"Are you to learn who that Colonel Clive is, and in what station God has placed him?"

The chief, who was known as a jester, answered with mock solemnity and much humility:

"I affront the Colonel ?-I, who never get up in the morning without making three low bows to his excellency's jackass!" Clive to him was a magnificent embodiment of that "Company" whose power by this time was not to be gainsaid.

Pitt, whose influence in the House was unbounded, could not say enough in praise of Clive, whom he described as a heaven-born general-a man bred to the labours of the desk, yet who displayed a military genius which might excite the admiration of the King of Prussia. The only English general since the death of Wolfe of whom his countrymen had much reason to be proud; and the story of Clive's doings passed from mouth to mouth, for the people were naturally proud and delighted to praise a captain of their own, whose native courage and self-taught skill had placed him on a level with the greatest tacticians.

It is pleasant to read that in the midst of all this whirl of success and popularity, the ne'er-do-well of the family, as he had been considered, was kind and good to the folk who of old seem to have shown him not over much affection; that he sent ten thousand pounds to each of his sisters, and as much more to other needy relations and friends; that he settled eight hundred a year on his parents, insisting that the poor lawyer of Drayton should keep his carriage, and live like a gentleman, now that his eldest son was so well to do in the world's gear, and lately appointed Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the British possessions in Bengal, which were by now of no small importance.

DR. WATTS.

"I WRITE NOT FOR YOUR FARTHING, BUT TO TRY

HOW I YOUR FARTHING WRITERS CAN OUTVIE."-Isaac Watts.

A

VERY respectable couplet, I must own. Surely, my son, but you have well deserved this-the Poet's Prize. How votes the company? Has Isaac won or no, boys? Clap who

So said a kind, meek-faced lady, as she laughingly held

up the small brown coin, and then dropped it, with a kiss, into the outstretched palm of her blushing little son, while the other boys clapped their hands gleefully, because of their love of noise and "fair-does," or looked glum and dissatisfied, according to their nature and disposition.

Mrs. Watts, their schoolmaster's gentle wife, often indulged the younger pupils with some game of the kind. To-day it had been capping verses, at which they had small chance of ending; next writing lines, the best to be rewarded with a farthing, which, as we see, the future “Dr.” Watts, D.D., pocketed triumphantly, being only a little boy of seven, and not above lollypops, for all his rhymed independence.

I think there is scarcely one dear granny in Great Britain who could not in her childhood have repeated off-hand a dozen or more of good Dr. Watts's hymns for the young. "How Fair is the Rose," "How doth the Little Busy Bee," and ""Tis the Voice of the Sluggard": why, they are still as familiar to our fathers' ears as the alphabet itself, and will outlive many more pretentious things of the kind. He also wrote many hymns, and in later life paraphrased the Psalms, the "why and

wherefore" of which much-needed work, came about in this unpremeditated manner.

Having soon outgrown the teaching in his father's boarding-school at Southampton, Isaac Watts was sent to the grammar-school near the Bargate, where his industry and rapid advance in all kinds of classical learning so pleased one or two persons in authority that they were well inclined to raise a sum of money that would enable the clever lad's father to send him to college, where, there was little doubt, he would have excelled; but it happened, unfortunately for the plan, that this honest, conscientious schoolmaster was a strict Dissenter, as his father had been before him. The story went that his mother had many a time been seen sitting on the stone steps of the town jail weeping with him, a baby in her arms, sorrowing for her husband imprisoned within, because of non-payment of the heavy fines imposed on him for differing from the Established Church.

Having such antecedents as these in those intolerant days, young Isaac could not go to the University, much as he craved for such teaching, without deserting the independent principles in which he had been nurtured. He therefore gave up the notion, and came home to the old rambling brick mansion, where his childhood had passed so simply and pleasantly, and there wrote and studied divinity, and helped his father to teach, and sometimes, I dare say, slyly teased his mother for prizing sundry little odds and ends of rhyme, the "Farthing one" among the rest, as such fond mothers have a way of doing now, as then, with even less excuse than Mrs. Watts had.

Every Sunday the family flocked to a very small and tumble-down chapel, where the preaching was good, but the hymns, all unaided by an organ, weak and halting, jangling compositions of an old-world kind, that the unlucky congregation had to slur and stumble through as best they might. To one earnest and devout young listener this gave great offence; their lack of sense and proper feeling struck him as likely to cause a lack of reverence, and as jarring against a solemn worship, that should be kept as pure and unworldly as possible. The student, Isaac Watts, mentioning this to some of the older members, was austerely told they must fain be content with what verse they had, complaints not being likely to bring

them anything excelling Psalmody. So rebuked, the young man said no more; he did better than grumble, however; and setting to work, composed some very superior hymns,

and passed from one congregation to another, until they

were to be found all over England, and soon translated into Welsh, were fervently chanted in many a wild, out-of-the-way district. I should think no book of the kind has ever gone through so many varied editions as Watts's Hymns, which, as you see, were written by a