have taken wing at length in the brilliant form of The Rivals. The
literary labors of her husband were less fanciful, but not, perhaps,
less useful, and are chiefly upon subjects connected with education, to
the study and profession of which he devoted the latter part of his
life. Such dignity, indeed, did his favorite pursuit assume in his own
eyes, that he is represented (on the authority, however, of one who was
himself a schoolmaster) to have declared, that "he would rather see his
two sons at the head of respectable academies, than one of them prime
minister of England, and the other at the head of affairs in Ireland."

At the age of seven years, Richard Brinsley Sheridan was, with his elder
brother, Charles Francis, placed under the tuition of Mr. Samuel Whyte,
of Grafton Street, Dublin,--an amiable and respectable man, who, for
near fifty years after, continued at the head of his profession in that
metropolis. To remember our school-days with gratitude and pleasure, is
a tribute at once to the zeal and gentleness of our master, which none
ever deserved more truly from his pupils than Mr. Whyte, and which the
writer of these pages, who owes to that excellent person all the
instructions in English literature he has ever received, is happy to
take this opportunity of paying. The young Sheridans, however, were
little more than a year under his care--and it may be consoling to
parents who are in the first crisis of impatience, at the sort of
hopeless stupidity which some children exhibit, to know, that the dawn
of Sheridan's intellect was as dull and unpromising as its meridian day
was bright; and that in the year 1759, he who, in less than thirty years
afterwards, held senates enchained by his eloquence and audiences
fascinated by his wit, was, by common consent both of parent and
preceptor, pronounced to be "a most impenetrable dunce."

From Mr. Whyte's school the boys were removed to England, where Mr. and