school. Last came the great, the important day,' when the anniversary public examination took place. A few days before, the master, from the records of the class and his own recollections, fixed the places, accompanying the arrangement with a few words of congratulation to the successful, and of comfort to the disappointed. And it was wonderful to observe with what good-humour all acquiesced in his decision, and how complete an absence there was among them of any thing like bad feeling. The near approach of the separation, after which they should all meet no more for ever, seemed to diffuse a melancholy feeling over the most thoughtless, and to melt down the affections of all to the same temperament of mutual regard. For days before, the voice of their sports was silent in the play-ground, and they were seen sauntering through it either in solitary reflection, or in groups of farewell conversation. On the day before the last day we should all meet in private, our beloved master took leave of us by addressing to us a few sentences of recollection, reflection, and advice, and commending us to the great Father of all. Next forenoon the class assembled at an early hour, and sat in anxious and silent expectation until the arrival of the presiding Magistrates was announced, and the doors thrown open to the overflowing public. The examination commences; a few shots are fired in the lower parts of the class, but the discharge mounts rapidly to the higher regions of the line; and before an hour or two is past, the whole is confined to a rapid and red-hot interchange of interrogations and answers between the examinator's bench and the dux's form. The sun is descending rapidly to his goal,-the final question is put, and it is mute expectation all; the master announces the names and merits of the successful competitors for prizes,-the tumult of applause begins, and, amidst its reverberated thunders, the prizes are delivered, the parting-speeches are made, and all is over! "All to me is over! I now enter the play-ground, but am greeted by no smile of recognition, save from the hoary janitor. I tread where once 'my name was rife,' but there it lives no longer, save on the perishable canvass. But if I forget you, scenes of my youthful ambition and delight,-if I forget thee, my master and benefactor,-if I forget you, once loved companions of my studious hours,—may the strings of my mind be dissolved! may my right hand forget her cunning!' Many of you still meet me in the academic walks; but soon this intercourse also will have passed away. Many of you are now in distant regions, and one of you is gone, and another is fast going, to that remotest and most Undiscovered country, from whose bourne No traveller returns.' Perhaps we shall meet again! J. P." PART II. 1820 1830. Mr Patterson's Academical Career-Correspondence-Prize Exercises and Essays-Second Winter-session at College-Essays -Correspondence-Third Winter-session-Debating Society -Correspondence-Journal kept during the Summer of 1823 -Fourth Winter-session-Exercises in the Moral Philosophy Class-Development of Religious Character-Enters the Divinity Hall-University-Commission Prize-essay-Residence at Oxford-Extracts from Journal kept at Oxford-Mr Patterson receives License. It would appear, from the interesting paper with which we closed our sketches of Mr Patterson's boyhood, that he was occasionally in the practice of "Reviewing life's eventful page, And noting, ere they fade away, The little lines of yesterday." We recollect to have seen among his juvenile papers one or two other pieces of a similar kind, but these he early committed to the flames; and, if he ever attempted, he does not appear to have succeeded in keeping any thing like a private and continuous diary. There is no vestige of the kind among his papers; for the journals which on two occasions he kept, and to which the reader will be introduced in the course of the present section, were evidently never designed as pieces of autobiography. They are not registers of the vicissitudes of internal and hidden feeling, nor is there any attempt in them to trace by minute and successive delineations the growth and features of his mental and moral physiognomy. Indeed, we have heard him express his dislike of a practice so much commended by some, as tending to produce an artificial character, and exposing oneself to the risk of having the most secret transactions betwixt the soul and God exposed by some rash and inconsiderate hand to the gaze and scrutiny of the world. Yet his letters to his intimate friends contain frequent and unaffected disclosures of the movements and principles of his own mind, and nearly all that is sufficient for the legitimate purposes of the biographer; and we cannot better introduce the reader to the Academical section of Mr Patterson's life than in the following letters, written in the first weeks of his first session at College. No. 7. "Edinburgh, November 1, 1820. "MY DEAREST FRIEND,-I had prepared an acknowledgment of the receipt of your letter to be sent last week; but, as I have found in my own experience that a few short lines from a friend prove often a greater disappointment than nothing at all, I thought it better to delay writing you till I 6 could send you an answer suitable in length at least to your most agreeable epistle. In yours, you are pleased to call my last eloquent, and I am glad of it; not from a paltry vain conceit that I have any claim to praise for justness of thinking or energy of expression,-far from it! but because you thereby tell me that it spoke to your heart; that it was from mine, I feel. You know the definition of eloquence, that it speaks from the heart to the heart; and, believe me, yours possesses a high degree of this dear qualification. You try to depreciate yours, by saying that it will likely prove unintelligible; and here I fairly confess that in some places it is so; as, for instance, when you speak of 'the relation in which you stand to me, and the way in which you have acted towards me.' In what relation, pray, do you stand to me but in that dearest one of friend? And how have you acted towards me but as a friend? Again, you say, 'I have not at this moment a single stimulus save a firm resolution.' And what is the use of stimuli but to produce that firm determination of which you speak? and then determination produces exertion, and exertion leads to honour and success. You thus, by your own acknowledgment, are in the fair way to these happy results. You will be contented,' say you, 'without aspiring to a single distinction.' Let not this idea get hold on your mind; for, even though in the end it should be as you too modestly antici |