It is in such society that youth may best learn to prune the luxuriance of its hopes, and manhood to elevate its views beyond the narrow scene of action where they now expatiate. It is in age that the noble instinct of immortality is most conspicuous, that we feel most surely that the horizon of this life cannot bound our mental vision. The consolations of youth and manhood may have no higher source than in surrounding objects--in love, or friendship, or ambition; but age is dead to these impulses, and must be reanimated and warmed by the influences of the life which is to come. Such an old age is that of my friend Parmenio. He has survived nearly all the companions of his childhood, and seen successive generations swept away before him. After a life of useful and honourable enterprise, he has retired to end his days in our little hamlet amidst the scenes of his earliest youth. He has dandled on his knee the fathers of many who now look up to him for counsel and friendship, yet is there no supercilious air of dignity or reserve about him. His placid eye bespeaks the serenity of his soul, and the hope which abideth there; and though you see in his sprightliness and activity the energy of his earlier life, it is most happily blended with the meekness and tranquillity of age. He wears away his remaining years in the social converse of his children and their friends, and looks forward to his close without fear or anxiety. I often meet him in my solitary evening walks, and we usually finish them together. We were loitering one evening on the brow of the hill which overlooks the course of a beautiful stream that flows at a small distance from the village, and marking the glories of an autumnal sunset.--"The sands," said he, "are fast ebbing in my glass, and I feel that my allotted days are but few. I have past a life of bustling activity, and seen a thousand forms of hope and happiness rise and vanish before me. They have all vanished--all, but that which is centered in heaven. I am not a votary of that vain philosophy which would pronounce all things to be vanity; yet could my voice be heard by the myriads of human beings who are wasting the sinews of life in the pursuit of wealth and power, I would warn them, from my own experience, that happiness is not in these things. Were I to guide the course of a young person, I would bid him extend this view, from the first, beyond the horizon of this world. I would tell him of the utter emptiness of all human distinctions. I would bid him pursue his avocations as a means only of health and support, and of invigorating his mind. I would turn his feet from the paths of fame and wealth, to those of retirement and privacy, and would there feed his soul with immortal contemplations. Thus would I fit him to ennoble his youth, to preserve his manhood unspotted, and to enjoy his age. How many events are there in the course of my own life, which I would now give the world to have prevented--duties