In the course of about six weeks afterwards might be read, in all the metropolitan papers, the following announcement:  “Died of deep decline in the forty-eighth year of his age, Solomon M’Slime, Esq., Attorney-at-Law.  Indeed we are bound to say, that for the last and most exemplary portion of his life, he ought rather to have been termed Attorney-at-Gospel.  We are glad to hear, for the sake of his interesting family, that his life was insured for the sum of two thousand pounds, which has been paid to them.”

About four months after Solomon’s death, an American vessel was lying at the Pigeon House, waiting for the tide.  Several of the passengers were assembled in Mrs. Thumbstall’s tavern—­previous to the departure of the brig—­where, as was then usual, they amused themselves by drinking punch and dancing.  Among them was a little thin fellow, dressed in a short frieze coat, striped waistcoat, corduroy breeches, and stout brogues; beside him sat a comely, youthful, but somewhat prim female, dressed as a plain peasant girl.  The moment the floor became vacant, the little frieze-coated fellow got to his legs, accompanied by the female, and addressed the musician as follows: 

“My good friend, there is—­is much cheerfulness in thy music, for which reason this young person and I will trouble you to play us that sustaining psalm—­I mean that blessed air called the Swaggering Jig, which is really a consoling planxtic—­come, Susanna.”

Good by, Solomon, thou art now gone to that land of true liberty, and sorry are we to say, that thou has left so many who are so much worse than thyself behind thee!  One of the most virtuous acts of thy life was the defrauding the Spiritual Railway Assurance office of two thousand pounds upon the fiction of thy death; which, truth to say, was a very bitter fiction to them.

Our chronicles are closed.  Need we say that Richard Topertoe, on gaining the title and estate, became a resident landlord, and is at this day enjoying a green and happy old age upon one of the best managed properties in Ireland, where his tenantry are grateful, prosperous, and happy.  Mary M’Loughlin, her husband, and family, lived happily, as they deserved to live, and some, of them live yet, and will easily recognize themselves in these pages.

Of Phil, we must say a word or two.  On finding himself the uncontrolled inheritor of his father’s ill-gotten wealth, he accelerated his progress in drunkenness and profligacy.  He took to the turf, became a gambler and spendthrift, and went backwards in squandering his fortune through as unprincipled a course as his father pursued in making it.  From step to step he came down until nothing was left.  Having no manly principle to sustain him, he fell from one stage of rascality and meanness to another, until he succeeded at length in getting himself appointed as an under turnkey in Castle Cumber Gaol.  A whisper has gone abroad, that upon a critical occasion when the Sheriff, owing to the death of a certain functionary essential to the discharge of his duty, felt himself considerably at a loss, he found in one of the under turnkeys a convenient substitute.