man, with long straight black hair, which appears to have been unprofaned by a comb since its last visit to the night-cap. We see him sitting in a threadbare black coat, old pantaloons, and slippers, bending over a table enlightened by a single candle, the wick of which is beginning to grow of portentous length. His breast is curved, his head is bent towards the paper, and a little on one side, and his right hand holds a pen which traverses the paper with eager and steady velocity. The only cessation is when the labourer raises his eyes to guide the pen to the ink-stand, or when in endeavouring to recover some idea, which in the rapidity of thought had escaped him, he raises his left hand to his forehead and ponders for some half minute. Behind him stands his little library, and upon the table in one promiscuous mêlée lie quartos, and octavos, and twelves; poetry, philosophy, and criticism; Newton and Milton in friendly contact, and the Rape of the Lock peacefully resting on the Novum Organum. Scraps of paper between the leaves, and dog-eared pages, serve as the guides through this inextricable labyrinth, which the young scholar traverses with the ease and confidence of one who has been long accustomed to the way. "Unheard the clock repeats its hours ;" in the fever of intellectual excitement, the mind takes no account of time. The candle gradually decreases, and, as its last flame is quivering in the socket, the exhausted student casts himself on his bed, to snatch amid phantoms of books and ghosts of pens and ink-stands, a short respite from the destructive and continued action of mind, which is so fatally undermining all his bodily powers. Horse-racing and cock-fighting are said to be very fascinating occupations, and a gamester can seldom overcome the temptation of the dice; but not even these allurements can be compared with the charms which science and literature possess for a young and enthusiastic votary. "I can prove," says the unfortunate Robert Heron, who ended his days within the walls of a gaol, "I can prove that I have, for many years, read and written, one day with another, from twelve to sixteen hours a day." Exertions like these may be continued for a time, but the human machine will wear out, and the mind, ever depending on the sanity of the bodily powers, shares the dreadful decay. We have absolutely written

ourselves serious, and almost feel inclined to lay down our pen, which has scarcely been in our hand three quarters of an hour, for fear that we should be seized with some of "the thousand ills which authors are heirs to." We really began to apprehend that we were destined to be cut off, like James Hay Beattie, or Henry Kirke White, in the flower of our age; but as we have no chance of getting Mr. Southey for a biographer, we thought it better to lengthen our stay amongst the folios and quartos of this world, than allow them to vanquish us in the contest.

The most formidable of all students are the dull and heavy ones. A thick elephant folio, closely printed in double columns, is the type of these men. They are the mill-horses of literature, treading the same laborious path, and wearing out a long life in compiling works which few or none afterwards read. They delight in folio editions and immense sheets of foolscap. They are gluttons, as contradistinguished from epicures, swallowing vast quantities of erudition, without being particularly nice as to the quality. They were men, who a century and a half ago always wrote in Latin when they could, and of whom at present there is scarcely a vestige remaining. Such a man was Anthony Wood, who tells us, that "books and MSS. formed his elysium, and he wished to be dead to the world" Such a man was Barnes the Greek professor; and more lately the Rev. Mr. Cole, who left behind him about forty folio volumes in his own hand-writing. Of this class are the Lexicon-makers, the commentators, and the compilers. They grow so devoted to the offspring of their brain, that they care for neither men, women, nor children; and they only account fortune valuable, inasmuch as it may serve to bring their works before the public. In fact, when a man has been employed day after day, and perhaps at the rate of ten hours per diem, for about forty years, upon some laborious literary undertaking, it cannot be supposed that he will not feel his heart yearn towards it with a considerable degree of affection. These Titans in literature, who attempted to scale heaven by heaping folio on folio, have all passed away and we now see our pigmy men of letters, resting their fame on foolscap octavos. At no period indeed did these bulky and learned speculations answer the reward of the indefatigable Stow was a gift of letters patent, allowing

him freely to ask alms from all charitable Christians throughout the realm of England. Only think of a man in these days publishing a learned work in nine volumes folio! And only think of any body reading it!

The dull and heavy students may perhaps with propriety be distinguished into two classes-the dull, heavy, and learned, and the dull, heavy, and ignorant. There are some men who cannot, for the life of them, though they have the best disposition in the world for it, make their brains retain any thing that passes through them. They are like Sir Hugh, in Miss Burney's Camilla,' who believed that all virtue and wisdom consisted in learning, and who employed Dr. Orkborne to teach him the Elements, which however he was never able to master. The heads of these men are the reverse of Fortunatus's purse, which was no empty than it filled again immediately, for they are no sooner full, than on the instant we find them as vacant as ever. They are generally people who have been neglected in their youth, and in their after-years attempt to do too much. This is often the effect of over-reading.

sooner

Pale Study, by the taper's light,
Wearing away the watch of night,
Sate reading, but with o'ercharged head
Remembering nothing that he read.

The reverse of this class of students are the light and fanciful ones. They are the butterflies of literature, skimming along the air, and alighting on every tender and beautiful flower. They never trouble themselves with laying up stores of honey, they only consume it. The student of poetry is a genus of this class. He hates any thing which has the appearance of a chain of laborious reasoning, which it is impossible for him to pursue steadily when his imagination is flying off at every individual step. He will not read long at a time, and he has a great dislike to a thick volume. He forgets many of the acquirements which he made in his childhood, and which were forced on him as a task; and he has very wide notions on geography and astronomy. Arithmetic to him is an abstruse science, which he has very seldom occasion for, and which he is therefore very content to remain in ignorance of; for of all things in the world mathematical studies are his abhorrence. When he writes poetry, it is not in Latin; and

when he reads Horace, he now and then makes a slip in the metre.

ac

Another genus of the same class, and certainly the lowest in it, are the mere novel-readers. These romanesque people absolutely terrify the ears of the uninitiated by a bare recital of titles. We used to think that we were tolerably well versed in the lore of the circulating libraries-for instance, we were quainted with all the first-rate horrors, such as the Mysteries of Udolpho, and the rest of Mrs. Radcliffe's romances, and many others of inferior note. Pride, however, must have a fall; for as we were journeying a little time ago in a certain stage-coach, which travelled all night, we happened to be seated next to a lively young lady, and wishing to be courteous we introduced the subject of novels and romances, when our companion instituted such a strict examination into the depth of our knowledge-Had we read the Fatal Banquet of St. Hildebrand?-Otho or the Black Bandit?-Manfrone or the One-handed Monk?-The Altar of the double Assassination? with a thousand others, that we were forced to resort to a little manœuvre; and observing the coach leaning considerably on one side, we uttered a loud scream, and begged the coachman to stop, which effectually broke the thread of the conversation. We laid our terror to the score of our nervousness, whereupon our fair friend very kindly produced a bottle of lavender-water, and we gradually revived. The taste for novel-reading is very insatiable and destructive. It is as pernicious to the mind as drinking is to the body, being a temporary excitement and leaving a proportionate depression afterwards. When taken in moderation, novels, like brandy or wine, may be very salutary. A glass of whisky will not injure a man when he is climbing a mountain, and a romance will have no prejudicial effect on the mind, when its powers have been strained over some difficult and abstruse point of learning.

The indicia of professional students are very palpable. You shall know, what in that revered book The Doctor and Student, is called a Student in the lawes of England, by a certain puzzleheaded look of satisfaction, which would seem to say he has pored over some knotty point till he has taken it all in. You shall see a contemplative furrow in his forehead, caused by the

contraction of the eyebrows, and an occasional compression of the lips, which has evidently become habitual from his straining over moot points. As he walks, you may perceive that his mind is dwelling on some obstinately difficult case, which he in vain endeavours to banish from his recollection. His eye is often sunk in his head, and his complexion generally assumes the hue of an ancient piece of parchment. He is frequently slovenly in his dress, and in general you would call him an ill-looking fellow. When he arrives at the dignity of a wig, you may sometimes distinguish him by the reliquiae of powder on the collar of his coat, for which there appears no adequate reason, seing that he possesses a head of strong black hair, which exhibits no symptoms of any such application to it. After he is called also, you may often see him in a morning with black silk stockings and short black gaiters. By these external signs shall you know him, and no less will he betray himself by his conversation. His trade is to argue at all

events

"Tho' heaven and earth his client crost.'

He has so often been the forlorn hope of an argument, that the possibility of owning himself vanquished never once enters his head. He is superlatively obstinate; and as fast as you drive him from one position, he fortifies hsmself in another. When he is young, he loves paradoxes of all kinds, and fancies he displays a prodigious subtlety in maintaining what is denied by every one else. You may detect him likewise by the use of certain words and phrases peculiar to his profession, which he will infallibly drag into use in half an hour's conversation. When he throws off his wig, he has often a good deal of fun about him, and he is addicted to the odious sin of punning. He has not the smooth solemnity of the divine, though he can put on an air of great gravity when there is occasion for it. Nor does he possess the smiling urbanity of the physician, though he can be exceedingly courteous when his object is to manage a witness.

The habits of a physician are certainly very different. How easy it is to tell a young man who is studying surgery and walking the hospitals! We do not here allude to the immediate conviction which sometimes flashes on our olfactory nerves when one of these gentlemen enters the room, though we have

more than once had occasion to recognize the frequenter of a dissecting-room by this method. Independently of this characteristic, there is a peculiar appearance about these young nosologists by which they are capable of being known. It is not, we believe, the effect of mere imagination, but we have always thought we could perceive something wild and cadaverous in their look. They have a prying inquisitive glance in their eyes, as if they were busy in probing for a bullet; and they often look you in the face with this same sharp scrutiny. They too often acquire habits of cruelty by performing infamous and torturing experiments on defenceless animals, for which one time or another, in spite of their cant about the improvement of science, they must be punished. They are inclined to be sceptical in points of belief, and they are not very strict in matters of morality. If they should ever happen to be exalted by a diploma, their character suffers a material change. They become affably authoritative, and carry their gold-headed canes with a sort of insinuating dignity. They never appear to doubt or hesitate in the presence of their patients or their friends; for if they do, like a woman, they are lost. Their prescriptions, which are written in Latin, or something approaching to it, are a sort of type of their manners and professional conversation, which ought to be clothed with a due degree of learned obscurity, in order to impress the mind with a full conviction of the great effect which so much unintelligible wisdom is capable of producing.

It would be unpardonable to omit, in a paper devoted to study and students, the character of a thorough-bred university man, who imagines that learning never grew but under the fostering protection of a four-cornered cap. He will never acknowledge that a man can possess sound acquirements, if he has not worn a certain black gown; in short, he is thoroughly persuaded that there is only one royal road to learning, and that runs through Oxford and Cambridge. He is well grounded in classical literature; and though he cannot write a single line of poetry in his own language which is not execrable, he can pour out Latin verses by the score, while tutors applaud and freshmen listen in amaze

ment.

He pays little regard to modern literature, and does not know how to pronounce French; but his classical knowledge, though it may sometimes want elegance, is seldom deficient in