THE COFFEE CLUB.

No. IV.

“Authors who acquire a reputation by pilfering all their beauties from others, may be compared to Harlequin and his snuff, which he collected by borrowing a pinch out of every man’s box he could meet, and then retailed it under the pompous title of ‘tabác de mille fleurs.’”Fitzosborne’s Letters.

Fitzosborne’s Letters.

“If the work cannot boast of a regular plan, (in which respect, however, I do not think it altogether indefensible,) it may yet boast that the reflections are naturally suggested always by the preceding passage.”Cowper’s Letters.

Cowper’s Letters.

No est tan bravo il leon, como se pinta—the lion is not so fierce as his picture—says the Spanish proverb, and such will doubtless be your exclamation, fair, gentle, indulgent, or judicious reader, (by whichever title you may please to be addressed,) when you discover that the heroes of the Coffee Club, invested by your scrutinizing sagacity with so many fictitious attributes, whether of honor or of dishonor, are in truth but cognate atoms with yourself in making up the mass of our small and secluded community. Nor will your self-satisfaction be at all enhanced, by the remembrance of the astute conjectures, ‘positive certainties,’ ‘perfect convictions,’ and ‘confidential informations,’ which have afforded you matter of exultation for a season, but are, by the revealment of the truth, shown to be unfounded, and if cherished with vanity, ridiculous. Each, however, may soothe his chagrin, with the assurance that no one was wiser than himself, and that the secret, which baffled his endeavors, not even the talismanic power of woman’s curiosity could elicit.

It is the eve of the farewell exercises of the class, and the last meeting of the Coffee Club. Tristo had thrown gloom upon our spirits, by a mournfulepitaphupon the pleasures and the duties, now buried in the past—but Pulito has reversed our feelings by a brilliantepithalamium, for our coming bridal day, on which we are to wed theworld. So is it in life—we shed one tear over the past, and hasten on to catch the future.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meatsDid coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats

Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.”

In such a mood, the thoughts of all naturally reverted to the time when first we entered upon that stage in the journey of life, whichwe have now completed. As we traced our progress onward, and recalled our errors and our follies, our hopes and disappointments, our attainments and our short-comings, the desire of sympathy, of consolation, and encouragement, led to a full and free expression of our thoughts and feelings. Apple, however, as his cigar wreathed forth its exhalations,

‘Upward and downward, thwarting and convolved,’

and puns and quips unceasing shot through their obscurity, like lightning through a cloud, seemed at first to be in no mood for the pathetic, or the serious. Pulito, too, after a brief and apparently regretful abstraction, broke forth in a strain half querulous, half laughing.

Pulito.“Well, ‘gentlemen commoners,’ however discourteous the remark may appear to you and your society, I must ne’ertheless regret that I am not this evening where I might have been, in a certain far-famed street, and gazing upon a certain lovely face, whose owner’s name ’twould be profanity to mention. I may say with the stricken Cowper,

‘Farewell to theelm-tree, farewell to the shadeAnd the whispering sound of the cool colonnade.’”

‘Farewell to theelm-tree, farewell to the shade

And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade.’”

Nescio, (smiling.) “‘Lugete oh! Veneres Cupidinesque!’ As an old dramatist has it,

‘Your soul, retired within her inmost chamber,Like a fair mourner, sits in state with allThe silent pomp of sorrow round about her.’”

‘Your soul, retired within her inmost chamber,

Like a fair mourner, sits in state with all

The silent pomp of sorrow round about her.’”

Pulito.“Yes, and to borrow from the same play, The Rival Ladies, I think,

‘Oh she is gone! methinks she should have leftA track so bright, I might have followed herLike setting suns that vanish in a glory.’”

‘Oh she is gone! methinks she should have left

A track so bright, I might have followed her

Like setting suns that vanish in a glory.’”

Nescio.“For the sake of quoting beautifully, you quote without application.”

Apple, (in a voice of thunder.) “Who in the name of heaven is it about whom you are making all this ‘tempest in a tea-pot?’ Girls, girls, girls, for ever and eternally! I wonder what you see in them! weak and shallow! It maddens me, Pulito, to see you, a fellow of some small sense, ‘bowing the knee in worship to an idol,’ a minion-queen, a painted doll—

‘A pagod thing of flirting sway,With front of brass, and feet of clay.’”

‘A pagod thing of flirting sway,

With front of brass, and feet of clay.’”

Pulito.“Why, Apple, from your fierceness, I suspect you have lately met with a rebuff from some fair damsel.”

Apple.“No, indeed I have not; I was afraid I should though, and did not give her a chance. I was acquainted with some of them once, and endeavored to patronize, instruct, and even please them. But they had neither the acuteness to perceive the point of my puns, nor the complaisance to laugh at them, even when I led the way. In fact—the fiends scorch their pictures!—I believe they laughedatinstead ofwithme. ‘Flattery is nectar and ambrosia to them.’ They drink it in and enjoy it like an old woman sucking metheglin through a quill.”

Pulito.“I allow that

——‘if ladies be but young and fair,They have the gift to know it.’

——‘if ladies be but young and fair,

They have the gift to know it.’

But this is chargeable upon us, who are accustomed to lie to them about their charms, as a matter of course.”

Apple.“Then, too, if beautiful, they can scarce be good. For, ‘honesty coupled to beauty, is to have honey a sauce to sugar.’”

Pulito.“How! Is what is fair at surface necessarily foul at heart?

‘Why what a world is this, where what is comely,Envenoms him that bears it.’”

‘Why what a world is this, where what is comely,

Envenoms him that bears it.’”

Apple.“And how wide is their information, scientific, literary, political, moral! Their wits ‘are dry as a remainder biscuit after a voyage.’”

Pulito.“Well, Apple, I should think you had exhausted Shakspeare and yourself for terms of reproach: yet it still remains true, that they are the dearest, sweetest things ‘in rerum naturâ,’ and

‘Should fate command me to the farthest vergeOf the green earth,’

‘Should fate command me to the farthest verge

Of the green earth,’

I shall still love them one and all.”

Nescio.“Yes.

‘Dulcé ridentem Lalagen amaboDulcé loquentem.’”

‘Dulcé ridentem Lalagen amabo

Dulcé loquentem.’”

Tristo.“I am no ladies’ man. I am too grave for their society. Yet I am willing to acknowledge that, together with their influence, they are half that makes life valuable. They are the purifying and refining ingredient in the seething caldron of society. Their perceptions are more rapid and acute than ours, and if deceitful, it is fromnecessity, which you know is the mother ofinvention.”

Pulito.“For my part, the absence of those pretty faces, which I have been wont to see in my ‘walk and conversation,’ will greatly deepen my regret at leaving this delightful place.”

Apple.“Pooh! couldn’t you sentimentalize a bit? ‘Pone me pigris ubi nulla campis, Arbor æstivâ recreatur aurâ,’ &c. Turn me adrift in New England, New Guinea, or New Zealand, and let me have good meats, good drinks, goodkapniphorouscigars and a dozen comedies, and I don’t care a rush.”

Pulito.“Oh! what ananimal! Why, Dumpling, do you suppose you have asoul, or are you a mere lump of flesh, a ‘congregation of skin, bone and spissitude,’ to use one of your own ridiculous phrases?”

Apple.“Yes, Pully, I suspect I have such a thing as a soul somewhere—but I cannot determine itslocale—neither do I fash my beard thereanent, since it is the onlyimmaterialthing about me, ha! ha!”

Nescio.“That’s Apple, through and through, to circumvent truth by a quibble.”

Pulito.“But have you no sympathy with this verdant city and its lovely scenes? Why, this very evening,

‘When the sweet wind doth gently kiss the trees.And they do make no noise,’

‘When the sweet wind doth gently kiss the trees.

And they do make no noise,’

is a copy of Paradise.”

Apple.“Yes! the ‘Paradise of fools.’”

Pulito.

“‘On such a nightStood Dido, with a willow in her hand,Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her loveTo come again to Carthage.’”

“‘On such a night

Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand,

Upon the wild sea-banks, and waved her love

To come again to Carthage.’”

Apple.

“‘On such a night did young Pulito striveT’ unseal the fount of feeling in his heart,And be poetic—but he could not do it.’”

“‘On such a night did young Pulito strive

T’ unseal the fount of feeling in his heart,

And be poetic—but he could not do it.’”

Pulito.“The air is like the breath of birds.”

Apple.“Such birds as caged pullets and mousing owls, probably, ha! ha!”

Pulito.“And then the cemetery, and these streets high-overarched with their verdant walls of inwoven shade.”

Apple.“Poetical, i’faith!Myonly amusement in theburying-ground, as an unsophisticated gentleman like myself would call it, is to read the queer old epitaphs.”

Nescio.“And mark how not even the ear of Death is secure from the poison of flattery.”

Apple.“Pretty fair! I approve of that remark. As for these streets, strip them of their green guardians, and they would be dry enough to choke the wave-washed throat of Neptune himself. Howcan fellows walk over all creation for fine prospects—my best prospect, as a kindred spirit once said, is the prospect of a good dinner.”

Pulito.“Surely, the view from East Rock is delightful.”

Apple.“Undoubtedly, if there be two or three mountain nymphs hanging affectionately on your arm. Oh! triple horror! To toil through two long miles of dusty barrenness, and crawla la quadrupedeup a mountain of shifting sand and triturated stones, to view a few houses included between shoal water and furze hills.”

Nescio.“Methinks only a few weeks since,youescorted thither some twelve or thirteen of these same mountain nymphs.”

Apple.“To be sure I did, and therefore I can speak from experience. But it argues an unkind disposition in you, to fling a man’s errors and misfortunes in his teeth. I did perpetrate that act, and as I hope forgiveness, I am contrite therefor. We set off one morning, when it was so hot that the very cloudssmoked, thoughIcould not—for what would Jonathan Oldbuck’s ‘woman-kind’ say? ‘The ladies be upon thee, Sampson,’ thought I. I could not laugh, though there was enough that was ridiculous, for I had corns. So I went sweating along under a load of milk-and-water refreshments, like a man carrying his own gibbet. I climbed up the hill like another Sisyphus, with a train of Sirens behind me. When there what saw we. Why, through a cracked spy-glass, I sawNescio Quodhere, my own chum, coming out the bookstore—wonderful, thrilling, soul-stirring prospect! Then, lo! we had left the pine-apples a quarter of a mile from the foot of the mountain, where we had stopped to browse. Nothing would do—one lady was faint, and must have a little pine-apple juice—another sweet nymph, in an unguarded moment, said that her principal object in coming, was the pleasure of eating the pine-apples—and another rosy-cheeked, and not very sylph-like figure, remarked, that if Mr. Dumpling would be so good as to go after the basket, he should have the pleasure of her arm down the mountain. The devil of a pleasure, thought I; the sweet creature must have ‘gane daft, clean daft,’ or she would never have offered such an inducement—better for me ‘that a millstone were hanged about my neck,’ &c.—but down I must come, and down I came, and when I got down, I stayed down. I ate the pine-apples myself, and laid down under the shade till evening, when I slunk home, leaving the ladies to their other beaux. I had some excuse though, for, while ‘midway between heaven and earth,’ I stumbled over a sweet-brier, and wrenched my ankle so excruciatingly, that Pope’s line occurred to my mind with some solemnity—

‘Die of arosein aromatic (a rheumatic) pain.’

You take, do you? I managed, however, to reset theluxedbut by no meansluxuriousjoint, and grateful for my escape, I have forsworn the ladies, and pray for grace to keep my vow.”

The laughter, long and loud, that succeeded the story of Apple’s tribulations, was a sort of clearing-up shower, and left the moral atmosphere in a temper more consonant with the seriousness of the hour. After a short breathing-space, the conversation broke forth anew, and in an entirely different channel. The sad peculiarity of our situation gave to our views, and possibly to our remarks, a tinge of bitterness and satire.

Pulito.“Well, fellows, ‘our course is run, our errand done’ within these walls, and we are to leave them for ever—and why not bid farewell with a light heart and bounding hopes. To be sure, the vexings of the world will be rather uncomfortable. A gentlemanly air, and a languid intimacy with the ‘tricksy pomp’ of literature, will not make a man a President or amillionaire.”

Apple.“The prospect is somewhat discouraging. I should have felt no misgivings at starting in the literary world a century ago, when the noble art of punning was duly appreciated and rewarded, as witness the celebrity of that great man, Dean Swift. Or I could have been content to have ruffled it with the quibbling, conceit-loving cavaliers, who basked in the smiles of Queen Bess. But now the principles of taste are sadly perverted, and this noble art, this sole distinctive mark of genius, has sought and found refuge only beneath the classic shades of College. It is truly sad to me, to think of leaving this last strong hold of wit and sentiment.”

Nescio.“Why, Apple, your grief bewilders your mind. You began with talking aboutpunning, and ended with wit and sentiment. Where is the connection?”

Apple.“At least as close, Mr. Quod, as between your real and expressed opinion, when you speak so despitefully of this innocent and dignified amusement. But now we are on the subject, what is wit?”

Nescio.“To which question I might reply, as Democritus did to him that asked the definition of a man—‘tis that which we all see and know.’ Such is the language of Barrow, the celebrated divine; I read it this very day. I however would admit no definition, that could possibly include apun.”

Tristo.“You go to an extreme there, Nescio. A mere play upon words, a mere coincidence of sounds, makes but a poor jest, and a ready facility in discovering and thrusting into conversation these ‘imperfect sympathies,’ gives one but slight pretensions to the reputation of a wit. But there are some witticisms, which depend for their force upon apun, but yet including also a racy humor, deserve the praise of true wit. I will read you an instance from Hazlitt:—“An idle fellow, who had only fourpence left in the world, which had been put by to pay for the baking of some meat for his dinner, went and laid it out to buy a new string for a guitar. An old acquaintance, on hearing this story, repeated these lines out of L’Allegro—

‘And ever againsteatingcaresLap me in soft Lydian airs.’”

‘And ever againsteatingcares

Lap me in soft Lydian airs.’”

Here the point of the jest lies in the pun uponeating, yet who does not acknowledge it as highly humorous. There are not many puns so refined and pure as this, but they sink in infinite and imperceptible gradations. You cannot draw a bold line between ‘the wit of words and wit of things.’ ‘For,’ as is said of Wit and Madness, ‘thin partitions do their bounds divide.’”

Pulito.“Very true, and I detest that squeamishness, which would refuse the praise of wit to any thing approaching to a pun, and sympathize most heartily with poor Apple for his many rebuffs. But nevertheless, Apple, ‘a joke’s prosperity lies in the ear of the hearer,’ Shakspeare says, and one should not complain if his pet witticisms are not received with applause and answered with laughter. If the jest is worthless, he deserves ridicule—if it does contain the essence of wit he has only himself to blame for giving it an utterance, where it could not be appreciated. Think you that Addison would have displayed his delicate humor for the amusement of crabbed and adust bookworms, or Voltaire sported his sarcasms to tickle the ear of clowns? Let their example encourage and instruct you, my dear Apple, and if you cannot equal their fame, you may, at least, attain the celebrity of Joe Miller.”

Tristo.“You will allow, however, Pulito, there is too often manifested a disposition to decry and disparage, when approbation would have been more natural. Censure is too often heard from lips, from which praise would have been more graceful, or silence more becoming. There are too many among us, who seek to rise upon the fall of their rivals—too many ‘frosty-spirited knaves,’ of whom it may be said, in bitterest truth, ‘not to admire is all the art they know.’”

Pulito.“I have, however, been accustomed to regard such characters with more of pity than severity. I have regarded them as defrauded by nature of the just proportions of humanity. I have been vexed by their perversity, but no more inclined to resent it, than to chastise the ceaseless annoyances of a child or an idiot.”

Nescio.“You underrate theirintellect, that you may relieve theirheartfrom the imputation of baseness. True, he who is always searching for faults, without paying any attention to beauties, affords strong grounds for the conclusion, that he has no perception of the latter, and in his own experience is conversant only with the former: and he who is ever detecting plagiarisms, and starting resemblances, gives reason for the suspicion, that his acquaintance with the fountains of these stolen waters, is not so purely accidental, or so honorably gotten, as he would have us imagine. But deficiency of taste and weakness of mind are not the sole causes of such conduct. Theprompterof the whole is envy,—envy, the meanest passion of the human heart—the only one in which thereis not some shade of honor, some trace of nobility. Ambition may be laudable—hate become a virtue from the loathsomeness of its object—covetousness acquire dignity from the excellence of the thing coveted—but the baseness ofenvyis enhanced by the purity and splendor against which it is directed.”

Tristo.“Not only is envy so mean a passion in itself, but it exerts a most debasing influence upon the intellect and whole character. Indeed, if we may believe Coleridge, the cherishing of it is incompatible with the existence of genius. His language is solemn; would that all the fosterers, or rather thevictims, of this worst vice, to which we are by our situation exposed, might listen to his warning. ‘Genius may co-exist with wildness, idleness, folly, even with crime; but not long, believe me, with the indulgence of an envious disposition. Envy is both the worst and justest divinity, as I once saw it expressed somewhere in a page of Stobæus; it dwarfs and withers its worshippers.’”

Apple.“To recall your attention, Tristo, to the subject from which we passed so suddenly to a more serious one, what think you of those who ‘wit-wanton it’ with things sacred, who at every breath break over the bounds of modesty, and outrage our sympathies with the true and the beautiful, for the sake of a momentary, and not unfrequently a shame-faced laugh?”

Tristo.“Such persons do themselves and others more injury than they think. Their incessant insults to all refinement and delicacy of feeling, if unresented and unguarded against, at length deaden and efface these sentiments. Bulwer says well of such, ‘Their humor debauches the whole moral system—they are like the Sardinian herb—they make you laugh, it is true, but theypoison you in the act.’”

Nescio.“It is disgraceful that impurity should be an unequivocal characteristic of college wit. But it will be so, until some one shall demonstrate by his own example that there is no necessary connection, but rather an essential hostility between real humor and obscenity. But so long as it is easier to swim with the current than to buffet its dashings—so long as it is pleasanter to excite a hearty laugh, than encounter a cold sneer—so long as indolence and vacillation continue to bedescriptive marksof a student’s character—we need not hope for a change.”

Pulito.“Whoever would attempt to effect one, should remember the aphorism, ‘He ought to be well mounted who is for leaping over the hedges of custom.’”

Tristo.“If this license on the part of some deserves severe reprobation, the chilling churlishness of those, who can feel no sympathy withpleasure, be it ever so innocent—whose minds can admit but the single idea of theuseful, and reject as trifling the elegant and refining—who, swallowed up in their admiration of moral beauty, lose sight of or depreciate intellectual symmetry, (forgetting thatmoral excellence, though it resemble in its value the priceless diamond, is not like it advantaged by a dull and roughened setting)—such, I say, must not pass without their share of censure, for they are in no slight degree the occasion, I will not say the cause, of the opposite vice in others.”

Pulito.“Such illiberality frustrates the praise-worthy exertions of all who indulge in it. It places them out of the circle of influence—their efforts can no more reach those whom they desire to affect, than (to use a magniloquent simile) the perturbations of the moons of Uranus can sway the Earth’s satellite in its orbit. But beside the unfortunate reaction of such principles, is not this cutting off, ‘at one fell swoop,’ all amusements, this tying down to one staid rule offormal observance, youth of every variety of taste, talent and temperament, and brought up under every complexion of circumstances—this curbing of all tastes and inclinations, not within thelawgiver’scapabilities—is it not based upon error of judgment, and directed by something of inquisitorial arrogance?”

Apple.“I never listen to a specimen of such frosty philosophy, without recalling an anecdote, much to the point. It is found, originally, I believe, in one of Pope’s letters to Swift, though I read it somewhere else. ‘A courtier saw a sage picking out the best dishes at table. ‘How,’ said he, ‘are sages epicures?’ ‘Do you think, Sir,’ said the wise man, reaching over the table to help himself, ‘do you think, Sir, that God Almighty made all the good things of this world for fools?’”

Tristo.“The sage must have belonged to the sectDeipnosophoi, or ‘Supper-wise,’ whom D’Israeli mentions. His principles, however, will apply in their full extent, I think, to the purer pleasures of taste and wit and literature.”

Pulito.“Talk not to them of the ‘purer pleasures of taste, and wit, and literature,’ for these are their utter abomination—snares for the youthful mind—idle perversions of talent. Speak to them of the grand display of moral power in Shakspeare’s dramas, and for an unanswerable answer, they will point to a gross expression—and consistently enough too, for theirs is the morality ofwords. They cannot perceive that thescopeof all his principal plays is purely and symmetrically moral, or even religious—that they seldom violate the modesty of nature, though they may overstep the prudishness of an age when, ‘La pudeur s’est enfuie des cœurs, et s’est refugiée sur les lévres.’—Modesty has fled from the heart, and taken refuge on the lips. They cannot admire theoverruling providence, by which his untutored genius, apparently so wild and uncontrollable, has been unerringly directed to conformity with truth and virtue. In their esteem the pious Cowper would have been more worthy, had he devoted his talents to thepracticalduties of ‘the clerk of the Commons,’ rather than havewastedthem in the unproductive pursuits of poetry.”

Nescio.“Well, let them enjoy their opinions, provided they do not meddle with others in the gratification of their taste, or profess to judge in matters which they so virulently decry. The nightingale may not quarrel with the discordant braying of the ass, till the ‘long-eared’ either attempt to ‘discourse sweet sounds’ himself, or criticise the melody of others.”

Pulito.“‘Aye, there’s the rub!’ None are more prompt in criticising, none more forward to condemn, than these same individuals.”

Apple.“Nothing ruffles the placidity of my temper so much, and so frequently, as the confidence with which some fellows, whose ignorance is absolute, pass judgment upon works of literature and taste. There are those, who cannot tell for their lives whether Walter Scott wrote Waverly or the Commentaries, or whether the author of Hudibras, the Reminiscences, and the Analogy, be not one and the same, who yet issue their unblushing firman upon any stray volume of poetry or romance, they may have chanced to pick up and gape through. I heard one, who could not count beyond ten, declare solemnly that he had no opinion of James, or Bulwer, and that J. K. Paulding could write better than either. Another, who had never seen a book, save the Family Bible, before he came to College, averred that Sterne, Smollett, Fielding, and Richardson united, never wrote any thing fit to be read by a man of good morals, or sound sense; and thought, moreover, thatCampbell’sThanatopsis was far inferior toBryant’sPleasures of Hope! And still another affirmed that the plays of Shakspeare even, were ruinous to the interests of morality, and that all the other dramatists of England ought to be buried under the ruins of the stage they support. Upon sifting the fellow, however, I found he had never read a play, saving the Tempest, Comedy of Errors, and a couple of diluted operas in the London stage!”

Pulito.“And yet these are they, who sit in daily judgment upon what they have neither the sense to comprehend, nor the delicacy to appreciate. These are they, who stigmatize every thing beautiful as arush, and all that is novel to their narrow knowledge, as extravagant and wild. ’Tis a Bœotian criticising the dialect of Athens; a Scythian carping at the figures of Praxiteles. Shall the home-bred rustic, who thinks the middle of the sky directly above his head, and supposes that a walk of a day would bring his feet to the ‘blue concave,’ attempt to teach the life-long traveller the principles of society, and decide upon the manners and customs and wonders of the world? And yet it would be as reasonable to the full as the conduct of him, who, when his knowledge is confined toparticulars, attempts to play the critic—a part, which, in its very nature, impliesgeneralizationof the widest kind.”

Tristo.“How can the poor catechumen, who has not yet donned the robes of his novitiate, nor raised his eyes to the vestibule,much less stood in his sacrificial garments by the High Altar in the Temple of the Muses, presume to decide upon the value and lustre of the treasures itsadytaconceal? It is as if the puny whipster, who fumes and gesticulates upon the academic stage, and whose thoughts and language are ‘a combination of disjointed things,’ should attempt to span or analyze the harmonious vastness and sweeping magnificence of an Edmund Burke.”

Pulito.“There is likewise a species of grave wiseacres—sober fools, who are quite as senseless and less amusing than fools of the more fantastic turn. They think that wisdom dwells only upon sealed lips, and that strength of mind and sobriety of purpose, isevidencedby nothing but a rueful face. These fellows (to use the old Greek phrase) ‘lift the eyebrows’ with a dull forthshowing of meditative wisdom, and a countenance

——‘of such a vinegar aspectThat they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.’

——‘of such a vinegar aspect

That they’ll not show their teeth in way of smile,

Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable.’

Oh rather give me a whole-hearted fool, with his eternal grin, than one of these sombreunimpressibleconcretions of torpedo-stricken clay.”

Nescio.“There are here, likewise, even as every where, many who can stop at no medium, but carry reasonable freedom to unwarrantable license. Because it is both pleasant and right to spend some time in general, and above all, in female society, some therefore, in their society fling away all their time, and, with their time, fling away character, and knowledge, and happiness, and worth. Because it is not well to be always bending over the learning of the present, and listening to the eloquence of the past, some therefore, double, wheel, march, and countermarch through these dusty streets during the long hours of a summer’s day, and when they catch a glimpse at the shadow of a female form, they experience a momentary heaven. Others, remembering that it is irrational to crucify the senses, and mortify the flesh, smoke, eat, and sleep, continually. Others, hearing that as well profit as delight may be reaped from the inspection of fancy’s fairy finger-work, are on the tiptoe of panting expectation for each miserable novel that falls lifeless from the press. And thus it was, thus it is, thus it will be.”

Pulito.“But idleness—idleness is the student’s bane. It is astounding how we throw away our time, and our best time—our spring-hour of life. Time is the medium of acquisition, and, losingthat, we lose all. I am no Utopian in theory, nor visionary in practice: neither am I free from the follies I deplore. But the strides whichmightbe made in our collegiate course, would be mighty and amazing.”

Nescio.“I agree with you. Every ordinary mind, by more judicious application, might accomplish double what it does. I donot mean that just twice as much would be read, or acquired; but that themindwould be twice as far advanced. It would not only have received twice the strength, and twice the beauty, from the studies it had actually traversed, but would be doubly fitted to grasp, conquer, and improve whatever might afterwards occur. The progress of the mind is in geometrical ratio. Every new and liberal idea, that is gained by a boy of twelve, is a capital which will return with yearly and enormous interest. It is analogous to the gaining of worldly wealth, where you musthewyour slow and narrow path from nothing to competence; but from competence to opulence, the road is broad and easy.”

Pulito.“I cannot divine themodality(as the schoolmen might say) of some minds—the manner, in which they operate. For I know of those, who for four years have toiled with desperate firmness, and are what they were. They seem to have pursued a mill-horse track, without the remotest conception that there was aught else of value in the universe beside. Now I complain not of the rigor or of the nature of our course. Stern application is our only hope, and the course of authors we peruse, is perhaps as good as could be devised; but it is thespiritwith which they study. They consider what they here gain, not as amean, but as anend. Every man, who would be ‘aut Cæsar, aut nullus,’ and whose eye goes forward to the ‘immensum infinitumque’ of Tully,must generalize—mustview thingsrelatively—mustconsider every thing, not as a whole, but as a part. If one possess this generalizing spirit, I care not how undivided be his attention to the college course; for I believe that there is in the books of the first three years, beauty and grandeur and weight, sufficient to justify, naydemand, almostentireattention. For instance, to gain a perfect intimacy with Horace—not an intimacy with his words merely, and sentiments—but an intimacy with his beauties—with hissoul—would require one month of the severest study; and yet such an intimacy is requisite to justify studying him at all: for if he is not to be appreciated—if that evaporating something, wherein he differs so widely from a dull Latin proser, is not to be seen and felt—you might as well have been reading Cato upon gardening, or Vitruvius upon architecture. But these fellows in studying a foreign tongue, give the general sense in hap-hazard English, without gaining any insight into the philosophy of mind, or the theory of language.”

Apple.“I think, moreover, that we ought to be more conversant with the sciences. Some of the details may, perhaps, be superfluous; but surely no one can claim to be a liberally-educatedgentleman, without a general acquaintance with all, and a perfect knowledge of some of those departments. Whatever may have been my former obliquities, or short-comings in these studies, I am determined to retrieve them all. I have begun with attempting to square the circle, upon which great problem I have employed two weeks.”

Nescio.“Ha! Ha! do you approach the goal!”

Apple.“I cannot say that I do very rapidly; but I feel increased acuteness of perception. I think I might discover this grand secret, could I hit upon some method of reducing the circle to linear measurement. My nearest approximation is to make a circle of a string, and then quadrate its sides by the introvention of a square surface of board. Of course, I have the perimeter and square contents of the board, and if I could fit the latter accurately to the string, the work is done, and I am Apple the Great. But ‘hic labor, hoc opus est.’”

Pulito.“Ha! Ha! Be not wearied in well doing, Dumpling; you have opened on the right scent, (erige aures, atque dirige gressus.)”

Tristo.“But there is a more serious view to be taken of this matter, and one to which we must all open our eyes sooner or later, and well will it be for us if we take counsel while the storm is yet lowering, rather than look back with despairing, remorseful eye when ruin is in the retrospect. The day will come when he, who has squandered his abilities, and perverted his passions, will ‘begin to be in want,’ when mortified pride and conscious inferiority will ‘bite like a serpent, and sting like an adder’—a day, when the busy idleness, the trifling engagements, and the languid excuses, which now lull all suspicion of anactual wasteof time, will be forgotten, and nothing but the results will be visible. Then, one hasty, reverted glance, without any minute calculation, will inform us, that by our thriftless expenditure, when we might have economized to some purpose, we arecompelledto be idle and insignificant; when wefeelidleness to be adisgrace, and insignificance atorment. And why are not we alive to all this? Why do we not feel it, andshowthat we feel it, by our actions, when we can thus in theorizing, ‘put on the spectacles of age?’ The melancholy maxim of the ancients explains it—

‘Quem Deus perdere vult, priusdementat.’

Who would have the punning epigram upon the Cardinal De Fleuri, true of him?

‘Floruit sine fructu,Defloruit sine luctu.’

‘Floruit sine fructu,

Defloruit sine luctu.’

There is a merry jingling in the sound, but under it is conveyed a mournful meaning. Yet it shall be written of all, who, either trusting to their native genius, or destitute of honorable ambition, flutter away their existence in mimicry of the tiny circlets of the silly fly, instead of pluming their wings and nerving their energies, for a bold, a steady, and a deathless flight. Youth gives its stamp to life, and life to immortality—time is a type of eternity. I have somewhere seen the vastness of the latter illustrated by the image of a hugechronometer, of which the starry heavens were the dial-plate, its pendulum swinging in cycles of ten thousand years, and ringing to myriads of ages.”

In such and similar discourse, did they consume the lagging hours of night: now changing ‘from grave to gay, from lively to severe,’ and glancing over all the subjects and circumstances in which a student might feel a personal or an associated interest. They talked of silly affection, and of scheming selfishness, and condemned alike that vanity, which could exult in a new pair of gloves, or be elated by that ‘shadow of a thing,’ yclept a reputation; and having in view this one position, that what oneis, and not what heseems, forms his character and moulds his destiny,

‘Still they were wise whatever way they went.’

And now, Reader, we have done. If from this rude, incongruous heap, which, in the throwing together, has afforded us both pleasure and profit, you have been able to extricate any thing of either, we are satisfied. If by our unworthy portraiture of cheerful mirth without the taint of vicious excitement, a single heart, sick of thehollownessof dissipation, shall be seduced from its enticements—if one mind, till now swallowed in the vortex of current opinion, and dead to the merits of any savefashionableauthors, should be led to the study of chaster models, and the formation of a purer taste—if one soul, whose fountains have been sealed to the thousand springs of written or unwrittenpoetry, gushing up all around him, has been opened to their influences—or if any individuals of the various classes which we have ventured to describe, shall, by the image of their deformity, be frighted, ‘if not into greater goodness, at least into less badness’—it is enough.

Ego.

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