OF POPULAR LITERATURE Anne, is the sole clue to thy matrimonial historywhose few scribbled signatures are thy only autographs extant-who tookest no steps whatever to make thy life known to posterity, but wast content to lie down and sleep by Avon side, leaving only that sacred dust, and a few unconsidered trifles of chiefly manuscript plays, which have made for thee an earthly immortality! What I wrote, or how, is unimportant now: I dwell in the land where all things are forgotten.' The reason why I am permitted again in complete steel-both as to pen and heart-to reappear in the mundane sphere, through the medium of this Journal, It was reserved for the resurrectionists of modern will be obvious in the following communication. How times to do worse than Shakspeare's curse deprecates communicated, by tapping, table-moving, or spirit--to dig up, not the bones, but the memories of the writing, befits not me to say, and is irrelevant to the departed great; exposing them like mummies under subject under consideration. I will only solemnly a glass-case, sixpence a peep (namely, three vols. 8vo, attest that the sole devil which has had any hand in charged twopence each for perusal; may be had at the matter is the printer's. any circulating library). After which, all the critics I am dead. For me, no more the delays of pub-in all the reviews and newspapers place them on a sort lishers, the stupidity or ill-nature of reviewers, the praise, blame, or curiosity of the public. Into 'the silent land' my works, whether 4to, 8vo, or 12mo, happily do not follow me; I shuffled them all off with this mortal coil; left them to take their chance of surviving me; and may their faults lie on them as gently as library dust! For my dust, that also is a secondary consideration to me now; yet I have a kindly feeling for the relics of what often hampered me most terribly during life. Occasionally, I wander airily round a certain suburban cemetery, to take an amused observation of a certain elegant vase with a marble laurel-wreath at top, and underneath an inscription attesting my great literary merit, and the irreparable loss which I am to society. Yet that inconsolable society is gradually ceasing to name me, even as 'Alas, poor Yorick!' and shortly I shall only be remembered by a faithful household or two as 'Our poor dear John.' I am not now ashamed of being 'John,' and should be well content to see on the aforesaid picturesque vase only that name and my surname, with the date of my birth and death-the sole facts of moment to me now-or perhaps some modern version of the familiar old epitaph: Good friend, for Jesus' sake, forbeare Query, had Shakspeare any foreboding of, or did of intellectual dissecting-table, where they are lectured upon learnedly, and anatomised limb by limb, muscle by muscle-not at all out of mere curiosity, oh, dear no!--but simply for the good of science and the benefit of mankind. A proceeding vastly interesting and quite unobjectionable-except for any who may chance to find-as has been found-some near relative or beloved friend in the inanimate 'subject' of Surgeon's Hall. I am incited to express myself thus, by being the elected spokesman of a committee of ghosts, who, in so far as spirits can suffer wrong, save from the sorrowful beholding of it, have been wronged in this fashion since they left the mortal sphere. Although to us, in our celestial Hades, all this clatter about us No more disturbs our calm repose still, we deem it right, for truth's sake, that a voice the matter. We abide-where, it matters not; as space, like time, belongs only to the flesh. We are often drawn together, as congenial spirits are, in life and after; and we converse sometimes of earthly matters, which we are aware of; for to be spirit alone implies to know. How, or how much we know, I shall not explain, as you will all find it out for yourselves at no distant day. We rarely speak of our own books-we have said our say, and done with it-but we sometimes note the books that have been written upon us since our departure. These are of every sort: from the humble onevolume Remains-compiled by some affectionate heart which deemed the loss as fatal for the world as for itself-to the large and boastful Memoir of somebody who was never heard of till he became a biographee, solely, it would appear, for the glorification of his biographer: from the plain, honest Life, with nothing in it to chronicle except useful deeds, or scientific researches: and the pathetic Final Memorials, throwing light upon long-secret griefs and ended labours, down to the heaps of Reminiscences, Recollections, Journals, and Correspondences, piled up like a cairn over some unfortunate-of whom, after all, the utmost that can be said, is included in a verse by one-whose hint his biographer had much better have taken Once in the flight of ages past There lived a man. And who was he? That man resembled thee. But these ghouls have no respect to the image of man, either spiritually or corporeally. They have dragged into the open daylight all our mental and physical defects; described minutely our personality, living, and in one or two instances, the appearance of our poor corpses after we were dead. Our vices, follies, sufferings, our family secrets and domestic wrongs, have been alike paraded before the world. Truths, half-truths, or two truths so put together as to form a whole falsehood, having been grubbed up in all directions, and either dovetailed into a groundwork purely imaginary, or arranged into a mosaic of most charming pattern-with the slight draw back that the design of it and of our history is entirely owing to our ingenious biographer. All this harms us not; but we regard the matter as something sad and strange, which may be harmful to authors now living, who, one day, will in their turn become ghosts and biographical subjects. of us whom a beneficent providence removed from the world before the development of the present biography mania, would have trembled lest even on the slender data attainable concerning them, some literary Professor Owen might put them together, and lecture on them in the character of extinct animals. This last case is the least reprehensible. When his own generation has died out, and no living being can be wounded by any revelations concerning him; when an after-age has decided his permanent position in letters, and become at once less prejudiced, and more just with regard to both his faults and his virtuesthen the world has some right to know the main facts of an author's personal history; at least so far as to discover whether his life corresponded with his works which makes the works themselves doubly valuable. But that one whose whole or chief intercourse with the public has been by the pen-who has never put himself forward as soldier, politician, or desired any of those positions which necessarily make a nu public property, should be seized upon as such, the minute the breath leaves him, for the entertainment of the world-is a proceeding the justice of which is certainly debatable. On the other hand, let us suppose a case in which the writings are the one valuable residuum of a very worthless life, during which the unhappy author has Known the right, and yet the wrong pursued; wherein, from weakness, wickedness, or folly, his career as a man furnishes no possible example to posterity, except to wonder how he ever could have written as beautifully as he did. Take, for instance, Hermion, whose worldly name, did I give it, would be recognised as one for years incensed with most odorous idolatry. What was Hermion? A wild, handsome young aristocrat, stuffed full with that passionate egotism and inordinate love of approbation which is the bane of many second-rate, of a few even first-rate geniuses. Consequently obnoxious to most men-though, because they only beheld the fair side of his character, adored by numerous women; till, whipped on one cheek, and caressed on the other, and maddened within by all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil-this poet, this demigod, who lived not long enough to know himself a fool, ay, and somewhat ef a wretch to boot, was found out after his death to be both. Thus, suppose we, who most of us passed our sublunary existence like ordinary men and women, wrote our books and published them; but for ourselves courted peace, privacy, and the meditative life which all true authors love-suppose we had been aware that on us, defunct, a greedy biographer would seize -rake up all our doings, undoings, and misdoings; record how we dressed, and walked, and ate our dinners; jot down, in various incorrect forms, which we have no power to set right, every careless or foolish word we said, with our motive for saying it; lure from weak, faithless, or indifferent friends our most private letters, written, perhaps, as others beside the luckless genus irritabile do write letters, on the impulse of the moment, or under the influence of some accidental mood; call upon all our kindred and aquaintanceone half of whom knew little of us, and the other half never understood us at all-for every possible reminiscence concerning us. Alack, alack! had we suspected-puts forth a garbled Life. A sentimental, kindly, this, what a living death of apprehension, annoyance, and mistrust would have been ours! And for the result? We should either have doubted our nearest and dearest, and retired in disgust from the impertinent world, to leave our bones mouldering unmolested in some African desert or American cave; or we should have carefully arranged our whole life with a view to posthumous publication. We should never have made a remark without considering how it would look in Smith-iana. We should have combed our hair, tied our neckcloth, selected our gowns and gloves, strictly for the benefit of posterity. Our very ledgers, house-accounts, and washing-books, would have been penned with an eye to autographs. We should have eaten, drank, and slept, like flies under a tumblerglass, waiting to be put in amber; or like strange beasts, conscious that their destiny is from the Zoological Gardens to the British Museum. Nay, those And how? Because there was no one to say: 'He is dead, he shall be buried; buried altogether, leaving to posterity only the best and noblest part of himhis writings.' Therefore, over his corpse biographers began to swarm like flies. A fashionable friend, for fear of other fashionable friends, suppressing his autobiography, which the man himself had carefully written, and which might have had one value-truth shallow lady-acquaintance details his Conversations; other acquaintance, denominated 'friends'—but he could not have had one real friend in the world, this wretched Hermion, who loved only himself—they too in successive years, throng the press, dilating on his private history and manner of life-how he starved for fear of obesity, how he wrote noble poetry of nights, and talked slang and ribaldry by day; how the worshipped bard of half the century was, in reality, when you came to be intimate with him, a selfish, conceited, parsimonious, narrow-minded, vacillating, irritable fop. Which, in degree, he was, and yet a poet; for poets are but men; yet was it for the friends, on pretence of elevating his memory, to hang up this poor battered scarecrow of humanity on a kind of glorified gibbet for every crow to peck at, and every passer-by to shudder or sneer ? And will their doing so advantage any human being? Will it not, in those who of indignant youth, when, blindly confounding the have not attained the large vision of us immortals, Christianity of a formalist and semi-rotten Church create a belief that all poets must be weak, puppyish, with the Christianity of the Lord Jesus, he dubbed egotistical, because this undoubtedly great poet was himself atheist, to shew his abhorrence of both. Poor so? Will they not be led to think that poetry itself Spiridion !--yet any one studying his life, which, with must be a beautiful lie, because a man could sit in all its faults, was so pure, unselfish, generous-so the quiet dead of night, writing out of the inmost essentially the Christlike life of love-making even depths of his nature his best, truest self, things his enemies love him as soon as they came to know worthy of it and him-yet rise up next day, put on him-cannot but acknowledge that many a saintly his weak, foul, conceited self, and persuade short-bishop has been, practically, less of a Christian than he. sighted people that that was the real Hermion after all? Alas! that for this man, who, like many another man, was tormented with two warring natures in his heart-there was no influence strong enough to make him Throw away the worser half of it, And live the purer with the other half. And so he died; and a fine carrion-feast has he made for biographers ever since. So has his contemporary, who, among us ghosts, A shadow like an angel, with bright hair and salt sea-brine. A sapient journal, whose comments on us departed often amuse us mightily in the upper sphere, asserts, noticing the last of the numerous memorials of Spiridion, that it supplies reasons why a complete life of him never can be, perhaps never ought to be, written.' I put it to the conscience of mortals, whether a complete life' of any human being can be written, except by the pen of the recording angel? If it be so difficult for a biographer to get at the simplest, most patent facts in his author's career, how shall he discover the life in full, inner and outer, and paint it clearly, honestly, capably-cramped by no prejudices, hesitating at no revelations, both able and willing to shew forth undisguisedly the whole man? How, even if he wished, can he do this, unless he were the man's alter ego, sufficiently understanding all his peculiarities to place his character in its true light before the world? And was there ever, in his lifetime, any alter ego who thus thoroughly understood Spiridion ? The mens Unaccountable as it may be, it is no less true, that most poets are all their days more or less children, and want taking care of like children. divinior seems to unfit them partially for the hard necessities of life, unless, as is sometimes-would it were oftener!-the case, their moral conscientiousness is strong enough to force them to acquire qualities not innate or coexistent with what is termed the poetic temperament'-namely, prudence, forethought, common-sense; that solid wisdom which, in the sum of life, outweighs all genius. This, Spiridion never had. How the busy world, deep in counter and merchandise, houses and lands, thrusts its hands into its pockets, and laughs over the picture of the beardless youth and his baby-wife, running from place to place, intending at each charming spot to stay 'for ever.' How afterwards, when he had broken laws, creeds, and women's hearts, it turns disgusted from the poor poet-living contentedly a life as idle and fickle as that of a meadow butterfly; yet, with one or two sad exceptions, almost as harmless. Utterly incomprehensible, to any respectable gentleman coming home at six P.M. precisely to his three courses, is the portrait drawn of our Spiridion, standing reading a whole day long with his untasted cold meat beside him-then starting, with a girlish blush: 'Bless me, I must have forgotten my dinner!' And worse than incomprehensible-altogether hateful, and anathema maranatha-is the daring blasphemy But why write his life at all? Why expose the miserable arcana of a luckless marriage-a disorderly home?-which many a man has to suffer, though he is fortunately not written about. Why unfold every writhing of the diseased restlessness and melancholy, that constitute a phase of mental development, which almost every sensitive nature is doonied to pass through during youth; until the fevers and despairs gradually wear themselves out, and the individual looks back on his old self-which, having happily been outlived, has never been chronicledwith a curious mixture of wonder and pity, that makes him tolerant and hopeful for all others going through the same ordeal. But, in the midst of those red-hot plough-shares, Spiridion died. Yet understand us. We ghosts do not wish to lay an embargo on all biographies: thereby annihilating the natural wish of the human heart to be remembered after death a little, and causing the worth and beauty of good men's histories to be indeed Interred with their bones. Not so. Everything that is great and noble, virtuous The But let us be chronicled not as authors, because we have written a book or so worth reading, but because we have lived a life worth rememberingthe story of which will have a beneficial influence on lives yet to come. If any incense poured upon or saintly odours arising from our mortal dust can reach and delight us in our immortality, it must be thus to know that neither our doings nor our sufferings have been altogether in vain. And for all that concerning us was purely personal, in noways differing from the rest of our species-which can neither point a moral' nor adorn a tale,' but only minister to an idle and prurient curiosity-in charity's name, let it be buried with us. Here, in this abode of calm, where the strongest puff of fame cannot send a single ripple across the sea of eternity, we ghosts wish it were better understood, that, however great our writings, we ourselves were but human, and no more was to be expected of us than struggling humanity can achieve; that our genius was an accidental quality, in noways exempting us from the temptations, any more than exonerating us from the duties, of our kind; that, if we erred, it was not our genius, but our miserable human nature that overcame us, as it does other men. We claim for our memories neither more nor less than the immunities granted to others-not authors-namely, that, except for some great benefit to the human race, you have no more right to drag a man's history, fair or foul, out of the merciful shadows of the tomb, than you have to dig up and sell his dead body, to be exhibited in a penny peep-show at Bartholomew Fair. The true manner of dealing with the dead at all times Shakspeare seems to indicate when he makes Queen Katherine say of Wolsey: Yet thus far, Griffiths, give me leave to speak him, She would not criticise her bitterest enemy, after he was no more, without the apology, 'Give me leave.' It would be well if some biographers I could name had been as tender and womanly. And this brings me to speak a word on the part of some gentle ghosts among us, who, inasmuch as women naturally shrink from publicity more than men, have been the more sorely aggrieved. I refer not to those who, conscious of living always in the public eye, designedly left their Diaries, &c., behind them, elegantly and artistically arranged-a little couleur de rose may be-on the principle that One would not look quite frightful when one's dead, but still vastly amusing; and no doubt an appreciative public made itself very merry over these dead women, whose life was a perpetual pose plastique, and who took care to die in the most graceful of attitudes. They have had their desire; though every one of them may be wise enough to be ashamed of it now. But for others who lived naturally, painfully, finding the burden of existence quite hard enough of itself, without taking heed as to how it would appear as a picture for future biographers-who arranged no materials, kept no intentional records, and evidently had not the slightest notion of ever being made into a book-the case is widely different. The generality of female authors do not desire, living or dead, to be made into a public spectacle. Something in womanhood instinctively revolts from it-as it would from caressing its dearest friends at a railway station, or performing its toilet in the open air. Women's domestic ways, actions, and emotions are so much more demonstrative, and, at the same time, more reticent than men's, that to tear the veil from their lives seems a far more cruel wrong. And in many instances even to do it, is most difficult. The true key to feminine nature is so delicate, so hidden, that it is all but impossible to find it. Thus, in nearly all female biographies current of later years, we feel by instinct that not one half of the life is unfolded-that much which would reconcile jarring mysteries, and harmonise the whole, has either never been discovered, or if discovered, is necessarily suppressed. Whether or not it be so with men there probably never is written an absolutely true life of any woman; for the simple reason, that the intricacies of female nature are incomprehensible except to a woman; and any biographer of real womanly feeling, if even she found them out, would never dream of publishing them. Take, for example, one of the most touching memoirs of modern times-the subject of which was a shy, timid, suffering being, utterly unknown, except through her books, until she died. Death-waiting but for the crowning of a long-sad life with one drop of happiness-took her suddenly away in the prime of her years. Now, the public thirsts with curiosity about her; now publishers foresee that any fragment concerning her is sure to sell; now her few friends and fewer acquaintance discover that they had entertained an angel unawares, and eagerly rack their memories for all possible memorials of her. So, a Life is written-carefully, delicately, and honestly, with due regard to the feelings of the living and the cherished memory of the dead; written as tenderly and wisely as such a Life could possibly have been written; but-it ought never to have been written at all. For what is the result of it? A creature, so reserved by nature that the ordinary attention of society to a 'celebrated author' was abhorrent to her, making her shrink with actual pain, is, after death, exposed openly to the world; her innermost thoughts, words, and actions displayed; her letters, written in the anguish of religious doubt, or family affliction, or intolerable bodily pain, printed and published, for the amusement of every careless or sarcastic eye; her books analysed, in order to apportion fictitious characters among real originals, and try to extract from the imagination the history of the heart. Every misfortune, error, and disgrace of her kindred, which you feel sure the woman herself would have concealed to the last extremity of sacred endurance, is trumpeted out to a harsh, cynical, or indifferent world-of which the tender-hearted portion can but feel instinctively one emotion: 'Fa charity's sake-for the dead woman's sake-leave the whole history untold. Cover it up! let her name and her books live, but let her life and its sorrows be heard of no more.' For, after all, what moral is gained from it?chronicle so sad, so incomplete, that apparently it does not 'justify the ways of God to man.' To mortals, on whom its page closed with that last pitiful sigh of hers-'Am I going to die, when we have been so happy?'-it can administer no possible lesson except of tacit, hopeless endurance. Many simil lives there are-of which we on the other side the grave are alone permitted to see the binding up of the broken web-the solution of all dark mysteries in the clear light of eternity: but such lives ought never to be written. It is impossible that any human being can write them, fairly and fully; and to attempt doing so incompletely, is profanity towards ghosts and men, as well as towards the Father of both. 'I would not have used any living creature as some of my dear friends have used me,' said, in the soft utterance of the unknown world, this gentle ghost of whom I am speaking; 'I would not, even had my correspondent been so foolish as to put her heart in her letters, have after her death put it also into print. I would have done with all her intimate correspondence as a friend of mine, estranged, yet soon to be regained -is wise and tender enough to do with hers-burned it. All the publishers and public in the world hammering at my doors should never have torn my friend's secrets out of my heart. I would have had all things done for her, dead, exactly as would have been done by her, living. Not one breath of the idle curiosity which she hated during life, should have been allowed to expend itself over her tomb. But it harms not me,' said the silver voice, speaking calmly, as if of another person-and breaking up the circle from which, I, the appointed delegate, give this communication. My body sleeps in peace among my moorlands, and I live here-and in the one true heart that loved me.' And then-as one of your poets, still in the flesh, tries to describe, painting the world which he knows not yet, but shall know— Glowed as I looked at her. Her face She locked her lips-she left me where I stood. [We print the foregoing article-to say nothing of our esteem for the accomplished author-on account of its suggestiveness, and the germ of truth it con tains; but we would not be supposed to endorse its opinions in their whole extent. To do so would be to condemn utterly a popular and important department of literature, to cut off the sources of biography and history, and bury in the grave the materials that in the hands of the skilful are used for developing the science of human nature. Authors do not belong less to the world than kings; their influence is more extensive and more lasting, and they are entitled to no immunity from the interest or curiosity of men. Our inquiries into their lives may, of course, sometimes involve mistakes, or give currency to calumnies; but that is all the more reason why inquiry should not rest. In the end, it will be successful where success is of any general importance; and the individual risk, or the possible delay, should not be grudged by those fine spirits that address themselves to mankind. At any rate, whatever errors may arise, whatever private feelings may be outraged, whatever eloquent remonstrances may be published, the thing will still go on, for it depends on a principle in human nature: our Boswells will still be read with a luxurious feeling of enjoyment and admiration, and our Gaskells will still command our interest and our tears.-ED. C. J.] THE MAN OF TWO SHADOWS. STRANGE and fantastical superstitions are confined to no part of the world; they flourish within the tropics, they locate themselves in the arctic and antarctic circles, and they are perfectly familiar to all the inhabitants of the temperate zone. If, however, they have any favourite residence, it is assuredly in Africa, where, from time immemorial, they have reigned paramount over all classes of the population. In other parts of the world, especially where men affect to be civilised, they who have enjoyed the advantages of education laugh when they meet together at everything denominated superstitious; but when they lay aside their multitudinous existence, become individuals again, walk home along tree-arched lanes, traverse midnight churchyards, and retire to bed alone, by one dim rushlight, in a room high up in some ancient building, rocked and shaken by the all-haunting winds, they often glide back into timorous infancy, and shiver as they pull the sheets over their faces. stood pitched in an immense semicircle facing the east, and projecting its horns on either side to the very verge of the palm-groves. The chief of this encampment-a man with green turban, to mark his descent from the Prophet-had a daughter named Selima (I wish the Arabs had more variety in their names); and among the youth of the tribe there was one who rejoiced in the name of Ibn Saffar. It was the misfortune of this young man that he had no relatives. How he found his way into the tribe, the chief only knew, if, indeed, he did. Yet Ibn Saffar was generally respected, because, as some believed, he was descended from the people of the Jinn, or, as others thought, came far away from Persia, where— in the mountains especially-there are people with blue eyes, and hair of the colour of gold. This was Ibn Saffar's case; and instead of shaving his head like the children of the Arabs, he suffered his long locks to escape from beneath a light embroidered cap, and to descend in waving masses over his shoulders. Abou Bernak, the chief, though friendly towards this young man—who possessed neither sheep nor camels, but went forth with his spear into the desert, where he hunted lions and hyenas, and often came back laden with their skins to the camp-was still very anxious that no intimacy should grow up between him and his daughter Selima. For this he had doubtless his own reasons; but the girl had eyes, and looked with admiration on the beauty of Ibn Saffar. It is true he was not gentle. His fierce eyes flashed habitually with an expression of cruelty; his short upper lip curled with disdain; and he appeared to be always eager to engage in conflict. Yet, as often as he came into the presence of the daughter of Abou Bernak, all his fierceness forsook him, and he sat at her feet as gentle as a gazelle. All his countenance wore a serene aspect, and his eyes were tinted like the light of the evening-star. He talked to her often of regions lying beyond the Bahr el Kolzun and the Shat el Arab, where the mountains are clothed with trees, where bright rivers rush down impetuously from the rocks, and where the believers in El Islam inhabit magnificent cities like those which the unbelievers of old times have left in ruins on the banks of the Lower Nile. Selima's imagina tion was inflamed by these accounts; so that she often wished to take a fleet dromedary and journey towards the rising sun, either alone or in company with Ibn Saffar, whom she loved with a trembling love, because he seemed to her a man of another race, of other beliefs and other feelings, who sympathised with nothing in the valley but her. This I say by way of apology for the two unphilosophical individuals who figure in the adventure described in the following narrative. They belong to a tribe of Arabs who encamped many years ago on the banks of the Upper Nile. The country in the whole neighbourhood is almost beyond imagination wild. Rocks naked, splintered, and precipitous rise on one side of the river to a great height, and are penetrated here and there by gorges so narrow and tortuous, that in some places the sun's rays never, during the whole day, illuminate their depths. On the stream's other bank, golden sand in billowy eminences stretches away interminably. Close to the water on both sides there is a strip of vegetation green as a pre-Raphaelite picture, and broken and diversified with singular beauty. On one particular point, the Libyan bank projects a little into the stream; and as you stand on this projection about Often and often as they sat together, Ibn Saffar's the middle of the afternoon, and look directly south-face appeared to be transfigured, but whether by ward, your eye catches a glimpse of a landscape which you have some difficulty in persuading yourself belongs to this world. Through a gap in the mountains, which appears much narrower than it is, since it permits the passage of the vast Nile, you behold a valley warm with sunlight, beautified with a broad expanse of water, looking like a fairy lake with patches of green-sward, here flat, there sloping and undulating, dotted with copses of mimosas, tamarisks, henna, rhododendrons, silk-trees, palma christi, and an abundance of nameless flowering shrubs; and overhead, the majestic date-palm fluttering its long leaves as a tall maiden flutters her veil in the soft breeze. Here and there, cresting small eminences, the airy cupolas of the tombs of holy men are seen between the foliage; and the whole stands relieved, like a landscape on canvas, against a chain of rose-coloured mountains, throwing up confusedly their jagged pinnacles into the blue. The Arabs from the desert never encamp in the cultivated country, but on the sandy edge close to it. At the time I speak of, the tents were many, and good or evil emotions, she could not tell. Some violent struggle appeared to be going on in his mind. Paleness, accompanied by big drops of sweat, came over him; his eyelids drooped, and his whole figure appeared to be bent with premature old age. Then, the fit being over, his face flushed, his eyes grew doubly bright, and tears as of rapture stood in them. These appearances, however, were painful as they were mysterious to Selima; but she feared to question him respecting them, for there was a loftiness in his manner, and a tone of authority in his voice, which entirely overawed her. Once in the broad daylight, when the sun was a full hour from the summit of the arch of noon, they walked together to the banks of the river. Why did Selima start? why did she seize Ibn Saffar's arm? why did she look so fearfully into his face? why did her own become so deadly pale? why did her limbs tremble, and almost refuse to support her weight? There, high up on the bank, was the cause. 'Look at it!' she exclaimed to Ibn Saffar; 'we are haunted, or the place is haunted. See, there are two |