of whom you have, doubtless, grown well wearied. So here for the
last time, and with every kind wish, I say, adieu!

L'ENVOI.

Kind friends,--It is somewhat unfortunate that the record of the happiest
portion of my friend's life should prove the saddest part of my duty as
his editor, and for this reason, that it brings me to that spot where my
acquaintance with you must close, and sounds the hour when I must say,
good-bye.

They, who have never felt the mysterious link that binds the solitary
scribe in his lonely study, to the circle of his readers, can form no
adequate estimate of what his feelings are when that chain is about to be
broken; they know not how often, in the fictitious garb of his narrative,
he has clothed the inmost workings of his heart; they know not how
frequently he has spoken aloud his secret thoughts, revealing, as though to
a dearest friend, the springs of his action, the causes of his sorrow, the
sources of his hope; they cannot believe by what a sympathy he is bound to
those who bow their heads above his pages; they do not think how the ideal
creations of his brain are like mutual friends between him and the world,
through whom he is known and felt and thought of, and by whom he reaps in
his own heart the rich harvest of flattery and kindness that are rarely
refused to any effort to please, however poor, however humble. They know
not this, nor can they feel the hopes, the fears, that stir within him, to
earn some passing word of praise; nor think they, when won, what brightness
around his humble hearth it may be shedding. These are the rewards for
nights of toil and days of thought; these are the recompenses which pay the
haggard cheek, the sunken eye, the racked and tired head. These are the
stakes for which one plays his health, his leisure, and his life, yet not
regrets the game.

Nearly three years have now elapsed since I first made my bow before you.
How many events have crowded into that brief space! How many things of
vast moment have occurred! Only think that in the last few months you've
frightened the French; terrified M. Thiers; worried the Chinese; and are,
at this very moment, putting the Yankees into a "_most uncommon fix_;" not
to mention the minor occupations of ousting the Whigs; reinstating the
Tories, and making O'Connell Lord Mayor,--and yet, with all these and a
thousand other minor cares, you have not forgotten your poor friend, the
Irish Dragoon. Now this was