‘Before I slept I was upon the ocean--and I have a dim recollection that there was a storm--that the green and crested billows hissed angrily as the thunder growled over them--that the ship went forward like a mad horse plowing through whole mountains of water, and shaking off the white surf from her bows in sheets of silver--and I remember that the violence of the tempest seemed to harmonize awfully with the loud passions within me. * * * * * ‘Years had passed. The bright enthusiasm of youth had gone off with them. The glowing thoughts, passions, sympathies, consuming themselves in their own fire--my whole character had saddened down into the melancholy, homeless wanderer. I was no longer the sunny featured boy that had spent so many pleasant hours on the hill side--by the sandy margin of the lake that washed its base and sent up there with every wind that fanned it, a gentle lullaby--by the rivulet that in early days had caught my laughing features as I bent over it to gather water flowers--no! I was that boy no longer. The peace which had once lived in my heart, had become a worthless and withered flower, scentless as a shadow; the innocency which once gave a zest to every thing had gone from me; the gray hairs of premature age were intermingled with the dark ones of my youth--no! I was that boy no longer. I had traveled--but what was travel to me? I had been in the north and south, in the east and west; I had wandered over the solemn grounds of Corcyra, and amid the classic ruins of Italy; I had stood beneath the sky of Africa and sat me down like Marius amid the relics of her better days, and tried to wake in my heart some of that dormant enthusiasm belonging to young minds; but it was like seeking to resuscitate the dead dust in the earth beneath, or to call life into the mouldering mausoleums and temples around me--no! I was that boy no longer.