With respect to what follows in the pages immediately succeeding, he who undertook to select from, and place in something like order, the scraps and memorandums of the Sexagenarian, confesses that to him the whole is perfectly unintelligible. But as it is not ill written, and certainly alludes both to some extraordinary personage and very particular events, it is inserted for the exercise of the sagacity of contemporaries, if any shall yet remain, who can break the sphinx’s head. “How can I entirely pass over, or in what terms shall I reveal one of the most singular and extraordinary facts that ever occurred, but which in my time excited an universal fermentation in our university. A thousand feelings press upon my mind at the remembrance of it, each and all tending to restrain my pen from diffuse or circumstantial description. A star appeared in our horizon, brilliant as the sun of the morning;—in a dire moment, when every eye was expecting its increasing splendour, it suddenly sunk in night:—but the night was not eternal—the star rose again—it still illuminates our extensive sphere. I myself have repeatedly basked among its rays, and enjoyed its genial warmth.—The phænomenon exhibits one of those very rare instances, where the steady exertions of diligence, prudence, and circumspection, aided by talents, and directed by genius, rise superior to the enormous pressure of disgrace and contempt: where a secret and latent vitality lurks in the sap of the blighted rose tree, which being transplanted to a genial soil, a balmy air, duly watered and carefully watched, the principle of life slowly and gradually circulates and ascends, and the senses are finally charmed and delighted with fragrance and with beauty. I forbear to say more, but may in this place not improperly introduce the following anecdote.