Within those halls had he experienced all that he had ever tasted of successful ambition, and in the depths of that old chair had he dreamed away all the visions of a glorious future. The room in which he sat was a large and lofty one, lighted by two windows deeply set in the wall. Its sides were lined with book-shelves, and books littered the tables and even the floor,--for it was one of his caprices to read as he lay at full length, either on the ground or a sofa,--and the paper and pens were scattered about in different quarters, as accident suggested. The only thing like ornament to be seen was a lithographic print of Cro' Martin Castle over the fireplace,--a strange exception would it seem, but traceable, perhaps, to some remote scene of boyish admiration for what had first awakened in him a feeling of awe and admiration; and there it now remained, time-worn and discolored, perhaps unnoticed, or looked on with very different emotions. Ay! these pictures are terrible landmarks of our thoughts! I speak not of such as appeal to our hearts by the features we loved, the eyes into whose depths we have gazed, the lips on whose accents we have hung entranced, but even when they trace the outlines of some spot well known to us in boyhood,--some scene of long, long years ago. It is not alone that the “Then” and “Now” stand out in strongest contrast, that what we were and what we are are in juxtaposition, but that whole memories of what we once hoped to be come rushing over us, and all the spirit-stirring emotions of early ambitions mingle themselves with the stern realities of the present. And, after all, what success in life, however great and seemingly unexpected it may be, ever equals one of the glorious daydreams of our boyish ambition, in which there comes no alloy of broken health, wasted energies, and exhausted spirits? or, far worse again, the envious jealousy of those we once deemed friends, and who, had we lived obscurely, still might be such? Student life is essentially imaginative. The very division of time, the objects which have value to a student's eyes, the seclusion in which he lives, the tranquil frame of mind coexistent with highly strained faculties, all tend to make his intervals of repose periods of day-dream and revery. It is not improbable that these periods are the fitting form of relaxation for overtaxed minds, and that the Imagination is the soothing influence that repairs the wear and tear of Reason.