Who is there that does not sometimes, on a quiet evening, even before he has attained to middle age, sit down and look back upon his college days, and his college friends; and think sadly of the failures, the disappointments, the broken hearts, which have been among those who all started fair and promised well?  How very much has after life changed the estimates which we, formed in those days, of the intellectual mark and probable fate of one’s friends and acquaintances!  You remember the dense, stolid dunces of that time:  you remember the men who sat next you in the lecture-room, and never answered rightly a question that was put to them:  you remember how you used to wonder if they would always be the dunces they were then.  Well, I never knew a man who was a dunce at twenty, to prove what might be called a brilliant or even a clever man in after life; but we have all known such do wonderfully decently.  You did not expect much of them, you see.  You did not try them by an exacting standard.  If a monkey were to write his name, you would be so much surprised at seeing him do it at all, that you would never think of being surprised that he did not do it very well.  So, if a man you knew as a remarkably stupid fellow preaches a decent sermon, you hardly think of remarking that it is very common-place and dull, you are so much pleased and surprised’ to find that the man can preach at all.  And then, the dunces of college days are often sensible, though slow and in this world, plain plodding common sense is very likely in the long run to beat erratic brilliancy.  The tortoise passes the hare.  I owe an apology to Lord Campbell for even naming him on the same page on which stands the name of dunce:  for assuredly in shrewd, massive sense, as well as in kindness of manner, the natural outflow of a kind and good heart, no judge ever surpassed him.  But I may fairly point to his career of unexampled success as an instance which proves my principle.  See how that man of parts which are sound and solid, rather than brilliant or showy, has won the Derby and the St. Ledger of the law:  has filled with high credit the places of Chief Justice of England and Lord Chancellor.  And contrast his eminently successful and useful course with that of the fitful meteor, Lord Brougham.  What a great, dazzling genius Brougham unquestionably is; yet his greatest admirer must admit that his life has been a brilliant failure.  But while you, thoughtful reader, in such a retrospect as I have been supposing, sometimes wonder at the decent and reasonable success of the dunce, do you not often lament over the fashion in which those who promised well, and even brilliantly, have disappointed the hopes entertained of them?  What miserable failures such have not unfrequently made!  And not always through bad conduct either:  not always, though sometimes, by taking to vicious courses; but rather by a certain want of tact and sense, or even by just somehow missing the favourable