Perhaps their knowledge of the one bitter draught that was mingled with his life's chalice, during the concluding years of his course, served greatly to soften their thoughts towards the intellectual chief of the old municipal institution, even while many of them rejoiced at the overthrow of the institution itself. His tenderly beloved and highly accomplished daughter,--his only child,--faded and died; and, therewith, the charm of life seemed broken for him. How often was this a subject of kindly-spirited converse among citizens as he passed; and how reflectingly did they note what they learnt to be his own poignant observations on that heart-rending bereavement!--his pithy and thrilling confessions that he had toiled for nothing!--that life was only a scene of disappointment!--that he had used unceasing exertion to attain wealth; but he had, now, neither "chick nor child" to leave it to! So fertile is life in affording moral nurture and correction to all hearts!--creating sympathy with the sorrowful brother, with him to whom the bitter cup is appointed; but infusing a salutary admonition, meanwhile, not to set our hearts too passionately on things of clay, lest we doom ourselves also to drink of that bitterness!---- He who was esteemed the most "odd," the most "singular," the most "eccentric" member of that Old Corporation, lingered long after its demise; and by the popularity of his character, as the only radical alderman of the Old, became a town councillor, and eventually a mayor, under the New municipal institution. How rife were the stories of his furious attacks upon the "self-elect" of the olden time!--and what a rich hue of the burlesque was thrown around the pictures that were given of him in daily conversation! Yet, who did not, in spite of his slenderness of intellect, love him for his incorruptible honesty, and, above all, for his unfailing benevolence? Oh! there was not a human being,--beggar, pauper, distressed stranger, or townsman,--who ever went from his door unrelieved; nor could he pass, in the street, a fellow-creature whose appearance led him to suppose he had found a real sufferer, but he must inquire into it, even unsolicited. The abhorrent enactments of the New Poor Law,--how he hated them!--and how staggered he felt in his reforming faith, when the "liberal" administration urged the passing of the strange Malthusian measure! "I cannot understand it!" he would exclaim, in the hearing of the numerous participants in his English hospitality; "I never thought that Reform was to make the poor more miserable, and the poorest of the poor the most miserable: it is a mystery to me! Surely it is a mistake in Lord Grey and Lord Brougham!" So the good old man thought and said; but he did not live to see the "liberal" lawmakers either correct their mistake, or acknowledge that they had made one,--though agonised thousands pealed that sad truth in their ears! NED WILCOM;