LINES BY ROBERT SOUTHEY.

(FROM AN UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH.)

The days of Infancy are all a dream,
How fair, but oh! how short they seem--
'Tis Life's sweet opening SPRING!

The days of Youth advance:
The bounding limb, the ardent glance.
The kindling soul they bring--
It is Life's burning SUMMER time.

Manhood--matured with wisdom's fruit,
Reward of learning's deep pursuit--
Succeeds, as AUTUMN follows Summer's prime.

And that, and that, alas! goes by;
And what ensues? The languid eye,
The failing frame, the soul o'ercast;
'Tis WINTER'S sickening, withering blast,
Life's blessed season--for it is the last.

[From the Autobiography of Leigh Hunt.]

THE SCHOOLMASTER OF COLERIDGE AND LAMB.

BY LEIGH HUNT.

Boyer, the upper master of Christ-Hospital--famous for the mention of
him by COLERIDGE and LAMB--was a short, stout man, inclining to
punchiness, with large face and hands, an aquiline nose, long upper lip,
and a sharp mouth. His eye was close and cruel. The spectacles which he
wore threw a balm over it. Being a clergyman, he dressed in black, with
a powdered wig. His clothes were cut short; his hands hung out of the
sleeves, with tight wristbands, as if ready for execution; and as he
generally wore gray worsted stockings, very tight, with a little
balustrade leg, his whole appearance presented something formidably
succinct, hard, and mechanical. In fact, his weak side, and undoubtedly
his natural destination, lay in carpentry; and he accordingly carried,
in a side-pocket made on purpose, a carpenter's rule.

The merits of BOYER consisted in his being a good verbal scholar, and
conscientiously acting up to the letter of time and attention. I have
seen him nod at the close of the long summer school-hours, wearied out;
and I should have pitied him, if he had taught us any thing but to fear.
Though a clergyman, very orthodox, and of rigid morals, he indulged
himself in an oath, which was "God's-my-life!" When you were out in your
lesson, he turned upon you a round, staring eye like a fish; and he had
a trick of pinching you under the chin, and by the lobes of the ears,
till he would make the blood come. He has many times lifted a boy off
the ground in this way. He was, indeed, a proper tyrant, passionate and
capricious; would take violent likes and dislikes to the same boys;
fondle some without any apparent reason,