f time is the wandering life which he led--and many have learned from
experience, how difficult it is for a traveller to find leisure for
intellectual pursuits. Some idea, therefore, of Pushkin's activity may
be formed from a knowledge of the circumstance, that during this roving
period he had not only been storing his memory with images of the
beauties of nature, taking tribute of grandeur and loveliness from every
scene through which he wandered, but found time to pursue what would
appear, even for an otherwise unoccupied student, a very steady and
incessant course of labour. During the whole of his life, he made it his
practice to read almost every remarkable work which appeared in the
various languages he had acquired. That this was no easy task, and that
the quantity of intellectual food which he unceasingly consumed, must
have required a powerful and rapid digestion to assimilate it, we may
conclude from his own statement of his occupations and acquirements. On
quitting the Lyceum, he was acquainted with the English, Latin, German,
and French languages; to this list he managed to add, during his
wanderings, a complete knowledge of the Italian, and a competent
proficiency in Spanish.

But let us hear his own account of these studies, extracted from a poem
written in Bessarabia--

"In solitude my soul, my wayward inspiration
I've school'd to quiet toil, to fervent meditation.
I'm master of my days; order is reason's friend;
On graver thoughts I've learn'd my spirit's powers to bend;
I seek to compensate, in freedom's calm embraces,
For the warm years of youth, its joys and vanish'd graces;
And to keep equal step with an enlighten'd age."

We cannot refrain from quoting in this place a passage from another
poem, written at this period; our readers will be pleased, we think,
with so graceful a tribute to the glory of the great exile-bard of Rome,
whose fate and character had so much in common with those of Pushkin
himself--

"Sweet Ovid! Love's own bard! I dwell by that still shore
Whither thine exiled gods thou broughtest--where of yore
Thou pour'dst thy plaints in life, and left thine ashes dying;
With deathless, fruitless tears these places glorifying.

* * * * * *

Here, with a northern lyre the wilderness awaking,
I wander'd in those days, when liberty was breaking--
Roused by the gallant Greek--her sleep, by Danube's tide;
And