THE HEBREWS PRAYER. 196 



And, when the heavenly harps inspire 



The song of praise and prayer ; 

 Oh ! let not — Lord — thy Judah's lyre 



Alone be wanting there. 



The dream of life is fading fast — 



Farewell — my friends — my home— . 

 Thy bitterness, oh death ! is past— 



I come — Great God — I come. 



The hymn was finished — but the last notes had scarce died 

 away on my ears, when a piercing- shriek announced that all was 

 over, — that the dreaded, yet inevitable event had come to pass. 



Exhausted with the exertions which he had made in the per- 

 formance of his last religious duties, the invalid had sunk back 

 upon his pillow. His eyes were now closed, and his features* 

 were almost painfully calm. Indeed, so gradual had been the 

 departure of life, that a faint smile seemed even yet to hover 

 over the lips of the deceased. Zillah leaned over the body of 

 her father ; pale, and motionless as a statue. A careless 

 observer would have called her unfeeling, so devoid was her 

 countenance of all external marks of sorrow. But no — hers was 

 not that impatient grief which vents itself in tears and ex- 

 clamations, and then passes away ; but that keener, and more 

 lasting regret, which, like the *'worm that dieth not," preys 

 on the heart incessantly, and embitters the happiest moments 

 of future years. 



The two elders were still standing at the foot of the bed ; and 

 in the same position in which I first observed them. The slightly 

 compressed lip, and an almost imperceptible contraction of the 

 brow alone betrayed their consciousness of what had come to pass. 

 Age had blunted their feelings, and destroyed the more sensitive 

 portion of their nature. The old nurse alone seemed wholly 

 unaffected ; death was her trade — and she had viewed the grim 

 tyrant in forms too terrible to be moved by him when in his 

 mildest shape. She still sate dozing over the fire. 



The scene had now closed — and nothing remained which could 

 either excite my curiosity, or require my commiseration. 1 tore 

 myself with difficulty from the post which I had so long occupied, 

 and sauntered slowly home, to meditate upon all I had seen and 

 heard, and to profit by it. 



Comte De Viry was a man of the greatest secresy and reserve. The 

 most trifling message delivered to one of his domestics was a mystery to 

 all the others ; and if he happened to be indisposed, it was a state secret. 

 He once called a surgeon to dress an ulcer on his leg j and when a 

 similar one broke out on the other, he sent for a difierent surgeon, that 

 the disordered state of both limbs might not be known — a circumstance 

 which was the cause of his death ; when to a person who inquired for 

 him, his secretary said, " he is dead, but he does not wish it to be 

 known.'* 



NO. ill. 2 c 



