es so dangerous to the best interests of society,
sacrifice somewhat of that "valuable space" which should have been
devoted to the bulletin of the health, or the history of the travels, of
the "gallant officer" who last deliberately shot his friend in a duel;
or the piquant details of the last _crim. con._, with the extraordinary
disclosures expected to be made by the "noble defendant." Society has no
sympathy with vices to which it has no temptation; it might have done
foolish things in its day, but has long ago seen the folly of them. So
we make a graceful acknowledgment of having been wrong once, for the
sake of congratulating ourselves upon being so very right now.

Let me then, for some few moments, recall those scenes which, on the
stage of life, have passed away for ever; and forgetting, as memory
loves to do, the evil that was in them, let it be not idle repining to
lament the good.

Oh! dark yet pleasant quadrangle, round whose wide area I might wander
now, a stranger among strangers, where are they who once gave life and
mirth to cheer those ancient walls? There were full a score of rooms,
congenial _lares_, in which no hour of day or night would have found me
other than a welcome guest. I had friends, yea, friends, within those
prison-like windows--warm hearts walled in by thy cold grey
stones--friends that had thoughts, and feelings, and pursuits in
common--who were not hospitable in words alone, suffering each other's
presence with well-concealed _ennui_--but friends in something more than
in the name. In vain, among the cold conventionalities of life, shall I
look for the warm and kindly welcome, the sympathy of feeling, the
unrestrained yet courteous familiarity of intercourse, which was part
and parcel of a college life; and if for this only I should say of
Oxford, that I shall not look upon its like again--if for this only, I
doubt whether the years of my youthful pilgrimage were altogether evil,
who shall gainsay me? Where, or in what society of wise, and orderly,
and respectable "grown-up children," shall I find the sincerity and
warm-heartedness that once were the atmosphere of my daily life? Where
is the friend of my maturer choosing, into whose house I can walk at any
time, and feel sure I am no intruder? Where is the man, among those with
whom I am by hard fate compelled to associate, who does not measure his
regard, his hospitality, his very smiles, by my income, my station in
society--any thin