person was
not good enough, we are told that the future professor nearly went
mad, and that he never quite got over it. But really, judging from
his writings and his biography, he bore up under it, after a little,
wonderfully well.

But looking back to the days which the old yellow letters bring back,
you will think to yourself, Where are the hopes and anticipations of
that time? You expected to be a great man, no doubt. Well, you know you
are not. You are a small man, and never will be anything else; yet
you are quite resigned. If there be an argument which stirs me to
indignation at its futility, and to wonder that any mortal ever regarded
it as of the slightest force, it is that which is set out in the famous
soliloquy in "Cato," as to the Immortality of the Soul. Will any sane
man say, that, if in this world you wish for a thing very much, and
anticipate it very clearly and confidently, you are therefore sure to
get it? If that were so, many a little schoolboy would end by driving
his carriage and four, who ends by driving no carriage at all. I have
heard of a man whose private papers were found after his death all
written over with his signature as he expected it would be when he
became Lord Chancellor. Let us say his peerage was to be as Lord Smith.
There it was, SMITH, C., SMITH, C., written in every conceivable
fashion, so that the signature, when needed, might be easy and imposing.
That man had very vividly anticipated the woolsack, the gold robe, and
all the rest. It need hardly be said, he attained none of these. The
famous argument, you know of course, is, that man has a great longing to
be immortal, and that therefore he is sure to be immortal. Rubbish! It
is not true that any longing after immortality exists in the heart of
a hundredth portion of the race. And if it were true, it would prove
immortality no more than the manifold signatures of SMITH, C., proved
that Smith was indeed to be Chancellor. No: we cling to the doctrine
of a Future Life; we could not live without it; but we believe it, not
because of undefined longings within ourselves, not because of reviving
plants and flowers, not because of the chrysalis and the butterfly,--but
because "our Saviour, Jesus Christ, hath abolished death, and brought
life and immortality to light through the gospel."

There is something very curious, and very touching, in thinking
how clear and distinct, and how often recurring, were our early
anticipations of th