flights!' There is another circumstance you do not know;--the _first
lines_ I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to _you_. You were to
have seen them; but Sinclair had the copy in his possession when we
went home;--and, on our return, we were _strangers_. They were
destroyed, and certainly no great loss; but you will perceive from
this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites.

"I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now
conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends,--nay,
we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance,
not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may
throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to
waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find
me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve
others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not
ask it often; and, if we meet, let us be what we _should_ be, and what
we _were_."

Of the tenaciousness with which, as we see in this letter, he clung to
all the impressions of his youth, there can be no stronger proof than
the very interesting fact, that, while so little of his own boyish
correspondence has been preserved, there were found among his papers
almost all the notes and letters which his principal school
favourites, even the youngest, had ever addressed to him; and, in some
cases, where the youthful writers had omitted to date their scrawls,
his faithful memory had, at an interval of years after, supplied the
deficiency. Among these memorials, so fondly treasured by him, there
is one which it would be unjust not to cite, as well on account of the
manly spirit that dawns through its own childish language, as for the
sake of the tender and amiable feeling which, it will be seen, the