tion in the College Chapel just before the Christmas
vacation. This was in the year 1831. He selected as his subject the one
eminently congenial to his thought; and his theme, "The Influence of
Italian upon English Literature," was admirably treated. The oration is
before us as we write, and we turn the pages with a fond and loving eye.
We remember, as we read, his brief sojourn,--that he died "in the sweet
hour of prime,"--and we are astonished at the eloquent wisdom displayed
by a lad of twenty summers. "I cannot help considering," he says, "the
sonnets of Shakspeare as a sort of homage to the Genius of Christian
Europe, necessarily exacted, although voluntarily paid, before he was
allowed to take in hand the sceptre of his endless dominion." And he
ends his charming disquisition in these words;--"An English mind that
has drunk deep at the sources of Southern inspiration, and especially
that is imbued with the spirit of the mighty Florentine, will be
conscious of a perpetual freshness and quiet beauty resting on his
imagination and spreading gently over his affections, until, by the
blessing of Heaven, it may be absorbed without loss in the pure inner
light of which that voice has spoken, as no other can,--

"'Light intellectual, yet full of love,
Love of true beauty, therefore full of joy,
Joy, every other sweetness far above.'"

It was young Hallam's privilege to be among Coleridge's favorites, and
in one of his poems Arthur alludes to him as a man in whose face "every
line wore the pale cast of thought." His conversations with "the old man
eloquent" gave him intense delight, and he often alluded to the
wonderful talks he had enjoyed with the great dreamer, whose magical
richness of illustration took him captive for the time being.

At Abbotsford he became known to Sir Walter Scott, and Lockhart thus
chronicles his visit:--

"Among a few other friends from a distance, Sir Walter received this
summer [1829] a short visit from Mr. Hallam, and made in his company
several of the little excursions which had in former days been of
constant recurrence. Mr. Hallam had with him his son, Arthur, a young
gentleman of extraordinary abilities, and as modest as able, who not
long afterwards was cut off in the very bloom of opening life and
genius. His beautiful verses, 'On Melrose seen in Company with Scott,'
have since been often printed."

"I lived an hour in fair Melrose:
It was not when 'the p