planted in
his imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he
will still feel as the famous woman did about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas,
mais je les crains,--"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them,
nevertheless."

--As people grow older they come at length to live so much in memory
that they often think with a kind of pleasure of losing their dearest
blessings. Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem
when remembered. The friend we love best may sometimes weary us by his
presence or vex us by his infirmities. How sweet to think of him as he
will be to us after we have outlived him ten or a dozen years! Then we
can recall him in his best moments, bid him stay with us as long as we
want his company, and send him away when we wish to be alone again. One
might alter Shenstone's well-known epitaph to suit such a case:--

Hen! quanto minus est cum to vivo versari

Quam erit (vel esset) tui mortui reminisse!

"Alas! how much less the delight of thy living presence
Than will (or would) be that of remembering thee when thou hast
left us!"

I want to stop here--I the Poet--and put in a few reflections of my own,
suggested by what I have been giving the reader from the Master's Book,
and in a similar vein.

--How few things there are that do not change their whole aspect in
the course of a single generation! The landscape around us is wholly
different. Even the outlines of the hills that surround us are changed
by the creeping of the villages with their spires and school-houses
up their sides. The sky remains the same, and the ocean. A few old
churchyards look very much as they used to, except, of course, in
Boston, where the gravestones have been rooted up and planted in rows
with walks between them, to the utter disgrace and ruin of our most
venerated cemeteries. The Registry of Deeds and the Probate Office show
us the same old folios, where we can read our grandfather's title to his
estate (if we had a grandfather and he happened to own anything) and see
how many pots and kettles there were in his kitchen by the inventory of
his personal property.

Among living people none remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can
see the same Othello to-day, if I choose, that when I was a boy I saw
smothering Mrs. Duff-Desdemona with the pillow, under the instigations
of Mr. Cooper-Iago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt,
but the same truculent bl