Your talking Latin,—said I,—reminds me of an odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so much of that language, that his English half turned into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to have published them by subscription. I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear them.—You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity-student,) and all such as have been through college, or, what is the same thing, received an honorary degree, will understand them without a dictionary. The old man had a great deal to say about “æstivation,” as he called it, in opposition, as one might say, to _hibernation_. Intramural æstivation, or town-life in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or semi-asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning of the last week in September. This is what I remember of his poem:— ÆSTIVATION. _An Unpublished Poem_, _by my late Latin Tutor_ IN candent ire the solar splendor flames; The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine, And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool’s conferva-scum,— No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue! Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,— Depart,—be off,—excede,—evade,—erump!