66 The sod was placed-and she was there The spirit dwells not-and she knelt Light be thy slumbers, and sweet thy rest,— And never a nobler, manlier one, Rested beneath, when his race was run. The sun was on the Ægean sea, And the light breath of morning curled The rippling wave, as joyously The Moslem fleet their sails unfurled. But curse of hate, and deepened tone Their light barks breasted to the flood. Since those proud barks first ploughed that sea; Yet, in that little while, how wide Had spread the curse of slavery! Greece! classic Greece! my earliest love!- If but to say that Greece hath strove— Hath struggled-once-awake! awake! Roy. I HAVE called myself an idle man; I am, by education. The quiet little village of Brighton, where I passed my boyhood, was little impregnated with the spirit of enterprise. It was so much apart from the din and bustle of the world, that even the shrewd shopkeeper, bargained with the pedlar from the city, for his stock of wares. It was a village of true republican simplicity; the ways of their ancestry had been handed down to the inhabitants, with most punctilious reverence, for a century; no post roads, no mill privileges, had blighted the prospect of a safe and auspicious journey in the tracks of their fathers. The happy new year, and the merry Christmas, and the April fool tricks, ran round the little village with all the glee that characterized the sunny days of Queen Elizabeth; and the blithe urchins kindled their flaming pile as regularly upon Christmas eve, as their fathers had done before them. It was a town of good old fashions; men lived to a right antique old age; women reposed in their huge leathern bottomed arm-chairs, long after the ladies of the world had fretted themselves to death, with their misshapen implements of fashion. There were more boys, and fewer young men in Brighton, than grace the march of reform;-more girls and fewer young ladies. It was the village of old fashion gossipping, of the chatting tea party; and every stranger who baited his nag at the inn, was crowded around by a dozen prying brats; even the ostler asked, 'how far he might have travelled, and he was stared at from every casement of the town. No wonder, that in such a place, amid such associations, I grew up idle. "I was one of those unlucky urchins, at mention of whom old men shake their heads, and predict that they will one day come to the gallows." This seems to comport strangely with some traits given in my former paper, but so it was, nor did a change occur, until my habits of life were changed;—until I became a reader and student of books. Still I was idle. I read, but not continuously; I studied, but the thought of the old poet, came on me in crude fancies, and I shut the book, and pondered on his life and destiny. And now, I turn to old Greek tomes, and ghosts of the slaughtered at Marathon stride by me, as I open the page; and wild vagaries lead away my fancy, and I follow the dead in the Thracian valley, and I thunder over the waters of the Adriatic in the brazen prowed galley, and wander in raptures by the Dalmatian shore,but my book lies unnoticed! And I go out, and look at the sky, and fondly think I read the 'magic of its mystery;' and turn again to learning, and catch the features of a giant mind, and close the book! And with Willis, I love to go Out in the pleasant sun, and let my eye And I am better after it, and go More gratefully to my rest, and feel a love And if from such a spirit and temper of mind, I have suffered, if habits of energy have relaxed, if my mind has swung from its moorings, and floated on, jostled by every breeze; if I have lost half worth living for, I can endure it with calmness, and with the bruised spirit of Medea, in the play, cry, eatur-nihil recuso— merui! My chum, Israel Crumb was his name, I should have noticed before this. Poor fellow, he was one of those easy good natured souls who are led about without much difficulty; and finally he was led back to the country. He was a true Jerseyman. I remember him perfectly-a small dapper-man, with a shock of brown hair, and an eye always twinkling. He used to sit with his legs thrown over the stove, his Lexicon on his thighs, and his Livy before his face-but I rarely saw his eyes on it. 'Tom, Tom,' he'd say, every five minutes, 'this's a dev'lish hard lesson; egad, hope Tutor Y. won't call me up.' Then he would thrum away at his Lexicon as if the spirit of Livy was in him, then glance at the clock, then scowl over his page, run through a sentence or two, glance at the clock again 'curse the deuced Latin' and throw his book across the room! From this time till recitation, his round face wore a ludicro-serious air, and he usually read a page or two in the comic alınanac. But after recitation, his face wore a singular brightness; no matter whether a failure or an escape,-his anxiety was gone, and he laughed, and chatted, and looked through the comic almanac, until an hour before the next recitation, when he repeated nearly the same scene described above. I never knew him angry. 'The devil take the lesson,' was the strongest language I ever heard him use, and this always in a 'Pickwickian sense.' His Sunday reading, for he was brought up by staunch Presbyters, was Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress ;-a cheap duodecimo edition, which he had illustrated with his own pencil sketches; in fact, I believe he could have described every scene in Christian's travels; but what the devil the man meant, by carrying a big bag (he had so seen illustrated the burthen of sin) on his back, through the slough, and the wicket, and over the interpreter's grounds, he didn't know for the life of him!' Every Sunday morning, after breakfast I found chum perched up in his chair, his legs on the stove, his eyes twinkling, his lips twisting and occasionally bursting out in a roar, at his picture of the battle between Great Heart and Giant Despair! Crumb was not one of those ever making resolutions; he was spared that sin. I think he never made one good or bad, while I knew him. He had a ludicrous way of laughing, after all around him had digested the joke; but chum's appreciation of humor was rather slow in its development. In recitation room, or parlor, he always managed to commence his laugh a few minutes after all others had checked their mirth; but chum's little brisk 'he! he! he!' was sure to revive a new sally, and this again Crumb reechoed, catching the joke, and shaking his shock of hair like a jolly alderman. So much did this disposition in chum interfere with all attempts to preserve a proper degree of gravity, that Tutor was obliged to detain him after recitation, upon the manifestation of rather unusual hilarity on his part, and reprimand him for his disturbance of the exercises. Crumb didn't tell me the result of this interview, but I have not a doubt that he laughed in the Tutor's face; very certain it was that ever after, Tutor C. treated poor chum very sternly. But as I have already intimated, chum was led astray, widely astray, and forgot himself in his pleasures, missed his way-marks, until the rebuke of the despotic power to which he was amenable, fell like a thunder-stroke upon him. It was a sad blow for poor chum, and he felt it sorely. I recollect the event as vividly as if it were but yesterday. The lu dicrous twinkle of his eye, had given place to an unfeigned expression of sorrow. I found him in our little room, shortly after the announcement had been made to him, of his dismission. He was in his old seat, but neither the comic almanac, nor any record of his healthy pastime was before him. Traces of tears too were on his face, and he occasionally heaved a deep sigh. I dropped a word or two of encouragement, but without much effect. 'It's dev'lish hard (a sob)—indeed it is, Tom, not that I care, but (a sob) look at that letter, Tom, you know the hand, (a sob) what'll she think?' I did know the hand, 'twas his mother's; and that evening as he gathered up his little stock of clothes for his departure, his pocket bible, accidentally opened at the very page, where the same hand had written a line of admonition, and the tears rolled down his cheeks, as he laid it carefully away in his trunk! But Providence, as surely as Thomson has foretold it, -from seeming evil, Still educing good, made this misfortune the means of throwing him into his proper sphere. I saw him half a year since; he had entered business in the city of F- and was the most successful tradesman in the county. He had a joke and a smile for every one, and his happy elation of spirits and buoyancy of character had found a fitting basis, and he was now contented, and eminently prosperous. He lost two years of his life, in college, except as they gave him experience;-how many lose four? Yes, Israel Crumb was a picture of many men about college, no more fitting themselves for active professional life, than you could fit a donkey for a mile heat! Fine hearted fellows, too, some of them are; like my chum, kind, obliging, possessing every thing to endear them to mankind in their proper sphere. But, ah! with little or no native taste for mental labor, they spurn the active pursuits to which their inclinations are naturally bent; and with a pride to indulge in the gaieties, and wear the courted air of a learned coxcomb, they come to college. Some yield at once to seducing proposals; the fascinations of books have but a small hold upon their minds, they are weaned away to haunts of dissipation, where time flies by in sunshine,— "Where social life and glee sit down, All joyous and unthinking, Till, quite transmugrify'd, they're grown, Oh! would they stay to calculate Th' eternal consequences; Or their more dreadful hell to taste, |