too, a great deal of it; and I never till then understood the term "perfect," as applied to "nonsense." I left Caroline at her home, and as I retired, whispered a single word in her ear. What volumes that delicate pressure of the hand spoke in reply!

Days passed on, and the same summer-like air was breathing, the same summer-like heaven was above us. I frequently met with Caroline, and was every day more and more pleased by her amiable merits, and agreeable weaknesses. I saw her angry once,-and of all the women whom I have seen in a pet, she is the only one I have not liked the worse for it.

And not many evenings after the walk in the moonlight, I was sitting with Caroline alone. Her roguish brothers and sisters had gone out, and the lights had not yet come in, and that everlasting aunt of hers, thank Cupid, was confined to her chamber by a headach, and I was sitting with her alone. We had been talking of the dreams of old romance, and reading Shakspeare, and chatting about the last new novel, and a thousand unmentionable things, and the fire was glimmering on the hearth, and I had ventured to speak of love, and she had ventured faintly to reply

"One o'clock, and all's well! "

If I ever fall asleep on the sofa again, of a summer evening, it shall not be without taking due precautions to get out of the way of the watchman! Commend me to a brace of ducks, macaroni, jellies, and accompaniments, as a suitable provocative of sound slumber; I shall never think of again retiring on less. I can endure most of the tricks and pranks of Queen Mab, but it is too much for humanity, to awake from so beautiful a vision, to the cold, though not unblest realities of life.

THE TOAD-STOOL.

THERE's a thing that grows by the fainting flower,
And springs in the shade of the lady's bower ;

The lily shrinks, and the rose turns pale,

When they feel its breath in the summer gale,

And the tulip curls its leaves in pride,
And the blue-eyed violet starts aside;
But the lily may flaunt, and the tulip stare,
For what does the honest toad-stool care?

She does not glow in a painted vest,
And she never blooms on the maiden's breast,
But she comes, as the saintly sisters do,
In a modest suit of a quaker hue.

And when the stars from the evening skies
Are weeping dew from their gentle eyes,
The toad comes out from his hermit cell,
The tale of his faithful love to tell.

O there is light in her lover's glance,
That flies to her heart like a silver lance;
His breeches are made of spotted skin,
His jacket is tight, and his pumps are thin;
In a cloudless night you may hear his song,
As its pensive melody floats along,

And if you will look by the moonlight fair,
The trembling form of the toad is there.

And he twines his arms round her slender stem,
In the shade of her velvet diadem;

But she turns away in her maiden shame,
And will not breathe on the kindling flame;
He sings at her feet, through the livelong night,
And creeps to his cave at the break of light;
And whenever he comes to the air above,
His throat is swelling with baffled love.

COLLEGE LIFE.

BY LUKE Lockfast.

I AM a man advanced in years; not indeed of an age which, in the great world, I should think of moralizing upon, as life's sere and yellow leaf; but which, since every thing is comparative, may well entitle me to assume the tone, and expect the consideration of a patriarch, among my fellow collegians. In short, reader, I am between twenty and thirty, and past, I fear me, the golden mean which separates their respective confines. My life, I hope, presents a decorous conformity with my years. I have taken up my abode where no droppers-in, and few, even of the staunch

est and most indefatigable visitants-general, are tempted to disturb my studies-in an upper-story room, very low and dark, with my old oak table, my old text-books, and my old self, in the middle of it (three articles of furniture, about equally unattractive, I suppose, to my young fellow students), a bed in one corner, a pile of wood in the corner opposite, a chest, surmounted by a wash-stand, in the third, and a fast-locked door in the fourth. Seldom, except at my own necessary exits and entrances, are the spiders' webs that festoon three well-smoked beams which frown across my ceiling, set in motion by the airy eddies which accompany the opening of that door. During study hours, at least, it is one of the strictest rules of my life to hold its threshold absolutely impassable from without. Whenever, during that sacred season, a knock salutes my door, I respond with a "busy," which sometimes, from my absorption in thought, or perhaps from something of indignation at the disturbance, is uttered with such sepulchral depth and solemnity, as have proved a cause of serious affright to sundry volatile young Freshmen, who, in their ignorance of localities, had addressed themselves to my portal by mistake. Such are my domestic habits and establishment; of a piec piece with which is all that appertains to me or mine. That I pay a conscientious attention to all lessons, I need not declare. All mental diversion, of a lighter nature than history, or occasionally a page of Milton or the Rambler, I utterly eschew. Never, in recitation-room, when a neighbour is at a loss for the declension of a heteroclite, or the measure of an angle, never am I moved by his imploring eye to play the undertoned prompter. Never have I been known, at the chapel-service, forenoon or afternoon, to close my eye longer than might be construed into a prolonged wink; nor to lose one particle of the serene gravity of my countenance, upon the appearance in the aisle of any of those stray quadrupeds, of the canine or feline race, who sometimes intrude among us, to the great diversion of the younger members of the congregation.

It may appear wonderful that, being such as I have described myself, I should patronize this magazine. And in truth I am by no means certain of the wisdom of our undertaking; I doubt if there be not much sense in the plea

upon which some gentlemen have refused their names to our subscription paper, viz. that we were sent here to study books, not to write them-to learn, not to publish. But since it has been determined to carry on the work, I confess an interest in its being carried on reputably. Wherefore I intend occasionally to chasten the gaieties, which, I foresee, will predominate in its pages, with a few of my own gravities. It is to vindicate my title to utter gravities, that I have given the foregoing sketch of myself; which has, I trust, shown, that my age and character are such, as to confer authority upon whatever of the serious or monitory may appear in the following Thoughts upon College Life.

That this life is a very peculiar one, none who have led it, and none, I suspect, who have much to do with those who are leading it, can be unaware. Our little community has ways most essentially its own, features which broadly distinguish it from the face which society elsewhere presents; and its members usually acquire habits, tastes, and opinions, which contrast very strongly, but sometimes not very advantageously, with those of others of the same age, and even with their own at any other period of life. We are all quite used, upon visiting home at the end of a term, or a year, and even upon transient minglings with our uncollegiate friends, to have these peculiarities animadverted upon, and not always in the most approbatory manner. No one of us, indeed, can observe the wide diverseness of his own pursuits, amusements, and course of life, from those of any one without the university, or note, in himself or his fellows, the sudden and important changes of character, both for good and for evil, which coming among us often works, the opposite manners in which it affects different individuals, and at the same time the many common traits which it stamps upon all, without feeling, with something of the anxiety with which he would discover himself within an enchanted circle, that he is under the sway of influences at once peculiar and powerful.

What these influences are, a slight view of our situation makes apparent. We find them to be such as results would have led us to suppose, and such as to account for many seeming anomalies. The fact is, our situation here is utterly

unnatural; necessarily so, perhaps, but that it is so that four or five hundred youth, collected from their homes, far and near, and housed together for four years, to read books and forget the world, are in a forced and unnatural state, is obvious. The developements of this unnaturalness are manifold-so, consequently, are its effects.

I. We are an insulated community,-secluded from the rest of the world, and thrown upon its own internal resources. We are brought into closer and more frequent contact than the members of any other society. We are all constantly rained upon by the same influences; and we all have continually and exclusively before our eyes the same examples -those of each other. There is thus a most powerful tendency to assimilate, ever at work among us. Fixed to one spot, and fixed there together, we must as necessarily assimilate, as the stones of a beach, which have no other motion than that of their mutual attrition.

I fear, however, that the chief instrument in bringing about this result-the immense power of example among us-does not, on the whole, operate beneficially. Although we certainly are frequently brought together in college, under circumstances which enable the industrious and intellectual to appear to such advantage as to excite emulation, these occasions bear no great proportion to the large remainder of our time, during which very different examples are generally found far more attractive. The hard student, when brought to mind at midnight, by a glance at the glimmering window, which indicates his watching and his labors; or when seen wending to recitation at morning, with absorbed look, and unelastic step, the probable consequence of his labors and his watching, may, I think, be well conceived to present a less tempting pattern to those who act from impulse, than the neglecter of his lessons, with his fine clothes, his gay air and genteel manners, his wit, with leisure to display it at any or every time-all which he is much more likely to have than the student-and last, not least, the fame of his merry-makings; of the brilliant joys of the wine table, around which he meets congenial spirits; and perhaps of his nocturnal exploits in the streets of the capital. To those, I have said, who act from impulse; and are there