per annum was the least that could suffice him to keep up his respectability; and thirty pounds in the fourteenth century was no trifle.

From this we may gather, with tolerable certainty, that this literary patriarch of our nation had the best advantages that could be found in his day, both for intellectual culture, and for keeping up a high standard of what may be called gentlemanly feeling; a great point in times when the multitude was sunk in barbaric ignorance, and when even persons of the higher classes were such as would appear very rude, if they could be compared, in the guise of those times, with the people of the present. Still, there was a highly select circle; and that Gower belonged to it, his works testify.

Chaucer, his early friend, and companion through a great part of their life, although there seems to have been some slight interruption of their intimacy, calls him " THE MORAL GOWER;" and the family of the Marquis of Stafford, being his descendants, and bearing his name, justly boast of this epithet as one of the brightest honours of their house. We may reasonably suppose that if John Gower had lived after the revival of letters, he would have been an eminent linguist; for he wrote in three languages. But he lived just in the dawn that preceded the revival of learning, and was one of those whose labours prepared the way for the great masters of the next century, and for the yet greater teachers of the Gospel itself, who flourished in the succeeding age. His chief works were, first, Speculum Meditantis, "A Manual for Him that meditates," in French. It was a compilation of precepts and examples, drawn from a variety of authors, in favour of domestic morality. The second was Latin, having for its title, Vox Clamantis, "The Voice of One that cries." One day, when King Richard II. was on the river Thames, in his barge, he saw Gower, probably in his own boat; and, paying him the courtesy which our Kings were wont to vouchsafe to favoured subjects with whom they wished to have free conversation, Richard called him on board the royal barge, and requested him "to booke some new thing.'

It is not likely that young Richard II. would set a clever

scribe to work without prescribing the subject. It was in his reign that the populace were stirred up to sedition by an insupportable burden of taxation, imposed on them for earrying on war with France, and the tax-gatherers, by their brutality, brought a flood of vengeance on themselves. It was then that a hundred thousand men assembled on Blackheath, led by Wat Tyler and Jack Straw; and it was then that the gallantry of Richard, who threw himself among the rioters, at Mile-End, saying that he would be their leader, and the good sense of Englishmen, under God, saved England from a most sanguinary revolution. It was then that the masses of the people conceived, not without provocation, a bitter hatred of the aristocracy; and the cry was thundered throughout all England, when people met by thousands to hear inflammatory speeches,

"When Adam delved, and Eve span,

Where was then the gentleman ?"

Of course, the reaction was outrageous; and mob-orators, calling themselves Preachers, made the most of the occasion. The result, then, of that conversation between the King and Gower, was a book, written in Latin, the universal language of the Clergy, and of the better-informed, who associated with them. And the subject of this Vox Clamantis was a Chronicle, or Poem,-for many of the Chronicles were written in a metrical form,-concerning "the insurrection of the peasants against the free and noble, and the causes whence those enormities proceeded." This noble student of the Temple, who was witty, well read in such lore as was, but not violent, and a person of high aristocratic sentiment, was just the writer fit to be employed on that work. They say that, after the violent death of his patron, Richard, he made some slight alteration, to adapt it to the taste of Henry IV., his successor. Some have charged him with servility on this account; but there is no reason to believe that the alteration was considerable. The probable date of the first publication of this metrical Chronicle is supposed to have been in the year 1397.

His most famous book was the Confessio Amantis, wherein he censured the vices of the Clergy. A fin

opportunity for the performance of so good a service could be found in this "Confession of a Lover," the Father Confessor being a Priest of Venus,-very like, no doubt, a Priest of the Pope. He wrote this satire on the confessional in the sixteenth year of the reign of Richard II., when, as he said, both "old and sick," and soon afterwards his eyesight failed. It was not a satire only, but rather a collection of all the moral sentences and stories that he could glean out of old books to suit his purpose. From one of these, the "Story of Two Caskets," we will give a specimen of the rude poetry of the first English poet, if poet he may be called. There was a certain King, whose nobles were dissatisfied with the very scanty rewards he had given them for their services, supposing that he had treasured up great wealth for himself; and two of them undertook to represent the general dissatisfaction, and their own in particular. The King commanded two caskets to be made, precisely alike, one filled with rubbish, and the other with gold and jewels, and set on a table before him, in presence of the Court. He told the two complainants of the inequality of the contents, but invited them to choose which they would take. After consultation, one of them touched one of the caskets with his rod, and it was immediately given to him and his companion, the other remaining with the King. The upshot is told thus, and the lines may serve both as a specimen of Gower's poetry, and of the rude English that proceeded from the pen of one who was, next to Chaucer, reputed the best writer of our language, nay, the only one who, until then, had condescended to write a book in it:

"The King, which wolde his honor save, Whan he had heard the common vois,

Hath granted hem her owne chois,

And toke hem thereupon the keie ;

But for he wolde it were seie

What good they have as they suppose,

He bad anon the cofre unclose,

Which was fulfild with straw and stones!

Thus they be served all at ones.

"This King than, in the same stede, Anon that other cofre undede,

There may be a moral in the tale, but we must confess that the poetry is yet unborn.

John Gower died rich, in the year 1404. He bequeathed only a hundred pounds to his wife in cash, but left her some very valuable estates in various parts of the country; and was buried in the collegiate church of St. Mary Overy, now called St. Saviour's, in Southwark, where a splendid marble monument was erected to his memory, and still exists, although somewhat changed by less skilful restorations. In great part, if not altogether, he had defrayed the cost of rebuilding that church. John Foxe mentions him: "By his sepulture within the chapel of the church of St. Mary Overy, which was then a monastery, it appeareth by his chain and his garland of laurel that he was both a Knight, and flourishing then in poetry; in which place of his sepulture were made in his gravestone three books: the first, bearing the title Speculum Meditantis; the second, Vox Clamantis; the third, Confessio Amantis. Besides these, divers chronicles and other works more he compiled." Several of these lesser works exist in manuscript, and are described by Todd, in his "Illustrations of the Lives and Writings of Chaucer and Gower."

THE KAFFIR PROPHET.

[THE pretension of the leader of the Chinese rebellion to have communication with heaven, and to be brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, is well known. We have heard of a less conspicuous person attempting a similar imposture in India. And now comes the Kaffir Umlanjene.]

Ir is not to be imagined that British supremacy in Kaffirland deprived the natives of personal liberty, or of

any part of their property. No tax, no tribute, was ever demanded of them; nor was there any interference with their national customs, except when such customs proved prejudicial to life or property. Then, for the protection of the oppressed, British power interposed, and demanded justice from the Kaffir Chiefs. Such demands were intolerable to the despotic Chiefs; and this coupled with the prompt and vigorous conduct of the Kaffir police in following the trail of cattle stolen from the colony, and bringing the guilty parties to justice-was the restraint imposed by British supremacy. To get free from this was, in my opinion, the aim of the late war.

He

To accomplish this object, recourse was had to the most powerful agency that could be brought to bear upon the Kaffir mind; namely, the ravings of Umlanjene. This Kaffir impostor was, comparatively, a young man. belonged to the Slambie tribe, and resided not far from the Mount-Coke Mission-station. Of his early life little was known; but subsequently, he obtained an influence greater than any Chief or "Doctor" had ever wielded: even the celebrated "Makana" of the war of 1819 did not possess half the influence of Umlanjene. To perceive the point in Umlanjene's ravings, it must be remembered, that at this time the Kaffir tribes generally had received some imperfect notions of Christian theology. Hence, with his Kaffir teachings, he incorporated statements like the following:That he had been in the heavens; that there he had seen GOD and His Son; that he had heard and seen "the wonders of GOD;" that he had seen that the Son of GOD was wounded, and heard that it was the white man who had wounded the Son of GOD, and that GOD was wroth with the white man, and would destroy him. Hence it went abroad that the white race was under the ban or curse of GOD, and might easily be destroyed. Umlanjene claimed a perfect knowledge of all things, and the power to inflict the greatest tortures, as also that of rendering the Kaffirs secure against any violence, giving to each warrior a small piece of a branch of a tree, which would act as a charm, to shield him in battle. The excitement into which Kaffirland was