’Tis true, I’m poor in what the world calls bliss; ’Tis true, I have known many wounds of pride, With which a weaker nature might have died. ’Tis true, I’ve passed the fearful Charybdis, Yet ’mid the maelstrom thrilled with happiness. We should not murmur ’gainst an earthly trial-- It throws a stronger sunlight on Life’s dial, Awakes the spirit in its chrysalis, And plumes it i’ to the broad, bright heavens to soar. And oh! if I could sing the bliss I’ve known, While sitting in this study-room alone, Listing the soul waves wash the eternal shore-- If I could ring it out in one loud song, ’Twould shake the throne of Grief and banish Wrong. * * * * * =THE LOVES OF AN APOTHECARY.= As John Godwin entered Christ’s Hospital so he left it, with no other friends than an uncle, who was a Kentish miller, and an understanding which, _if_ it was impermeable to much learning, retained and fostered whatever at any time it received. A stolid, quiet, precocious boy, with a generous and simple heart, in which strong self-will was seated at depths seldom disturbed, with an original imagination, of which he was always unconscious, with a new suit of clothes, a tall hat, and six shillings in a clothes-box, he was articled to an apothecary. This suit being worn out, another supplied its place; when this in its turn got threadbare, the process of renewal, not without ceremony, was repeated; and, with the best intentions to the contrary, that is as much as the most partial biographer could write of John Godwin’s life for some years. It is true that, in like manner, new notions and ideas, what may be called the provisional phases of manhood, were rapidly worn out and replaced; for every year between fifteen and twenty is itself a distinct era. It is also true, by the bye, that at seventeen he fell in love, desperately and sincerely, with a lady thirteen years his senior, whose great recommendation consisted not so much in an imposing, handsome person as in a baby.