habits contrary to those of civilized life. I met with order, subordination, improvement, with progress unexpected as it was unexampled, and with a state of social and intellectual culture, strange indeed, and marvellous, in a place so lately abandoned to pauperism, and to crime. The shadow of Time has rested heavily upon these fair islands; the sea has conquered from them many a rood of smiling land; the dwellers on their shores waxed few and feeble; they became as it were the inheritance of the wild man, whose hand was against his fellow, and whose life was a life of violence and of blood. The dark and melancholy spirit of those days is fled, with the ignorance from which it sprung. All is now pleasantness and peace. In the midst of the comfort and prosperity so visible around, a Scillonian pastor might reverse the sarcasm of the Curé of Carpentras, and say truly of his flock, "Heureux vous me les avez donnés, heureux je vous les rends.”

Appendir.

SUPPLEMENTARY chapter is

but a dull affair, after all. If anything good has gone before, this kind of parting word must always be full of melancholy. We are winding up a feast by languidly picking the bones. Yet a supplementary chapter must be written, were it only to rid the main narrative of those dry details and common-places, which, when gathered together and set apart from the rest, like an awkward squad, may be reviewed, and despatched at once.

In this case moreover I have an additional reason for dreading the ponderous dulness of an appendix. Almost every account of Scilly has been written in a style so oracular and so heavy, with such a parade of learning, and such an apparent inquisition into antiquities, that as soon

* I may say here that Scilly is as much an unknown land as the Tierra del Fuego. In the city article of the Times of (I think) May 31st, it is contrasted with Lobos Afuero,-the guano rocks in the Pacific; and described as being inhabited by fishermen and pilots! I only wish the writer could see the Abbey gardens!

as one only touches on a point of classical or barbarian information, the shadowy hand of some sage Theban seems to start up and claim it for his own. Erudition * appears to be the forte of the clerical historians of Scilly, their strongest point, in fact, except smuggling. For my part, I suspect the scholarship of these learned men, and grow tired of their ancient Pegasus; even as the worthy Parisian, whose wife, being in raptures with a statue in the Gardens of the Tuilleries, exclaimed "Ah l'antique, comme c'est beau." To which the spouse replied "Oui, ma femme, en marbre.”

A friend of mine, who was Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, was, once upon a time, sailing down the waters of the Golden Horn in a cuique, having in his company a French traveller, his temporary guest. My friend wrote a very illegible hand. The conversation happening to turn on the education of our diplomates, he observed, partly in jest, partly also in reference to his own deficiencies as a scribe, that England cared so little for the training of her Ministers, as to employ-in his own case,-an Envoy who could neither write nor spell. The Gaul bowed, shrugged his shoulders, and made a note of the remark. And in

* If credit is sometimes taken where there is no learning, credit is sometimes also denied where it exists. We know the old epigram,―

"Ci git Voltaire, que n'était rien,

Pas même Acadamicien."

But I remember a case more in point. There is a college in Cambridge, to which is accorded an easy and graceful præeminence in letters. Yet a Cantab wrote this of one of its members,

"Here lies a Doctor of Divinity,

And a senior Fellow of Trinity;

And he knew as much, about Divinity,

As any other Fellow of Trinity,"

his travels, produced with all that depth of observation and knowledge of other lands which is the characteristic of that thoughtful and sober nation, this little anecdote appeared, in so many words, as an instance of one among the many failings of England. Sometimes, when we are told that the Greeks must have colonized these islands, because Prigless is evidently a corruption of Pericles, we are apt to feel such classical superiority rather overpowering, and to wish for an hour with an Ambassador not yet in his А В С.

So brightly thy brain with its classics is burning,

With Greek and with Latin, with verb and with tense,

We whisper, oh give us a little less learning,

And fill up the void with a little more sense,

So

But still, however I may linger on its confines, the supplementary chapter must be written, and, to use Falstaff's metaphor, this "borrowing only lengthens it out." I may as well begin at once, as I have been writing a good deal about Scilly, by inquiring what the word Scilly means. First. Nearly all the varieties of the name have the same

root.

With the exception of "Estrymnides," as they were called by Festus Avienus, a poet who wrote " De oris

I suspect that the Scillonians, when at a loss for a local designation, sometimes coin one. A very old man told me that Troutbeck engaged a guide to the different places, and wrote down their names as they were reported to him by his cicerone. On one occasion they came to a tall rock, upon which the sun was shining. The man, not knowing what else to say, boldly affirmed that it was the "sun rock," and so it stands in Troutbeck:-à propos of him, I saw at a farm, called London, a set of antique tea-spoons and a sugar-spoon, that had belonged to the historian, marked with his initials J. T.

† Woodley.

DD