Ye who can feel for others’ woes, imagine the sufferings of a mind thus strung, yet branded with all the rusticity of Droneville manners, exposed to the taunts and ridicule of College life. View him, the butt of sarcasm—the mark of scorn—the bound, the unarmed victim, against whose breast all aspirant wits may with impunity test the point of every weapon, and their own dexterity in its use. My Droneville education! It has been a “heritage of woe”—a source of the deepest, acutest suffering. In manners, in appearance, in every thing which the cant of society calls “elegance,” I was not only entirely deficient, but so absolutely clownish as to elicit wit from stupidity itself. Follow such an one, forced by circumstances beyond his control into the cold world of fashion, and your fancy can picture those scenes of embarrassment and humiliation, which my memory shrinks from recalling. And yet, my mind—_my mind_ was of no such ungainly mould. If this clay was thrown amidst the stock of Droneville, it had been fired by an intellect whose boundless aspirations scorned all limit or control. What if it _did_ know nought of the refinements of artificial life? From the mountain solitude—from the heavens above—from the earth, in its sublimity—from the whisperings of its own spirit, it had drawn in all that is deep in emotion or thrilling in thought. If it _was_ a stranger to society, it was no stranger to the greatest minds of the present and past ages. It requires not the formalities of fashion—none of the coxcomb’s art—to hold communion with this ethereal principle within us—to dwell with the genius of the mighty Past—to soar amidst the high hopes of the Future—to love and worship those beings with whom imagination peoples her own brilliant creations. Must I be a scorned outcast, neglected by my race, because this perishable clay was not moulded in that form, which might please the evanescent fancy? because my limbs would not play the buffoon at the beck of fashion, or my tongue utter, or my spirit endure, her language of emptiness and deceit? A misanthrope? _no!_ I scorn that name, but scorn more him who covets the reputation or affects the spirit of misanthropy. A misanthrope! never. The source of my suffering was a consciousness of a deep fountain of feeling—of love, (if you please,) without one being upon whom I could lavish it; for who would deign to accept the devotion of a clown?—it was too much to ask of any one’s benevolence. Can there be one more unfortunate? Is there suffering more intense, than that of a being conscious of mental power, infinitely superior to the butterflies of fashion—glowing with all that is rich in thought, or deathless in love—a love, which, squandering on its object entire devotion, stoops to no barter of affection but soul for soul—yet, having all its energies paralyzed by a sense of awkwardness—a serpent whose folds are drawn tauter by his very struggles to resist them. Place