t uncivilized lands; could
not be traced; reappeared in England no more. The lawyer who conducted
his defence pleaded skilfully. He argued that the delay in firing was
not intentional, therefore not criminal,--the effect of the stun which
the wound in the temple had occasioned. The judge was a gentleman, and
summed up the evidence so as to direct the jury to a verdict against
the low wretch who had murdered a gentleman; but the jurors were not
gentlemen, and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathy
for a son of the people, whom a gentleman had wantonly insulted. The
verdict was manslaughter; but the sentence emphatically marked the
aggravated nature of the homicide,--three years' imprisonment. Grayle
eluded the prison, but he was a man disgraced and an exile,--his
ambition blasted, his career an outlaw's, and his age not yet
twenty-three. My father said that he was supposed to have changed his
name; none knew what had become of him. And so this creature, brilliant
and daring, whom if born under better auspices we might now be all
fawning on, cringing to,--after living to old age, no one knows
how,--dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom."

"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago,"
said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no idea
that it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel
Poyntz has so graphically described. I have a very vague recollection of
the trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since.
The affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten."

"Soon forgotten," said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not? Leave your place
in the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else has
taken it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that you
had ever a place even in the parish register?"

"Nevertheless," said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly,

"'The sun of Homer shines upon us still.'"

"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that we
know no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homer
at all, or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man in
the moon,--if there be one man there, or millions of men. Now, my dear
Miss Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts
into channels less gloomy. Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I have
something to say to you." She drew me towards the window.