es.

After blazing nearly ten years in the fashionable world, and hiding, like
many of her compeers, an aching heart with a gay demeanour--after
declining repeated offers of the most respectable kind for a second
matrimonial engagement, Lady Staunton betrayed the inward wound by
retiring to the Continent, and taking up her abode in the convent where
she had received her education. She never took the veil, but lived and
died in severe seclusion, and in the practice of the Roman Catholic
religion, in all its formal observances, vigils, and austerities.

Jeanie had so much of her father's spirit as to sorrow bitterly for this
apostasy, and Butler joined in her regret. "Yet any religion, however
imperfect," he said, "was better than cold scepticism, or the hurrying
din of dissipation, which fills the ears of worldlings, until they care
for none of these things."

Meanwhile, happy in each other, in the prosperity of their family, and
the love and honour of all who knew them, this simple pair lived beloved,
and died lamented.

[Illustration: Jeanie Dean's Cottage--414]

READER,

THIS TALE WILL NOT BE TOLD IN VAIN, IF IT SHALL BE FOUND TO
ILLUSTRATE THE GREAT TRUTH, THAT GUILT, THOUGH IT MAY ATTAIN
TEMPORAL SPLENDOUR, CAN NEVER CONFER REAL HAPPINESS; THAT THE
EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF OUR CRIMES LONG SURVIVE THEIR COMMISSION,
AND, LIKE THE GHOSTS OF THE MURDERED, FOR EVER HAUNT THE STEPS
OF THE MALEFACTOR; AND THAT THE PATHS OF VIRTUE, THOUGH SELDOM
THOSE OF WORLDLY GREATNESS, ARE ALWAYS THOSE OF PLEASANTNESS
AND PEACE.

L'ENVOY,

BY JEDEDIAH CLEISHBOTHAM.

Thus concludeth the Tale of "The Heart of Mid-Lothian," which hath filled
more pages than I opined. The Heart of Mid-Lothian is now no more, or
rather it is transferred to the extreme side of the city, even as the
Sieur Jean Baptiste Poquelin hath it, in his pleasant comedy called _Le
Me'decin Malgre' Lui,_ where the simulated doctor wittily replieth to a
charge, that he had placed the heart on the right side, instead of the
left, "_Cela e'tait autrefois ainsi, mais nous avons change' tout cela._"
Of which witty speech if any reader shall demand the purport, I have only
to respond, that I teach the French as well as the Classical tongues, at
the easy rate of five shillings per quarter, as my advertisements are
p