cheeks; yet his was not a weak nature,--not one of those that love
indulgence of irremediable grief. On the contrary, people who did not
know him well said "that he had more head than heart," and the character
of his pursuits, as of his writings, was certainly not that of a
sentimentalist. He had not thus visited the tomb till Richard King had
been placed within it. Yet his love for his aunt was unspeakably greater
than that which he could have felt for her husband. Was it, then, the
husband that he so much more acutely mourned; or was there something
that, since the husband's death, had deepened his reverence for the
memory of her whom he had not only loved as a mother, but honoured as a
saint?

These visits to the cemetery did not cease till Graham was confined to
his bed by a very grave illness,--the only one he had ever known. His
physician said it was nervous fever, and occasioned by moral shock or
excitement; it was attended with delirium. His recovery was slow, and
when it was sufficiently completed he quitted England; and we find him
now, with his mind composed, his strength restored, and his spirits
braced, in that gay city of Paris; hiding, perhaps, some earnest purpose
amid his participation in its holiday enjoyments. He is now, as I have
said, seated before his writing-table in deep thought. He takes up a
letter which he had already glanced over hastily, and reperuses it with
more care.

The letter is from his cousin, the Duke of Alton, who had succeeded a few
years since to the family honours,--an able man, with no small degree of
information, an ardent politician, but of very rational and temperate
opinions; too much occupied by the cares of a princely estate to covet
office for himself; too sincere a patriot not to desire office for those
to whose hands he thought the country might be most safely entrusted; an