wound of each mingled on the grass. More I know notI fainted.

Again I returned to life: weak almost to death, I found myself stretched upon a bed-Juliet was kneeling beside it. Strange! my first broken request was for a mirror. I was so wan and ghastly, that my poor girl hesitated, as she told me afterwards; but, by the mass! I thought myself a right proper youth when I saw the dear reflection of my own wellknown features. I confess it is a weakness, but I avow it, I do entertain a considerable affection for the countenance and limbs I behold, whenever I look at a glass; and have more mirrors in my house, and consult them oftener than any beauty in Venice. Before you too much condemn me, permit me to say that no one better knows than I the value of his own body; no one, probably, except myself, ever having had it stolen from him.

Incoherently I at first talked of the dwarf and his crimes, and reproached Juliet for her too easy admission of his love. She thought me raving, as well she might, and yet it was some time before I could prevail on myself to admit that the Guido whose penitence had won her back for me was myself; and while I cursed bitterly the monstrous dwarf, and blest the well-directed blow that had deprived him of life, I suddenly checked myself when I heard her say-Amen! knowing that him whom she reviled was my very self. A little reflection taught me silence-a little practice enabled me to speak of that frightful night without any very excessive blunder. The wound I had given myself was no mockery of one-it was long before I recovered-and as the benevolent and generous Torella sat beside me, talking such wisdom as might win friends to repentance, and mine own dear Juliet hovered near me, administering to my wants, and cheering me by her smiles, the work of my bodily cure and mental reform went on together. I have never, indeed, wholly recovered my strength-my cheek is paler since-my person

a little bent. Juliet sometimes ventures to allude bitterly to the malice that caused this change, but I kiss her on the moment, and tell her all is for the best. I am a fonder and more faithful husband-and true is this—but for that wound, never had I called her mine.

I did not revisit the sea-shore, nor seek for the fiend's treasure; yet, while I ponder on the past, I often think, and my confessor was not backward in favouring the idea, that it might be a good rather than an evil spirit, sent by my guardian angel, to show me the folly and misery of pride. So well at least did I learn this lesson, roughly taught as I was, that I am known now by all my friends and fellow-citizens by the name of Guido il Cortese.

MISERRIMUS.

ON A GRAVESTONE IN WORCESTER CATHEDRAL IS THE EMPHATIC INSCRIPTION, MISERRIMUS, WITH NEITHER NAME NOR DATE, COMMENT NOR TEXT.

"La durée de nos passions ne dépend pas plus de nous que la durée de notre vie."

"Plus on aime une maîtresse, et plus on est près de la hair."

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THIS little volume was originally printed for private circulation; but in consequence of circumstances of a simply individual nature, and therefore unworthy of record, it is now presented to the public in a new typographical form.

As, during the narrative, allusion is rarely made to the era, and to the character of the times, the reader is requested to bear in mind, that the principal events occurred in the reign of Charles the Second; when the internal government of the country was so lax, that in the remote and thinly peopled provinces, the wealthy and the powerful might have perpetrated, with little fear of legal retribution, the wildest act of social oppression and delinquency. So long as his more exalted subjects abstained from political indiscretions, neither the king nor his cabinet cared to examine too closely into their private enormities.

On a gravestone in Worcester Cathedral is this emphatic inscription, Miserrimus. No name, date, symbol, text, or comment is appended; nor any clue to the country, station,

or career of the individual thus unhapply and terribly distinguished. Whether a clue has or has not been found, and whether the following pages are a genuine or fictitious autobiography, are questions which must be submitted to the solution of the reader; who will, no doubt, decide according to the confidence or suspicion with which Nature has endowed him.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION.

It has been observed by a most respectable publication, that the hero of the following pages does not embody the idea which the inscription on the tombstone would naturally beget in the mind of a reflective person. The word "Miserrimus," it is asserted, engenders feelings of charity and sympathy, and invests with a tender and plaintive interest the individual to whom it has been applied; whereas, the principal personage of this volume has been endowed with so fiery and villanous a character, that he fairly merits the designation of Furiosissimus.

The word "Miserrimus," attached by himself, or by another, to a living and guiltless person, would certainly in vest him with a tender and plaintive interest; but, considered as an epitaph, it assumes a very different aspect; it no longer characterises existing misfortune, but the memory of the dead. The greater the sufferings of a good man in this mortal state, the greater his happiness in escaping from it; only so long as he endures the ills of humanity is he "Most Wretched:" his bequest for his tombstone would be Felicissimus. No sorrow can extend beyond the grave, but that which originates in a life of sin.

These are the reasons which have led the author to his interpretation of this impressive epithet, and to the portraiture

of his hero as a villain of the darkest die; but, not so consistently callous as to be incapable of experiencing the most heart-rending remorse.

The author never would have adopted this epitaph as the ground-work for a fiction, had he been aware that the name and career of the individual who selected it were known; but he received the first intimation of their publicity through the medium of the periodicals which reviewed his work. In them it was stated, that he was a conscientious priest, whose sufferings arose in his adherence to his religion. But, the exception does not constitute the rule: few virtuous men would be guilty of the eccentricity of stigmatizing their memories with the epithet of " Miserrimus."

The author's first knowledge of the existence of this epitaph originated in a conversation with Mr. Wordsworth; who afterwards wrote a sonnet upon it, which was published some five or six years ago in the "Keepsake." This avowal would have been made in the advertisement to the First Edition, but the author was then unwilling to appear in character.

his own proper

An objection has been urged against the grammar of the title-page. It is averred that it is erroneous to declare that there is no "text" upon the tombstone; for "Miserrimus" is the text upon which a fiction of two hundred pages has been constructed. These censors forget that many of our English words possess various and discrepant significations; that the word bull, for instance, may denote "a blunder,” a papal letter," and the "male of black cattle ;" and that "text" may mean a " scriptural quotation."

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