centred in one spot and in one
circle; and can we be accused in thus terminating our simple annals of
wandering from the real course of life. Is it not thus with very many
families of England? Are not marriage and death twined hand in hand, to
render that home desolate which once resounded with the laugh of many
gleesome hearts, with the glad tones of youthful revelling and joy?
True, in those halls they often meet again, and the hearts of the
parents are not lone, for the family of each child is a source of
inexpressible interest to them; there is still a link, a precious link
to bind them together, but vain and difficult would be the attempt to
continue the history of a family when thus dispersed. Sweet and
pleasing the task to watch the unfledged nestlings while under a
mother's fostering wing, but when they spread their wings and fly, where
is the eye or pen that can follow them on their eager way?

Once more, but once, we will glance within the halls of Oakwood, and
then will we bid them farewell, for our task will be done, and the last
desires of fancy, we trust, to have appeased.

It was in the September of the year 1830 we closed our narrative. Let us
then, for one moment, imagine the veil of fancy is upraised on the first
day of the year, 1838, and gaze within that self-same room, which twenty
years before we had seen lighted up on a similar occasion, the
anniversary of a new year, bright with youthful beauty, and enlivened by
the silvery laugh of early childhood. But few, very few, were the
strangers that this night mingled with Mr. Hamilton's family. It was
not, as it had been twenty years previous, a children's ball on which we
glance. It was but the happy reunion of every member of that truly happy
family, and the lovely, mirthful children there assembled were, with the
exception of a very few, closely connected one with another by the near
relationship of brothers, sisters, and cousins. In Mr. and Mrs.
Hamilton, Mrs. Greville, Montrose Grahame, Lucy Harcourt, and Mr.
Morton, who were all present, time had comparatively made but little
difference; but it was in those who twenty years before had so well
acted the part of youthful entertainers to their various guests that the
change was striking, yet far, very far from being mournful.

On one side might be seen Percy Hamilton, M.P., in earnest yet
pleasurable conversation with Mr. Grahame. It was generally noticed that
these two gentlemen were always talkin