monument less of pity than of awe! There are some who pass through
the Lazar-House of Misery with a step more august than a Caesar's in
his hall. The very things which, seen alone, are despicable and vile,
associated with them become almost venerable and divine; and one ray,
however dim and feeble, of that intense holiness which, in the INFANT
GOD, shed majesty over the manger and the straw, not denied to those
who in the depth of affliction cherish His patient image, flings over
the meanest localities of earth an emanation from the glory of Heaven!




CHAPTER L.

Letters from divers hands, which will absolve
Ourselves from long narration.--Tanner of Tyburn.

One morning about a fortnight after Talbot's death, Clarence was
sitting alone, thoughtful and melancholy, when the three following
letters were put into his hand:

LETTER I.

FROM THE DUKE OF HAVERFIELD.

Let me, my dear Linden, be the first to congratulate you upon your
accession of fortune: five thousand a year, Scarsdale, and 80,000 in
the Funds, are very pretty foes to starvation! Ah, my dear fellow, if
you had but shot that frosty Caucasus of humanity, that pillar of the
state, made not to bend, that--but you know already whom I mean, and