peaceful kind of abstraction which an indolent man is apt to feel, after a hearty dinner. The stillness which prevailed was only now and then broken by the creaking of Weston's chair, as he threw himself backward, to withdraw his cigar from his mouth, and puff out an uncommonly huge volume of smoke. Frank is what, in college, we call an odd genius; I have never seen him sullen or melancholy for fifteen minutes consecutively; a fountain of good humor seems to be always welling up from the very bottom of his heart, which flows over upon every person or thing with whom he is connected. A sight of his honest, beaming countenance, or the sound of his hearty "how are ye!" is sufficient, at any moment, to disperse a fit of "the blues." His intellectual acquirements will be best estimated from what follows. It was he that first broke the silence.

"What are you thinking of, Davison, that causes such a genial smile to overspread your countenance?"

"I was reflecting on the ludicrous termination of Dick's discourse, last night.

"Eh! what's that, Dick ?"

"Why, Ned and I had an argument about the respective merits and demerits of Fielding and Smollett, and in the midst of an elaborate critique of mine, he fell fast asleep, thereby tacitly giving me the victory, you see.”

"Quite flattering, really."

"Well, Frank," said Davison, "you've read these authors; what's your opinion of them?"

66

I don't like to venture an opinion from the little that I know of them; but if I were obliged to judge, I would say-to Fielding all honor; but as for Smollett, it were better if he had thrown away his pen."

"And why, Weston," said I, "what are your reasons for thinking so hardly of Smollett ?"

"Reasons enough, Hasty. The extreme licentiousness of his writings, first of all. Take Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, for instance ;-they are, simply, sketches of the lives of two rakes, written indeed in a masterly manner, but with immorality and the loosest profligacy, painted in the most seductive colors upon every page. Smollett is said to have been an imitator of Fielding's; in style, he is perhaps almost his equal; but of his sentiment he has caught only the faults; its higher qualities he could never reach. Such a character as Allworthy, Smollett never could have depicted. I find but one parallel to it, the good Vicar of Wakefield; but surely there is nothing either in the characters or fortunes of Roderick Random, or Peregrine Pickle, fitted

"To point a moral, or adorn a tale.'"

"Your objections, Frank, are perhaps well-founded; yet I confess I am not convinced. I have somewhere in my note-book a remark of Scott's, which may well apply to this case. Here it is. "Men," says the great novelist, "will not become swindlers or thieves, because they sympathize with the fortunes of the witty picaroon, Gil Blas, or licentious debauchees, because they read Tom Jones." The same I think may be said, with perfect propriety, of the fictitious writings of Smollett. Take your own example, Peregrine Pickle. The fiery, generous youth, is followed from one scene of debauchery to another; he heaps folly upon folly, and crime upon crime, till he arrives at that crowning act of baseness, the attempted seduction of Emilia. In one place we feel inclined to laugh, in another to weep, but here we turn away utterly disgusted. We look back and readily perceive the train of causes which led to this effect, and the great moral at once bursts upon our minds;-a life of licentiousness, however noble and generous he may originally have been, who passes through it, must eventually not only alienate his friends, but debase, nay, utterly deprave himself. There are, it is true, expressions, sometimes whole passages, which we might wish were not there; but in general, I think that the place which Smollett's fictitious writings have gained among British classics, is well deserved. The good old Saxon-English method of composition, seems now-a-days to be almost forgotten. Look at the essayists whose voluminous works are brought to us across the Atlantic. There's Carlyle and Macaulay, Hazlitt and Kit. North-though perhaps I ought to except the last; names world-renowned, yet I love none of them so well as these fine old novelists, or coming to more recent times, as the quiet, eccentric Charles Lamb."

"Aye, but, Dick," exclaimed Frank, "you couple the names of Fielding and Smollett, without marking the distinction between them. In the former there is but little or no real vulgarity; the latter abounds with it; the licentiousness depicted in the writings of the one is disgusting, in those of the other attractive. Jones is a brave, gallant, high-spirited youth, scorning from the bottom of his heart a base action, and when led into folly and crime by the impetuosity of his temper, bitterly repents his precipitation, and makes the strongest resolutions to reform. Pickle is brave, indeed, but vice and debauchery are to him amusing recreations; he never laments his crimes, except when foiled in his purposes; abuses his best friends, insults his mistress, and finally is dismissed to the same happiness as Jones. This is neither poetical or prose justice, and I repeat again-to Fielding all honor; but the world would suffer little loss were the fictitious writings of Smollett buried in oblivion. But let

Fielding and Smollett go; to your opinion of Charles Lamb, I can most heartily subscribe. There is a quiet, thoughtful simplicity, a truthful, loving humor, in those Essays of Elia,' for which I look in vain elsewhere."

6

"True, Weston, stop a moment. Here is Elia; I open book at a marked place. Now listen.

the

"Antiquity, thou wondrous charm, what art thou? When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity; then thou wert nothing; but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou calld'st it, to look back to with blind veneration, thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern. What mystery lurks in this retroversion? The mighty Future, is as nothing, being every thing, the past being every thing, is nothing. What were thy dark ages? Surely the sun rose as brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in the morning. Why is it that we can never hear mention of them without an accompanying feeling, as though a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and our ancestors had wandered to and fro groping?"

"Now, Weston, this is just what every man feels, but very few can express. I can never think of the times of Pepin and Charlemagne, without fancying a vast pall drawn over the face of things, in whose portentous shade giants, enchanters, and errant knights wandered to and fro groping.' If I try to imagine the sun rising in the morning, I seem to behold a huge red meteor, glaring at me from the East, through fogs of seven-fold density. The waving forests, the green fields, the dancing rivulets, and the great ocean, appeared to be covered with that sort of mongrel darkness which we see in a partial eclipse."

"With me, Hasty," said Weston, "the case is somewhat different. I do not look so much at the appearances of things, as at the things themselves. If any thing could make me melancholy, the reading of history would. I call to mind the many kings, generals, statesmen, poets, and orators, that have sprung into existence, breathed out their brief span of life, and disappeared forever; and then I look around me and behold-what? thousands of eager mortals pursuing the same beaten trackthat track which leads only to the grave and oblivion. I turn over the pages of ancient learning, and reflect that the hand of Homer and the lips of Cicero are now but the veriest dust upon which the vilest slave may trample with impunity. I read of the exploits of Charlemagne and his warriors, and remember only, that

I turn to"

Themselves are dust,

And their good swords rust!'

"Stop! for the love of comfort, stop! Frank," exclaimed Da

vison, starting up, "you're getting too dismally solemn. Who would have expected such horribly gloomy sayings from you? If Charles Lamb induces such feelings as these, do read something else; the Anatomy of Melancholy, for instance. I've been told that's fine; or better buy a Comic Almanac, an infallible remedy for the blues."

"Ned, that's outrageous to interrupt a man just as he's getting into the pathetic-ungentlemanly, inhuman!"

"Hallo!" said I, "there goes the prayer-bell."

"Where! Where !" shouted Ned, running to the window. "None of that, Hal. Throw your cigar into the stove, Frank, and come along: an abominable habit of yours, that smoking!"

JONATHAN QUIZZY, M. A.

HONOR be to the graduates of Old Yale! Already are they found in every land where enterprise invites-where danger challenges, or duty calls. In the nation's councils, their voices sway the public weal-at the Bar, their eloquence wakes up the drowsy ear of justice-on the Bench, their oracular lips deliver legal sentences, which shall be precedents for all coming timein the Pulpit, they clothe the high message of Heaven with more than mortal energy, while a numerous class, stepping into the seclusion of literary retirement,

"Along the cool sequestered vale of life,

Keep on the noiseless tenor of their way."

Among this latter class, perhaps more frequently than in either of the others, is occasionally found an eccentric personage. These are of two sorts: either those whose minds naturally run in an erratic orbit, by the very laws of their being, and therefore, in College parlance, obtain the dubious appellation of "Geniuses;" or those whose understandings have been rudely jostled out of the path which nature meant they should pursue. It is well known to all novel readers and sentimentalists, that the melancholy accident, which most usually causes this disturbance, has its origin in the "tender passion." The poor youth gets crossed in love, and then goes moping about the world, feeding his soul on the sweetly sad reminiscences of the Past, and odd fantasies and dreams, which men whose brains work straight, cannot exactly see the pith of.

On the banks of the Connecticut, in a snug little village,

which I don't care to locate precisely, dwells, or whilom did dwell, an old farmer, by the name of Ichabod Quizzy, or, as he was more commonly called, "Squire Quizzy." He was an easy sort of a body, "well to do in the world;" one of those men whom Fortune seems to have taken a particular liking to. If it chanced to be a bad season for corn, it always happened that he had planted but little that year; in short, he always got his garner full, whatever might be the luck of his neighbors. He always happened to go to the market too, just when produce commanded the highest price. Indeed, so proverbial was his good fortune, that some of his neighbors managed their husbandry precisely as he did his, and went to market the same day; but all in vain, for they were no luckier than before. The squire's only son, Jonathan, was thought to be a very hopeful youth. He was about to be indoctrinated into all the various economy of a Farmer's establishment, when his ambitious mother decided that nothing would do for her Jonathan but a College education, and after a feeble opposition, she carried her point, as women are invariably known to do, when they fairly Having recited Latin and Greek, &c., for a sufficient length of time, in the village parson's studio, he was pronounced "well fitted," and forthwith sent to College, and initiated into all the mysteries which a Yale Freshman is supposed to be acquainted with. He went through the course in the usual number of years, and at its expiration started for home. The only visible effects of his six year's study were, that his name was longer than before by the addition of M. A., in capitals, and an uncommonly white sheep-skin, which was ever aftewards observed hanging up over the squire's parlor mantel-piece, encased in a huge gilt frame, and all covered over with mystic German letters and hard Latin, which, neither Jonathan nor any body else in the village had ever been able to read, except the parson, who had often tried to make the squire think he made sense of it; and the village doctor, who had still oftener been known to make nonesense of it. There was, indeed, one other quite important result of his College course, which, on a careful examination I am led to believe, is not a necessary concomitant, or effect of College learning, though very frequently connected with it. Jonathan had become a little crazed sometime between the important eras of matriculation and graduation. There was some difference of opinion as to the cause. One old gentleman, who thought himself much shrewder than common people, declared, "that nobody could have been such a fool that had'nt been to College," thereby charging the whole blame upon our venerable institution. But he was known to be hostile to Colleges, to such a degree, that he even sometimes