1

Fresh were his features, his attire was new;

Clean was his linen and his jacket blue;

Of finest jean his trousers, tight and trim,
Brushed the large buckle at the silver rim.(1)

A small boy, the son of a poor school-master, off for a holiday,

His fond and anxious mother in his best,

Her darling child for the occasion drest;

All in his coat of green she clothed her boy,
And stood admiring with a mother's joy:

Large was it made and long, as meant to do

For Sunday service, when he older grew,

Not brough, in daily use in one year's wear or two.

White was his waist coat and what else he wore

Had clothed the lamb or parent ewe before
Inall the mother showed her care or skill;

A riband black she tied beneath his frill;
Gave him his stockins, white as driven snow,
And bade him heed the miry way below,

On the black varnish of the comely shoe,

Shone the large buckle of a silvery hue. (1) Crabbe II. 154.

Boots had he worn, had he such things possest

But bootless grief!- he was full proudly drest.(1)

Education.

Crabbe attempts to show us a group of schools as

they were to be found in the Borough. He begins with a school kept by a dame, the description has already been quoted.

Education in England at this period was at a very

low ebb, out of onehundred and thir.ysix schools in Bedfordshire fortysix were kept by dames. We have no reason to suppose that the proportion was less in Suffolk. The richer classes believed that education would unfit the poor for their position in life and the appalling number of three children was left ignorant for every one that had the opportunity of education. (2) Though Crabbe shows us schools for every class we mus. not forget this fact. The second school mentioned by Crabbe is,

Where humming students gilded primers read;
Or books with letters large and pictures gay,
To make their reading but a kind of play -

(1) Crabbe VIII. 12. (2) Walpole p.212.