ite
than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "_bene_,
_bene_," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the
day?--the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us
wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes, "before us where to
choose." Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with
which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air,
and the shout sent forth!

Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every month has
its favourite ones. The sports-man does not more keenly scrutinize his
kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse shooting, or
hare-hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites,
bowling at cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles.
Pleasure is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the
mass is guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws
them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst
of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the
propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in
conclave on the expediency of emigration.

Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday--a long
summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless
and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the _prima luce_,
from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the "severing clouds in
yonder east," through the sun's matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper
circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to
his evening entree in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the
brevity of life; 'tis _men_ that are idle; a thousand things could be
contrived and accomplished in that space, and a thousand schemes were
devised by us, when _boys_, to prevent any portion of it passing over
without improvement. We pursued the fleet angel of time through all his
movements till he blessed us.

With these and similar thoughts in my mind, I strayed down to the banks
of the river, and came upon the very spot, which, in those long-vanished
years, had been a favourite scene of our boyish sports. The impression
was overpowering; and as I gazed silently around me, my mind was subdued
to that tone of feeling which Ossian so finely designates "the joy of
grief." The trees were the same, but older, like myself; seemingly
u