some, however, as there are several scholars in Greek, and 1 never possessed a tolerable knowledge of the language, and long ago forgot what little I ever knew. My Latin, I find, holds by me better; so that I can about always explain a hard sentence to an inquiring scholar. There are two or three scholars in Geometry and Nat. Phil.; and, that I might not show my ignorance, I rattled off so about angles, and sides, and the attraction of gravitation, and Sir Isaac Newton and the apple, and solids, and fluids, and convergent and divergent rays, that, I verily believe, the fellows thought me a sort of prodigy; when, in truth, if a person who knew anything about the matter, had been present, he would have laughed in my face. I, as well as the scholars, am impatiently expecting the vacation, which commences in a day or two, and lasts three weeks. So your next letter, if written within two or three weeks, must be directed to Amherst.

I shall send you a catalogue of this academy-not that I have the slightest idea that you care anything about it, but in order to dispose of one, out of twenty which the boys have handed to me. You will light some cigars with it, and when you use the third page for that purpose, let tender recollections come athwart your mind of your absent friend.

I will however, bore you no longer. Remember me to all my friends in your quarter. My respects to your mother and family.

Your affectionate Quondam,

APPLETON.

FROM THE SAME то THE SAME.

LONDONDERRY, June 26, 1827.

DEAR CHUM :

While I was writing those two words the con founded bell of the academy tolled a death-note to the hopes I had of writing to you by this morning's mail; but I will try if I can prepare a letter in readiness for the next. I continue to

PROPHECY OF THE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR CASE. 45

Joze on in my usual torpid state-a state which a campaign in school-keeping will produce in any one; I am now so accustomed to it that it does not make me, as at first, positively miserable, and, I am sure, it can never make me more than negatively happy.

I doubt not that you will succeed well in the Western States; indeed, I think the chance of success so much greater there than in New England, that, if it were not for one or two reasons, I should almost be tempted to accompany you.

I heard from our friend T- yesterday. He has entered college again, and appears to be as much as ever dissatisfied with things about him. He said he should write you soon; confirms what he formerly wrote me about his engagement: and says he shall commence the study of divinity immediately upon leaving college, with one of the Episcopalian bishops! I am sorry to hear, by a letter from Lord, that his former complaints have, of late, somewhat disturbed him; he says, if they increase, he shall, probably, cross the Atlantic. What a grand thing this money is, chum! as you will experience when you gain your hundredthousand-dollar case, purely by the force of your eloquence, with neither law nor reason on your side. You still, I suppose, find your cigar a never-failing refuge in your troubles. I don't know how I should be able to support existence without some such comforter-not that it gives me any positive pleasure to smoke, but it deadens the acuteness of my feelings whenever anything happens to trouble me.

You have, by this time, become quite a proficient in legal lore, I imagine. I left the study before I had gone any further than the rudiments, and the very little that I learned I have forgotten. I shall not recommence the study if I can continue in my present situation, or obtain another as eligible, for a year at least; at the end of that time I hope to be more able to penetrate its mysteries.

A very large proportion of our class are studying law, I should think. I shall have an opportunity of seeing their success before I attempt the practice. Bob S is in Andover Institution! He must make a most dignified appearance among

the black-bearded, long-whiskered students of divinity, whose age averages at least twenty-five years. Cleaveland is studying law in Andover; and Jonas we pedagogues rank in our frater. nity. I know not how it is, but I feel a great interest in all my class-mates, though there were but two or three that, while in college, I ever cared a copper about, or who, I have reason to think, held me at that value. If I could meet any member of the Spouteroi, I should feel in the seventh heaven.

Judge Pierce alludes to his fonduess for the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Large portions of Scott's poetry he early committed to memory. The introduction to Canto III. of Marmion, was a great favorite with him. A portion of it deserves to be quoted, as the lines, by some subtle link of association, became indissolubly connected with his recollections of New England, and the home of his boyhood. Those who heard him recite them, many years afterwards, cannot have forgotten the subdued and gentle spirit in which he did it. As by an enchanter's wand, they seemed to unseal the mystic fountain of memory, and the waters gushed out.

But say, my Erskine, hast thou weighed
That secret power by all obeyed,
Which warps not less the passive mind,
Its source concealed or undefined;
Whether an impulse, that has birth
Soon as the infant wakes on earth,
One with our feelings and our powers,
And rather part of us than ours;
Or whether fitlier termed the sway
Of habit, formed in early day?
Howe'er derived, its force confest
Rules with despotic sway the breast,
And drags us on by viewless chain,
While taste and reason plead in vain.
Look east, and ask the Belgian why,
Beneath Batavia's sultry sky,
He seeks not, eager to inhale,
The freshness of the mountain gale,
Content to rear his whitened wall

Beside the dank and dull canal?
He'll say from youth he loved to see
The white sail gliding by the tree.
Or see yon weather-beaten hind,
Whose sluggish herds before him wind,
Whose tattered plaid and rugged cheek
His northern clime and kindred speak;
Through England's laughing meads he goes,
And England's wealth around him flows;
Ask, if it would content him well,
At ease in these gay plains to dwell,
Where hedgerows spread a verdant screen,
And spires and forests intervene,
And the neat cottage peeps between ?
No, not for these will he exchange
His dark Lochaber's boundless range;
Nor for fair Devon's meads forsake
Bennevis grey and Garry's lake.

Thus while I ape the measure wild
Of tales that charmed me yet a child,
Rude though they be, still with the chime,
Return the thoughts of early time;

And feelings, roused in life's first day,
Glow in the line, and prompt the lay.

Then rise those crags, that mountain tower,
Which charmed my fancy's wakening hour.
Though no broad river swept along

To claim, perchance, heroic song;
Though sighed no groves in summer gale,
To prompt of love a softer tale;
Though scarce a puny streamlet's speed
Claimed homage from a shepherd's reed
Yet was poetic impulse given,

By the green hill and clear blue heaven
It was a barren scene, and wild,
Where naked cliffs were rudely piled:

But ever and anon between

Lay velvet tufts of loveliest green;

And well the lonely infant knew
Recesses where the wall-flower grew,
And honey-suckle loved to crawl

Up the low crag and ruined wall,

I deemed such nooks the sweetest shade

The sun in all his round surveyed;

And still I thought that shattered tower

The mightiest work of human power;

And marvelled, as the aged hind

With some strange tale bewitched my mind,

Of forayers, who, with headlong force,

Down from that strength had spurred their horse, Their southern rapine to renew,

Far in the distant Cheviot's blue,

And home returning filled the hall
With revel, wassail-rout, and brawl.
Methought that still with trump and clarg
The gate-way's broken arches rang;
Methought grim features, seamed with scars,
Glared through the window's rusty bars.
And ever, by the winter hearth,
Old tales I heard of woe or mirth,

Of lovers' sleights, and ladies' charms,

Of witches' spells, of warriors' arms;

Of patriot battles, won of old

By Wallace wight and Bruce the bold;

Of later fields of feud and fight,

When pouring from their highland height,

The Scottish clans, in headlong sway,

Had swept the scarlet ranks away.

While stretched at length upon the floor,

Again I fought each combat o'er,
Pebbles and shells, in order laid,

The mimic ranks of war displayed;

And onward still the Scottish lion bore,

And still the scattered Southron fled before.

Still, with vain fondness, could I trace, Anew, each kind familiar face,

That brightened at our evening fire:

From the thatched mansion's grey-haired sire;

Wise without learning, plain and good,

And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood;

Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen,

Showed what in youth its glance had been ;

Whose doom discording neighbors sought,

Content with equity unbought;

To him the venerable priest,

Our frequent and familiar guest,

Whose life and manners well could paint

Alike the student and the saint:

Alas! whose speech too oft I broke
With gambol rude and timeless joke:
For I was wayward, bold, and wild,
A self-willed imp, a grandame's child;
But, half a plague and half a jest,
Was still endured, beloved, carest.