esson
is derived, sometimes, perhaps, a warning, but also (and this is of
universal application) some consolation. Whatever may have been the
misfortunes or the sorrows of a man's life, he is still privileged to
regard himself and his friends as amongst the fortunate by comparison,
in so far as he has escaped these wholesale storms, either as an actor
in producing them, or a contributor to their violence--or even more
innocently (though oftentimes not less miserably)--as a participator in
the instant ruin, or in the long arrears of suffering which they
entail.

* * * * *

The following story falls within the class of hasty tragedies, and sudden
desolations here described. The reader is assured that every incident is
strictly true: nothing, in that respect, has been altered; nor, indeed,
anywhere except in the conversations, of which, though the results and
general outline are known, the separate details have necessarily been lost
under the agitating circumstances which produced them. It has been judged
right and delicate to conceal the name of the great city, and therefore of
the nation in which these events occurred, chiefly out of consideration for
the descendants of one person concerned in the narrative: otherwise, it
might not have been requisite: for it is proper to mention, that every
person directly a party to the case has been long laid in the grave: all of
them, with one solitary exception, upwards of fifty years.

* * * * *

It was early spring in the year 17--; the day was the 6th of April; and the
weather, which had been of a wintry fierceness for the preceding six or
seven weeks--cold indeed beyond anything known for many years, gloomy for
ever, and broken by continual storms--was now by a Swedish transformation
all at once bright--genial--heavenly. So sudden and so early a prelusion of
summer, it was generally feared, could not last. But that only made
everybody the more eager to lose no hour of an enjoyment that might prove so
fleeting. It seemed as if the whole population of the place, a population
among the most numerous in Christendom, had been composed of hybernating
animals suddenly awakened by the balmy sunshine from their long winter's
torpor. Through every hour of the golden morning the streets were resonant
with female parties of young and old, the timid and the bold, nay even of
the most delicate valetudinarians, now first tempted