must have been sent to America either by yourself, or by some one of
the various gentlemen to whom, I am well aware, you have afforded
opportunities of perusing my brother's MS. remains."

"Mr. Pattison," I replied, "I beg to remind you that it never could be
my intention, either by my own hands, or through those of another, to
remit these manuscripts to the press, until, by the alterations which I
meditated, and which you yourself engaged to make, they were rendered
fit for public perusal."

Mr. Pattison answered me with much heat:--"Sir, I would have you to
know, that if I accepted your paltry offer, it was with less regard to
its amount, than to the honour and literary fame of my late brother. I
foresaw that if I declined it, you would not hesitate to throw the task
into incapable hands, or, perhaps, have taken it upon yourself, the
most unfit of all men to tamper with the works of departed genius, and
that, God willing, I was determined to prevent--but the justice of
Heaven has taken the matter into its own hands. Peter Pattison's last
labours shall now go down to posterity unscathed by the scalping-knife
of alteration, in the hands of a false friend--shame on the thought
that the unnatural weapon could ever be wielded by the hand of a
brother!"

I heard this speech not without a species of vertigo or dizziness in my
head, which would probably have struck me lifeless at his feet, had not
a thought like that of the old ballad--

"Earl Percy sees my fall,"

called to my recollection, that I should only afford an additional