"I have never heard anything of Ada, the little Electra of my Mycenae. * * * But there will come a day of reckoning, even if I should not live to see it. I have at least, seen ------ shivered, who was one of my assassins. When that man was doing his worst to uproot my whole family, tree, branch, and blossoms--when, after taking my retainer, he went over to them--when he was bringing desolation on my hearth, and destruction on my household gods--did he think that, in less than three years, a natural event--a severe domestic, but an expected and common calamity--would lay his carcass in a cross-road, or stamp his name in a Verdict of Lunacy! Did he (who in his sexagenary * * *) reflect or consider what my feeling must have been, when wife, and child, and sister, and name, and fame, and country, were to be my sacrifice on his legal altar--and this at a moment when my health was declining, my fortune embarrassed, and my mind had been shaken by many kinds of disappointment--while I was yet young, and might have reformed what might be wrong in my conduct, and retrieved what was perplexing in my affairs! But he is in his grave, and * * * What a long letter I have scribbled!" (Here is a random string of poetical gems:)-- So, we'll go no more a roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright; For the sword out-wears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And Love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we'll go no more a roving By the light of the moon. Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story. The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty. What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled? 'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled. Then away with all such from the head that is hoary! What care I for the wreaths that can _only_ give glory? Oh, Fame! if I e'er took delight in thy praises, 'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, Than to see the bright eyes of the dear One discover She thought that I was not unworthy to love her. _There_ chiefly I sought thee--_there_ only I found thee; Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee; When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory. TO THE COUNTESS OF B----. You have asked for a verse,--the request In a rhymer 'twere strange to deny, But my Hippocrene was but my breast, And my feelings (its fountain) are dry. Were I now as I was, I had sung What Lawrence has painted so well; But the strain would expire on my tongue, And the theme is too soft for my shell.