hours of agony
Again before my mind:--I mourned his doom;
I mourned my own: the sunny little room
In which, opress'd by sickness, now I lay,
Weeping for sorrows past, and woes to come,
Had been my own in childhood's early day.
Oh! could those years indeed so soon have passed away!

Past, as the waters of the running brook;
Fled, as the summer winds that fan the flowers!
All that remained, a word--a tone--a look,
Impressed, by chance, in those bright joyous hours;
Blossoms which, culled from youth's light fairy bowers,
Still float with lingering scent, as loath to fade,
In spite of sin's remorseless, 'whelming powers,
Above the wreck which time and grief have made.
Nursed with the dew of tears, though low in ruin laid.

_The Sorrows of Rosalie_.

* * * * *

FAGGING AT WINCHESTER SCHOOL.

The following outline of a recent quarrel at Winchester School serves to
illustrate the _System_ of _Fagging_ as practised at one of our leading
schools, among the "future clergy, lawyers, legislators, and peers of
England." It is extracted from a pamphlet by Sir Alexander Malet, Bart.;
and we hope this _expose_ will lead to the extermination of the
"custom:"--

The prefects, or eight senior boys of the school, are in the habit of
fagging the juniors; and that they may have a greater command of their
services during meal times, they appoint one of the junior boys with the
title of course keeper, whose business it is to take care that whilst the
prefects are at breakfast or supper, the juniors sit upon a certain cross
bench at the top of the hall, that they may be forthcoming whenever a
prefect requires any thing to be done. During that part of the short
half-year in which there are no fires kept, a sufficient number of boys
for this service was generally furnished from the fourth class, and it
was considered that the junior part of the fifth class, which is next in
the ascending scale, was exempt from so disagreeable a servitude. It
appears, however, that within these few years, there has been a much
greater press of boys to enter the school than formerly; the consequence
has been, that they have come to it older and more advanced in their
studies than formerly, and the upper departments of the school have
received a greater accession of numbers in proportion than the lower
classes. The fourth class, therefore, gradually furnishing a smaller
number of fags, the p