THE LAST PULSATION.

III

had finished the kind offers he was making to the father, the son had insensibly pressed close up to his knees, and had taken hold of the breast of his coat and was pulling it towards him. The blood and spirits of Le Fevre, which were waxing cold and slow within him, and were retreating to their last citadel, rallied back; the film forsook his eyes for a moment, he looked up wistfully in my Uncle Toby's face, then cast a look upon his boy, and the ligament, fine as it was, was never broken.

Nature instantly ebbed again. The film returned to its place. The pulse fluttered, stopped, went on, throbbed, stopped again, moved, stopped

Shall I go on? No.

HORACE WALPOLE, EARL OF

ORFORD.

BORN OCTOBER 5, 1717; DIED MARCH 2, 1797.

Selection.

THE MYSTERIOUS HELMET.

P

HORACE WALPOLE.

H

ORACE WALPOLE'S claim to be included among English novelists arises from the fact that, in his "Castle of Otranto," he inaugurated a new school of melodramatic composition. Sir Walter Scott designates it "the first modern attempt to found a taste for amusing fiction on the basis of the ancient romances of chivalry;" but, in truth, it is little more than one of these romances dressed up in a modern garb, with the accessories of a polished style and a lively vein of conversation. There is no high moral aim in it; no ideal; it is not designed to illustrate any great truth, or work out any lofty lesson. Its characters are mere phantoms, or, more correctly speaking, stage supernumeraries, attired in the conventional costume, and eked out with tinsel and blue lights. All its merit consists in a stirring plot, and a quick succession of picturesque scenes. Had its author written nothing else, his name would have been forgotten, even if his romance had occasionally attracted the curious reader as the precursor of works which imitated but surpassed it; but that he possessed no ordinary powers of observation, considerable wit, and a quick appreciation of men and things, we know from his admirable "Letters" and his entertaining "Memoirs." And it may further be owned that his tragedy of the "Mysterious Mother," published in 1768, displays a decided facility for dramatic writing; while he occasionally shows himself an acute, as he is always a lively, critic, in his "Anecdotes of Paintings" (1761-71); his "Catalogue of Engravings" (1763); his "Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors" (1758); and his "Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of Richard III.” (1768).

He

As a man he neither commands our respect nor wins our esteem. was supercilious, ungenerous, artificial; he was utterly incapable of any high enthusiasm or deep affection; and while keenly anxious to obtain literary reputation, was ever professing to look down with contempt on