Oh, those Camford conversations--how impetuous, how interesting, how thoroughly hearty and unconventional they were! How utterly presumption and ignorance were scouted in them, and how completely they were free from the least shadow of insincerity or ennui. If I could but transfer to my page a true and vivid picture of one such evening, spent in the society of Saint Werner's friends--if I could write down but one such conversation, and at all express its vivacity, its quick flashes of thought and logic, its real desire for truth and knowledge, its friendly fearlessness, its felicitous illustrations, its unpremeditated wit, such a record, taken fresh from the life, would be worth all that I shall ever write. But youth flies, and as she flies all the bright colours fade from the wings of thought, and the bloom vanishes from the earnest eloquence of speech. Yet, as I write, let me call to mind, if but for a moment, the remembrance of those happy evenings, when we would meet to read Shakespeare or the Poets in each other's rooms, and pleasant sympathies and pleasant differences of opinion freely discussed, called into genial life, friendships which we once hoped and believed would never have grown cold. Let the image of that bright social circle, picturesquely scattered in armchairs round the winter fire, rise up before my fancy once more, and let me recall what can never be again. Of the honoured and well-loved few who one night recorded their names and thoughts in one precious little book, two are dead though it is but five years back; C E B---is dead; and R H P---is dead; C E B---the chivalrous and gallant-hearted, the champion of the past, the "Tory whom Liberals loved;" and R H P---, the honest and noble, the eloquent speaker, and the brave actor, and the fearless thinker--he, too, is dead, nobly volunteering in works of danger and difficulty during the Indian Mutiny; but L---, and B---, and M---, and others are living yet, and to them I consecrate this page _they_ will forgive the digression, and for their sakes I will venture to let it pass. We are scattered now, and our friendship is a silent one, but yet I know that to them, at least, changed or unchanged, my words will recall the fading memory of glorious days. The conversation, (but do not suppose that I shall attempt, after what I have said, to reproduce it), happened to turn that evening on the phenomena of memory. It started thus:--They had been discussing some subject of the day, when Owen observed to Julian-- "Why, how grave you look, Julian." "Do I? I was thinking of something odd. While you were talking-- without the faintest apparent reason that I can discover, (and I was trying to hit upon one when you spoke)--a fact started up in my mind, which had no connection whatever with the subject, and yet which forced itself quite strongly and obtrusively on my notice."