t in the poor concerns of transient mortality, and are
permitted to hold communion with those they have loved on earth, I
feel as if now, at this deep hour of night, in this silence and
solitude, I could receive their visitation with the most solemn but
unalloyed delight.'

The use of the plural in the above extract obviated that publicity of
his especial bereavement which would have arisen from a reference to
_one_, and it is to be explained by the deaths of three persons to whom
he sustained the most endearing though varied relations of which man is
capable: his mother, his sister Nancy, and his betrothed. The first two
had become sacred memories, and were enshrined in the sanctuary of his
soul; but the latter was a thing of life, whose existence had become
identified with his own, and was made sure beyond the power of disease
and mortality. Who, indeed, would have been so welcome to the solitary
tourist on that weird midnight as she whose Bible and Prayer-Book
accompanied his wanderings, whose miniature was his treasure, and of
whom he could say: 'She died in the beauty of her youth, and in my
memory she will ever be young and beautiful.'

That a reuenion with all the beloved of earth was a controlling thought
in his mind, and one bearing an especial reference to this supreme
bereavement, is manifest from the following, from the same sketch:

'We take each other by the hand, and we exchange a few words and
looks of kindness, and we rejoice together for a few moments, and
then days, months, years intervene, and we see and know nothing of
each other. Or granting that we dwell together for the full season
of this mortal life, the grave soon closes its gates between us,
and then our spirits are doomed to remain in separation and
_widowhood_ until they meet again in that more perfect state of
being, where soul will dwell with soul in blissful communion, and
there will be neither death, nor absence, nor any thing else to
interrupt our felicity.'

Such was the view which cheered the life of one thus early stripped of
promised and expected happiness, and to which he dung during all changes
of time and place. Amid the infirmities of advancing years, while
surrounded by an endearing circle of relatives, who ministered to him
with the most watchful affection, there was one that abode in still
closer communion with his heart. While writing in his study at