without at all thinking that he was born to devour any of them. This is an example, and a powerful one, of what may be accomplished by a proper education, which rightly estimates the force of habit, and confirms, by judicious management, that habit which is most desirable to be made a rule of conduct. The principle is the same, whether it be applied to children or

It was the eleventh day of my fever. The medical attendants had again collected round my bed for a last struggle with the disease, that was drying up my blood, and searing the very marrow of my bones. Unfortunately, in every sense of the word, for my present comfort, as for the chance of recovery, I had little faith in them, though, to judge from the result, my opinion had less of reason than of prejudice. But I could not help myself; I was far away from those in whom I should have put trust, in the Isle of Jersey, which, for any useful purpose, as regarded distance, might as well have been in the Isle of Madeira.

The evening declined rapidly; the physicians had long since gone; and in those few hours which may be said to linger between light and darkness, I was in a state of comparative quiet. But when night came on-eyeless, voiceless, heavy night!-strange shapes began to float about me, while my hands and feet burnt like iron thrice heated in the furnace, and my own touch scorched my own flesh. I was fast tending to delirium ; I felt it my self, and even tried by reasoning to keep down my rising fancies. But it was all to no purpose. Those fantastic shadows, too, flung from the various pieces of furniture upon the wall! -how they mocked me by their flit ting forms, as the rushlight flickered to and fro under the air!

I buried my head in the clothes, to shut out the images that harassed me, and for a time slept, or seemed to

sleep. It was, however, only for a short time-perhaps an hour-perhaps a few minutes-I know not; but time grows longer as we approach the grave, as the shadows increase in the decline of day.

The sound of trumpets startled me from my broken slumber. I was in Rome, a Roman amongst Romans, with no other consciousness of individual being than what belonged to that moment; yet memory and fancy had strangely wrought together, confounding men and things, times and places. War had fixed his throne in the capital, and bound his brow with the crown of victory. Men neither thought nor spoke of anything but battle and triumph; they were the only measure of glory-the sole object for which we lived. The wealth of nations was constantly pouring through the streets, either as tribute or as plunder, to satisfy a spirit that was insatiable, and to swell a pride that was already towering to the clouds. What were kings, rich with barbaric gold and pearl, to the meanest of us, though our rags were an offence to earth and heaven?-to us, the citizens of eternal Rome? Our eagles waved over them, to defend or to devour; our senate gave them laws, either as slaves or allies. And who lent wings to those eagles, or gave voice to that senate, but ourselves-the children of eternal Rome? It was told us by our tribunes; it was repeated by our consuls; it was engraved upon our banners, that spoke neither of tribunes

nor of consuls, but of the senate and the Roman people; while the tremendous Cabulæ, the S. P. Q. R., spread terror amongst the remotest nations of the world. We might want for bread, but we never wanted for that food which pampers the spirit, and elevates poor mortality above the level of earth. Slaves in gold and purple might flatter kings, but our flatterers were the conquerors of kings; they were heroes and demigods, the bravest, and the wisest, and the noblest of the earth, and yet were fain to put on the garments of humility, showing their scars and counting their deserts to win our favor. Wherever our eyes turned, they were saluted with the monuments of our glory-the records of a conquered world. There was no pause, no stagnation of existence with us; our tide of life rolled onward like a torrent, foaming, boiling, and sparkling, amidst the shouts of victory, the glitter of triumph, the pageantry of festivals, the eloquence of the senate, the tumult of the forum, the crowning of one hero, the immolation of another; amidst crimes that, from their greatness and their motives, shone out like virtues-and virtues which wore the bloody hue of crimes, but both crimes and virtues such as none but a Roman could have had the head to imagine, or the heart to execute. Such was our every-day life; but the present day was one of even more than usual interest. The formidable eagles were passing out at one gate with their mailed legions to distant battle; while, at another, Pompey, and Scipio, and Camillus, and Cæsar, and the conqueror of Corioli, were returning victorious in the midst of rejoicing multitudes. The kings and warriors of many nations, from India to Britain, followed their triumphant wheels; and in the faces of those kings and warriors might be read defeat, and shame, and wrath, and captivity. The masses of human life grew yet denser; the clamor of triumph swelled louder and louder, peal after peal, incessant, like the bursting of a stormy sea upon the shore. I saw a king

he who a few days before had ruled a world, who had been the joy or the terror of more millions than Rome could count thousands-I saw him, this mighty one, dash out his brains, in the impatience of despair, with his fetters; and the many around shouted applauses on the noble deed, as if it had been a mimic death on the public stage; but, in the next moment, the glorious suicide was forgotten, the pageant passed on, and the marching legions trampled with indifference on the corse, till it became a portion of the highway.

In the midst of this swelling pageant, and while the temples were yet reeking with incense, I was sensible, though I knew not why, that I had become the object of general awe and hatred. Men scowled as they passed by me, and drew their garments more closely to them, to avoid the contamination of my nearness, as if I had carried plague and pestilence in my touch; or else turned pale with terror, and hurried on, as they would have fled from the path of the aspic. Still I kept on my way without stop or question, the startling crowd dividing before me like water before the prow of a vessel when the gale is at the highest, till I found myself in the senate house. A general murmur arose at my appearance, and all simultaneously started up from the bench on which I had seated myself, and passed over to the opposite side, where Cato sate lowering hatred and defiance, and Cicero was watching me with his keen, eagle eyes, while his whole frame trembled with visible emotion. I knew that I was Catiline, with the will to be lord of the city, or to lay it in ruins-I recked not which—and the dread and loathing I inspired were sweeter to ine than flattery. Rome, that feared nothing else, feared me. I rejoiced that it was so; I could have laughed, but for prudence, at the majestic horrors of Cato-the doubtful brow of Cæsar, who loved the treason, though he shrank from its dangerand the spare face of the consul, bleached with his midnight terrors, and

not yet seeming quite assured of his safety, even when bucklered round by his friends. But even then, while my heart was swelling with present and expected triumph, the orator arose and thundered in my ears the terrible "Quousque tandem, Catilina ;" and a thousand voices re-echoed with deafening roar, Quousque tandemquosque tandem!" It was like the unholy spell of some wizard. The images of the gods, the marbles of the illustrious dead, in temple and in porch, in the forum and in the senate, all at that sound became instinct with life, and cried out with the pale orator, " Quousque-quousque !" I endeavored to reply, to defend myself, to hurl back defiance on the wretched peasant of Arpinum, who had dared to brand a Roman and a noble; but my voice was no more, amidst the tumult, then the voice of a child would be to the cataract or the ravings of the tempest. I was stunned, beaten to the earth, by the mighty congregation of sounds; my eyes dazzled; my brain shook; and down I toppled-downdown-a precipice as deep as from heaven to earth, catching at every thing in the long descent to break my fall. But all was in vain the stoutest oaks snapped under my grasp like the dried reeds of autumn; the ponderous masses of jutting rock sank from my tread like hills of sand. The weight of some strange crime was upon me; and, loaded as I was, nothing was so stout it could give my foot a resting-place.

Unconsciousness, or sleep, its counterfeit, dropped a curtain between me and this stage of suffering, and again the shadows of my delirium took other forms. A rapid succession of visions came more or less distinct, and again melted away, like those fantastic forms which the clouds build up in a summer's evening, when the winds are high, and the sun is sinking amidst a world of vapors. I skimmed the air with the birds; I dived into the waters with the sea-mew; or floated on its surface with a fleet of gallant barks, that were sailing to some

un

known land, which no one could name, but which all knew to be the land of the sun, where the spice grew like acorns, and the stones of the highway were emeralds and diamonds. As we neared it, the air grew softer, the skies brighter, the waters clearer : it was a world unlike the world we had left, not in degree, but in kind; and the feelings it excited required a new language for their expression. But even then the scene faded. I was burning at the stake by the side of the Huguenots, surrounded by thousands, who in general did not, or dared not, pity us, though the faces of many were convulsed with eager horror; and here and there the features of some young female, in despite of beads and rosary, expressed a sympathy with our fate. The flames from the new-lit fagots hissed like serpents. Anon, before the fires, that wrapt us as with a garment, were burnt out, I was tossing on the waters of the Polar Sea, amidst mountains of blue ice, whose tops were in the clouds. The surge dashed and broke upon these colossal masses as upon so many rocks of granite. On a sudden, a crash like thunder stilled the mutinous billows. The huge icebergs were rent and shivered, and their summits dissolved into floods, that came roaring and tumbling down their rugged sides, till all around us was a world of cataracts, and in the pool below our little bark tossed and eddied like a dry leaf in the whirlwind.

By some inexplicable shifting of the scene I was in Africa, and the past was as if it had never been. On every side, as far as the eye could reach, was sand-nothing but sandhot and burning sand-which scorched the weary soles of the feet, as though I had been walking on molten lava. Suddenly the wind began to howl, and at its voice the fiery mass rolled, and swelled, and surged, and was lifted up as the storm lifts up the sea; but its waves were more like mountains. Then again the unstable mass formed itself into moving columns, and these giants of the desert traversed, or ra

ther swept, the waste with a speed that made flight hopeless. But I was not fated to perish by them. They rolled around me harmless, and, in less than what seemed an hour, all was again calm, and the sun sunk down upon silence-a silence that was lifeless!

A raging thirst tormented me. But no stream was near in the moonlight expanse, and the night of the desert had no dews to moisten my parched lips. Had any benevolent genius stood before me, with an offered diadem in one hand, and a glass of fair water in the other, I had rejected empire, and snatched at the more humble boon with rapture. The pains of fire or of steel-and I had felt both within the last few hourswere nothing to the torments of this terrible thirst: it drank my very life-blood.

In the midst of this unutterable agony, I heard, or thought I heard, the rushing of water. Strange that I had not seen it before! Within a hundred yards of me was an oasis, or island of the desert, covered with a grove of palms, and a remarkable sort of tree, for which I knew no name; but it breathed a fragrance sweeter than all the spicy gales of Araby the Blessed yet still sweeter to my fancy was the little crystal spring that bubbled from the turf beneath, sparkling, and leaping along over stone and pebble, as if rejoicing in the soft moonlight. If ever there was bliss on earth, it was mine for that brief moment when my eyes first fell upon the stream. But, like every joy beneath the sun, it proved a shadow, an unsubstantial vapor, fading the very instant it was grappled with. When I would have drunk, all was mist and confusion; and then, for a while, my troubled fancy slept.

There was a blank in my existence -for aught I know for hours. Had I beer dead, the mind and body could not have been wrapped in a repose more deep or senseless.

After a time, it seemed to me as if I awoke from a long, long slumber, all

that had passed showing to my memory rather as the dream of sleep than of delirium. On this awaking, I had a distinct perception that I was in my bed-room, dangerously ill, if not dying. But the hag of à nurse could not wait for the fated hour, when, as it seemed, death would of himself visit me, but must needs anticipate his coming. Filling a cup from one of the many phials, she came to my bedside, and croaked out, "It is time; drink, and die!" But I stoutly refused the draught so ominously presented. The hag persisted, uttering dreadful, half-intelligible menaces ; and, in the very desperation of terror, I struggled as for life, and endeavored to dash down the chalice. But I was a mere child in her hands. She forced me back upon my pillow with a strength that to my feebleness seemed gigantic, and poured the poison down my throat in spite of my utmost resistance.

No sooner was it swallowed than it crept like ice through my veins, freezing up life as it stole on, drop by drop, and inch by inch, the numbness beginning at my feet, and mounting upward till it curdled at my heart. It must not, however, be supposed that I was silent during this deadly march of the poison; on the contrary, my rage was, at least, equal to my terror; and their united influence was powerful enough to loosen the bonds that had hitherto kept my tongue tied, when to have spoken would have been some relief to the overwhelming sense of agony. I poured forth the bitterness of my heart in curses that staggered the old hag, and sounded tremendous even to my own hearing. At first she only stared, like one struck by sudden wonder; then, as surprise gave way to fear, she covered her face with her hands, as if to shut out the sounds that were too horrible for bearing; and, finally, fled with the long-protracted howl of the wolf when driven from its prey.

I was dead, and knew that I was dead. I had consciousness without life-sense only for suffering and lay

a fettered prisoner in my narrow prison-house. Still SELF, that centrepoint to which in life all pain and all pleasure are referred-that individual but invisible existence, which remains entire even when the limbs are lopped away from the trunk-which, mutilate the body as you will, retains in its wholeness the same capacity of suffering and enjoyment-this SELF still was. I lived, though my body had perished; and the stings and bruisings of the insensible flesh were, by some mysterious agency, reflected on the spirit.

But I was soon to be called to ano

ther sphere, and to loftier modes of suffering. While I was yet mouldering, a voice reached me, and it sounded like a tempest-" Let the dead arise!" Death, which had closed my ears to all other sounds, could not make me deaf to this awful summons. I arose from the grave as from a bed, shaking off the mouldering garment of the flesh, and was in eternity, myself a portion of it, however indefinite. There was neither sun, nor moon, nor star, nor earth, nor space, nor time: all was eternity-immeasurable, incomprehensible eternity! And there

no

I was alone with my own conscience, that, with a thousand tongues, spoke out the sentence of anguish, and drove me onward through the boundless without rest, for in it was resting-place. I called on Death; but Death himself had passed away with the world. Not even an echo answered to my cry. I called on those who, like me, were to know anguish; but either they were not, or else were lost in the void.

fiance. I heard the voice of those I loved so dearly; I saw their little fairy forms gliding dimly about me, as if in mist; but I could neither move, nor speak, nor in any way, as it seemed, make them sensible of my nearness. They were talking of me. I heard one say to the other, "Tomorrow is his birth-day!" And then they began to sing in low, plaintive tones, one of the wild strains of a wild drama that I had written many years before, and which was even too apt to my situation. Strange to say, though till that moment I could as soon have repeated the whole of the Iliad as my own lines, yet, ever since, the address of the poor Adine to Faustus has remained indelibly written upon my memory. thus:

It ran

Oh, Saul! oh, king!
Wake from thy fearful dream!
The chains, that bind
Thy horror-haunted mind,
Drop from thee, as the stream
Of music gushes from the trembling string.
Softly, softly breathe, my lyre,
Stilling every wild desire!
Let thy music fall as sweet

On the anxious, listening ear,
As the odors to the sense

When the summer's close is near.
More soft! more slow!
The measure flow!

Softer, slower yet!
Till the sweet sound beget

A joy that melts like woe.

I listened, and wept! Oh, the unutterable luxury of those tears! They worked upon my burning brain as the long-withheld dews fall upon the dry and rifted earth. The fever of my blood was stilled, and the air seemed to blow so coolly upon my parched cheeks! A sense of enjoyment stole over me, calm as the breath of a summer's evening, but vivid beyond the power of words to paint it.

The sounds of that wild strain came fainter and fainter; the fairy forms waxed dim; my eyes grew heavier; I slept.

The morning awakened me; it was not till the sun had been up for many hours; but when it did break my long slumber, it found me far other