THE LIFE OF A COLLEGIAN. A NOVEL. former years Arise, and bring forbidden tears. LONGFELLOW. IN TWO VOLS. VOL I. LONDON: CHARLES J. SKEET, PUBLISHER, No. 21, KING WILLIAM STREET, CHARING CROSS. 1853. 249.x. 57. THE LIFE OF A COLLEGIAN. CHAPTER I. Incipe, si quid habes.-VIRGIL. WHY is it that in our youth we delight more in poetry and fiction, while in more mature years we turn with keener appetite to more practical and prosaic studies: that, at first, we love rather to learn, and then to compare? It is perhaps, that in our ignorance of the actual, we tend instinctively to the transcendental and the ideal; and when the world comes to wake us from our reveries, and goad us on to the rivalry and warfare of VOL. I. B of life, action usurps the place of speculation. Perhaps it is that the attraction to earthly things, which strengthens with our strength, draws downward whatever is in us of the ethereal spirit; and, from a close contact, our souls at last mingle familiarly and contentedly with the clay. The spirit, while yet a recent visitor on earth, obeys the lingering instinct of its native heaven; and, unsatisfied with the realities of its material life, wanders away to revel in converse with the bright and lofty creatures of imagination. It is the homesickness of the soul-the dream in which the exile is transported back to the valley and the mountain-side, consecrated by the memories of childhood. It has been truly said, that it is a humiliating reflection for any man to compare what he has with what he might have done; and there is a time of life at which we feel these unavailing regrets with peculiar intensity. This is that central point where we stand as upon some commanding eminence, and look back and forward upon two landscapes-two pictures the past and the future; the one presenting to us, in long perspective, time. wasted, opportunities neglected, like priceless treasures, sunk and lost for ever, in the unfathomable ocean of eternity, and all the mocking and upbraiding forms of error and folly; the other peopled with all the dim and glorious outlines of energy and success, ambitious hopes, high designs, and yearning aspirations-the battle, the victory, and the triumph. Though the cold light of philosophy, falling in upon the romance of youth, may dissipate all its roseate hues-though time may teach us the worthlessness of all we had prized and fought for the falsehood and selfishness of friendship; the sensuality and inconstancy of love; the vanity and childishness of ambition; the bitterness of the tempting fruit; the brief mockery of the golden dream-for these are all dreams-love, friendship, and ambition; and amusing us for a season, then raise their glittering pinions, casting back upon us, in transient colours, the enthusiasm and tenderness |