Haverfield and Lord Ulswater continued their friendship
through life; and the letters of our dear Flora to her correspondent,
Eleanor, did not cease even with that critical and perilous period
to all maiden correspondents,--Marriage. If we may judge from the
subsequent letters which we have been permitted to see, Eleanor never
repented her brilliant nuptials, nor discovered (as the Duchess of ----
once said from experience) "that Dukes are as intolerable for husbands
as they are delightful for matches."

And Isabel Mordaunt?--Ah! not in these pages shall her history be told
even in epitome. Perhaps for some future narrative, her romantic and
eventful fate may be reserved. Suffice it for the present, that the
childhood of the young heiress passed in the house of Lord Ulswater,
whose proudest boast, through a triumphant and prosperous life, was to
have been her father's friend; and that as she grew up, she inherited
her mother's beauty and gentle heart, and seemed to bear in her deep
eyes and melancholy smile some remembrance of the scenes in which her
infancy had been passed.

But for Him, the husband and the father, whose trials through this wrong
world I have portrayed,--for him let there be neither murmurs at the
blindness of Fate, nor sorrow at the darkness of his doom. Better that
the lofty and bright spirit should pass away before the petty business
of life had bowed it, or the sordid mists of this low earth breathed a
shadow on its lustre! Who would have asked that spirit to have struggled
on for years in the intrigues, the hopes, the objects of meaner souls?
Who would have desired that the heavenward and impatient heart should
have grown insured to the chains and toil of this enslaved state, or
hardened into the callousness of age? Nor would we claim the vulgar
pittance of compassion for a lot which is exalted above regret! Pity
is for our weaknesses: to our weaknesses only be it given. It is
the aliment of love; it is the wages of ambition; it is the rightful
heritage of error! But why should pity be entertained for the soul which
never fell? for the courage which never quailed? for the majesty never
humbled? for the wisdom which, from the rough things of the common
world, raised an empire above earth and destiny? for the stormy
life?--it was a triumph! for the early death?--it was immortality!

I have stood beside Mordaunt's tomb: his will had directed that he
should sleep not in the vaults of his haughty li