of resistance to the shocks and frowns of fortune, which
adversity had made essential perhaps to her being, had passed away
with her day of suffering. She was now soft, mild, tender, and
confiding. She often reminded me of some of those plants which, when
exposed to the storm, contract and diminish their form and foliage;
but, when sheltered, resume their original luxuriance and loveliness.
Clotilde, in the sufferings of the emigration, in the terrors of the
Revolution, and in the march through the Vendee, might have perished,
but for that loftiness of soul which was awakened by the exigency of
the trial. But now, surrounded with all the security of rank, and with
opulence for her enjoyment, and with love to cherish her, she
displayed the force of her nature only in the fondness of her
affections. Thus surrounded, thus cheered, thus looked up to by beings
whom I loved; what had I to ask for more? Nothing. I here close my
page of life. I still vividly retain all the sense of duty, all the
feeling of patriotism, and all the consciousness, that age will
neither dull my heart towards those whom I have so long loved, nor
shut up theirs to me. I believe in the possibility of friendship
untainted by selfishness, and I am firm in the faith, of love that
knows no decline. I look round me, and am serenely happy. I look above
me, and am sacredly thankful.

HOW WE GOT UP THE GLENMUTCHKIN RAILWAY, AND HOW WE GOT OUT OF IT.

I was confoundedly hard up. My patrimony, never of the largest, had
been for the last year on the decrease--a herald would have emblazoned
it, "ARGENT, a money-bag improper, in detriment"--and though the
attenuating process was not excessively rapid, it was, nevertheless,
proceeding at a steady ratio. As for the ordinary means and appliances
by which men contrive to recruit their exhausted exchequers, I knew
none of them. Work I abhorred with a detestation worthy of a scion of
nobility; and, I believe, you could just as soon have persuaded the
lineal representative of the Howards or Percys to exhibit himself in
the character of a mountebank, as have got me to trust my person on
the pinnacle of a three-legged stool. The rule of three is all very
well for base mechanical souls; but I flatter myself I have an
intellect too large to be limited to a ledger. "Augustus," said my
poor mother to me, one day while stroking my hyacinthine
tresses--"Augustus, my dear boy, whatever you do, never forget that
you are