plify the beauties of the British Poets by my juvenile powers of recitation.

I have traveled much in reality since then, and beheld with the corporeal eye many of the scenes and places that looked so surpassingly fair to my inward vision in former times. I have become "familiar with strange faces," and have made friends and acquaintance in far-off countries. But time and the world have done their usual work with me as with others. I am changed-vilely sophisticated; the smoke of cities is upon my soul, and innumerable trivial sensualities have imperceptibly clogged the elastic spring of the spirit within me. To enjoy the company of old mother nature now, I must have "all appliances and means to boot"-be easy and comfortable, neither hungry nor athirst, instead of seeking her in every form and mood as of yore. But this is the way, more or less, with us all. As we grow up, we acquire an unconscious preference for art above nature-we love the country less and the town more, and shady walks and "hedge rows green" are forsaken for wellpaved streets and public promenades. We muddle our brains with politics and political economy, and form attachments to newspapers and distilled and fermented liquors that it is often difficult to shake off. Oh the lamentable deterioration of human nature!

We are the antipodes (to our disadvantage,) of even the despised caterpillar tribe. We do not expand from the grub into the butterfly, but degenerate from the butterfly into the grub. When boys-or wingless butterflies, we disport in the free air and sunshine, clad in the hues of health, and as free from care or trouble as the lilies of the field. Every returning day brings animation and enjoyment

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Flowers in the valley, splendor in the beam,
Health in the gale, and freshness in the stream,"

until the remorseless usages of the world apprentice us to doctors, tailors, lawyers, merchants, shipwrights, sugar-bakers, &c. to be initiated into their respective mysteries; we grow up to be sallow, bearded men-we herd together in cities--we monotonously slink day after day from the dull obscurity of our dwellings through dirty lanes and dusky alleys to our strange occupations, and then crawl back again we snarl at and undermine each other-we play with unbecoming zeal "much ado about nothing" for a few years-we die some day just when we did not want to do so— -the living clod is resolved into the lifeless one, and we become-a dream, a recollection, a dimly-remembered thing, of whom perchance, some singular custom or odd saying is recorded, at intervals, for a brief space of

time, and then (to all worldly intents and purposes) we are as if we had never been!

There is, however, to counterbalance the many pleasures and advantages of traveling, one peculiar unpleasant sensation, which nearly all who have journeyed must have felt. It is, in passing away from any place where you have been warmly welcomed and hospitably treated-where you have interchanged good offices, and eat and drank and held pleasant communion with kindly pieces of 'humanity--the thought that you pass away for ever-that you will see then no more! Their joys or sorrows, their smiles or tears, are thenceforward nothing to you--you have no further portion in them you will know them no more! It is, in truth, a most unpleasant feeling; but a man had better suffer from it, than be without it. I do not, however, relish that easily excited, indiscriminating kindness, awakened on every occasion; that unvarying civility---that ready-made sympathy so common in this world of ours. I dislike your polite smilers, on first acquaintance; fellows who will shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at meeting; and shake you by the hand, bow, and smile at parting, with equal indifference. Though not altogether to be commended, I rather prefer their opposites the race of unapproachables; persons of

cloudy and uninviting aspects, who station therselves in the less frequented parts of steamboats, and odd corners of stage-coaches; who speak when they cannot help it, and with whom a civil sentence seems the prelude to suffocation. When the ice is once broken, when you do get acquainted with them, there is often much good fruit under the rough rind; and when the time for separating arrives, they look half sulky, half sorrowful, as they give you their hand-as much as to say, "we might have been better friends, but your road lies that way-and mine this, and so-good-by." I would be bail for one of those personages; I would put my hand to a bond for him, (which I look upon to be the extreme test of human confidence,) but for your ever-ready smilers, they have, in general, no more neart than an infantile cabbage-all leaves and husk, husk and leaves--"let no such men be trusted."

DEBATING SOCIETIES.

"There are many evils in the present state of society, which it is much easier to censure than eradicate."-Modern Moralist.

ONE of the most pernicious mischiefs of the present times, and one most pregnant with the seeds of individual discomfort and general unhappiness, is the rapid increase of Debating Societies; or, rather, societies for the annoyance of the community -night-schools for the education of youth in flippancy and sophistry-seminaries for the full developement of the organ of self-sufficiency-arenas for the exposure of the weakness of the human intellect, and the depreciation of heaven's creatures in the opinion of all considerate people. These excrescences are springing into existence on every side, and are productive of the most lamentable consequences. When I see (as I have seen) a meek, diffident juvenile of eighteen or nineteen, of the right age to imbibe wholesome, quiet wisdom and nutritious instruction-seduced from his darling books," and peaceful solitary chamber, to attend one of those