Monthly Review of Literature. 89 



tire, and which we suspect from its characteristic fidelity to be not fictitious 

 but genuine. Let master Sly speak for himself. 



" Dear Dick I copied my school letter to Farther and Mother ten times be- 

 fore one was good enough, and while the teacher is putting the capitals and 

 flourishes in 1 shall slip this off on the sly. Our examination was yesterday 

 and the table was covered with books and things bound in gilt and silk for 

 prizes but were all put away again and none of us got none only they awarded 

 Master Key a new fourpenny bit for his essay on Locke because his friends 

 live next door and little Coombe got the tooth ake so they would not let him 

 try his experiments on vital air which was very scurvy. It didn't come to my 

 turn so I did not get a prize but as the company was to stop tea I put the cat 

 in the water butt which they clean it out in the holidays and they will be sure 

 to find her and we were all treated with tea and I did not like to refuse as they 

 might have suspext something, Last night we had a stocking and bolster 

 fight after we went to bed and I fougt a little lad with a big bolster his name 

 is Bill Barnacle and I knocked his eye out with a stone in my stocking but no 

 body knows who did it because we were all in the dark so I could not see no 

 harm in it. Dear Dick send me directly ypur Wattses Hyms to show for I 

 burnt mine and a lump of cobblers wax for the masters chair on breaking up 

 day and some small shot to pepper the people with my quill gun and eighteen 

 pence in coppers to shy at the windows as we ride through the villiage and 

 make it one and ninepence for there's a good many as Ive a spite against and if 

 farther wont give it you ask mother and say its for yourself and meet me at the 

 Elephant and Castle and if there's room on the coach you can get up for I 

 want to give you some crackers to let off as soon as we get home while they 

 are all a Kissing of me. Your affectionate brother, 



TIMOTHY SLY." 



British Almanac and Companion of the Society for the Diffusion of 



Useful Knowledge. 183?. C. Knight. 

 Statistical Account of the British Empire. By J. R. M'CuLLocn, 



assisted by numerous Contributors. 2 thick 8vo. volumes. C. 



Knight. 



IT is almost a work of supererogation to speak favourably of the British Al- 

 manac of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. If that Society 

 merits but little praise for some of the multifarious books that it has ushered 

 into the world, for this at least its members have fairly earned the warm 

 thanks and gratulations of all classes of his Majesty's subjects. 



The Stationers' Company, who till 1829 enjoyed by prescription the mo- 

 nopoly of the Almanacs, thought that they might foist on the public any 

 rubbish, any absurdity, however puerile ; and hence it was that the learned 

 Francis Moore so long exercised an astrological influence over the minds of 

 thousands, who would have laughed to scorn such villanous trash, proceed- 

 ing from a less renowned and less time-established author. The Society 

 broke the spell of the enchanter and unmasked his tricks and frauds ; the 

 ill-fated conjuror's trade was ruined ; and we believe that he is now defunct, 

 having left his name as the heading for a very curious chapter in the intel- 

 lectual history of the English people. The fear of an interloper roused the 

 Company to some exertion ; anu in 1830, driven to improve by mere slavish 

 necessity, that Corporation published the Englishman's Almanac, to which on 

 the repeal of the Stamp duty by the Whig government (at the instance of 

 many influential members of the above-named Society) they added numerous 

 other year-books of very considerable merit. But it must never be forgotten 

 to whom the praise of such reforms is due, not at all to them, but wholly to 

 the firm determination of Lord Brougham and his colleagues in promoting 

 literary reform. The Almanac of 1837 is, on the whole, the best of any that 



