the nest, the old one will recover their eyes with this herb. This I am confident, for I have tried it [the old sinner!], that if we mar the very apple of their eye with a needle, she will recover them again, but whether with this herb or not, I know not.' The eyes, it seems, are 'under the luminaries; the right eye of a man, and the left eye of a woman, the sun claims dominion over.' Let those who attempt to operate for strabismus, look to it, or they may get themselves into trouble. In all matters ophthalmic, the Fates themselves seem to have laboured under an obliquity of vision. Esculapius, because of the marvellous cures he performed with the blood drawn from the right veins of Medusa's head-a lady who boasted but a reversionary interest in one eye, which belonged in common to herself and her lovely sisters the Gorgons -fell under the thunders of Jove; the issue being, that the great luminary' Apollo himself, the father of physic, for his just vengeance inflicted on the oneeyed Cyclopes who forged the thunderbolts, was thrust incontinently from heaven, and doomed to consort with the flocks of Admetus. After this, where shall the mortal be found bold enough to undertake so delicate an operation as that for squinting, on either the right eye of a man or the left eye of a woman under the luminaries?' Running through the pages of our author, there is a genuine undercurrent of humour and shrewd common sense. We feel sure that he believes not in one-half he propounds with such solemn gravity. Sundry of his prescriptions savour strongly of the mendicant friar's celebrated recipe for the making of flint-soup. In his concoction of simples, he slily insinuates his 'powdered beet' or his cock-chicken.' Certain herbs are shewn to be peculiarly efficacious 'gathered with the dew on them; others are of remarkable potency if the body be exercised after the taking thereof.' In his love of sack and canary, he is the very Falstaff of physicians. He holds forth on the virtue of moderation, but has evidently no mind to treat his friends in private with anything so meagre as 'a last year's pippin with a dish of caraways.' Perusing some of his inimitable concoctions, we exclaim perforce: Why, what an epicurean rascal is this!' It would conjure up the shade of Father Mathew, only to hear him when he is busy in his distillery. In his battle with temperance, he is as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth two of Agamemnon.' There is a whole merchant's venture of Bordeaux stuff in him.' If he admonishes us to repent, truly it is not in sackcloth, but in new milk and old sack.' Under the head of Rosa Solis, or Sundew [query, mountaindew?], is a rare specific for 'qualms and spasms of the heart. This herb is good [no doubt of it] made into a drink with aqua-vitæ and spices.' Hearken to Nicholas on the subject of the vine: "The vine is a most gallant tree of the sun, very sympathetical with the body of man, and that is the reason that the spirit of wine is the greatest cordial among all vegetables.' He who, being sick, covets not a drink with a veritable smack of nectar in it, let him eschew the following: "The powder of violet leaves, or a sirup of violets taken in some convenient liquor [!], and a little of the juice or sirup of lemons put into it, quenches the thirst, and gives to the drink a claret-wine colour and a fine tart relish pleasing to the taste.' If this is not a draught for Olympian Jove, 'may a cup of sack be our poison.' Here follows another convenient liquor: Take fifty kernels of peach-stones, and one hundred of the kernels of cherry-stones, a handful of elder-flowers, fresh or dried, and three pints of muscadel.' O Falstaff, if sack and sugar be in fault, God help the wicked!' Yet he who can gravely advocate the above delectable compounds, comes down with a sly rebuke on Schola Selerni a gentleman whose name we humbly suppose to be a corruption of 6 Silenus. Schola Selerni advises to take much wine after pears, or else they say they are as bad as poison; nay, and they curse the tree for it, too; but if a poor man find his stomach oppressed by eating pears, it is only working hard, and that will do as well as drinking wine.' Take comfort, ye sons of toil; ye shall eat pears with impunity-ay, in the sweat of your brow! After so much wine, it is not to be wondered at that our friend Nicholas should indorse the following libel against 'sweet basil.' He says: 'Hilarius, a French physician, affirms, upon his own knowledge, that an acquaintance of his, by common smelling of this herb, had a scorpion bred in his brain: something is the matter; basil and rue will not grow together, no, nor near each other, and we know rue is as great an enemy to poison as any that grows.' It was rue, in combination with figs, walnuts, and some few other ingredients, that was said to be taken daily by Mithridates, and which gave the 'Pontic monarch of old days' immunity against the poisonous assaults of his enemies. A simpler physic than this was patronised, we are told, by the grandfather of him of Utica: 'Honest old Cato used no other physic than the coleworts. I know not of what metal his body was made; this I am sure, cabbages are extremely windy, whether you take them as meat or medicine; yea, as windy meat as can be eaten, unless you eat bagpipes or bellows, and they are but seldom eaten in our days.' Should the public be desirous of knowing how the celestial personages whose names so frequently figure as presiding over the vegetable kingdom, conducted their ministrations with reference to the animal economy of the human subject-Culpeper is their man. He has walked among the immortals, and knows their ways and their whereabouts. Like us poor mortals of this lower earth, it would appear that they have their likings and their dislikings, their love and their hate. Sympathy and antipathy,' be it remembered, 'are two hinges upon which the whole of physic turns; and that physician who minds them not, is like a door from off the hooks, more like to do a man a mischief than to secure him.' Moreover, he who would know the reason of the operations of the herbs, must look up as high as the stars, astrologically.' So he adds: 'To the stars went I. Having soared thus high, but a step further, and we find him in the presence of great Jupiter himself. Up comes Mars to him-" Come, Brother Jupiter," he says, "thou knowest I sent a couple of trines to thy house last night, the one from Aries, and the other from Scorpio; give me thy leave by sympathy to cure this poor man with drinking a draught of wormwood beer every morning." So much for sympathy; now for antipathy. The moon was weak the other day, and she gave a man two terrible mischiefs, a dull brain and a weak sight. Mars lays by his sword and comes to her-" Sister Moon," says he, "this man hath angered thee; but I beseech thee take no notice-he is but a fool. Prithee, be patient; I will with my herb wormwood cure him of both infirmities by antipathy, for thou knowest that thou and I cannot agree." With that the moon began to quarrel: Mars, not delighting much in women's tongues, went away, and did it whether she would or no.' Yet this is the 'gallant Mars!' Worse, however, follows. He had no sooner parted with the moon, but he met with Venus-and she was as drunk as a hog!' Enough of the immortals. One step lower, and we come to the pope. If Nicholas has an unkind corner in his genial heart, he reserves it for his holiness. In his love for his darling simples, with their rare old Saxon names, he is 'as true as truth's simplicity, and simpler than the infancy of truth.' He is not half pleased to hear misletoe called lignum sanca crucis; inveighs in no measured terms against pansy being blasphemously called an herb of the Holy Trinity, because it has three colours,' and quarrels with KRASINSKI: A TALE. archangel as a term for dead-nettle. Of sea-wormwood toils of his campaign, than that contained in the folhe says: It hath gotten as many names as virtues-lowing recipe, under the head of melilot, or king'sand perhaps one more. A papist got the toy by the claver: The head often washed with the distilled end, and called it holy wormwood; and, in truth, I am flowers of melilot, is effectual for those that suddenly of opinion their giving so much holiness to herbs is a lose their senses!' reason there remains so little to themselves.' But he has not done yet. 'St Peter's wort,' he says, 'rises up greater than St John's wort; and good reason, too, St Peter being the greater apostle, ask the pope else! For though God would have the saints equal, the pope is of another opinion. There is not a straw to choose betwixt this and St John's wort, only St Peter must have it, lest he should want pot-herbs.' Thus does Nicholas deal the pope a sly poke in the ribs with a herb pronounced by Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen to be good for sciatica! For a concluding specimen of the wisdom of our ancestors in the discovery of remedies for all the ills that flesh is heir to, let us turn to the art-magic as developed in our hedgerows. We must be pardoned if we place amongst our cabalistic observances some few prescribed remedies, the medicinal value of which is boasted in sober seriousness: such, for example, as peonies to be hung round the neck, wild tansy to be worn in the shoes, so that it be next the skin; divers other herbs to be bound round the wrists of the hands -the disease to be cured lying in some distant region of the body; and vervain, as a remedy for scrofula, to be tied to the pit of the stomach by a white ribbon round the neck. Lastly-hear it, humanity Martin!-'A good handful of the hot, biting culrage or water-pepper put under a horse's saddle, will make him travel the better, although he were half-tired before.' We have the authority of Mizaldus and others for the fact, that neither witch nor devil, thunder nor lightning, can harm a man in the presence of a bay-tree. Woodbetony, according to Antonius Musa, the physician to Octavius Cæsar, possesses similar miraculous properties. The power ascribed to the fig-tree is of a somewhat different character. With stories of a cock and bull, most persons are familiar; but the connection of the latter animal with the fig-tree-a tree under the dominion of great Jove himself-is a fact not sufficiently known. If you tie a bull, be he ever so mad, to a fig-tree, he will quickly become tame and gentle.' The only difficulty in the way of administering the remedy proposed seems to lie in who shall bell the cat.' There would appear to be also some mysterious connection between the same animal and fig-wort, since we are told that 'Venus owns the plant, and the celestial bull will not deny it!' Again, we cannot help thinking that mouse-ear,' though itself under the dominion of the moon, must have felt tickled when first it caught the echo of the following announcement: "Though authors do cry out upon alchemists for attempting to fix quicksilver with this herb and moon-wort, a Roman would not have judged a thing by the success; if it be to be fixed at all, it is by lunar influence.' Of all famous herbs, none is comparable to moonwort. We would strongly advise all horse-jockeys to give it a wide berth, and Messrs Bramah and Chubb especially to keep a sharp eye upon their business, if ever they find themselves in its vicinity. It is an herb which, they say, will open locks and unshoe such horses as tread upon it. This, some laugh to scorn, and those no small fools neither; but country people that I know call it unshoe-the-horse.' Besides, I have heard commanders say, that on White Down, in Devonshire, near Tiverton, there were found thirty horses' shoes, pulled off from the feet of the Earl of Essex's horses, being there drawn up in a body, many of them being newly shod, and no reason known, which caused great admiration.' If the Earl of Essex himself took kindly to the view of the subject here broadly hinted at, all we can say is, that we could not recommend him a more appropriate restorative, after the IN FOUR CHAPTERS. I'll take the ghost's word for a thousand pounds.-Hamlet. IN one of my late visits to the continent, I became He was a good-looking dark man, of about five or six and thirty; gentlemanlike in appearance and manner, rather grave, and decidedly clever. He was by birth a Belgian; and was said to have inherited an ample fortune, together with the title of count, from his father, who, though of an ancient and noble race, had embarked in mercantile affairs, to repair the declining fortunes of the family. Cautious not to risk success by precipitance, I was in no haste to betray my curiosity. But, one evening, when the conversation accidentally turned on the mysteries of life here and hereafter, I ventured to say, that if one single case of appearance after death were well established, the great question of there being a world to come would be irrefragably settled; adding, that I, for my part, believed there was no scarcity of such evidence, if everybody who had any to produce would speak out upon the subject, and if those who had the courage to do so only met with fair-play. He entirely coincided. 'But,' said he, 'since anybody who is rash enough to make such an avowal is sure to be treated as a fool or a liar, there is no chance of the question ever receiving the consideration it deserves. Indeed, I think the man is a fool who risks being laughed at by telling people what they are predetermined not to believe.' Notwithstanding this unpromising beginning, M. de Rosny ended by telling me what I wanted to hear. Not then; for it was evening when we held_the above conversation, and he said with a shudder: I shouldn't sleep if I speak of it now-I should think I saw again' There he stopped; but he agreed to meet me the next morning; and all I can say is, that I am thoroughly convinced that he believed the truth of the following story he then told me. The wealthy De Rosny, having a desire to see the world, set out on his travels at four-and-twenty. His time was his own; he went where he pleased, stayed in a place till he was tired of it, and partook of all the amusements that came in his way. Amongst the acquaintances formed in his travels was Arthur Edmonds, an Englishman, younger than himself, and was travelling to counteract a tendency to consumption, brought on by too close study at Oxford. They met several times, and finally at Venice, where they put up at the same hotel-Il Leone Here Bianco, on the Grand Canal, near the Rialto. they became very intimate; and as their pursuits were the same, and they frequented the same society, they engaged a gondola between them, in which they spent much of their time. One morning, about a fortnight after their arrival, just as they were stepping into their boat, a gentleman came hastily out of the hotel, and called for a gondola. There happened to be none there at the moment; and as he evinced great impatience, the young men offered him a seat in theirs. He accepted the offer with many thanks, saying that he had an appointment of importance, and was already past his time. They rowed him to his destination; and on parting, he expressed a hope that he might be allowed to return them thanks in person the next day, at the same time handing them his card. 'Count Stanislaus Krasinski,' said De Rosny, reading it. And an uncommonly nice fellow,' rejoined Edmonds. And such he appeared to be; he was tall, handsome, well dressed, polished in his manners, and, though a Pole, spoke French like a Frenchman. They were delighted with their new acquaintance, who soon became their companion in all their pleasures. Indeed, they liked his society so much, that they pressed him to join them in a projected tour to the east; but his great desire, he said, was to see England; and Edmonds promised him an introduction to his family, who were residing at the Lakes a country you must visit,' he said, as it is one of the lions of England. Our place is in Suffolk; but, unfortunately, my mother can't live there; the climate does not agree with her.' If you go there,' said De Rosny, you will be falling in love with Edmonds's sister. Elle est très belle; et riche aussi, n'est ce pas, mon cher?' Arthur replied, that he was perhaps not a fair judge, but he thought she was very pretty, and that, moreover, she would have a very good fortune, as, besides her paternal portion, she had L.20,000 left her by an aunt. "That aunt was a trump,' added he; 'for she left L.60,000 between three of us; and if either of the three die without issue, his or her portion goes to the survivors.' Both the young foreigners expressed their admiration of English fortunes; and the Pole remarked, that in his country, ladies were seldom so well provided for; that as for himself, being an only son, he had great landed estates-though not much money, he rejoined laughingly; but that if he had had the misfortune to be born a girl, he would have scarcely had a subsistence. This agreeable intimacy was at length interrupted by a letter summoning De Rosny to Pisa, where his only sister had been residing some time with her husband. He departed with reluctance, promising to be back in a fortnight; and, as he had a great deal of luggage, he retained his room, giving the key to Edmonds to keep till his return; and reminding him that there was a store of good cigars there, from which he was welcome to help himself. On his return, after being absent a month instead of a fortnight, he learned with surprise that both Edmonds and the Pole had quitted Venice. The landlord handed him a note from the former, in which he said that he was tired of waiting for him; and that as Krasinski was leaving for England, he should leave too, and go on to Rome, where he hoped De Rosny would rejoin him. De Rosny now bethought himself of the key of his room, which he had intrusted to Edmonds; but the landlord produced it, saying that it had been found in the door. 'In the door?' said the count. 'Oui, monsieur. Two days ago, I happened to be up stairs, and seeing the key in the door, I took possession of it; but your trunks are there, and I hope you'll find everything safe.' De Rosny, annoyed at the negligence of Edmonds, who was aware of the value of the property left in his charge, now ascended to his chamber. On opening the door, he saw indeed all his trunks and portmanteaus in their places as he had left them; but a very cursory examination shewed that he had been robbed, and that by a very discerning depredator. His clothes were there, except a few very recherché articles of the toilet; but his jewels, his rings, his pins, his diamond snuff-boxes, and other things of that description, which he had collected in the course of his travels, were all gone; as also a bag of gold coins and medals of great value, which he had inherited from his father, and which he was carrying to Rome to the Prince B- who wished to purchase them. When the landlord was told what had happened, he expressed the greatest surprise and dismay; and condemned the Signore Inglese very much for not having committed the key to his care. Of course, he could not be answerable for the people of all nations that went up and down those stairs. He was confident none of his servants had committed the theft; and he fixed his suspicions on a stranger, in appearance a Russian, who had lodged there a week, and had gone out one morning, promising to be back to dinner, but had never returned, even to pay his bill. The annoyance was great, and the loss considerable. The police having in vain used every effort to discover the thief, De Rosny left Venice, disgusted with his own folly and Edmonds's carelessness, and entirely cured of his passion for buying baubles. He determined now to prosecute his journey to the east; and, being too much out of humour with his English friend to desire him for the companion of his travels, instead of going to Rome, he embarked at Triest for Corfu. After lingering a little amongst the islands of Ionia, he proceeded to Athens, Constantinople, &c.; and about four months after leaving Venice, he arrived at Beyrout, where he lodged and boarded with a Greek called Simonides. Here he fell violently in love with the daughter of his host, who seemed nothing loath to accept his addresses. Her father, however, thinking no good would come of this attachment, was exceedingly annoyed by it, and endeavoured to get him out of his house; but not immediately succeeding in that object, he set his son, a boy of fourteen, to keep watch upon the lovers in the meantime. This was the position of affairs, when one night De Rosny suddenly awoke out of a sound sleep, and saw a person, as he thought, sitting in a corner of the room. His instant impression was, that it was the boy Alexis; and he sat up for an instant to assure himself it was not a delusion, before he jumped out of bed to chastise the lad for the impertinent intrusion. But as he rose, the figure rose too, and approached the bed; and then he saw that it was Edmonds, pale and wan, with a countenance expressive of intense melancholy. When M. de Rosny came to this point of his story, I eagerly asked him how he felt, and if he was frightened. But, perhaps,' I said, 'you thought it was Edmonds himself alive?' 'No,' he said, 'I did not think that; indeed, I believe I did not think at all. I was not frightened; I was paralysed. My sensations were such as, I imagine, people feel under the influence of mesmerism.' He went on to say, that after an interval, he recovered his faculties; and found himself still sitting up in bed, in perfect darkness. He thought that Edmonds had talked to him; had told him that he had been murdered; that his murderer was the same that CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL. had committed the robbery; and that he, the count, must proceed immediately to England, to convey this information to Edmonds's mother and sister, and thereby prevent a great calamity. 'And were you now convinced that you had really seen a ghost?' I asked. 'Why, at first I was,' he replied; 'but after a little consideration, I persuaded myself that I had been dreaming. In the first place, I had never believed in ghosts; and in the next, I found the room perfectly dark; so that, had a figure been there, I could not have seen it at all, much less distinguished its features. Then I thought it might be some trick of old Simonides and his son to frighten me away-though that could hardly be, unless they had a secret entrance into the room, as I had locked the door. Besides, I did not remember that I had ever told them anything about Edmonds.' mentioned the circumstance to Stephano, who had 'Sacré!' he exclaimed, and vexed and irritated, he turned his face to the wall, determined, in spite of cats or rats, to go to sleep. 'I'll not pass another 'I heard Well, De Rosny proceeded to say, that after some night in this cursed hole!' thought he time he sunk into sleep, from which he woke satisfied Colonel Everest say he intends to leave to-morrow; that he had merely had an unusually vivid dream, and I'll go out early and endeavour to secure his He lodging.' such as we all of us occasionally experience. looked at his tongue, and felt his pulse; reviewed his yesterday's bill of fare; thought he must have eaten something that disagreed with him; or, perhaps, In have lately indulged too much in the hookah. short, he settled himself in the belief that it was a dream; and this conviction was strengthened by there being no repetition of the apparition. Had it been the shade of Edmonds that visited him, of course he So would have come again to enforce his request. he dismissed the subject from his mind, and thought no more of it. Simonides was in the right. There was no good likely to come to the fair Japhira from her intimacy with the count; for when he saw that she was taking his attentions seriously to heart, not being inclined to fetter himself with a wife, he thought it prudent to So he made an excursion to leave her for a little. Mount Carmel, visited Tyre and Sidon, and other interesting localities, and returned to Beyrout only to prepare for a longer absence from her, this short excursion having convinced him that he could live perfectly well without her. After a brief period of repose, therefore, he again started, and in the course of his wanderings came to Jerusalem, where, owing to the celebration of some grand festival, he had a great difficulty in procuring a lodging. At length, he found a very poor one in the house of a man called Abime, who lived in the Via Dolorosa; but the man had a sinister eye, and there was something suspicious about his family; insomuch, that De Rosny warned his servant Stephano to be on his guard, and keep his eyes open and his trunks shut. Tired with his journey, he went early to bed the first night, and fell into a sound sleep, from which he was awakened by-he knew not what-but he fancied somebody had roused him. He cast his eye round his small room-for he had burned a light ever since his unpleasant dream at Beyrout-but could see no one, though he fancied he heard footsteps. Upon this, he jumped out of bed, and opened his door, which he had both locked and barricaded with a heavy portmanteau. He looked out into the passage, but there was nobody there; and all being quiet again, he returned to bed and tried to settle himself to sleep; but in vainthere still were the footsteps. Again he got out of bed, looked under it, and examined the room more particularly; but finding nothing, he suddenly recollected that his room was at the top of the house, and making up his mind that the noise proceeded from the midnight peregrinations of some marauding cat, he contrived to forget it, and go to sleep. He did not think of this disturbance in the morning; but as it was repeated the two following nights, he "Who's there?' he cried; for his soliloquy was suddenly interrupted by the pressure of a hand on his shoulder; and turning sharply round, he beheld by his bedside the same figure he had seen at Beyrout. There stood Arthur Edmonds, 'in his habit as he lived,' but with a less melancholy expression of countenance than he had exhibited on his former visitation. I repeated my question, 'How did you feel?' and he confessed that his first sensation was terror; but that gradually the same paralysation of the faculties stole over him. When he passed out of that state into his normal condition, he was sitting up in bed, no figure visible, and the room quite dark. He rose, felt for his matches, and tried to light his lamp, but found it had been broken by the blow of the slipper, and the oil spilt. He tried his door, which was fast; felt all about the room, but discovered nothing to explain what had happened; and then he got into bed again to reflect on it. It appeared to him that he had not only been wide awake when he felt the hand on his shoulder, but that he had not been to sleep at all; and he recol'But then,' he said, 'did I fall asleep at the moment. lected distinctly what he had been saying to himself and dream the rest? Surely it must be so,' he added, rebelling against any other interpretation of the circumstance; for why should he come to me? Why not go to his brother himself, and tell him what he the ghost had said; that I ought to have complied wants?' Then he summoned to his recollection what was no longer necessary; but what he now enjoined, with the request made to me at Beyrout; however, that he conjured me not to neglect. I am to go to Malta, where I shall find his brother, and then we are to proceed together to Naples, where we shall have this mystery unravelled.' "How obscure! Why not say what we were to do? But ghost-stories always run in this fashion-ghosts go about things in such an absurd roundabout way, that it is impossible to believe in them. I daresay Edmonds is at this moment alive and well as I am; much better, probably, for I think I must be ill; this climate doesn't agree with me, and the sooner I get back to the west the better. I can go by Malta, certainly; indeed, I should naturally do so; and then I'll go to Sicily-I want to see Sicily; and thence to Rome, and I'll inquire if Edmonds has been there,' &c.; and having made up his mind to this course of proceeding, he went to sleep and slept till morning. On the following day, he was still less inclined to believe in the ghost; and although, for many reasons, he would have been glad to change his lodging, he resolved now not to do it, lest it should be, unknown to himself, a weak compliance with his fears; for bravely as he talked, and obstinately as he argued, he confessed that he would not have been sorry to be secured from such dreams in future. No, he said, 'I'll stay where I am for the short time I have to be here; perhaps I may discover the trick, if trick there is;' and when he went to bed that night, he determined to be on the alert and keep all his senses about him in spite of which laudable resolution, he incontinently fell asleep, and when he opened his eyes, his lamp was burned out, and the broad daylight was glaring into his room. CHAPTER II. The succeeding nights of De Rosny's stay at Jerusalem being equally undisturbed, and his days very much occupied, the impression made by his ghostly visitant naturally became fainter and fainter; and when he started on his return to the west, with the intention of taking Malta in his way, he persuaded himself that it was by no means in compliance with the request of his late friend, but that he should have done so under any circumstances, as perhaps he might. He accomplished his journey without meeting with any extraordinary adventure; but when he sailed into the harbour of Valetta, and saw the boat of the medical officer coming from the Lazaretto to ascertain their state of health, he owned to me that he felt a strange qualm of anxiety that convinced him he had not entirely succeeded in arguing himself into a disbelief of the apparition. 'I knew,' said he, 'that Edmonds had a brother in the army; but I had never heard in what regiment he was, and still less where he was quartered; therefore, if I found the regiment to which the young man belonged actually here, and he on duty with it, it would give more colour and probability to the ghost's story than I liked to think of. However, I was not left long in doubt, for almost at the same moment that the Lazaretto boat pushed off from the shore, we observed another from the quay making for our vessel; and in it was seated an officer in uniform-red, with blue facings. Of course, there is always a garrison at Malta; I knew that, and yet my heart beat at the sight of that red coat. I felt myself turn pale; and I stood breathlessly watching the boat as it neared us, and, somehow or other, quite prepared for the question that followed: "Have you a Mr Edmonds on board ?-Mr Arthur Edmonds?" "No," said the captain. 'All the passengers were clustered at the side, looking over at the boat; and the young officer stood up and reviewed us all-perusing our faces, as if in hopes, notwithstanding the denial, of detecting the one he wished to see; then he reseated himself, and desired to be rowed back. 'It was clear, then, that the regiment in question was here, and I had no doubt of this being the brother: there was a strong family resemblance, extending even to the voice, and quite sufficient to satisfy me of that. I was relieved, however, to find that he was expecting Arthur from the east. If he had been dead so many months, the family must surely have known it ere this. Edmonds had no doubt fulfilled his intention of going to the East, but not having taken the same route as myself, we had never met. I kept up my spirits with this supposition during our short quarantine; and the morning after we got ashore, I walked up to the barracks, and inquired for Lieutenant Everard Edmonds-for such was his rank, as I had ascertained by reference to the Army List. I sent in my card, and was immediately admitted. 'I had been rehearsing this meeting in my mind, studying how I should account for my visit, and how I should avoid incurring the young man's ridicule, in case I found it advisable to disclose the real motive of it, which, however, I had resolved not to do, if I ascertained that Arthur was alive. But I was spared all confusion; for the moment I entered, he advanced eagerly towards me with my card in his hand, and said, after the first salutation and giving me a seat: "What can you tell me of my brother ?" 'Nothing," answered I. "I have done myself the honour of calling on you for the express purpose of making inquiries about him." 'His countenance fell; he looked blank. "Nothing?" he repeated-"you don't know where he is? Has he not been travelling with you?" "No," I answered; "I have been travelling alone. He did talk of going with me to the east; but I fancy he altered his intentions; at least " "When did you last see him?" asked he. 'I hesitated a little, and then said: "At Venice-we parted at Venice." "And you have not seen him since?-you did not meet at Rome or Naples ?" "I did not go to Rome or Naples; I went by Triest. May I ask if you are also without intelligence?" 66 Wholly," he said-"entirely without intelligence. We have never heard a word from Arthur since he left Venice. In his last letter, which I think was dated early in April, he said he was starting for Rome and Naples, at one of which places he expected to meet you, with whom, he had previously told us, he was to travel; and that you were to proceed together to the east. He acknowledged the receipt of some money that he had written for, and desired us not to be uneasy if we did not hear from him, as he should be continually on the move: nor were we for some time. Arthur is a sad idle fellow about writing; and a silence that would be alarming with most people, does not alarm us. But circumstances have happened that render this absence of intelligence unusually perplexing and inconvenient. I daresay you may have seen Count Krasinski with my brother?" "Certainly," said I; "I knew him very well. When I left Venice, he was there with your brother. He talked of going to England." "He did go," said the lieutenant; "and took a letter of introduction to my family. He said that Arthur and he left Venice together, and that Arthur was gone to Rome to meet you." "I have no doubt," I said, "that was his intention; we had originally proposed that route; but your brother left Venice during my absence, and circumstances induced me to alter my plans." "But you wrote my brother to that effect, I suppose?" said Edmonds. "Why, no," I replied; "to confess the truth, I did not. I ought to have done so, but I was vexed and angry. When I went away, I left the key of my room in your brother's charge. He thoughtlessly left it in the door; and when I came back, I found some inquiring traveller had been investigating the contents of my trunks, and had relieved me of all my valuables." "Arthur is dreadfully thoughtless," said the lieutenant. "I had some famous cigars," continued De Rosny, "to which he had leave to help himself, and, I suppose, he went to get some of these, and forgot to bring away the key. The landlord said he had had a scamp of a Russian there, who went away without paying his bill, and he had little doubt but he was the thief." "Probably," answered Everard. "But it is very extraordinary that we hear nothing of Arthur!" 'I began to feel,' said De Rosny to me, 'that I ought now to say something about my vision or dream, but I did not know how to begin: on the one hand, expecting that he would take me for a fool or a |