envy with which I regarded the easy movements and elastic steps
of my more happily formed brethren. Alas! these goodly barks
have all perished on life's wide ocean, and only that which
seemed so little seaworthy, as the naval phrase goes, has reached
the port when the tempest is over. Then there is the pool,
where, manoeuvring our little navy, constructed out of the broad
water-flags, my elder brother fell in, and was scarce saved from
the watery element to die under Nelson's banner. There is the
hazel copse also, in which my brother Henry used to gather nuts,
thinking little that he was to die in an Indian jungle in quest
of rupees.

There is so much more of remembrance about the little walk, that
--as I stop, rest on my crutch-headed cane, and look round with
that species of comparison between the thing I was and that which
I now am--it almost induces me to doubt my own identity; until I
find myself in face of the honeysuckle porch of Aunt Margaret's
dwelling, with its irregularity of front, and its odd, projecting
latticed windows, where the workmen seem to have made it a study
that no one of them should resemble another in form, size, or in
the old-fashioned stone entablature and labels which adorn them.
This tenement, once the manor house of the Earl's Closes, we
still retain a slight hold upon; for, in some family
arrangements, it had been settled upon Aunt Margaret during the
term of her life. Upon this frail tenure depends, in a great
measure, the last shadow of the family of Bothwell of Earl's
Closes, and their last slight connection with their paternal
inheritance. The only representative will then be an infirm old
man, moving not unwillingly to the grave, which has devoured all
that were dear to his affections.