his sudden friendship I
express, Mr. Mowbray, but I am afraid you think me very strange."

"No, indeed," replies Mowbray; "I know not why, but you have already
taken a strong hold upon me. Singular! we are almost strangers, but I
feel as though I had known you all my life!"

"That can scarcely be, for I am but seventeen or eighteen," says
Hoffland smiling.

"A frank, true age. I regret that I have passed it."

"Why?"

"Ah, can you ask, Mr. Hoffland?"

"Please do not call me Mr. Hoffland. We are friends: say Charles; and
then I will call you Ernest. I cannot unless you set me the example."

"Ernest? How did you discover my name?"

"Oh!" said Hoffland, somewhat embarrassed, "does not every body know
Ernest Mowbray?"

"Very well--as you are determined to give me compliments instead of
reasons, I will not persist. Charles be it then, but you must call me
Ernest."

"Yes, Ernest."

The low musical words went to his heart, and broke down every barrier.
They were bosom friends from that moment, and walked on in perfect
confidence.

"Why did you regret your youth, Ernest?" said Hoffland. "I
thought young men looked forward impatiently to their full
manhood--twenty-five or thirty; though I do not," he added with a
smile.

"They do; but it is only another proof of the blindness of youth."

"Is youth blind?"

"Blind, because it cannot see that all the delights of ambition, the
victories of mind, the triumphs and successes of the brain, are mere
dust and ashes compared with what it costs to obtain them--the
innocence of the heart, the illusions of its youthful hope."

"Ah! are illusions to be desired?"

"At least they are a sweet suffering, a bitter delight."

"Even when one wakes from them to find every thing untrue--despair
alone left?"

"You paint the reverse truly; but still I hold that the happiness of
life is in what I have styled illusions. Listen, Charles," he
continued, gazing kindly at the boy, who turned away his head. "Life
is divided into three portions--three stages, which we must all travel
before we can lie down in that silent bed prepared for us at our
journey's end. In the first, Youth, every thing is rosy, brilliant,
hopeful; life is a dream of happiness which deadens the senses with
its delirious rapture--deadens them so perfectly that the thorns Youth
treads on are such no longer, they are flowers! stones are as soft as
the emerald grass, and if a mountain or a river rise before it, al