the neighbouring counties, and pupils crowded from parts for the benefit of his instruction.

all

From this time it may be said to have been one of our public seminaries, being inferior neither in point of discipline, mode of education, nor masters, to the first in the kingdom. In its most flourishing state under Dr. James, it consisted of three hundred boys; and it was his chief aim to reduce the expences as much as possible, in order that parents might be induced to send their children to it in preference to other public schools, some of which are attended with the most extravagant charges. In this respect he completely gained his point, and during his long residence there, which was more than sixteen years, sent several hundred young men to the universities, some of whom proved eminent scholars, and brought a lasting credit to the establishment.

In a few years after his first settlement at Rugby, he paid his addresses to, and afterwards married Miss Elizabeth Landor, of Coventry, a lady of many accomplishments, and to whom he had a most sincere and firm attachment, but who was unhappily taken from him by a rapid illness three or four years after their marriage. Upon a small marble monument which he erected to her memory in Rugby church, is inscribed this comprehensive line by way of epitaph, at once expressive of his tender affection for her, and the well-grounded hope which he entertained of a blessed reunion in a better world,

46 Ενδε, φίλη ψυχή, γλυκέρον και ἐγερσιμον ύπνον,”

which we here present in English for the benefit of our readers of the fair sex, though much of its original beauty and conciseness is lost in the translation.

Peace to thy slumbers, kindred soul,

Peace to thy mouldering clay !

Soon shalt thou wake in joy to hail

The resurrection-day.

By this lady he had two children, a son and a daughter, the former of whom has been brought up to the law, and promises fair to be eminent in his profession; the latter was married in 1803 to the Rev. Dr. Wingfield, late head-master of Westminster school, and now prebendary of Worcester.

Dr. James was for a considerable period nearly inconsolable for the death of his wife, frequently visiting her grave and weeping over it. But time, in some degree, healed the deep wound which so great a loss had made; and the doctor in the course of two years afterwards began to form a connexion with Miss Caldecott of Rugby, which also terminated in matrimony. By his second wife he has had either six or seven children, one of whom is now a member of Christ Church, and another of Oriel College, Oxford.

About the year 1791 Dr. James's health began to be impaired by his unremitted study and the great attention which he had paid to the minutest affairs of the establishment under his care. Several of his friends, therefore, advised him to resign; but his natural activity of mind was agreeably exerted inscholas ticemployments, and he did not comply with their injunc tions so soon as in prudence, perhaps, he ought to

have done. However, during the two following years, his health had suffered so much in consequence of his extraordinary exertions, that the trustees of the school themselves requested him to give up the place, assuring him at the same time of their readiness to do for him whatever might be in their power. And accordingly in 1793 the doctor resigned the mastership, though not without some reluctance; and was succeeded by Dr. Ingles, a gentleman whose abilities and learning were such as well adapted him for the situ

ation.

Upon Dr. James's resignation, the trustees at their next meeting wrote jointly to the minister, informing him of the long and great services of the doctor, and requesting he might have such preferment given him as might be thought adequate to his deserts; and in consequence of that application he was shortly afterwards appointed to a prebend in Worcester cathedral, which he still enjoys as well as the living of Harvington in Warwickshire.

Dr. James gave upso much of his time to the concerns of the school, that he never was able to appear before the world in any literary work of much consequence. He published, however, a small compendium of geography, which is one of the most comprehensive and accurate performances of the kind, and is used chiefly at Rugby school. He is likewise the author of an explanation of the fifth of Euclid by algebra, which renders that difficult book, comparatively speaking, easy to beginners; and also of two Sermons, published in 1799, one of which was preached at the musi

cal meeting of the three choirs of Worcester, Hereford, and Gloucester, in the cathedral of Worcester, and the other upon a public fast-day; the former of these, the learned Dr. Hurd, now Bishop of Worces ter, said was " ingenious and eloquent, the latter pious and animated."

Although Rugby school is not of royal, yet it can boast a very ancient foundation, and has produced several very distinguished characters both in church and state; the late valiant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who received the whole of his education there, ever retained a grateful affection for the place, and expressed his intentions of visiting it again in a letter to a friend and school-fellow of his, who still resides there, in case he had lived to return to his native country.

Dr. James was introduced to his Majesty a few years ago, and had the honour of walking on the terrace at Windsor with him in company with Dr. Heath, provost of Eton, when his Majesty heartily congratulated the former upon his enlargement and improvement of Rugby school; "but it is no wonder (continued the King) you have been so successful, having been yourself educated at Eton;" a very neat compliment, of which Dr. Heath might certainly claim a moiety.

MR. EGERTON BRYDGES,

AMONG the public characters of the day may justly be reckoned those who have either informed or

amused

amused their contemporaries by the genius or the elegance of their writings, or who have forsaken the paths of wealth and ambition for the less substantial but more generous acquisitions of mental superiority. There is a vulgar sort of celebrity arising out of rank, fortune, or success in the world-from a gaudy establishment-from fluttering at public assembliescourting a numerous acquaintance, and outvying others in every fashionable folly-which, in the ideas of the ordinary herd of mankind, high or low, overshadows the modest claims of mental excellence. To such, a man whose person is known but to few, whose voice has never been heard in the senate, whose carriage does not glitter at St. James's or in Bond-street, and whose name is not echoed in every newspaper; but who utters from the silent recesses of rural solitude the dreams of his fancy, or the effusions of his heart, appears unworthy to be recorded. But it is the duty of literature to plead its own cause; to counteract the more obtrusive, yet less sterling, claims to worldly reputation; and to enforce the elegant words of Gibbon, that "in the estimate of honour we should learn to value the gifts of nature above those of fortune; to esteem the qualities that best promote the interests of society; and to pronounce the descendant of a king less truly noble than the offspring of a man of genius, whose writings will instruct or delight the latest posterity."

Samuel Egerton * Brydges, F. A. S. whose poems

He derived these names from his godfather and near relation Samuel Egerton, Esq. of Tatton-park in Cheshire, who representedthat county in parliament from 1754 till his death in 1780.

and