fore us: shall we cling
to a grain of dust? All immortality is our heritage: shall we gasp and
sicken for a moment's breath? What if we perish within an hour?--what
if already the black cloud lowers over us?--what if from our hopes and
projects, and the fresh woven ties which we have knit around our life,
we are abruptly torn?--shall we be the creatures or the conquerors of
fate? Shall we be the exiled from a home, or the escaped from a dungeon?
Are we not as birds which look into the Great Air only through a barred
cage? Shall we shrink and mourn when the cage is shattered, and all
space spreads around us,--our element and our empire? No; it was not
for this that, in an elder day, Virtue and Valour received but a common
name! The soul, into which that Spirit has breathed its glory, is not
only above Fate,--it profits by her assaults! Attempt to weaken it, and
you nerve it with a new strength; to wound it, and you render it more
invulnerable; to destroy it, and you make it immortal! This, indeed,
is the Sovereign whose realm every calamity increases, the Hero whose
triumph every invasion augments; standing on the last sands of life, and
encircled by the advancing waters of Darkness and Eternity, it becomes
in its expiring effort doubly the Victor and the King!"

Impressed by the fervour of his companion, with a sympathy almost
approaching to awe, Lord Ulswater pressed Mordaunt's hand, but offered
no reply; and both, excited by the high theme of their conversation,
and the thoughts which it produced, moved in silence from their post and
walked slowly homeward.

CHAPTER LXXXVII.

Is it possible?
Is't so? I can no longer what I would
No longer draw back at my liking! I
Must do the deed because I thought of it.
......
What is thy enterprise,--thy aim, thy object?
Hast honestly confessed it to thyself?
O bloody, frightful deed!
......
Was that my purpose when we parted?
O God of Justice!--COLERIDGE: Wallenstein.

We need scarcely say that one of the persons overheard by Mr. Brown was
Wolfe, and the peculiar tone of oratorical exaggeration, characteristic
of the man, has already informed the reader with which of the two he is
identified.

On the evening after the conversation--the evening fixed for the
desperate design on which he had set the last hazard of his life--the
republican, parting from the companions with whom he had passed the day,
returned home to compose the fever of