CONCLUSION And now, what can we more say?
Will not the Hamilton family, and those intimately connected with them, indeed be deemed complete?
It was our intention to trace in the first part of our tale the cares, the joys, the sorrows of parental love, during the years of childhood and earliest youth; in the second, to mark the _effect_ of those cares, when those on whom they were so lavishly bestowed attained a period of life in which it depends more upon themselves than on their parents to frame their own happiness or misery, as far, at least, as we ourselves can do so.

It may please our Almighty Father to darken our earthly course by the trial of adversity, and yet that peace founded on religion, which it was Mr.and Mrs.Hamilton's first care to inculcate, may seldom be disturbed.

It may please Him to bless us with prosperity, but from characters such as Annie Grahame happiness is a perpetual exile, which no prosperity has power to recall.

We have followed Mr.Hamilton's family from childhood, we have known them from their earliest years, and now that it has become their parts to feel those same cares and joys, and perform those precious but solemn duties which we have watched in Mrs.Hamilton, our task is done; and we must bid farewell to those we have known and loved so long; those whom we have seen the happy inmates of one home, o'er whom-- "The same fond mother bent at night," who shared the same joys, the same cares, whose deepest affections were confined to their parents and each other, are now scattered in different parts of their native land, distinct members of society, each with his own individual cares and joys, with new and precious ties to divide that heart whose whole affection had once been centred in one spot and in one circle; and can we be accused in thus terminating our simple annals of wandering from the real course of life.

Is it not thus with very many families of England?
Are not marriage and death twined hand in hand, to render that home desolate which once resounded with the laugh of many gleesome hearts, with the glad tones of youthful revelling and joy?
True, in those halls they often meet again, and the hearts of the parents are not lone, for the family of each child is a source of inexpressible interest to them; there is still a link, a precious link to bind them together, but vain and difficult would be the attempt to continue the history of a family when thus dispersed.