he had come within reach of his talons!

The volumes, of which we have given an account altogether too brief
and too rapid for their importance, deserve to be studied, as
containing some of the richest transcripts of the richest mind of
England. Letters from various eminent persons diversify them, but the
staple is Burke. If their style seldom rises to the elated ardour and
buoyant strength of his speeches and pamphlets, they exhibit all his
wisdom; they display the entire depth of that current which public
difficulties and obstructions swelled into a cataract. We have the
image of Burke reposing, but still we have all the proportion, all the
dignity, and all the colossal grandeur of the form, ruling senates,
and marshaling the mind of nations for the greatest of their fields.

Various notes illustrate the volumes, and the edition does every
credit to Lord Fitzwilliam and General Bourke.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

NO. II.
JOHN BROWN.

A heavy snow-storm, which confined Chesterton and myself pretty much
to the walls of the college for the next few days, prevented us from
paying our friend Brown a visit in his new quarters so soon after his
installation as we intended. When we did succeed in wading there upon
the commencement of a thaw, we found him rather sulky. The sweets of
retirement had become somewhat doubtful; the Grange was certainly not
the place one would have deliberately chosen to be snowed up in; and
so far John was unfortunate in his first week of commencing hermit.

We found him in full possession of his easy chair, with Bruin extended
on the only piece of carpeting in the room, which did duty as a
hearth-rug. There was a volume of Sophocles open upon the table, with
a watch on one side of it; the Quarterly Review had not at that time
taken upon itself to enlighten undergraduates as to their real state
of mind, and the secrets of successful reading, or there would
doubtless have been the miniature of some fair girl on the other.
(What the effect of such "companions to the classics" may be in
general, I perhaps am no judge. I detest "fair girls," in the first
place; but I have not yet forgotten, if the reader has, that a pair of
_dark_ eyes were the ruin of three months' reading in my own case.)
However, there was no pictured face, except the watch-face, to cheer
the studies of John Brown; and, perhaps, for that reason, our friend
had evidently been asleep. How very glad he was to see us, was
betr