'Si res sola potest facere et servare beatum Hoc primus repetas opus, hoc postremus omittas.' "Things are not very well in the world, but they are pretty well. They might have been worse, and such as they are may please us who have but a few short days to use them. This scene of affairs, though a very perplexed, is a very short one, and in a little while all will be cleared up. Let us endeavor to please God, our fellow creatures and ourselves. In such a course of life we shall be as happy as we can expect in such a world as this. Thus you, who cultivate your farm with your own hands, and I who teach a dozen blockheads for bread, may be happier than he, who having more than he can use, tortures his brain to invent some new methods of killing himself with the superfluity." In this letter, worthy of Cowper or of Foster, we see a brave spirit struggling with the direst misfortunes, poverty and disease, and overcoming both by the silent might of a believing spirit. Another thing which greatly afflicted Bruce at Forest Mill, was the total want of agreeable scenery, and it was only by an effort of memory and imagination that he could, in some measure make up this deficiency, by recalling the delightful scenery of his early home. To this combination of unfavorable circumstances he touchingly refers in the poem of Lochleven, which was actually produced under their influence, as a means of relaxation and enjoyment. "Thus sang the youth amid unfertile wilds, And nameless deserts, unpoetic ground! Far from his friends he strayed, recording thus The dear remembrance of his native fields, To cheer the tedious night, while slow disease Preyed on his pining vitals, and the blasts Of dark December shook his humble cot." "Lochleven" is his longest, and in most respects, his most beautiful poem. It has defects, obvious enough to a critical eye, but its general excellence strikes every reader. Its descriptions and delineations are natural and striking, its imagery is simple and poetical, and its measure sweet and melodious. Nearly the whole of it has been "used up," in beautiful extracts by different writers of distinction. But the composition of this poem seems to have been too much for Bruce's shattered frame; for he was compelled almost immediately to relinquish his school. He had just strength to walk home to Kinnesswood, a distance of nearly twenty miles, resting only a short time at Turf-hills on the way. Though nowhere on earth could he be happier than in the humble cottage of his parents, it was yet the worst place in the world for his disease. "The vapors rising from the lake," says his biographer, "particularly in spring, keep the atmosphere constantly in a state of moisture, whilst in the mornings and evenings the eastern haars, as the fogs which come up from the sea are called by the inhabitants, come rolling down the hills, and hang suspended over Kinnesswood like a dripping curtain."