p in the room dozing, before this stale old
desk? Here's the desk; yes. But, if it has been a dream, how could I
have learned to hum that tune out of Dinorah? Ah, is it that tune,
or myself that I am humming? If it was a dream, how comes this yellow
NOTICE DES TABLEAUX DU MUSEE D'AMSTERDAM AVEC FACSIMILE DES MONOGRAMMES
before me, and this signature of the gallant

BARTHOLOMEUS VANDER HELST, FECIT Ao, 1648.

Yes, indeed, it was a delightful little holiday; it lasted a whole week.
With the exception of that little pint of amari aliquid at Rotterdam, we
were all very happy. We might have gone on being happy for whoever knows
how many days more? a week more, ten days more: who knows how long that
dear teetotum happiness can be made to spin without toppling over?

But one of the party had desired letters to be sent poste restante,
Amsterdam. The post-office is hard by that awful palace where the Atlas
is, and which we really saw.

There was only one letter, you see. Only one chance of finding us.
There it was. "The post has only this moment come in," says the
smirking commissioner. And he hands over the paper, thinking he has done
something clever.

Before the letter had been opened, I could read COME BACK, as clearly
as if it had been painted on the wall. It was all over. The spell
was broken. The sprightly little holiday fairy that had frisked and
gambolled so kindly beside us for eight days of sunshine--or rain which
was as cheerful as sunshine--gave a parting piteous look, and whisked
away and vanished. And yonder scuds the postman, and here is the old
desk.

NIL NISI BONUM.

Almost the last words which Sir Walter spoke to Lockhart, his
biographer, were, "Be a good man, my dear!" and with the last flicker of
breath on his dying lips, he sighed a farewell to his family, and passed
away blessing them.

Two men, famous, admired, beloved, have just left us, the Goldsmith and
the Gibbon of our time.* Ere a few weeks are over, many a critic's pen
will be at work, reviewing their lives, and passing judgment on their
works. This is no review, or history, or criticism: only a word in
testimony of respect and regard from a man of letters, who owes to his
own professional labor the honor of becoming acquainted with these two
eminent literary men. One was the first ambassador whom the New World of
Letters sent to the Old. He was born almost with the republic; the pater
patriae had laid his hand on the child's