wonderful lamp. The Forty Thieves waited until nightfall in a coppice near the town. Oberon and Titania held their revels in the moonlight, and a hundred dainty sprites did

"Hop in my walks, and gambol in mine eyes."

Then passed in long array the creations of Bunyan; I saw the Slough of Despond on the swampy marshes, or looked beyond to the distant wicket, where stretched the walls of Beelzebub's castle, high and embattled;-GreatHeart and Giant Despair swept by. I heard the roaring of the lions, and saw the cave strewed with human bones. The sun sank over the Delectable Mountains, and the forms of the shepherds faded away in the descending twilight until all assumed the look of the Enchanted Land, or amid the darkness rose the Valley and Shadow of Death. Even the river-depths were peopled, and the clouds mirrored therein were the roofs of crystal palaces, where Nymph and Syren dwelt, and bore the bodies of the drenched mariners to coral couches, and sang over them their wild sea-songs. These and a thousand other such waking visions were ever before me, all interspersed and varied like a field of flowers in May, and never looked upon without producing a feeling of deep delight.

Such were my boyish reveries; nay, if aught, more highly coloured than I have here given them, and I doubt not but there are thousands besides myself who have had similar thoughts and feelings, although they have never adventured to give them utterance. I have at times tried to imagine the feelings of a man who is about to emigrate, fully convinced that he never again will look upon his native land-to my mind, it brings thoughts allied to death. I could fancy that I was going away to diegoing to live somewhere until Death came-in some huge prison, with a gaol-like sky above it, and an area

that might stretch hundreds of miles with a wide sea around it, on the margin of which I should wander alone, sighing away my soul in wishes to regain my native land. Everything would be strange to me, the landscape would call up no recollections; I should not have even a tree to call my friend, nor a flower which I could say was my own. Ah! after all, it is something to look upon the church-yard where those that we loved are at rest, to gaze upon their graves, and think over what we have gone through with them, and what we would now undergo to recall them from the dead. Reader, pardon these childish thoughts-they forced themselves into my mind, and I have recorded them; they seem to awaken my memory anew and strip me of a score of years: they have a foolish hold of my affections. But surely it is a worthy passion to cherish; there seems something holy about the past; it is freed from all selfishness; we love it for its own sake; we sigh for it, because it can never again be recalled; even as a fond mother broods over the memory of some darling child that is dead, as if she had but then discovered how much her heart loved it. Still, if we all clung with a like affection to the scenes of our childhood, this would be but a spiritless world; the soul of adventure would die away, knowledge would be on the wane, discovery would make but little progress; and that high intellectual state, which so many have gained, would be but little aspired to. It is, perhaps, a truth, that many of the charms which we discover in the past are imaginary; that they only become pleasing through associations, and that the reality is just what the mind thinks, or the heart feels, while contemplating them admitting this to be all, it is even then a high intellectual enjoyment. The generality of mankind reflect too little; it is not the mere reading of books alone that ought to engross the mind; a thousand vo

lumes may be pursued, and the reader find himself but little improved after such a task. There are thousands who spend all their leisure time over books, who but rarely draw their chairs toward the fire, and pass away an hour or two in silent thinking, in holding a solemn converse with themselves. We have within us a huge volume, full of deep interest and experience, the pages of which are too seldom examined, although they teem with simple truths. Let us look at a few of its plainest passages. We are sitting here now-we remember those who formerly assembled around this very hearth; -where are they? What should we have been if such a one had lived? What threw us into our present position? A few angry words have, perchance, altered our situation in life: we were too proud to explain, or we pined for a change. Mere chance perhaps caused us to leave our native home, or there are many events linked with the change.

Many remembered scenes and familiar faces pass through the mind while it is in such a state of contemplation. We seem to live over again the past scenes of our life, and our natures become solemnized after such reflections. I speak not of the necessity of preparing for another state of existence; but if we inure the mind to look steadfastly and seriously on the past, we school it almost imperceptibly for the approach of death. Our notions of death become divested of those terrors which are too often and with bad taste exaggerated: we contemplate it as a natural change-one which is as sure to come as darkness closes upon the day. We look beyond the grave with the eye of faith, and humbly hope to mingle again with those we loved on earth. Our mind becomes hallowed by the images which pass over it; our thoughts are resting-places for the past-the ladder by which we seem to ascend to heaven, and on

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which the spirits of those whose memories we cherish descend.

Riches are not always attended with happiness, nor has poverty misery alone for a companion. An intellectual mind is the surest wealth: contemplative man can create his own happiness. Many a rich man is too often a slave to fashion: he tugs at the galley in chains of gold. To one who, like myself, has been compelled to forego the quiet of rural life, the false gild and glitter of the multitude is more apparent. I look round and see thousands whose lives are spent in search of empty pleasure, in the wearisome monotony of fashion and parade, as if they only studied to drive from the heart all substantial happiness. Society has too many forms, too many customs that signify nothing, as if they were but established to kill time, to make the very least of the hours which they pass together. How small a portion of the time. and expense dedicated to mere form and show, would suffice for the spreading of true happiness, for binding together a knot of kindred hearts which might be made to beat like one-a concentration of sympathies in place of those pretended friendships that spring up, the mere shadows of a night, and melt away like the morning mist. These are not alone my own sentiments-they have fallen from the lips of men whose names rank high in the present day; they have found that their is a want of heart in a mixed and strange society, a want of happiness in the gayest assemblies, a lack of sincerity in the greetings of fashion, a grave mockery in the formal introduction, a frowning welcome too often covered over with a false smile. Yet what crushing and jostling do we daily see among the thousands who are ever eager to be foremost at this splendid misery; they rush to fashion in fifties, and leave true friendship to brood over his own hearth alone. Those who have a kindred feel

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ing with each other are dispersed in these assemblies; the man of wit is surrounded by a circle who must have laughter; the man of genius wastes his thoughts on a group who have grown tired of each other, and have no relish for the beauties which he brings before them ;— and all this is done in the very teeth of common sense, and at the sacrifice of common comfort, because it is a custom. And what is the cause of all this sacrifice but a want of storing the mind with intellectual treasures, of making a dwelling-place therein to which the soul could fly with pleasure, and there find real happiness! All the elements of good feeling are found there—nay, in the veriest slave of fashion you often find a man with a right heart, one who wastes his kindness on a multitude, and is never thoroughly appreciated. Such men, we have seen, attempt to diffuse cheerfulness in a dull company; but it was like hanging up a lamp in a sepulchre -the light fell only on the dead. Those who have the largest circle of acquaintance have in general the fewest friends mankind oftener meet together for amusement than to benefit each other: and many there are who endeavour rather to make themselves feared than loved. True, you sometimes meet with those in the glitter and pomp of this empty parade that you could take to your heart for ever-those with whom you would like to walk, and talk, and make friends of whom you would give your very soul for, if you could but redeem them from the fire of fashion; but you find with regret that they have drunk too deeply of the enchanted cup, and that to meet them often you must lift the poisoned chalice to your own lips. It perhaps but ill becomes me to make

these remarks; however, I have no false dignity to uphold, and have, therefore, blundered them out, believing that they are the truth.

After all, I fear
my

endeavours are too Quixotic; and