If this gallant but unfortunate man should prove to be none other than Solomon Hymen, Esquire, Chief Magistrate of Troy, Cornwall, whose recent mysterious disappearance has cast a gloom over the small borough, we commiserate our friends in the West while envying them this exemplar of an unselfish patriotism.

_Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori_." Troy required no further evidence.

To those of us indeed who had known the man--who, to borrow the words of a later poet, had lived in his mild and magnificent eye--the news carried its own verification.
Precisely how--in what circumstances--he had volunteered, we might never elucidate: but the act itself, when we came to consider it, was of a piece with his character.

He had left us in chagrin, betrayed by our unworthiness, nursing a wound deeper than any personal spite.
Summarily, by a stroke, in the simplicity of his greatness, he had at once rebuked us and restored our pride.

Perishing, he had left us an imperishable boast; an example to which, though our own conscience might accuse us, we could point, and saying "This was a Son of Troy," silence detraction for ever.