[9] Miss Gurney, who has honourably been hailed as "the Elstob of her age," privately printed her own close version of the "Saxon Chronicle" from the printed text, 1810. Happy lady! who, when sickness had made her its prisoner, opened the "Saxon Chronicle;" and she learned that she might teach the learned. The Rev. Dr. INGRAM, principal of Trinity College, Oxon, has since published his translation, accompanied by the original, a collation of the manuscripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A volume not less valuable than curious. THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL. When learning was solely ecclesiastical and scholastical, there were no preceptors for mankind. The monastery and the university were far removed from the sympathies of daily life; all knowledge was out of the reach of the layman. It was then that the energies of men formed a course of practical pursuits, a system of education of their own. The singular institution of chivalry rose out of a combination of circumstances where, rudeness and luxury mingling together, the utmost refinement was found compatible with barbaric grandeur, and holy justice with generous power. In lawless times they invented a single law which included a whole code--the law of knightly honour. _L'Ordenne de Chevalerie_ is the morality of knighthood, and invests the aspirant with every moral and political virtue as every military qualification.[1] Destitute of a national education, the higher orders thus found a substitute in a conventional system of manners. Circumstances, perhaps originally accidental, became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In this moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement adorned barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in disguise, and it broke out in the forms of imagination, passion, and magnificence, seeking their objects or their semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying the foundations of social order and national glory in Europe. A regular course of practical pursuits was assigned to the future noble "childe" from the day that he left the parental roof for the baronial hall of his patron. In these "nurseries of nobility," as Jonson has well described such an institution, in his first charge as varlet or page, the boy of seven years was an attendant at the baron's table, and it was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the carver and the cupbearer. He played on the viol or danced in the brawls till he was more gravely trained in "the mysteries of woods and rivers," the arts of the chase, and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery, or the falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk, which had not obeyed him had he neglected that daily flattery.