Notes On Literature, Science, And Art.

NOTES ON LITERATURE , SCIENCE , AND ART .

BY BRO . GEORGE MAKKHAM TWEDDELL . Author of "Shakspere , his Times and Contemporaries , " " The Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Dicrhamf " The People ' s History of Cleveland ancl its Vicinage , " " The Visitor ' s Handbook to liedcar , Coatham , and Saliburn by the . Sea" " The History of the Stockton and Darlington Railway" etc ., etc .

T AM glad to see that an Exhibition of Wild-flowers ancl Grasses has been held in the - * - Baker Street Hall at Hull ; for , as Thomas Campbell sang , in strains that will echo through the vaults of Time , as long as the English language remains" Ye field flowers ! the gardens ecli 'tis true

pse you , , Yet , wild lings of Nature , I dote upon you , For ye waft me to summers of old , "When tho earth teem'd around me with fairy delight , And when daisies and buttercups gladdened my sight , Lite treasures of silver and gold . "

On one of the sultriest days of the present summer—tired with a week ' s daily travelling to and from business , along the heated roads of the great metropolis , as a single unit oi the never-ceasing crowd that throngs its streets—I sought the purer air and comparative repose of Primrose Hill . Of the magnificent view therefrom , in all directions , I will not now dilate . The twenty-sixth of June was not a time for looking for primroses , even in the colder north , where every flower comes forth about a month later than in

the sunny south . But I could not help thinking how , when Shakspere was an actor at the Globe and the Blackfriars' Theatres , he might here have gathered thousands of what was evidently one of his favourite wild-flowers ; and that , even after his bones were mouldered into dust—as the sexton of Stratford-on-Avon , according to Washington Irving , peeped through a hole in the tomb ancl saw it—the children ' s children of the children ' s children whom he met in London might also have there found

" Tho violets , cowslips , ancl tho primroses , " as easily as the Ladies in his Cymbeline found those for the Queen , which he makes her ( Act i ., Scene 6 th ) " bear to my closet . " But who can find a root of the Primula vulgaris there now ? And yet our forefathers did not name it Primrose Hill without just cause . I would be sorry to see it made into an artificial pleasaunce ; but mi ght not a few hundred roots of primroses be lanted here ancl there around its slopesat a

p grassy , very sli ght expense , and be allowed to spread with joy to many a poor city-imprisoned slave of Mammon , who never can seek them in their sylvan haunts ? One single policeman on dut y woidd be sufficient to keep watch ancl ward over them ; and , if no other means would prevent the London roughs from destroying them , let us publicly flog them on the benches placed on the summit of the Hill—for which purpose , if no more stalwart wm coidd be foundI would volunteer to officiate " free gratisfor nothing" and to

, , , find my own whipcord . Seriously , I would recommend the planting of wild primroses —we clon't want the cultivated kinds—on Primrose Hill . _ Mr . John Rowell Waller— -a working-man , who wisely devotes his leisure hours to literary studies , and who has long been known as a contributor of prose ancl verse to the North of England newspapers , which half a century ago would have made him famous—has just published a little volume of commendable poetry , under the quaint