TO A CONTEMPLATIVE MIND. 281 



tranquillity of retirement, and whose youthful mind has acquired :i 

 peaceful calmness, in perfect unison with the pastoral repose among 

 which his youthful years glided so peacefully away, the solitary scene 

 of his nativity becomes ten thousand times dearer as the anxieties and 

 turmoil of business thicken around him in after years, and compel him 

 to abandon the quiet valley, to cultivate the acquaintance of strangers 

 in a land distant and unknown. How often, amid the distracting 

 cares which surround him, does the mind turn with languor and 

 loathing from the anxieties of business, and direct its eye, as through 

 a telescopic vista, to the bright and sunny regions of the past ! How 

 often does he think of the unsullied days of childhood and youth, when 

 he bounded up the valley with a few chosen companions to enjoy the 

 refreshing coolness of the evening, and watch the silver orb of night 

 rise in unclouded majesty above the towering summit of the heath- 

 clad mountains to the eastward, while his native stream murmured 

 along at their feet over its slaty bed ! How often does he think of 

 the buoyant feeling which pervaded their bosoms when, emancipated 

 from the thraldom of school, they wound their way up the solitary dell, 

 leaving the busy world far behind them, to exercise their piscatorial 

 skill; when the guileless heart was free from forebodings of the 

 future, and the past presented but a succession of enjoyments, un- 

 alloyed with care or grief! Ah! — 



" These are the days when youthful hopes beguile, 

 We think that bliss like this will still prevail; 

 But sage experience shows the specious wile. 

 And every year leaves something to bewail." 



For how often does the sigh heave his bosom when he thinks of the 

 untimely fate of many of those companions who, while health and 

 vigour are his, in a foreign land are falling beneath the assaults of 

 the relentless destroyer, and filling untimely graves ! What, though 

 lie is surrounded by more luxuriant scenes and fanned by more 

 odoriferous gales than in youth? He lons:s to call a moderate 

 independence his own, and then breathe once more the salubrious 

 air of his native mountains, which have occupied his day dreams and 

 gilded his night visions since the time when he last beheld them, and 

 which are engraven on the tablets of his memory as with a pen of 

 adamant. Though surrounded with gaudy pageants, magnificent 

 scenes, and costly viands, lie longs to retire to his native solitude, 

 Vol. IX. No. 106. 2 b 



