of the homicide,--three years' imprisonment. Grayle eluded the prison,
but he was a man disgraced and an exile,--his ambition blasted, his career
an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty-three. My father said that he was
supposed to have changed his name; none knew what had become of him. And
so this creature, brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices
we might now be all fawning on, cringing to,--after living to old age, no
one knows how,--dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom."

"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago,"
said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no idea
that it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. Colonel Poyntz
has so graphically described. I have a very vague recollection of the
trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since. The
affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten."

"Soon forgotten," said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not? Leave your place in
the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else has taken
it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that you had ever
a place even in the parish register?"

"Nevertheless," said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly,

"'The sun of Homer shines upon us still.'"

"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that we know
no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homer at all,
or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man in the
moon,--if there be one man there, or millions of men. Now, my dear Miss
Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughts into channels
less gloomy. Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I have something to