rints, under the care of a nurse. Her pension, together with the income
from her brother's savings, was amply sufficient for her support.

Talfourd, who was present at the burial of Mary Lamb, has eloquently
described the earthly reunion of the brother and sister:--

"A few survivors of the old circle, then sadly thinned, attended her
remains to the spot in Edmnonton churchyard where they were laid above
those of her brother. In accordance with Lamb's own feeling, so far as
it could be gathered from his expressions on a subject to which he did
not often or willingly refer, he had been interred in a deep grave,
simply dug and wattled round, but without any affectation of stone or
brickwork to keep the human dust from its kindred earth. So dry,
however, is the soil of the quiet churchyard that the excavated earth
left perfect walls of stiff clay, and permitted us just to catch a
glimpse of the still untarnished edges of the coffin, in which all the
mortal part of one of the most delightful persons who ever lived was
contained, and on which the remains of her he had loved with love
'passing the love of woman' were henceforth to rest,--the last glances
we shall ever have even of that covering,--concealed from us as we
parted by the coffin of the sister. We felt, I believe, after a moment's
strange shuddering, that the reunion was well accomplished; although the
true-hearted son of Admiral Burney, who had known and loved the pair we
quitted from a child, and who had been among the dearest objects of
existence to him, refused to be comforted."

There are certain handy phrases, the legal-tender of conversation, that
people generally use without troubling themselves to look into their
title to currency. It is often said, for instance, with an air of
deploring a phase of general mental degeneracy, that "letter-writing is
a lost art." And so it is,---not because men nowadays, if they were put
to it, could not, on the average, write as good letters as ever (the
average although we certainly have no Lambs, and perhaps no Walpoles or
Southeys to raise it, would probably be higher), but because the
conditions that call for and develop the epistolary art have largely
passed away. With our modern facility of communication, the letter has
lost the pristine dignity of its function. The earth has dwindled
strangely since the advent of steam and electricity, and in a generation
used to Mr. Edison's devices, Puck's girdle presents no diffi