But for proofs like these, we might fancy that such a soul had but mistaken its way while wandering from the abodes of the gods, and brought with it to the earth all the wisdom and poetry which it had taken an immortality to gather; that when he returned to his native home, the gates of heaven closed not suddenly enough upon him to shut out the undying echoes of his golden utterance; but that for ever the winds of heaven were chartered to repeat them--to blow them abroad into every corner of the earth--nor cease their mission until the language he spoke shall be uttered by "every nation, kindred, and tongue." Such a deed as this alone proves his mortality; for the creations of his genius carry him as far away from the common standard of men as heaven is from earth. What records have we here of old families long since passed away!--their very names forgotten in the places where they once enjoyed "A little rule--a little sway, A sunbeam on a winter's day, Between the cradle and the grave."--DYER. Perhaps the last of the race perished a pauper in some obscure poorhouse; it may be, the one which his ancestors founded a century or two ago. Another visits the Will-Office, who gained information of the death of some near and wealthy relative by chance--perhaps through the scrap of an old newspaper which formed the wrapper of the pennyworth of butter or cheese purchased at the little huckster's shop at the corner of the filthy court in which for years the poor family have resided,--spots in which misery clings to misery for companionship. Letter after letter had they written, but received no answer; no one would take the trouble to reply. Then they sank lower and lower, and removed from place to place, until, at last, one single room in an undrained and breathless alley held all their cares and all their heart-aches; and there they tried to forget their wealthy relatives--to bury the remembrance of what they once were. Meantime, he who had long been dead had remembered them on his deathbed; letters had been written and advertisements had appeared, announcing "something to their advantage," but they had fallen amongst the very poor, who, though living in the heart of London, concerned not themselves with matters foreign to their own wretched neighbourhood, unless it were some execution or low spectacle, suited to their depraved tastes. Poverty had long ago prostrated all their finer feelings. Even such as these have we seen enter the doors of the Prerogative Court, after they had with difficulty raised the shilling which they were compelled to pay before searching for the will, and come out exultingly the possessors of thousands.