And the next day that place was desolate, and the board on the lawn announced that it was again to be let. But thither daily, in rain or sunshine, came the solitary lover, as a bird that seeks its young in the deserted nest:--Again and again he haunted the spot where he had strayed with the lost one,--and again and again murmured his passionate vows beneath the fast-fading limes. Are those vows destined to be ratified or annulled? Will the absent forget, or the lingerer be consoled? Had the characters of that young romance been lightly stamped on the fancy where once obliterated they are erased for ever,--or were they graven deep in those tablets where the writing, even when invisible, exists still, and revives, sweet letter by letter, when the light and the warmth borrowed from the One Bright Presence are applied to the faithful record? There is but one Wizard to disclose that secret, as all others,--the old Grave-digger, whose Churchyard is the Earth,--whose trade is to find burial-places for Passions that seemed immortal,--disinterring the ashes of some long-crumbling Memory--to hollow out the dark bed of some new-perished Hope:--He who determines all things, and prophesies none,--for his oracles are uncomprehended till the doom is sealed--He who in the bloom of the fairest affection detects the hectic that consumes it, and while the hymn rings at the altar, marks with his joyless eye the grave for the bridal vow.--Wherever is the sepulchre, there is thy temple, O melancholy Time! BOOK V. CHAPTER I. “Per ambages et ministeria deorum.”--PETRONTUS. [Through the mysteries and ministerings of the gods.] Mr. Roger Morton was behind his counter one drizzling, melancholy day. Mr. Roger Morton, alderman, and twice mayor of his native town, was a thriving man. He had grown portly and corpulent. The nightly potations of brandy and water, continued year after year with mechanical perseverance, had deepened the roses on his cheek. Mr. Roger Morton was never intoxicated--he “only made himself comfortable.” His constitution was strong; but, somehow or other, his digestion was not as good as it might be. He was certain that something or other disagreed with him. He left off the joint one day--the pudding another. Now he avoided vegetables as poison--and now he submitted with a sigh to the doctor’s interdict of his cigar. Mr. Roger Morton never thought of leaving off the brandy and water: and he would have resented as the height of impertinent insinuation any hint upon that score to a man of so sober and respectable a character.