grew fresh under his eye; and though many years had elapsed since, in the buoyancy and thoughtlessness of boyhood, he had rambled over it, yet gradually old acquaintances grew again familiar to his glance. The tree he knew again under which he had formerly played. The lawn spread freely onward, as of old, over which, in sweet company, he had once gambolled—the little clumps of shrub trees, here and there, still grew, as he had once known them; and his heart grew softened amid its many cares, as his memory brought to him those treasures of the past, which were all his own when nothing of strife was in his fortunes.
What a god is memory, to keep in life—to endow with an unslumbering vitality beyond that of our own nature—its unconscious company—the things that seem only born for its enjoyment—that have no tongues to make themselves felt—and no claim upon it, only as they have ministered, ignorant of their own value, to the tastes and necessities of a superior! How more than dear—how precious are our recollections! How like so many volumes, in which time has written on his passage the history of the affections and the hopes! Their names may be trampled upon in our passion, blotted with our tears, thrown aside in our thoughtlessness, but nothing of their sacred traces may be obliterated. They are with us, for good or for evil, for ever! They last us when the father and the mother of our boyhood are gone. They bring them back as in infancy. We are again at their knee—we prattle at their feet—we see them smile upon, and we know that they love us. How dear is such an assurance! How sweetly, when the world has gone wrong with us, when the lover is a heedless indifferent, when the friend has been tried and found wanting, do they cluster before our eyes as if they knew our desire, and strove to minister to our necessities! True, they call forth our tears, but they take the weight from our hearts. They are never false to us,—better, far better, were we more frequently true to them!
Such were the musings of Singleton, as, reclined along the roots of the old tree, and sheltered by its branches, his eye took in, and his memory revived, the thousand scenes which he had once known of boyish frolic, when life wore, if not a better aspect of hope to his infant mind, at least a far less unpleasant show of its
