had appointed their meeting. To the fastidious reader these details of
pecuniary matters, so trivial in themselves, may be a little wearisome,
and may seem a little undignified; but we are writing a romance of real
life, and the reader must take what is homely with what may be more epic-
-the pettiness and the wants of the daily world, with its loftier sorrows
and its grander crimes. Besides, who knows how darkly just may be that
moral which shows us a nature originally high, a soul once all a-thirst
for truth, bowed (by what events?) to the manoeuvres and the lies of the
worldly hypocrite?

The night had now closed in, and its darkness was only relieved by the
wan lamps that vista'd the streets, and a few dim stars that struggled
through the reeking haze that curtained the great city. Aram had now
gained one of the bridges 'that arch the royal Thames,' and, in no time
dead to scenic attraction, he there paused for a moment, and looked along
the dark river that rushed below.

Oh, God! how many wild and stormy hearts have stilled themselves on that
spot, for one dread instant of thought--of calculation--of resolve--one
instant the last of life! Look at night along the course of that stately
river, how gloriously it seems to mock the passions of them that dwell
beside it;--Unchanged--unchanging--all around it quick death, and
troubled life; itself smiling up to the grey stars, and singing from its
deep heart as it bounds along. Beside it is the Senate, proud of its
solemn triflers, and there the cloistered Tomb, in which as the loftiest
honour, some handful of the fiercest of the strugglers may gain
forgetfulness and a grave! There is no moral to a great city like the
River that washes its walls.

There was something in the view before him, that suggested reflections