Henry Cruickshank, growing old in his eminence and less secure, perhaps, in the increasing conflict of loud voices, of his own grasp of the ultimate best, fearing too, no doubt, the approach of that cynicism which, moral or immoral, is the real hoar of age, wrote to young Murchison while he was still examining the problems of the United States with the half-heart of the alien, and offered him a partnership.  The terms were so simple and advantageous as only to be explicable on the grounds I have mentioned, though no phrase suggested them in the brief formulas of the letter, in which one is tempted to find the individual parallel of certain propositions of a great government also growing old.  The offer was accepted, not without emotion, and there, too, it would be good to trace the parallel, were we permitted; but for that it is too soon, or perhaps it is too late.  Here, for Lorne and for his country, we lose the thread of destiny.  The shuttles fly, weaving the will of the nations, with a skein for ever dipped again; and he goes forth to his share in the task among those by whose hand and direction the pattern and the colours will be made.

END