gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of revelry? No; there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song; there is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.... But the grave of those we love, what a place for meditation! There it is that we call up in long review the whole history of virtue and goodness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us almost unheeded in the daily intercourse of intimacy; there it is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tenderness of the dying scene. The bed of death, with all its stifled griefs, its noiseless attendance, its mute, watchful assiduities. The last testimonies of expiring love! The feeble, fluttering, thrilling--oh! how thrilling--pressure of the hand! The last fond look of the glazing eye turned upon us even from the threshold of existence! The faint, faltering accents struggling in death to give one more assurance of affection!' How truly is this passage 'to be interpreted in the light of the event in Irving's history', when it is evident from a comparison of it with the memoranda, that it is a sketch of that scene which wrecked his brightest hopes, and that here he is renewing in this unequaled description of a dying-bed, the last hours of Matilda Hoffman. The highly-wrought picture presents a complete detail to the eye, and yet still more powerful is that simple utterance in the memoranda: '_I was the last one she looked upon_.' _St. Mark's Eve_,' to which reference is also made, was written several years subsequently, and as may be gathered from its tone, under circumstances of peculiar loneliness. It was while a solitary occupant of his lodgings, a stranger in a foreign city, that he felt the inspiration of precious memories, and improved his lonely hours by this exquisite production. 'I am alone,' he writes, 'in my chamber; but these themes have taken such hold upon me that I can not sleep. The room in which I sit is just fitted to foster such a state of mind. The walls are hung with tapestry, the figures of which are faded and look like unsubstantial shapes melting away from sight.... The murmur of voices and the peal of remote laughter no longer reach the ear. The clock from the church, in which so many of the former inhabitants of this house lie buried, has chimed the awful hour of midnight.' It was a fitting time to yield to the power of that undying affection which abode with him under all changes, and the serene presence of one snatched from him years ago must at such times have invested him as with a spell. Thus he writes: