Accordingly Solomon was called, and in a few minutes a slow and dignified step upon the stairs announced his approach. Entering the room, he stood for a moment very deliberately surveying me, while the old lady explained in a most luminous manner the relation in which we stood to one another. As the light broke upon his mind a placid smile came over his features, and he extended his hand in wel

come.

He was tall and slender, with a form so pointed and angular that to look upon it would rejoice the heart of a mathematician. He had small grey eyes, pale features, sunken cheeks, and a high intellectual forehead, which was partially concealed by a mass of black hair prematurely tinged with grey. His head was supported in front and on the flanks by a neck-stock of immense height and unyielding firmness, and in the rear by a huge collar, to which was attached an old fashioned coat, with skirts of very limited breadth in the first place, and as they approached his heels "growing small by degrees and beautifully less." I made these observations while the subject of them, after going through several preliminary movements, seated himself by my side. We were soon engaged in conversation, and from that day have been bosom companions. Many an hour have I passed beneath that hospitable roof, where the Freshman forgot his trials,— where the Sophomore laid aside his dignity, and where the Junior returned from his wanderings among the stars.

I have spoken of the personal appearance of my friend. To describe with justice his mind and character, would be a far more difficult task. He is a scholar. Living as he does so near, it would be strange if the influences from this Institution had failed to affect him. Thirsting for fame and immortality, he has not spent his time in idle dreams, without making an effort to reach the desired object. His greatest fault seems to be an attempt to reach the object in too many different ways. His acquirements are in fact almost universal. The various departments of Science, Literature and the Fine Arts have all received his attention.

In the cause of Science his labors have been unwearied, and I venture to hope will not long remain unrewarded. Much of his time for several years past has been spent in preparing a work upon Guideboards. His principal object is to account for certain apparent irregularities of these articles. For instance, he found that there were very material variations in giving distances. Often a guide-board standing between two places and directing to each, would make the

whole distance fifty, while another would make the same distance but forty-five miles, and others would vary between these extremes. Having taken a great number of observations throughout New England, he hopes to discover the law of these variations.

He has permitted me to peruse, with great profit to myself, a work entitled "Practical Application of Conic Sections to Morality and Rhetoric." The publication of this work has been delayed, in consequence of the difficulty in obtaining suitable illustrations.

He has also in manuscript a metaphysical work upon "The Will and the Won't," in which work the subject of volitions is treated in a most clear and to my mind most satisfactory manner. Poetry he formerly wrote, but was compelled by the command of the physicians to abandon the practice.

Exalted as is my opinion of these works, and of several others I have been permitted to peruse, I yet doubt very much whether their publication would secure to the author the reputation he so ardently covets and so richly deserves. The age is not yet sufficiently advan

ced to appreciate such profound works.

I have, however, in my possession, a number of Essays which I have thought would be interesting to the general reader. Most of these Essays are historical, and I regard them as valuable, not so much on account of their literary merit as for their clearness in settling many long controverted points, for their historical accuracy and fidelity, and for the light they throw upon the origin and early history of this place. I need not stop to point out the faults of these writingsfaults which arise partly from the author's habits of seclusion and study-partly from a sort of wilful obstinancy-partly from being somewhat in advance of his age, and partly from various other causes. Without further preface I leave the reader to judge of the Essays of Solomon Fogg. C.

Ian Lanzt.

A LIFE SONG.

A bubbling stream with its silv'ry gleam,
Gushed up from a mountain's ciest,
And rippled along e'er singing a song
To its goal in the sunny West.

'Twas solemn and dim as the chant of a hymn,

Dying away on the ear.

Bright! Bright! was their birth, Dark! Dark! is the earth,

Where the waters disappe ar

My Life is a stream with its silv'ry gleam

In childhood's blessed hour,

Joy-notes are its song as it gurgles along,
Bright hopes its sunbeam shower.

The Flowers of Truth 'neath the tears of our Youth,
Spring up by the Life-stream side,

"Till they're broken away at the close of the day,

To drift on the ebbing tide.

But the Sin Blast comes up with its loud roar and whoop,

It is riding Death's pallid steed,

And its skeleton form hurls down the dark storm,

As casteth a sower his seed.

Ir was a pleasant thought of the poet-Professor, to give the world this little book just at the advent of these bright warm Summer months. It came fittingly with the birds and flowers. Its simple tale runs on with a cool refreshing murmur that reminds one of a bubbling brook or of the young green leaves,

"that clap their little hands in glee

With one continuous sound."

Have you never in some long afternoon ride or ramble, turned from the dusty highway into a quiet little village street, where the green

grass grows to the very verge of the wheel ruts, and the huge elms form a nobler than cathedral arch above? Do you not remember the moss-grown houses, and their old fashioned porches, covered with creeping vines, and bearing upon their worm-eaten benches, the rude initials of half a dozen generations? Close beside these stands the village church with its wafer-bedecked board of publishments, and its quaint griffin of a vane; and further on is the store, the only building in all the street that has not its pleasant yard in front, but presents instead of lilac and hollyhock a knot of listless loungers. The school house is there too, with its door wide ajar at all hours, and its weather beaten shutters each hanging by a single hinge. You see here and there a girlish form flitting by, almost like a fairy, (if fairies wear gingham frocks and sun bonnets,) or meet the white haired old minister, with his ponderous gold-headed cane and round-eyed spectacles. Then you turn the corner with curious glance at its battered fingered post, and in a trice you are once more upon the great road, and see, when you look back, only the village spire, and a few white spots that gleam among the mass of foliage. But many a time the thought of that quiet scene comes up before you in the hot paths of life, and you treasure it as a pleasant memory.

We re

Not unlike this has been to us the perusal of Kavanagh. tain from it no deep emotion, no great truth: we met in its pages none of those marked characters which—whether met in fiction, in history or in real life-seem to incorporate themselves with our world. But. we passed some pleasant hours in that quiet little village of Fairmeadow.

Kavanagh would be a hard book to criticise in legitimate critical style. It is not "a work of thrilling interest," it it not a "finished production of the author's stored and elegant mind:" and the only "great moral lesson" it teaches, is the not very novel one that, “ Procrastination is the thief of time." Plot it has none: we have a few pleasant glimpses into the every day life of a country schoolmaster whom "the gods have made poetical;" we see an old clergyman ride away from the scene of his labors with "an apocalyptic white horse and an antediluvian chaise," and soon after his successor comes quietly before us, and even he, though a most interesting young man, and the hero to boot, does very little except fall into a love whose course runs most unpoetically smooth, and ends with a very natural and common place sort of a wedding. And yet, meagre as the thread of incident is, few will complain, we think, of a want of interest. So vivid,