My flush of youth, my beauty’s flower, But not, oh not! my thirst of fame. The Pyramids before me lie, Piercing the deep Egyptian sky, Memorials of the nameless dead, To build whose glory thousands bled— And I, the latest of their race, A captive in their dwelling place, Die, yet survive them all. I tell thee, when no trophies shine Upon the proud Capitoline, When Julius’ fame is all forgot, Even where his honored relics rot, Ages shall sing my fall. Proud Roman, thou hast won. But I, More gladly than thou winnest, die. Away! when crowns were on my brow, And nations did my rising greet, And Cæsar groveled at my feet, I lived not—never lived till now. * * * * * =REMINISCENCE.= Not every man, I believe, takes the trouble to look back occasionally to his very earliest recollections, recalling what he may, with a view to learn how much of his character was formed by the trivial incidents of his spring-time, how much, and what, is of later origin. It would surprise one to see accurately the proportion of his habit of thought, his sensibility, his ideas of right and wrong, his reverence and his affections, how much of the underlying sympathies and poetry of his nature is associated with this early period. Some book I was reading, or some friend I was talking with the other day, suggested the matter and left me in a revery of reminiscence. There came back to me the memory of pleasant dreams which I was perplexed to divorce from dream-like reality, of presents and promises, of nursery tales and melodies, of first disappointments, punishments, and altercations, of all the scenery between babyhood and boyhood, and of the constant wonder amid which my mind wrought its first essays.