both. Equal disappointments, I fancy, have been experienced by those who believed human happiness to reside in solitudes like these, as in the busier scenes of life.

"Doubtless," said Mr. Aitkins, "you are right; yet methinks, I have had my share of the struggle, and should conceive I have purchased, by past activity, a right to dreamy idleness,"and here he sighed, as he suppressed something" for the remainder of my days."

A summons to tea interrupted our discourse. Miss Netterville, with her aunt, awaited us in an adjoining apartment. Graceful and gay, she rallied us on our serious, if not sombre, air; so that the conveyance which was to bring us back to town, found us in the midst of an animated and well-sustained discourse.

CHAPTER XV.

PERKINS' THEME.

"Es reden und träumen die Menschen viel,
Von bessern künftigen Tagen,
Nach einem glücklichen goldnen Ziel;

Sieht man sie rennen und jagen.
Die Welt wird alt und wird wieder jung,

Doch der Mensch hofft immer Verbesserung!"

It was the practice of the time, and probably continues so, to give out subjects for composition in Greek, Latin, or English, to the young men. It may all be very well, as an exercise of ingenuity, to attempt to clothe modern notions and ideas in languages so long extinct-spoken by nations, too, who thought, felt, and acted in

material respects, so very differently from ourselves. Flagrant grammatical errors, by dint of sedulous care and attention, may be weeded out, but there must be every other defect; solecisms without number, incongruous mixtures of the words, phrases, and ideas of different periods, idiomatic barbarisms-in short, an accumulation of all the blunders, any one of, which would prove destructive to the reputation of a modern writer.

The decadence of nations, a copious theme, was the subject of the academic exercise. Lest the intricacies of the subject however, should not prove sufficiently numerous in English, the young men were permitted, if not enjoined, to clothe their conceptions in Latin or Greek ;Sanscrit or Arabic might have been substituted with almost equal propriety. I hesitated whether I should preserve the following imbodiment of his ideas from Perkins' fervid pen. It is but a fragment, after all; and neither claims nor courts perusal from any, save those for whom

his virtues have attractions, and his genius

charms.

"THE DECADENCE OF NATIONS." "The fate of nations is the fate of individuals; they rise by their merits-they fall by their defects. This is a hard doctrine, but it is true. It seems unjust to make the innocent and welldoing of a community suffer from the misconduct of the guilty-the descendants for the errors of their predecessors. It cannot be otherwise; we are all connected-part and parcel of each other. What we do, others feel -what others do, we feel. As impinging circles, when a stone is thrown into the water, eventually reach the uttermost bank; so the acts and deeds of each man, each people, extend their influence beyond the present period and scene, and affect nations and multitudes unborn. As every deed, and thought, and word, must influence the absent, and those who are to come after us; so it is undoubted that the condition of each among us is mainly the result of the

deeds, the words, the thoughts, and the emotions of our cotemporaries, and more especially of those who have gone before.

"If our predecessors have acted wisely and well; if they have been provident, temperate, just, so much the better will it fare with us: if, on the other hand, they have been intemperate, improvident, unjust, by so much will our lot be deteriorated. It is impossible, whether as nations or individuals, to escape the consequences of our actions. Lofty deeds and generous aspirings will not be transacted or experienced in vain; and with not less certainty, ignoble achievements and sordid tendencies will work their own eventual overthrow and punishment. Let any man pursue unintermittingly, for months and years, some magnanimous purpose; let him act upon it by day, and brood over it by night, with all his mind, with all his heart, with all his strength-in a word, let him make it the business and purpose of his life, and shall he not succeed,-shall he not realize