end on that calm summit that they toiled so honestly to reach. The
difference comes home to us. The moral is read only at the end of the
story. Remorse rings it for ever in the ears of the dying--often too
long a-dying--man who has laboured for himself. Peace reads it smilingly
to him whose generous toil for others has brought its own reward.

Sheridan had climbed with the stride of a giant, laughing at rocks, at
precipices, at slippery watercourses. He had spread the wings of genius
to poise himself withal, and gained one peak after another, while
homelier worth was struggling midway, clutching the bramble and clinging
to the ferns. He had, as Byron said in Sheridan's days of decay, done
the best in all he undertook, written the best comedy, best opera, best
farce; spoken the best parody, and made the best speech. Sheridan, when
those words of the young poet were told him, shed tears.

Perhaps the bitter thought struck him, that he had _not_ led the best,
but the _worst_ life; that comedy, farce, opera, monody, and oration
were nothing, nothing to a pure conscience and a peaceful old age; that
they could not save him from shame and poverty--from debt, disgrace,
drunkenness--from grasping, but long-cheated creditors, who dragged his
bed from under the feeble, nervous, ruined old man. Poor Sheridan! his
end was too bitter for us to cast one stone more upon him. Let it be
noted that it was in the beginning of his decline, when, having reached
the climax of all his ambition and completed his fame as a dramatist,
orator, and wit, that the hand of Providence mercifully interposed to
rescue this reckless man from his downfall. It smote him with that
common but powerful weapon--death. Those he best loved were torn from
him, one after another, rapidly, and with little warning. The Linleys,
the 'nest of nightingales,' were all delicate as nightingales should be;
and it seemed as if this very time was chosen for their deaths, that the