It was during that melancholy November when the death of the
Princess Charlotte had diffused throughout Great Britain a more
general sorrow than had ever before been known in these kingdoms; I
was sitting alone at evening in my library, and my thoughts had
wandered from the book before me to the circumstances which made
this national calamity be felt almost like a private affliction.
While I was thus musing the post-woman arrived. My letters told me
there was nothing exaggerated in the public accounts of the
impression which this sudden loss had produced; that wherever you
went you found the women of the family weeping, and that men could
scarcely speak of the event without tears; that in all the better
parts of the metropolis there was a sort of palsied feeling which
seemed to affect the whole current of active life; and that for
several days there prevailed in the streets a stillness like that of
the Sabbath, but without its repose. I opened the newspaper; it was
still bordered with broad mourning lines, and was filled with
details concerning the deceased Princess. Her coffin and the
ceremonies at her funeral were described as minutely as the order of
her nuptials and her bridal dress had been, in the same journal,
scarce eighteen months before. "Man," says Sir Thomas Brown, "is a
noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave;
solemnising nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting
ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature." These things
led me in spirit to the vault, and I thought of the memorable dead
among whom her mortal remains were now deposited. Possessed with
such imaginations I leaned back upon the sofa and closed my eyes.

Ere long I was awakened from that conscious state of slumber in
which the stream of fancy floweth as it listeth by the entrance of
an elderly personage of grave and dignified appearance. His