My absence was necessarily prolonged much beyond what I had anticipated. A letter, with a foreign post-mark, had, as I afterwards found, been brought over from his own house to my venerable substitute in the interval, and barely giving himself time to transfer the charge he had undertaken to a neighbouring clergyman, he had hurried off at once to Leyden. His arrival there was, however, too late. Frederick _was dead_!--killed in a duel, occasioned, it was said, by no ordinary provocation on his part, although the flight of his antagonist had added to the mystery which enveloped its origin. The long journey, its melancholy termination, and the complete overthrow of all my poor friend's earthly hopes, were too much for him. He appeared too,--as I was informed by the proprietor of the house in which I found him, when his summons at length had brought me to his bed-side,--to have received some sudden and unaccountable shock, which even the death of his grandson was inadequate to explain. There was, indeed, a wildness in his fast-glazing eye, which mingled strangely with the glance of satisfaction thrown upon me as he pressed my hand;--he endeavoured to raise himself, and would have spoken, but fell back in the effort, and closed his eyes for ever.--I buried him there, by the side of the object of his more than parental affection,--in a foreign land. It is from the papers that I discovered in his travelling-case that I submit the following extracts, without, however, presuming to advance an opinion on the strange circumstances which they detail, or even as to the connexion which some may fancy they discover between different parts of them. The first was evidently written at my own house, and bears date August the 15, 18--, about three weeks after my own departure from Preston. It begins thus:-- "Tuesday, August 15.--Poor girl!--I forget who it is that says, 'the real ills of life are light in comparison with fancied evils;' and certainly the scene I have just witnessed goes some way towards establishing the truth of the hypothesis.--Among the afflictions which flesh is heir to, a diseased imagination is far from being the lightest, even when considered separately, and without taking into the account those bodily pains and sufferings which,--so close is the connexion between mind and matter,--are but too frequently attendant upon any disorder of the fancy. Seldom has my interest been more powerfully excited than by poor Mary Graham. Her age, her appearance, her pale, melancholy features, the very contour of her countenance, all conspired to remind me, but too forcibly, of one who, waking or sleeping, is never long absent from my thoughts;--but enough of this.