h flies, and as she flies all the bright colours
fade from the wings of thought, and the bloom vanishes from the earnest
eloquence of speech.

Yet, as I write, let me call to mind, if but for a moment, the
remembrance of those happy evenings, when we would meet to read
Shakespeare or the Poets in each other's rooms, and pleasant sympathies
and pleasant differences of opinion freely discussed, called into genial
life, friendships which we once hoped and believed would never have
grown cold. Let the image of that bright social circle, picturesquely
scattered in armchairs round the winter fire, rise up before my fancy
once more, and let me recall what can never be again. Of the honoured
and well-loved few who one night recorded their names and thoughts in
one precious little book, two are dead though it is but five years back;
C E B---is dead; and R H P---is dead; C E B---the chivalrous and
gallant-hearted, the champion of the past, the "Tory whom Liberals
loved;" and R H P---, the honest and noble, the eloquent speaker, and
the brave actor, and the fearless thinker--he, too, is dead, nobly
volunteering in works of danger and difficulty during the Indian Mutiny;
but L---, and B---, and M---, and others are living yet, and to them I
consecrate this page _they_ will forgive the digression, and for their
sakes I will venture to let it pass. We are scattered now, and our
friendship is a silent one, but yet I know that to them, at least,
changed or unchanged, my words will recall the fading memory of glorious
days.

The conversation, (but do not suppose that I shall attempt, after what I
have said, to reproduce it), happened to turn that evening on the
phenomena of memory. It started thus:--They had been discussing some
subject of the day, when Owen observed to Julian--

"Why, how grave you look, Julian."

"Do I? I was thinking of something odd. While you were talking--
without the faintest apparent reason that I can discover, (and I was
trying to hit upon one when you spoke)--a fact started up in my mind,
which had no connection whatever with the subject, and yet which forced
itself quite strongly and obtrusively on my notice."

"Just as one catches sight suddenly of some stray bit of seaweed
floating in a great world of waters, which seems to have no business
there," said Kennedy.

"Yes. But there _must_ have been _some_ reason for my thinking of it
just then."

"The law of association, depend upon it," said O