ir merits or their failings from the opinion of strangers! It
may be readily supposed that the dinner did not pass without its share
of the ludicrous--that the waiter and the dishes, the family and the
host, would have afforded ample materials no less for the student
of nature in Hogarth, than of caricature in Bunbury; but I was too
seriously occupied in pursuing my object, and marking its success, to
have time even for a smile. Ah! if ever you would allure your son to
diplomacy, show him how subservient he may make it to benevolence.

When the women had retired, we drew our chairs near to each other, and
laying down my watch on the table, as I looked out upon the declining
day, I said, "Let us make the best of our time, I can only linger here
one half hour longer."

"And how, my friend," said Clutterbuck, "shall we learn the method
of making the best use of time? there, whether it be in the larger
segments, or the petty subdivisions of our life, rests the great enigma
of our being. Who is there that has ever exclaimed--(pardon my pedantry,
I am for once driven into Greek)--Euzexa! to this most difficult of the
sciences?"

"Come," said I, "it is not for you, the favoured scholar--the honoured
academician--whose hours are never idly employed, to ask this question!"

"Your friendship makes too flattering the acumen of your judgment,"
answered the modest Clutterbuck. "It has indeed been my lot to cultivate
the fields of truth, as transmitted unto our hands by the wise men of
old; and I have much to be thankful for, that I have, in the employ,
been neither curtailed in my leisure, nor abased in my independence--the
two great goods of a calm and meditative mind; yet are there moments in
which I am led to doubt of the wisdom of my pursuits: and when, with a
feverish and shaking hand, I put aside the books which have detained
me from my rest till the morning hour, and repair unto a couch often
baffled of slumber by the pains and discomforts of this worn and feeble
frame, I almost wish I could purchase the rude health of the peasant
by the exchange of an idle and imperfect learning for the ignorance,
content with the narrow world it possesses, because unconscious of the
limitless creation beyond. Yet, my dear and esteemed friend, there is a
dignified and tranquillizing philosophy in the writings of the ancients
which ought to teach me a better condition of mind; and when I have
risen from the lofty, albeit, somewhat melancho