as it were, the moment it reappeared; hurried away, as the circle
on the ocean, which is scarce seen ere it vanishes amidst infinity.
Suddenly both hands were still; the head fell back. Joy had burst
asunder the last ligaments, so fretted away in unrevealing sorrow. Afar,
their sound borne into that room, the joy-bells were pealing triumph;
mobs roaring out huzzas; the weak cry of John Avenel might be blent in
those shouts, as the drunken zealots reeled by his cottage door, and
startled the screaming ravens that wheeled round the hollow oak. The
boom which is sent from the waves on the surface of life, while the
deeps are so noiseless in their march, was wafted on the wintry air into
the chamber of the statesman it honoured, and over the grass sighing low
upon Nora's grave. But there was one in the chamber, as in the grave,
for whom the boom on the wave had no sound, and the march of the deep
had no tide. Amidst promises of home, and union, and peace, and fame,
Death strode into the household ring, and, seating itself, calm and
still, looked life-like,--warm hearts throbbing round it; lofty hopes
fluttering upward; Love kneeling at its feet; Religion, with lifted
finger, standing by its side.

FINAL CHAPTER.

SCENE--The Hall in the Old Tower of CAPTAIN ROLAND DE CAXTON.

"But you have not done?" said Augustine Caxton.

PISISTRATUS.--"What remains to do?"

MR. CAXTON.--"What! why, the Final Chapter!--the last news you can give
us of those whom you have introduced to our liking or dislike."

PISISTRATUS.--"Surely it is more dramatic to close the work with a
scene that completes the main design of the plot, and leave it to the
prophetic imagination of all whose flattering curiosity is still not
wholly satisfied, to trace the streams of each several existence, when
they branch off again from the lake in which their waters converge, and
by which the sibyl has confirmed and made clear the decree that 'Conduct
is Fate.'"

MR. CAXTON.--"More dramatic, I grant; but you have not written a drama.
A novelist should be a comfortable, garrulous, communicative, gossiping
fortune-teller; not a grim, laconical, oracular sibyl. I like a novel
that adopts all the old-fashioned customs prescribed to its art by
the rules of the Masters,--more especially a novel which you style 'My
Novel' par emphasis."

CAPTAIN ROLAND.--"A most vague and impracticable title 'My Novel'! It
must really be changed before the work goes in due