erhaps the mind of boyhood is more
active in its conceptions--more alive to the impulses of pleasure and
pain--in other words, has a more extended scope of sensations, than
during any other portion of our existence. Its days are not those of
lack-occupation; they are full of stir, animation, and activity, for it
is then we are in training for after life; and, when the hours of school
restraint glide slowly over, "like wounded snakes," the clock, that
chimes to liberty, sends forth the blood with a livelier flow; and
pleasure thus derives a double zest from the bridle that duty has
imposed, joy being generally measured according to the difficulty of its
attainment. What delight in life have we ever experienced more exquisite
than that, which flowed at once in upon us from the teacher's "_bene_,
_bene_," our own self-approbation, and release from the tasks of the
day?--the green fields around us wherein to ramble, the stream beside us
wherein to angle, the world of games and pastimes "before us where to
choose." Words are inadequate to express the thrill of transport, with
which, on the rush from the school-house door, the hat is waved in air,
and the shout sent forth!

Then what a variety of amusements succeed each other. Every mouth has
its favourite ones. The sportsman does not more keenly scrutinize his
kalendar for the commencement of the trouting, grouse-shooting, or hare-
hunting season, than the younker for the time of flying kites, bowling at
cricket, football, spinning peg-tops, and playing at marbles. Pleasure
is the focus, which it is the common aim to approximate; and the mass is
guided by a sort of unpremeditated social compact, which draws them out
of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of
amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the
propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in
conclave on the expediency of emigration.

Then how perfectly glorious was the anticipation of a holiday--a long
summer day of liberty and ease! In anticipation it was a thing boundless
and endless, a foretaste of Elysium. It extended from the _prima luce_,
from the earliest dawn of radiance that streaked the "severing clouds in
yonder east," through the sun's matin, meridian, postmeridian, and vesper
circuit; from the disappearance of Lucifer in the re-illumined skies, to
his evening entree in the character of Hesperus. Complain not of the
brevity of li