17S LETTERS TO A FRIEND AT COLLEGE. 



you bend in deep absorption over some knotty passage of the "Analo- 

 gy," when, all at once, you are startled by the cry, "Come ! it is time 

 to go," and off you hurry to the "Recitation-room." You are examined 

 upon some of the mysteries of that plan of the divine government, the 

 whole scheme of which angels find themselves too weak in judgment 

 fully to comprehend ; but the least of whose laws is a link that imites 

 earth and heaven. You hesitate to express the crude conceptions that 

 you had formed. Your experienced Professor sees your perplexity. 

 An adept in the Socratic art he asks another question which presents the 

 subject in a light entirely new. You now see the force of what he had 

 said in his last lecture, penetrate into the very spir-it of Butler, and 

 feel that you now have in your hands a clue to guide you tluough all 

 the mazes of this labyrinth. You give your answer-, though but in two 

 words, and these shall henceforth and forever be your "open sesame" 

 into what you had but an hour before regarded as a gloomy region into 

 which you could never find your way, or as one where you must for- 

 ever wander about in uncertainty, even if you should succeed in ci-oss- 

 ing its tlireshold. Thus, one point after another is elucidated, and you 

 return to your room with fresh courage for the prosecution of at least 

 this department of your studies. 



In the same way are the principles of every science, the treasures of 

 Grecian and of Roman literature, (where the most insignificant circum- 

 stance now lies, like the ant of Martial,* immortalized in amber,) and 

 the Gothic richness of modern languages unfolded to you. But if all 

 this is not sufficient, if you wish for additional light or for a greater va- 

 riety of studies, there are the ten thousand volumes of the various libra- 

 ries of the histitution opening to you their exliaustless stores. And 

 again lest you should dissipate your mind by wavering from one vol- 

 ume and from one subject to another, as the bee is said to have gathered 

 no honey in the island of Java where innumerable flowers were ever 

 blooming around it, there is the fixed amount of study, the prescribed 

 Academical course over which you must go, if you will be dismissed 

 from College crovvned with its "first laurel." 



Or do you tire of studying in silence } Whilst you are gathering 

 ideas and culling the choicest words in which to clothe them, do you 

 feel the impulse grow strong within you to give them utterance ? There 

 is your friend and room-mate to whom you can talk '■'■De omnihus rebus 



* Dum Phaethontea formica vogaiur in umbra, 

 Implicuit temiem succina gutta feram : 

 Sic nodo quae fuerat vita contemta manente, 

 Funcribus facta est nunc jircliosa suis. — Mart. Epig. Lib. vi. 15. 



