all your carefully hoarded treasure will not be enough to pay my first term in college. Without books, without friends, I must give up the hope of an education," and the large tears trickled between his fingers.

"You forget," she said, "your good friend at C. who has lent you so many books. Why not apply to him again?"

A deep blush flushed the young man's countenance, but he made no answer, and seemed to wish to change the subject.

"It is almost evening," he said; "shall we not have prayers?" and, placing himself near the window to catch the last rays of departing daylight, he read one of the chapters from the Old Testament.

The aged man, who had not spoken during the discussion, stood up and prayed with great fervency.

His prayer was made up, indeed, by quotations from the Old Testament, and he used altogether the phraseology of the Scriptures. He prayed for the church in the wilderness, "that it might be bright as the sun, fair as the moon, beautiful as Tirzah, and terrible as an army with banners;" "that our own exertions to serve the church and our strivings after the Holy Spirit might not be like arrows in the air, traces in the sea, oil upon the polished marble, and water spilt upon the ground."

He asked for no temporal blessing; all his petitions were in language highly figurative, and he closed with a prayer for his grandson, "that God would make him a polished shaft in the temple of the Lord, a bright and shining light in the candlestick of the church."

When he had finished his prayer,—"My son," he said, "do not be cast down; you forget that the great Luther begged his bread. The servants of the church, in every age, have been poor and despised; even the Son of God," and he looked reverently upwards, "knew not where to lay his head. You have only to labor. The peat at the bottom of the meadow is already dry; there is more than we shall need for winter fuel; take it, in the morning, to C——, and with the produce buy the book you need."

"No," said the young man, "there are many repairs necessary to make you and my grandmother comfortable for the winter. I cannot rob you of more. I can borrow the book."

He lighted his lamp, made from rushes dipped in the green wax of the bay bush, which affords a beautiful, but not brilliant flame, and went up a few steps to his chamber in the garret. The old woman gathered the ashes over the kindling coal, and, with her aged partner, retired to the bed-room opposite the narrow entrance.

CHAPTER II.

Our young student retired to his garret, a small room in the roof of the cottage, heated by the summer sun resting on its roof almost to the heat of a furnace. One small window looking towards the east admitted the evening breeze.

In the remotest corner was a low and narrow pallet, by the side of which hung the indispensable articles of a man's apparel.

A small table, covered with ink spots, and a solitary chair stood in the centre of the little apartment. A few deal shelves contained the odd and worn volumes of the student's library. A Greek Testament, several lexicons, half a volume of Horace, lay scattered on the table. Virgil was the book he had brought with him from the pine-knot torch, and it was the old Grecian, Homer that he was so anxious to possess.

The uncarpeted floor was thickly strewn with sheets half written over, and torn manuscripts were scattered about. Wherever the floor was visible, the frequent ink spots indicated that it was not without mental agitation that these manuscripts had been produced.

It was not to repose from the labors of the day that the young man entered his little chamber: to bodily labor must now succeed mental toil.

He cast a wistful look towards his little pallet; he longed to rest his limbs, aching with the labor of the day; but no; his lamp was on the table, and, resolutely throwing off his coarse frock, he sat down to think and to write.

Wearied by a long day of labor, the student in vain tried to collect his thoughts, to calm his weakened nerves. He rose and walked his chamber with rapid steps, the drops of heat and anguish resting on his brow.

"Oh!" said he, "that I had been content to remain the clod, the toil-worn slave that I am!"

Little do they know, who have leisure and wealth, and all the appurtenances of literary ease—the lolling study-chair, the convenient apartment, the brilliant light—how much those suffer who indulge in aspirations beyond their lowly fortune.

The student sat down again to write. His hands were icy cold, while his eyes and brow were burning hot. He was engaged on a translation from the Greek. His efforts to collect and concentrate his thoughts on his work, exhausted as he was with toil, were vain and unavailing. At length he threw down his pen.

"Oh God!" thought he, "is this madness? am I losing my memory, my mind?" Again he walked his little room, but with gentler steps; for he would not disturb his aged relatives, who slept beneath.

"Have I deceived myself?" he said; "were all my aspirations only delusions, when, yet a boy, I followed the setting sun, and the rainbow hues of the evening clouds, with a full heart that could only find relief in tears?—when I believed myself destined to be other than a hewer of wood and a drawer of water, because I felt an immeasurable pity for my fellow-men, groping, as I did myself, under all the evils of ignorance and sin? Was it only vanity, when I hoped to rise above the clods of the earth, and aspired to have my lips, as Isaiah's, touched by a coal from the holy altar? Was it only impatience at my lot which destined me to inexorable poverty?"

"Let me not despair of myself;" and he took from his table a manuscript of two or three sheets, and began to read it.

As he went on, his dissatisfaction seemed to increase. With the sensitiveness and humility of true genius, when under the influence of despondency, every line seemed to him feeble or exaggerated; all the faults glared out in bold relief; while the real beauty of the composition escaped his jaded and toil-worn attention.

"Oh Heaven!" he said, "I have deceived myself; I am no genius, able to rise above the lowliness of my station. The bitter cup of poverty is at my lips. I have not even the power to purchase a single book. Shall I go again to my good friend at C——? Shall I appear as a beggar, or a peasant, to beg the trifling pittance of a book?"

A burning blush for a moment passed over his pale countenance. "Will they not say, and justly, 'Go back to your plough; it is your destiny and proper vocation to labor?'"

He sat down on the side of his little pallet, and burst into tears. He wept long, and, as he wept, his mind became more calm. The short summer's night, in its progress, had bathed the earth in darkness, and cooled the heated roof of his little apartment. The night breeze, as it came in at his window, chilled him, and he rose to close it.

As he looked from his little window, the dawn was just appearing in the east, and the planet Venus, shining with the soft light of a crescent moon, was full before him.

"O beautiful star!" he thought, "the same that went before the sages of the East, and guided them to the manger of the Savior! I aspire only to be a teacher of the sublime wisdom of that humble manger. Let me but lift up my weak voice in his cause, and let all