iling; one side was in decay, and through which
I often passed to read the simple inscription--"Courtenay Temple-ton,
Armiger, aetatis 22."

This was not the family burying-place--why he was laid there was a
family mystery. His death was attributed to suicide, nor was his memory
ever totally cleared of the guilt. The event was briefly this:--On
the eve of the great battle of Fontenoy he received an insult from an
officer of a Scotch regiment, which ended in a duel. The Scotchman fell
dead at the first fire. Templeton was immediately arrested; and instead
of leading an attack, as he had been appointed to do, spent the hours of
the battle in a prison. The next morning he was discovered dead; a great
quantity of blood had flowed from his mouth and nose, which, although
no external wound was found, suggested an idea of self-destruction.
None suspected, what I have often heard since from medical men, that
a rupture of the aorta from excessive emotion--a broken heart, in
fact--had killed him: a death more frequently occurring than is usually
believed.

"Ruined and dying" are the last words in my record; and yet neither
desirous of fortune nor life! At least, so faint is my hope that I
should use either with higher purpose than I have done, that all wish is
extinguished.

Seriously I believe, that love of life is less general than the habit
of projecting schemes for the future--a vague system of castle-building,
which even the least speculative practises; and that death is thus
accounted the great evil, as suddenly interrupting a chain of events
whose series is still imperfect. The very humblest peasant that rises
to daily toil has his gaze fixed on some future, some period of rest
or repose, some hour of freedom from his lifelong struggle. Now, I have
exhausted this source; the well, that once bubbled with eddying fancies
of days to come, is dry. High spirits, health, and the buoyancy
that result from both, when joined to a disposition keenly alive to
enjoyment, and yet neither cloyed by excess nor depraved by corrupt
tastes, will always go far to simulate a degree of ability. The very
freedom a mind thus constituted enjoys is a species of power; and its
liberty exaggerates its range, just as the untrammelled paces of the
young colt seem infinitely more graceful and noble than the matured
regularity of the trained and bitted steed.

It was thus that I set out in life--ardent, hopeful, and enthusiastic:
if my mental resou