ington Irving, Cooper, and Byron, afforded him much amuse ment and pleasant instruction. His favorite author was Shakspere, and I think a week never passed without his perusing more or less of the productions of the great dramatist. He read with wonderful rapidity, and seemed to gather, by intuition, the prominent facts and incidents of every book he looked through. He passed over a book so quickly, and at the same time so understandingly, that a fellow pupil once observed: "Prentiss reads two pages at the same time, one with his right eye, and the other with his left."

He quickly made himself master of the common office business; and I soon perceived that he possessed the qualifications required for eminence as an advocate. His memory was astonishingly tenacious, his imagination warm and prolific; he reasoned with great accuracy and logical force, while his power of illustration seemed exhaustless. He was generous and highminded, despising all meanness, and loved to satirize folly, and ridicule affectation.

When he left Maine for the West, he hoped to better his fortunes, and acquire fame in his profession; at that time, I think, he had little ambition for political life. To him it was painful to leave his home for a distant land, and yet there was in it something romantic, which suited his disposition. He had confidence in his own success, and thought, that in a few years, he should return to New England with a competency of property, and a well-established reputation as a lawyer.

His part of the correspondence with his classmate Appleton, is missing. But the following extracts from his friend's letters to him, while he was in the office of Judge Pierce, will, in some degree, supply its place.

WILLIAM APPLETON TO S. S. PRENTISS.

MY DEAR CHUм:

AMHERST, N. H., February 28, 1827.

I am very much obliged to you for your last letter, but was a good deal amused at the moralizing tone which was preserved through the whole of it, as I had always con

sidered you, of all my acquaintance, the one most calculated to enjoy life. Pardon me for saying that I think it rather foolish for a person whose prospects for the future are as bright as yours (and I really think that you have a better right to entertain high expectations than almost any of your classmates), to rail at the world and permit a few scurvy blue-devils to take away the comfort of your existence. The world is good enough for any of its inhabitants; at any rate we have no reason to expect an Expurgata edition of it, compared and revised, and as we cannot hope that it will change its organization to adapt itself to our wishes, we had better try to make the necessary change in ourselves, that we may fall in with it. You talk a good deal about the complying easiness of my disposition. I consider it as one of the greatest misfortunes of my life, that I have gone to extremes in that respect. I have never scolded about the world much, because I unfortunately have always found, on the slightest examination, that much the greatest number of my troubles I am to thank myself for, and I have not possessed energy and perseverance enough to remove the causes. But our cases are materially different. I have a right to be lowspirited if I will. But you have no possible reason for being so; leaving college and entering on the study of a profession, as you did, with a high reputation both for talents and scholarship, and with a fluency of speech which is almost enough in itself to ensure one success at the bar.

The Court of Common Pleas has been sitting in this town for the last week, but has been enlivened by no interesting trial. The bar of this county contains no very brilliant orators, and there is scarcely ever a plea worth hearing even in the Superior Court, except those of the Attorney-General (Mr. Sullivan). I am still engaged in wallowing in the deep mire of old Coke's Commentary, and shall, I assure you, be really rejoiced when I finish it. There is unquestionably a good deal of valuable law knowledge contained in it, but it requires the patience of Job to extricate it from the gnant garu in which it is arrayed. You have before this, I suppose, read through half the elementary works; but I find that I am obliged to read very slowly to effect

anything, and after all find myself most .amentably ignorant of what I have been reading.

I have some expectation of a visit from T- next week. I had a letter from him a short time since, and was surprised at the common-sense manner in which it was written. He says that he has discarded Lord Byron and phrenology "in toto," and gives Tom Paine to the devil, who, he doubts not, has long ere this boiled him down to the consistency of calves'-foot jelly. He says that he "has determined to be a minister, and shall begin the study on leaving college." He mentions hearing from you not long before he wrote. He has been teaching school. I am in daily expectation of a letter from McLellan, although he is very little to be calculated upon, from his carelessness about writing. He still unites the professions of law and poetry. As the stage has just arrived, I beg you will excuse me one moment while I run to the post office to see if any letters have arrived. [Five minutes after. Not a line nor a syllable from any of my friends, not even a newspaper to console me in some measure for the disappointment; so I will proceed with my letter.

I had a letter from Hilliard the next day after I received yours, although the dates of the letters differed more than a week. The delay of yours was owing to your not directing it "via Boston," as did Hilliard. I wish that you would do so in future, as I want to get your letters as soon as possible. Hilliard mentioned that he expected a visit from Farrar. Remember me very particularly to him if you see him. Your description of our jovial times while in college, thrilled through my very heart-strings. As our friend Ossian very well observes, "the memory of joys that are past are pleasant and mournful to the soul."

I wish I knew the line which rhymes to

"Yes, they were happy days but they are fled."

and I would give you as pretty a little quotation off-hand as you have seen for some time. I have grown most extravagantly sentimental lately, to qualify myself to talk to our girls, whose conversation is divided between sentiment and scandal; so you must not laugh if I do sometimes quote poetry just by way of

keeping ny hand in. The topics of conversation among the Gorham belles are not, I hope, so limited. Tell Hilliard that I shall answer his letter very soon. My respects to your family and all my other friends.

Ever yours affectionately,

WM. APPLETON.

Write as soon as you can possibly with convenience. Remember me to Capt. R.'s cigar-box.

FROM THE SAME то THE SAME.

WELL, CHUM,

LONDONDERRY, N. H., May 6, 1827.

I will again endeavor to hammer out my small ideas to cover three pages of letter paper. I received your epistle, by due course of mail, with the pleasure that I always feel in hearing from you. Since writing to you I have cut Blackstone and the law, and am now a sober, plodding pedagogue. My stipend is, of course, increased with the time that I spend in instruction. Thirty dollars per month for teaching scholars what I never knew myself; next term I shall have thirty-five dollars. I had some thoughts of accepting an offer of a school in Baltimore, which would bring me in something like six or seven hundred dollars a-year, but concluded that my age, and other reasons, would make my present situation preferable. In case I had accepted, I should have been obliged to take the superintendence of a large and, for aught I know, a turbulent school.

"I am very sorry that you are so much disposed to submit to the dominion of the blue-devils, and I know of no reason for your giving up yourself to their tyranny. With regard to your scheme of a Western expedition, I know of no reason why it should not succeed, f you feel disposed to settle so far from your friends. That consideration would, I should think, have considerable weight with you-it certainly would with me. I hope you have given up all idea of going off, however. Talents and perseverance will succeed anywhere; and Maine, if we may

judge by the numbers of professional men that emigrate there, presents a fair field for exertion. If I should ever be admitted to the bar, I think I shall nail up my shingle in some back town, where there are good mill privileges, and trust to Providence for an influx of clients and business. I shall pursue my present occupation at least two years, I think, as I have no desire to become a lawyer until I have arrived at the legal age of discre tion.

"I suppose Hilliard is still at Warren; I am expecting a letter from him every day. Do you know whether Lord has returned home? I directed a letter for him to New York some time since, which was, however, I fear, too late. I had a letter from T—— a short time since, in which he inquires after you. He will return to Brunswick next term, to take his degree. He tells me very soberly that he is engaged to "an excellent girl in N-:' I shall write him a letter of congratulation on the event and, also, on the common-sense style that characterizes his letter. This excellent girl, whose name I don't know, will, I hope, sober him down into an every-day sort of man. If some strange and foolish traits in his character were smoothed down a little, he has talents enough to enable him to make quite a figure in the world.

John Cleveland is keeping school within twenty miles of me, at Andover.

Time creeps with me very much, about these days. I have no acquaintances to visit, and no books to read out of school hours. If it were not for Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery, I should have a most miserable time; but I find tobacco-smoke an infallible specific against blue-devils, as well as the mosquitoes. I wish, chum, you could contrive some means of visiting here.

The preceptor whom 1 assist, is a very pleasant and sociable man. His family is about the only one that I visit. This is very dull for me-to whom existence, without intercourse of friends to enliven it, was always a burden. Study occupies some of my leisure time; but you know, by experience, how hard it is to bend one's mind down to study after spending six hours in that confuser of ideas, a public school. I am obliged to study