men of different appetites
and tastes have plundered."

"I myself know not," replied Henry, "what education is, except that
derived from the life and disposition of my parents, or the instruction
of my teacher, the chaplain. My father with all his cool and sturdy
habits of thought, which leads him to regard all relations like a piece
of metal or a work of art, yet involuntarily and unconsciously exhibits
a silent reverence and godly fear before all incomprehensible and lofty
phenomena, and therefore looks upon the blooming growth of the child
with humble self-denial. A spirit is busy here, playing fresh from the
infinite fountain; and this feeling of the superiority of a child in
the loftiest matters, the irresistible thought of an intimate guidance
of the innocent being who is just entering on a course so critical, the
impress of a wondrous world, which no earthly currents have yet
obliterated, and then too the sympathizing memory of that golden age
when the world seemed to us clearer, kindlier, and more unwonted, and
the almost visible spirit of prophecy attended us,--all this has
certainly won my father to a system the most devout and discreet."

"Let us seat ourselves upon the grass among the flowers," said the old
man interrupting him. "Cyane will call us when our evening meal is
ready. I pray you continue your account of your early life. We old
people love much to hear of childhood's years, and it seems as if I
were drinking the odor of a flower, which I had not inhaled since my
infancy. Tell me first, however, how my solitude and garden please you,
for these flowers are my friends; my heart is in this garden. You see
nothing that loves me not, that is not tenderly beloved. I am here in
the midst of my children, like an old tree from whose roots, has
sprouted this merry youth."

"Happy father," said Henry, "your garden is the world. The ruins are
the mothers of these blooming children; this manifold animate creation
draws its support from the fragments of past time. But must the mother
die, that the children may thrive? Does the father remain sitting alone
at their tomb, in tears forever?"

Sylvester gave his hand to the sighing youth, and then arose to pluck a
fresh forget-me-not, which he tied to a cypress branch and brought to
him. The evening wind waved strangely in the tops of the pines which
stood beyond the ruins, and sent over their hollow murmur. Henry hid
his face bedewed with tears upon the neck of