candidates receive their education gratis, and are entitled, for four years, to chambers and commons in the University. When first I urged him to present himself as a candidate at the examination, which always takes place on Trinity Tuesday, he made many objections. He was apprehensive of failure-he did not think his classical attainments sufficient to meet the competition with which the places are always sought; (I have known upwards of one hundred candidates for six vacancies,) and it was with no little difficulty I overcame his reluctance to encounter the examination. I was not, however, disappointed in my estimate of his success; although without any special preparation for a most severe and scrutinizing examination, he obtained first sizarship, with marks that placed him far beyond the reach of competition. Having given this decided proof of his ability and classical attainments, and being strongly recommended by Dr. Wail, he had not much difficulty în procuring a situation as assistant in one of the first schools in Dublin, with a salary that to him was affluence, and having his chambers and commons in college, he now seemed comfortably settled. The free rooms appropriated to the accommodation of sizars are the garrets in the old brick or library square, and in one of these Arthur Johns was soon comfortably lodged. Each set of rooms is generally appropriated to two, but the Provost, as a compliment to his acquirements, allotted him a set to himself. This is generally considered as a favour. Poor Arthur seemed greatly gratified by the compliment it implied. The first evening that I sat with him in his small and solitary chambers, he told me of it with pride. I did not wish to damp his spirits, but I could not help involuntarily sighing, as I thought the favour was to be condemned to the solitude of a lonely garret. Those who know the miseries of "chum" will understand that it was a real favour; but just then I thought that there was no great compliment in being left without a companion, to the miserable and unfriended loneliness of a college life. There was something that was, alas! too prophetic in the melancholy feelings with which I regarded it. a Between the duties of his situation and his studies Arthur's whole time was occupied; occupied, indeed, far more than I could have wished. I could not but observe with alarm, as the summer advanced, that the constitutional paleness of his cheek had assumed a still more ashy wanness, and that his once bright eye was beginning to be heavy and glazed. I urged him to take more care of his health, and to read less; but he used to laugh at me: he said the walk to and from the school was sufficient exercise for him. When I urged on him the danger of too much mental exertion, he used to point to his head, and say, "God never gave us our brains to be unemployed, and he never will let us be injured by employing them." And it seemed as if his confidence was well grounded. Naturally delicate, he appeared uninjured by an application that might have worn down the most Herculean frame. Winter passed away, and at every examination he attained honours, and raised his character. Everyone now spoke of him: he became the subject of almost universal interest. The chief portion of his time was devoted to the study of the classies; and yet it astonished me, who knew how much he neglected his scientific reading, that he bore a high, a very high character, as a scientific scholar. By the most strict economy of his time, he had also contrived to amass a fund of general information that was quite surprising; and it may give some idea both of his ability and his industry that while, for five hours in the day, he was harassed by the wearying and dispiriting labours of a school, he yet managed, in the hours that were his own, not only to prosecute his academic studies with a success that might well have been the result of undivided application, but to acquire a knowledge of those subjects of general literature which the majority of academic students too generally neglect. And, as if to make the difficulties of his situation more apparent by contrast -as if to bring into more striking relief the truth of the maxim, which is as old as the days of Juvenal-as old, perhaps, as the selfishness and the heartlessness of society-that poverty is a drag upon genius, a weight that crushes many a noble spirit to the earth-his principal opponent for honours was a young man of fortune, and one whose parents wisely thought that their wealth was well applied in providing for their son every facility of distinction. From one examination to another St. George was provided with the best tutors that the University could afford, and the hours of his study were broken only by recreations that might invigorate his mind. Poor Arthur was thrown upon his own resources; and the best, because the earliest, hours of his day were taken up in toiling, not so much to find a livelihood for himself as to minister to the comforts of his parents; and yet, with all these odds against him, the child of poverty and toil was successful against his favoured competitor. Time passed on, and another summer vacation arrived, with its long and dreary days-long and dreary to those who have ever passed them in the solitude of the city, or still more in the desertion of college. In the months of July and August the streets of Dublin are almost deserted. The rumbling of the wheels of a solitary carriage rolling along may occasionally be heard afar off in the quietness of the streets; and the cart of the waterman, as he goes about to lay the dust, tells you that, at least, the municipal authorities calculate upon the presence of some pas sengers in the streets, for whose convenience they are concerned: but go into College, and you have the utter picture of desolation. You find at the gate, perhaps, a solitary porter, listlessly keeping his sinecure watch: but you meet in the archway no troops of gowned gibs hurrying to and fro, as they flock to or from their lecture; no pompous premium men, looking with an air of self-importance at the notices on the gates. You hear no hum of voices in the courts. You may look round and round, and see no trace of any living thing: nothing meets your eye but the glare of the hot summer sun, falling on the white burning pave ment, and flung back with increased intensity upon the pillars and walls of the gray buildings. All is lonely and deserted; and you feel almost afraid that you are guilty of a crime as the echo of your own footsteps starts the silence and disturbs the repose of the cloisterlike stillness that is around you. And yet there are men who make this lonely place their residence for the summer months, some by compulsion, and some by choice. In the beginning of July Arthur paid a short visit to his parents. I would have given much to have seen this meeting. But I can conceive the pride with which they must have received him to their humble roof. I can fancy that I see his old father blessing God for having given him such a son; and his plain mother, with her matronlike cap and clean white apron, gazing on him with pride for the past and anticipation for the future, as he sat by their lonely fireside. His visit, however, was a short one: he returned to Dublin sooner even than he had intended. I confess I thought this strange; that he should thus, as it were, tear himself from the shelter of a parental roof: and when I found that he had returned, after an absence of a fortnight, I feared that he was getting too proud for his parent's cottage. I was at first angry with him; but I began to think that perhaps the feeling was only what might be expected from proud and foolish human nature; and I sighed for the imperfections of mankind, that alloy even the best and noblest dispositions with the base mixture of mean selfishness and silly pride. My reflections were, perhaps, philosophical. I might not have formed too low an estimate of human nature; but I did my friend deep injustice. After his return I never saw such intense devotion to study as he manifested. His whole soul appeared concentrated in the desire of distinguishing himself. I knew not how to reconcile his sacrifice of health, of everything, to this one object. He did not seem ambitious. He was a mystery to me. It might have corrected my unjust suspicions of his want of filial duty that he had proved his affection for his parents far more substantially than by paying them long visits. Ever since he left them he had received monthly his stipend from the school where he was engaged; and each month he transmitted the best part of it to his mother, reserving only so much as was necessary for those wants with the supply of which the strictest economy could not dispense. During the long days of summerdays in which, as I have already said, College is almost altogether deserted I often made it my business to interrupt his studies and force him into an hour's recreation. Often, of an evening, did I bring him reluctantly from his books, to wander under the shelter of the fine old trees in the College park, and talk with me of many and of strange things. He loved the moonlight of a summer night; and often did we carry with us two chairs from his apartment, and sit under these old trees, watching the moonbeams silvering their leaves, and an occasional bat wheeling round their branches, and then winging his dreary flight to some crevice in the walls of the library. On one of these occasions a circumstance took place which I never can forget. I had been speaking to him of his future prospects. I had been reasoning with him on the indiscretion of the course he was pursuing in devoting his entire time to classical studies, to the neglect of scientific pursuits. I suggested to him that for classical knowledge 'the University made no permanent provision; while, by applying his time to the study of science, he might ultimately obtain a fellowship-a result which his abilities and, above all, his habits of intense application, might warrant him confidently to expect. He told me candidly that he did not wish for a fellowship. I spoke of its emoluments: he only answered by a deep and heavy sigh. I pressed him on the subject. "Of what use," said he, indignantly, "is the wealth that fellowship confers on you, when a regulation which is the remnant of monastic barbarity prevents you from sharing it?" A deep red blush, I thought, of indignation, passed over his countenance. I could not help laughing. Of all the persons I knew I thought him the least likely to be deterred from a fellowship. by the celibacy regulation; and I told him so, and rallied him on the point. He seemed ill at ease: he rose from the chair on which he was sitting, and stamped his foot hurriedly on the ground. I rose too, and we both, almost mechanically, walked away from the spot. Nothing more passed between us; but I felt convinced, by the extreme agitation of his manner, that it was a particular attachment, and not a mere general liking for the matrimonial state, that created his aversion to the restraints of the celibacy statute-a statute which is certainly one of the most absurd remnants of a barbarous code, for the maintenance of which no rational justification has ever yet been put forward, and of which the only effect is, to drive from the fellowship here every man of genius, unless the few-and of men of genius they are the fewwho can bring themselves to submit to its odious and unnatural provisions.† But this is a digression. Let me confine myself to the history of my friend. I did not wish to question him upon the subject connected with our conversation in the park; and yet it often occurred to me that he was endeavouring to lead the conversation so that I should ask for a disclosure that he wished to make, but did not choose to volunteer. I determined to seek an opportunity of obtaining his confidence on the only point on which I had reason to believe that it was withheld. Accident soon obtained it for me. I was invited, about the middle of September, to make one of a party to visit the Lakes of Killarney. I sought and obtained permission to invite Arthur to accompany us. To my surprise, he positively refused. I pressed him; but, what with him was very unusual, he was obstinate, without being able to give a reason; and I was at last reluctantly obliged to forego my useless solicitations. The evening before we were to set out I spent with him in College. The evenings had shortened to their autumn • It is usual to close the park gates at night-roll hour; but at the time of which I speak the gates leading into the park were, during the summer vacation, permitted to remain open until twelve. I do not know whether the same custom is still observed. My readers will, perhaps, recollect that it was an early attachment that diverted from fellowship the views of Charles Wolfe; a man who, surely, as a fellow, would have done honour to the University. See Russell's Life of Wolfe. 38 Chapters of College Romance. length, and there was no moonlight; 66 I was astonished at the sad and bitter tone in which he uttered the words, but he did not give me time to Mr. O'Brien," said interrupt him. "do not laugh at me ; he, more loudly, do not think me a fool; I am oneam IN LOVE." The earnestness with which the words burst, as it were, from the contending emotions that were choking in his throat, told me that even if love might ever excite a smile, his was not a pas sion at which I could laugh. 66 66 long years, worn me out." These were the very words he used, and even if they are incorrect, I will not alter them. When I was but a child," continued he, a passion seized upon my mind, and the idol of it has never since for a moment left her shrine. I have dreamed of her when asleep-I have thought of her when awake. I have wandered over the hills, and heard her voice in the music of every breeze, and seen her image mirrored in the bosom He had not yet mentioned the name Matilda (I cannot give her true name, and there is a sacredness around her in my mind which prevents me from attaching a fictitious one.) Matilda was the daughter of a gentleman who resided at no great distance from Arthur's home. When they were both children he had conceived for her the most romantic passion, which, unlike most boyish loves, had grown with his growth, and strengthened with his strength. He met her in her walks through the fields when the tenderness of both their ages prevented the distance which the difference of rank created between their As they grew up more mature years. he met her but occasionally, but still the passion lived in his heart. He used to go wherever he thought that he could catch a glimpse of her, even at a distance; and what was most singular was, sion for fifteen years, until the object that though he had cherished this pasof his childish affection had become a woman, and he himself a man, yet never had he once given the slightest indication of its presence; it was shut up in the loneliest recesses of his own heart, and in that shrine he was content to worship, in secret, the treasured image of the unconscious object of his admiration. There was something so singularly, so wildly, almost so unreally romantic in the history of this passion-thus formed in childhood, cherished for thirteen long years in secret, and now for the first time communicated to any human being-that it invested his character in my mind with a grandeur that it never had possessed before. The constancy with which he had clung to his early idol, even where he had no possible expectation that his love was requited, could only spring from feeling not like that of the ordinary sons of men. His was the worship of a poet, which could thus abstract, as it were, its object, from all the circumstances that surrounded her, and bow down before her in secret in all the purity of spiritual affection. Here, too, was the clue to much that had been hitherto mysterious in his character. His almost superhuman exertions to attain distinctions that he did not seem to prize at all, was to raise himself to a station in which he might honourably seek her love. And while I could not but admire the depth of that love which prompted him to these exertions, I could also the better appreciate the fulness of that filial devotion, which, instead of hoarding the immediate proceeds of those exertions, appropriated them to ministering to his parents' comforts. He walked up and down the room for some time-he seemed ashamed of what he had told me. At last he flung himself upon a chair, the only one beside the one which I occupied, which his scantily furnished apartment contained-he leaned his head upon the table, and burst into a convulsive flood of tears. It was but for a moment-he became calm. Mr. O'Brien," he said, "I am foolish; but had you like me loved. No! love is not the word to express what I felt, what I feel-it was madness-for fifteen years she has been the vision of my soul-a part of my existence-mysteriously present to all my thoughts-but now," said he, "the spell is broken. Surely man disquieteth himself in vain." You I endeavoured to urge upon him the possibility that he might yet attain his wishes-but he stopped me. do not know the nature of my passion -long-long before I calculated on the cold contingencies of life--this passion seized my mind. I remember the day when I gathered her wild flowers-she then seemed to me like an angel; and from that hour I associated with her everything that was fair, and virtuous, and pure. I was then in an humble station, and in it I would have been happy, but it was not God's will. She crossed my path like a being from another sphere-a spark, as it were of fire, fell upon my soul, and it has been burning ever since-and this was the flame whose flickering gleams men have admired; for I know I have been admired-but do you recollect Horace : "Post ignem ætheria domo Subductum Macies et nova Febrium Terris incubuit cohors;" And so it was with me, a fever preyed upon my heart, and consumed me, and the production of this disease was what you called talent." 66 She is now a woman," he said, after a pause; "but I cannot bear to think of her otherwise than as the simple and innocent little girl of former days with her eyes like as the heaven on which she smiled, and her curls clustering along-but I have seen her different-changed-like other women-a flirt." A deep groan burst from his heart. With difficulty I persuaded him to tell me to what he alluded. It seemed, that during his last visit home, an officer quartered in the neighbourhood had been paying Miss —some particular attention-she was not very averse to receiving it. Her familiarities, which never passed the bounds of propriety, in the eyes of a jealous lover were crimes. She knew nothing, she could not dream of his attachment; but still he fancied it a crime that she should receive even the common-place attentions of another; and unable to endure the sight of what his madness-for madness it was-regarded as a desecration of the goddess of his idolatry, he had hurried from his home; and this was the secret of that abrupt departure which I had attributed to such a different cause-but how could I have dreamed of the real one? But with absence his love returned he reasoned with himself that he had no cause to have a lower opinion of Miss than he had before; but still the spell was broken-she had hitherto been an ideal creature of his fancy-upon whom, as it were, no one could look but himself-she was now but a woman-and strange to say, for the first time, he began to think of the possibility that some more favoured rival might bear away the prize for which he had toiled so long. It was strangely characteristic of the wildness of his passion, that never |