on terms of intimacy, would seem to imply no little disquietude on
the part of his student friend during the earlier years of his life at
Cambridge.

"You can hardly imagine with what delight I recur to the days which I
spent at Cambridge. In the delightful seclusion from noisy vulgarity,
in the sweet interchange of kind sentiments, and in the mutual
competition of classic pursuits, I possessed a unity and tranquillity
of purpose far beyond the merits of my later years. My first years
there were not marked with this peculiar character. It was in my
Junior and Senior years that, from forming a choice of friends, and
participating in the higher views of literature, I felt that happiness
resulted in the activity of intellect and possession of friendship.
That period will in future be yours; and though you may start with
surprise at the thought at this moment, that period will be marked out
in the calendar of your years as among the _dies fortunatos_. You and
I are not widely distinct in years, and you can therefore readily
believe that this attachment is not the moral relation of comparison
and experience; no, it was reality which charmed me when present, and
reflects a lustre in remembrance. Go on, then, my dear fellow, in the
academic course with awakened hope. A high destiny awaits you. The
joys of youth shall give spirit to the exertions of manhood, and the
pursuits of literature yield a permanent felicity attainable only by
the votaries of taste. Sweet are the attainments which accomplish the
wishes of friends. Our reliance upon you is founded on a belief that
ambition and literature will unite us in as close bonds as sympathy
and affinity.

"On a subject so interesting to me as my collegiate course I seldom
reflect without melancholy; not a harsh and dark brooding, but a soft
and tender pensiveness which

"'Sheds o'er the soul a sympathetic gloom.'

"The thousand associations of festivity, pleasantry, study, and
recreation live to hallow the whole. The picture, by its distance,
loses its defects, and retains only the strong colorings of primitive
impression. Never do I cast my eyes on that dear seat of letters but I
exclaim involuntarily with Gray:

"'Ah! happy fields, ah! pleasing shade,
Ah! groves beloved in vain,
Where once my careless childhood strayed,
A stranger yet to pain;
I feel the gales that round ye blow
A momentary bliss bestow.'

"By the way, when you ar