-bound as it were, with one foot on the edge of the boat, and the other on the edge of the quay; but recovering himself, he drew up his hinder leg, and then crossing himself like a good catholic, and salaaming his acquaintance, like a polite Turk, he stepped along the quay, touching the necromancer as he passed him, and thus completely assuring himself, it was no deception of vision. Mr. —— thinking more about this wonderful occurrence than the business of the —— nation he was going upon went his way, and having discharged his duty, hurried back to Pera, where he told this story, where it was universally believed from the veracity and character and dignity of the narrator, and where the narrator himself is still living. Very possibly, while I am writing he is telling his rencounter with the wizard, for he tells it to every stranger—Metropolitan.