eams and fancies fair to give,
Some hallowing whispers of a loftier feeling.
Not for the far posterity they strive,
Doom'd with the time, its impulse but revealing,
Born to record the Moment's smile or sigh,
And with the light dance of the Hours to fly.

Spring wakes--and life, in all its youngest hues,
Shoots through the mellowing meads delightedly;
Air the fresh herbage scents with nectar-dews;
Livelier the choral music fills the sky;
Youth grows more young, and Age its youth renews,
In that field-banquet of the ear and eye;
Spring flies--lo, seeds where once the flowers have blush'd
And the last bloom's gone, and the last muse hush'd.

A READING PARTY IN THE LONG VACATION.

Every one who knows Oxford, and a good many besides, must have heard of
certain periodical migrations of the younger members of that learned
university into distant and retired parts of her Majesty's dominions,
which (on the _"lucus a non lucendo"_ principle) are called and known by
the name of Reading Parties. Some half dozen under-graduates, in peril
of the coming examination, form themselves into a joint-stock cramming
company; take L.30 or L.40 shares in a private tutor; pitch their camp
in some Dan or Beersheba which has a reputation for dulness; and, like
other joint-stock companies, humbug the public, and sometimes
themselves, into the belief that they are "doing business." For these
classical bubbles, the long vacation is the usual season, and Wales one
of the favourite localities; and certainly, putting "Reading" out of the
question, three fine summer months might be worse spent, than in
climbing the mountains, and whipping the trout-streams, of that romantic
land. Many a quiet sea-side town, or picturesque fishing-village, might
be mentioned, which owes no little of its summer gayety, and perhaps
something of its prosperity, to the annual visit of "the Oxonians:" many
a fair girl has been indebted for the most piquant flirtation of the
season to the "gens togata," who were reading at the little
watering-place to which fate and papa had carried her for the race-week,
or the hunt ball: and whatever the effect of these voluntary
rustications upon the class lists in Oxford, they certainly have
procured for the parties occasionally a very high "provincial
celebrity." I know that when we beat our retreat from summer quarters at
Glyndewi in 18--, the sighs of our late pa