Blackstone, speaking of apprenticeships, says, “They are useful to the commonwealth, by employing of youth, and learning them to be early industrious.”
The same author says, “These payments (alluding to first fruits) were only due if the heir was of full age, but if he was under the age of twenty-one being a male, or fourteen being a female, the lord was entitled to the wardship of the heir, and was called the guardian in chivalry.”—Comm. book ii. c. 5. p. 67.
Dower.
The seisin of the husband, for a transitory instant only, when the same act which gives him the estate conveys it also out of him again, (as where, by a fine, land is granted to a man, and he immediately renders it back by the same fine,) such a seisin will not entitle the wife to dower: for the land was merely in transitu, and never rested in the husband, the grant and render being one continued act. But if the land abides in him for the interval of but a single moment, it seems that the wife shall be endowed thereof.—Black. Comm. book ii. c. 8. p. 132.
The author adds in a note: “This doctrine was extended very far by a jury in Wales, where the father and son were both hanged in one cart, but the son was supposed to have survived the father, by appearing to struggle longest; whereby he became seised of an estate in fee by survivorship, in consequence of which seisin his widow had a verdict for her dower.”—Cro. Eliz. 503.[520]
An unintentional Imitation extempore
of the 196th and 7th stanzas of the
2d canto of Don Juan.
A mother bending o’er her child in prayer.
An arm outstretch’d to save a conquer’d foe.
The daughter’s bosom to the father’s lips laid bare.
The Horatii when they woo’d the blow
That say’d a nation’s blood, a young girl fair
Tending a dying husband’s bed of woe,
Are beautiful; but, oh, nor dead nor living.
Is aught so beautiful as woman wrong’d forgiving.
For there she is, the being who hath leant
In lone confiding love and weakness all
On us—whose unreproaching heart is rent
By our deed; yet on our cheek but fall
A tear, or be a sigh but spent.
She sinks upon the breast whence sprang the gall
That bitter’d her heart’s blood, and there caressing.
For pain and misery accords a blessing.——
Note for the Editor.—“An unintentional imitation” may sound something like a solecism, although a very little reflection will prove it to be far otherwise. I had been reading Don Juan till I had it by heart, and nightly spouted to the moon Julia’s letter and the invocation to the isles of Greece. I had a love fracas; a reconciliation, as one of the two alternative natural consequences, took place, and the foregoing were part of some propitiatory measures that effected it. At the time of writing them I had no more idea of imitating Byron, than has my Lord Chief Justice Best, in his charge to the jury in a newspaper cause, or crim. con. I wrote them rapidly, scarcely lifting my pen till they were finished, and certainly without bestowing a word or thought on any thing, except the image I pursued; but my mind had received a deep impression from my late reading, and my thoughts assumed the form they did from it, unknown to me. Some months afterwards, I was reciting the passage from Byron alluded to; I had heard something like it; I repeated it: I was more struck; I rack’d my brain and my lady’s letter-box, and made this discovery.
J. J. K.