their deserted obscurity, discover the feeble hold which we ourselves must have upon earth and the memory of men. Friendship forgets what the devouring earth has claimed; and even enmity ceases at last to remember the resting place of a foe. Love ourselves as we may, devote our affections to others as we can, yet must our memory perish with us in the grave; and all the immortality we leave to be cherished among friends, is expressed in the distich of a poet, whom the anticipation of enduring renown could not blind to the transitoriness of real remembrance: Poor Pope will grieve a month, and Gay A week, and Arbuthnot a day.[1] [Footnote 1: SWIFT--_On the Death of Dr. Swift_.] But there were other thoughts necessarily associated, and other feelings excited by this lonely sepulchre; and while Miss Falconer preserved a moody and painful silence upon its brink, Catherine bent over it, scarce conscious that she bedewed the rose-bush with a tear, or that her own shadow had descended, as it were, into the pit, with an ominous readiness. It was a delightful evening; the air was full of balmy freshness, the landscape resplendently verdant, and the sky cloudless, save in the west, where the sun was sinking among curtains of gold and pillars of flame; and the solitude and quiet of the whole scene, broken by no sounds, except the ceaseless turmoil of the water-fall, and the plaintive scream of the fishing-eagles, which had deserted their gray perch, to bathe in the pure floods of sunset, that beautified the upper air,--the solitude, quiet, and beauty of every thing around and nigh, were additional arguments for silence. But silence, long continued, was not consonant to the restless and impatient temper of Miss Falconer; and notwithstanding the indignant incredulity with which she had interrupted her friend's narrative, the same curiosity which compelled the commencement of it, still thirsted for the conclusion. The presence of the dead, however, in so wild, so forlorn, so unblest a spot, where, as it would seem, the shame of proud but humbled hearts had dug the neglected grave, worked powerfully on her feelings; and it was with a hesitating and quivering, though an abrupt voice, that she demanded, after gazing for a long time on the grave, "Did others,--did any beside this bitter-tongued woman, accuse my father of this thing?"