he peculiar characteristics of the unreleased soul
within: the brow was knit into more than its wonted sternness and pride;
and in the eye which glared upon the opposite wall, the light of the
waning life broke into a momentary blaze,--that flash, so rapid and
evanescent, before the air drinks in the last spark of the being it
has animated, and night--the starless and eternal--falls over the
extinguished lamp! The hand of the right arm (which was that unshattered
by the fall) was clenched and raised; but, when the words which came
upon Clarence's ear had ceased, it fell heavily by his side, like a clod
of that clay which it had then become. In those words it seemed as if,
in the confused delirium of passing existence, the brave soldier mingled
some dim and bewildered recollection of former battles with that of his
last most fatal though most ignoble strife.

"Down, down with them!" he muttered between his teeth, though in a
tone startlingly deep and audible; "down with them! No quarter to the
infidels! strike for England and Effingham. Ha!--who strives for
flight there!--kill him! no mercy, I say,--none!--there, there, I have
despatched him; ha! ha! What, still alive?--off, slave, off! Oh, slain!
slain in a ditch, by a base-born hind; oh, bitter! bitter! bitter!" And
with these words, of which the last, from their piercing anguish and
keen despair, made a dread contrast with the fire and defiance of the
first, the jaw fell, the flashing and fierce eye glazed and set, and all
of the haughty and bold patrician which the earth retained was--dust!

CHAPTER LXXX.

Il n'est jamais permis de deteriorer une ame humaine pour
l'avantage des autres, ni de faire un scelerat pour le
service des honnetes gens.--ROUSSEAU.

["It is not permitted us to degrade one single soul for the
sake of conferring advantage on others, nor to make a rogue
for the good of the honest."]

As the reader approaches the termination of this narrative, and
looks back upon the many scenes he has passed, perhaps, in the mimic
representation of human life, he may find no unfaithful resemblance to
the true.

As, amongst the crowd of characters jostled against each other in their
course, some drop off at the first, the second, or the third stage, and
leave a few only continuing to the last, while Fate chooses her agents
and survivors among those whom the bystander, perchance, least noticed
as the objects of her selectio