A FEW months ago in London an old man sat in a large paneled room in one of the streets near Soho-square. Every thing in the apartment was brown with age and neglect. Nothing more superlatively dingy could well be imagined. The leathern covers of the chairs were white and glossy at the edges; the carpet was almost of a uniform tint, notwithstanding its original gaudy contrasts; there were absurd old engravings upon the walls—relics of the infancy of the art; and curtains to the windows, which the smoke of years had darkened from a delicate fawn to a rusty chocolate color. In the centre of the room, and, as it were, the sun of this dusty system, stood an office-table of more modern manufacture, at which was seated the old man alluded to, sole lord and master of the dismal domicile. He was by profession a money-lender. His age might be from sixty to sixty-five years; his face was long, and his features seemed carved out of box-wood or yellow sandstone, so destitute were they of mobility; his eyes were of a cold, pale, steel color, but his brows were black and tufted like a grim old owl's; a long aquiline nose, a thin and compressed mouth, and a vast double chin, buried in a voluminous white neckcloth of more than one day's wear, completed the portrait. Nor did the expression of his countenance undergo any perceptible change as, after a timid knock, the door opened, and a young man entered of singularly interesting appearance.

The new-comer was well-dressed, though his clothes were none of the newest, and had the air of a man accustomed to society. His pale brow was marked with those long horizontal lines of which time is rarely the artist. His dark, deep-set gray eyes flashed with a painful brightness; his long chestnut hair, damp with perspiration, clung in narrow strips to his forehead; his whole manner implied the man who had made up his mind to some extraordinary course, from which no wavering or weakness on his part was likely to turn him aside, whatever the opposition of others might compel him to abandon or determine. Bending his tall figure slightly, he addressed the money-lender in a tone of constrained calmness.

"Sometimes—on good security," replied the usurer, indifferently, forming a critical summary of his visitor's costume at a glance.

The stranger hesitated: there was a discouraging sort of coldness in the mode of delivering this answer that seemed to prejudge his proposition. Nevertheless, he resumed with an effort—"I saw your advertisement in the paper." The usurer did not even nod in answer to this prelude. He sat bolt upright in his chair, awaiting further information. "I am, as you will see by these papers, entitled to some property in reversion."

The usurer stretched out his hand for the papers, which he looked over carefully with the same implacable tranquillity, while his visitor entered into explanations as to their substance.

Once only the money-lender peered over the top of a document he was scanning, and said, gruffly: "Your name, sir, is Bernard West?"

"It is," replied the stranger, mechanically taking up a newspaper, in which the first thing which caught his eye was the advertisement alluded to, which ran thus:—"Money to any amount advanced immediately on every description of security, real or personal. Apply between the hours of ten and five to Mr. John Brace, —— street, Soho-square."

After a brief interval of silence, the usurer methodically rearranged the papers, and returned them to the stranger. "They are of no use," he said, "no use whatever: the reversion is merely contingent. You have no available security to offer?"

"Could you not advance something upon these expectations—not even a small sum?"

"Is there no way of raising fifty—thirty—even twenty pounds?" said the stranger, anxiously, and with the tenacity of a drowning man grasping at a straw.

"There is a way," said the usurer, carelessly. West in his turn was silent, awaiting the explanation of his companion. "On personal security," continued the latter with a sinister impatience, beginning to arrange his writing materials for a letter.

"I will give any discount," said the young man, eagerly. "My prospects are good: I can—"

"Of the interest only—and the life insurance," added the usurer, with a slight peculiarity of intonation that might have escaped the notice of one whose nerves were less exalted in their sensitive power than those of his visitor's.

"A hundred pounds: more if you require it. In fact, any amount, if your security be good."

"Not at all: four or five per cent. As much is often given for money on mortgage of land."

"One hundred," replied the usurer, sharply. "Men who lend money do not run risks. You may die, and four out of five insurance offices may fail; but the chances are that the fifth would pay."

"But it is not likely—" began Bernard West, amazed at this outrageous display of caution.

"I do not say it is likely," snarled the usurer with a contemptuous sort of pity for his visitor's dullness of apprehension; "I say it is possible; and I like to be on the safe side."

"Your security, who of course must be a person known to have property, will give a bond guaranteeing the regular payment of interest and premiums—that is all."

West reflected for some minutes in silence. The faint expression of hope that had for an instant lighted up his countenance vanished. He understood the money-lender and his proposition. A sufficiently clear remembrance of the tables of life assurance which he had seen, enabled him to perceive that the interest and premiums together would amount to nearly twenty per cent., and that the bond engaged his security to pay an annuity for his (West's) life of that amount. It is true that, full of energy and hope, he felt no doubt of his capacity to meet the payments regularly: it is true that, monstrous as were the terms, he would have accepted eagerly still harder ones, had it simply depended on his own decision. But where find, or how ask, a friend to become his bondsman? He ran over in despair the scanty list of acquaintances whom his poverty had not already caused to forget him. He felt that the thing was impossible. There was not one he could think of who would have even dreamed of entering into such a compact. He turned desperately to the money-lender.

"I have no friend," he said, "of whom I could or would ask such a service. If I had, I should not be here. Are there no terms, however high, on which you can lend me even the most trifling sum, for which I myself alone need be responsible?"

The strange seeker of loans at length rose to depart. He reached the door. Suddenly he turned back, his eyes blazing with the sombre radiance of despair. He strode up to the table, and planted himself, with folded arms, immediately in front of the usurer.

"Mark me!" said West, in a tone of deep suppressed passion, like the hollow murmur of the sea before a storm: "It is a question of life or death with me to get money before sunset. Lend me only twenty pounds, and within twelve months I will repay you one hundred. I will give you every power which the law can give one man over another; and I will pledge my honor, which never yet was questioned, to the bargain!"

The usurer almost smiled, so strangely sarcastic was the contraction of his features, as he listened to these words.

"I do not question your honor," he said, icily, "but honor has nothing to do with business. As for the law, there is an old axiom which says, Out of nothing, nothing comes."

Bernard West regarded the cold rocky face and the passionless mouth from which these words proceeded with that stinging wrath a man feels who has humiliated himself in vain. Nevertheless he clung to the old flinty usurer as to the last rock in a deluge, and a sense of savage recklessness came over him when he advanced yet closer to the living cash-box before him, while the latter shrank half-terrified before the burning gaze of his visitor's dilated pupils.

Laying his hand upon the money-lender's shoulder, by a gesture of terrible familiarity that insisted upon and commanded attention to his words, West spoke with a sudden clearness and even musical distinctness of utterance that made his words yet more appalling in their solemn despair—"Old man, I am desperate; I am ruined. It is but a few months since my father died, leaving me not only penniless, but encircled by petty obligations which have cramped every movement I would have made. I have had no time, no quiet, to make an effort such as my position requires. This day I have spent my last shilling. I am too proud to beg, and to borrow is to beg when a man is known to be in real distress. Within one hour from this time I shall be beyond all the tortures of a life which for my own sake I care little to preserve. And yet I have spent my youth in accumulating treasures, which but a brief space might have rendered productive of benefit to man, and of profit to myself. My father's little means and my own have vanished in the pursuit of science, and in the gulf of suffering more immediate than our own. If I die also, with me perish the results of his experiments, his studies, and his sacrifices. There are moments when all ordinary calculations and prudence are empty baubles. Life is the only real possession we have, and death the only certainty. Listen! I will make one last proposal to you. Lend me but ten pounds—that is but ten weeks of life—and I swear to you that if I live, I will repay you for each pound lent not ten or twenty, but one hundred—in all, one thousand pounds! Grant that it be but a chance upon the one hand, yet, upon the other, how small is the risk; and then, to save a human life—is not that something in the scale?" And the stranger laughed at these last words with a bitter gayety, which caused a strange thrill to creep along the nerves of the usurer.

However, the lender of gold shrugged his shoulders without relaxing his habitual impassibility of manner. He did not speak. Possibly the idea occurred to him that his strange client meditated some act of violence upon himself or his strong box. But this idea speedily vanished, as the stranger, relapsing suddenly into silence and conventional behavior, removed his hand from the usurer's shoulder, and strode rapidly but calmly from the apartment.

The door closed behind the ruined man, and the usurer drew a long breath, while his bushy brows were contracted in a sort of agony of doubt and irresolute purpose.

Meanwhile Bernard West paused for an instant on the threshold of the outer-door, as if undecided which road to take. In truth all roads were much alike to him at that moment. Some cause, too subtle to be seized by the mental analyst, determined his course. He turned to the right, and strode rapidly onward.

He felt already like one of the dead, to join whom he was hurrying headlong. He looked neither to the right nor to the left; and before him was a mist, in which the phantoms of his imagination disported themselves, to the exclusion of all other visible objects. Nothing earthly had any further interest for him. He did not even hear the steps of some one running behind him, nor hear the voice which called after him to stop; but his course was soon more effectually arrested by the firm grasp of a man's hand, which seized him by the arm with the force and the tenacity of a vice.

He turned fiercely round. He was in no humor for the converse of casual acquaintances. Nor was it any gay convivialist of happier days whose face now greeted him: it was the old money-lender, who in a voice husky with loss of breath, or possibly emotion, said, thrusting a couple of twenty-pound bank-notes into West's hand—

"Here! take these notes. Take them, I say!" he repeated, as the young man, dizzy with amazement, stammered out—

"No!" growled the usurer, "I give them to you. Do you understand me? I say I give them to you. I am an old man; I never gave away a shilling before in my life! Repay me if you will, when and how it please you. I have no security—I ask no acknowledgment; I want none. I do not count upon it. It is gone!" and the usurer pronounced the last words with an effort which was heroic, from the evident self-mastery it cost him. "There! go—go!" he resumed, "and take an old man's advice—Make money at all hazards, and never lend except on good security. Remember that!" The old man gently pushed West away, and all hatless and slippered as he was, ran back muttering to his den, leaving the object of his mysterious generosity fixed like a statue of amazement in the centre of the pavement.

About three months had elapsed, when Bernard West once more knocked at the door of the money-lender.

"Oh! if you please, sir, they buried him yesterday," replied the servant, with a look of curiously-affected solemnity.

"Buried him!" cried the visitor, with sincere disappointment and grief in his tone.

"Yes, sir; perhaps you would like to see Miss Brace, if it's any thing very particular?"

"I should, indeed," said West; "and when she knows the cause of my visit, I think she will excuse the intrusion."

The servant gave an odd look, whose significance West was unable to divine, as she led the way to her young mistress's drawing-room.

West entered timidly, for he doubted the delicacy of such a proceeding, though his heart was almost bursting with desire of expansion under the shock just received. A beautiful and proud-looking girl of nineteen or twenty years rose to meet him. Her large blue eyes, which bore traces of many and recent tears, worked strangely upon his feelings, already sufficiently excited.

"I came," he said, in his deep musical voice, "to repay a noble service. Will you permit me to share a grief for the loss of one to whom I owe my life—yes, more than my life!" West paused, and strove vainly to master the emotion which checked his utterance.

"My father rendered you a service?" said the young lady, eagerly, regarding with involuntary interest the noble countenance of Bernard, which, though it still bore traces of great suffering, was no longer wild and haggard, as at his interview with the money-lender.

"A most unexpected and generous service," replied West, who, softening down the first portion of the scene we have described, proceeded to recount to the fair orphan the narrative of the great crisis in his destiny.

"I knew it was so!" cried the young lady, almost hysterically affected; "I knew he was not so grasping—so hard-hearted, as they said—as he himself pretended. I knew he had a generous heart beneath all his seeming avarice! Oh, you are not the only one doubtless whom he has thus served!"

West did not discourage the illusion. Nay, the enthusiasm of the charming woman before him was contagious. "Thanks to your father's disinterested liberality," he resumed, "I am now in comparatively prosperous circumstances. I came not merely to discharge a debt; believe me, it is no common gratitude I feel! Doubtless you inherit all your father's wealth—doubtless it is but little service I can ever hope to render you. Yet I venture to entreat you never to forget that you possess one friend of absolute devotion, ready at all times to sacrifice himself in every way to your wishes and to your happiness."

West paused abruptly, for the singular expression of the young lady's features filled him with astonishment.

"That I—am a—a natural child!" she completed, with a crimson blush, turning away her head as she spoke, and covering her face with her hands—"that I am without fortune or relations; that my father died intestate; that the heir-at-law, who lives abroad, and without whose permission nothing can be done—moreover, who is said to be a heartless spendthrift—will take all my father leaves; that I have but one more week given me to vacate this house by the landlord; in short, that I must work if I would not starve: that, in a word, I am a beggar!" And the poor girl sobbed convulsively; while Bernard West, on whom this speech acted as some terrible hurricane upon the trees of a tropical forest, tearing up, as it were, by the roots, all the terrible stoicism of his nature, and rousing hopes and dreams which he had long banished to the deepest and most hopeless abysses of his soul; while Bernard, we repeat, ventured to take her hand in his own, and calm her painful agitation by such suggestions as immediately occurred to his mind.

"In the first place," he said, "my dear Miss Brace, I come to repay to you your father's generous gift."

"It belongs to his legal heirs. I can not receive it with honor," said the money-lender's daughter, firmly.

"Not so," replied West, gravely: "it was a free gift to me. I repay it by a natural, not a legal obligation;" and he laid the two twenty-pound notes upon the table. "Next," he resumed, "I have to pay a debt of gratitude. I owe my life to your father. Thus in a manner I have become his adopted son. Thus," he continued impetuously, "I have a right to say to you, regard me as a brother; share the produce of my labor; render me happy in the thought that I am serving the child of my benefactor! To disdain my gratitude would be a cruel insult."

"I can not disdain it!" exclaimed the daughter of the usurer with a sudden impulse of that sublime confidence which a noble and generous soul can alone inspire. "Yes—I accept your assistance!"

The face of Bernard brightened up, as if by an electric agent. But how were the two children of sorrow confounded by the discovery that they were no longer alone, and that their conversation had been overheard by an utter stranger, who, leaning against the wall at the further end of the room, near the door, appeared to survey them with an utter indifference to the propriety of such behavior!

He was a man of between forty and fifty years; a great beard and mustache concealed the lower part of a swarthy but handsome countenance of rare dignity and severity of outline. His dress was utterly un-English. A vast mantle, with a hood, fell nearly to the ground, and he wore huge courier's boots, which were still splashed, as if from a journey. His great dark eyes rested with an expression of royal benevolence upon the two young people, toward whom he had advanced with a courteous inclination, that, as if magnetically, repressed Bernard's first indignant impulse.

"I am the heir-at-law," he said, in a mild voice, as if he had been announcing a most agreeable piece of intelligence.

"Trust absolutely!" interrupted quickly the foreign-looking heir. "My children, do you know who I am? No? I will tell you. I am a monster, who in his youth preferred beauty to ambition, and glory to gold. For ten years after attaining manhood I struggled on, an outcast from my family, in poverty and humiliation, without friends, and often without bread. At the end of five more years I was a great man, and those who had neglected, and starved, and scorned me, came to bow down and worship. But the beauty I had adored was dust, and the fire of youthful hope quenched in the bitter waters of science. For ten years since I have wandered over the earth. I am rich; I may say my wealth is boundless; for I have but to shake a few fancies from this brain, to trace a few ciphers with this hand, and they become gold at my command. Yet, mark my words, my children! One look of love is, in my esteem, worth more than all the applause of an age, or all the wealth of an empire!" The dark stranger paused for an instant, as if in meditation, then abruptly continued: "I take your inheritance, fair child!—I rob the orphan and the fatherless!"—and the smile of disdainful pride which followed these words said more than whole piles of parchment renunciations as to his intention.

Involuntarily the orphan and Bernard seized each a hand of the mysterious man beside them, who, silently drawing the two hands together, and uniting them in his own, said, gently, "Love one another as you will, my young friends, yet spare at times a kind thought for the old wandering poet! Not a word! I understand you, though you do not understand yourselves. It is as easy to tell a fortune as to give it."

And was the prophecy realized? asks a curious reader. But no answer is needed; for if the prophecy were false, why record it? And, pray, who was the stranger, after all? Too curious reader!—it is one thing to tell stories, and another to commit breaches of confidence.

EVERY man is double. He is what he knows himself to be, and what others think him. The two men—the outward and visible, and the inward and invisible man—are often very different sort of people.

Perhaps this thesis was never more forcibly illustrated than in my own case. I had the misfortune, when scarcely fifteen years of age, to dream a most rare and ominous dream. So distinct was the vision in all its details, that it rather resembled a visit to another world, or a clairvoyant projection of the soul into the future, than an ordinary dream. Its most astounding peculiarity was its apparent duration. Every body almost is familiar with the fact, that in a dream a few moments are often so prodigiously crowded with images and sensations that they appear as many hours. But I doubt whether there are many dreamers living who can boast of having condensed ten years of life into a single night. Such, however, was precisely my case. I awoke ten years older in mind than when I fell asleep the night before. I awoke with a distinct remembrance of ten years of active experience. I had the clearest recollection of thoughts and events during the whole period. During these ten years of dream-life, I had left school, studied at a university, travelled, loved, fought, and written works which had obtained for me a great literary reputation. In a word, I had become a great and distinguished man, accustomed to receive the consideration due to my position. I had possessed fortune, power, a host of admirers, and, above all, the consciousness of power and manhood. I awoke a mere child in the eyes of the world; a delusive phenomenon, an anachronism, a living paradox; a schoolboy ten years older than himself; an experienced man ten years younger than his ideas.

At first I could scarcely realize the absurd fact of my youth. I was inclined to take truth for vision, and vision for truth. But finding myself soon driven to fall back on metaphysics, and on such notions as that life is itself a dream, and that ideas and events differ only in a trifling degree, I thought it wisest to avoid becoming insane by taking a more practical view of my position. I certainly had dreamed myself into a most unboyish state of intellect and feelings. I as certainly had awakened to a most un-manlike appearance of juvenility, and a most inconsistent state of boyish thraldom. I was at an English boarding-school—the Rev. Doctor Whopham's classical academy! What a ridiculous misfortune for the author of books, the politician, the man of the world, of my dream-memory!

I was just revolving these contradictions in my mind when the school-bell rang for the boys to get up. It was six o'clock in the morning. For the last five or six years of my life (in the infernal dream) I had been accustomed to lie in bed in the morning and muse on the composition of my works. On the present occasion I continued to ponder lazily over my mysterious vision, when I was suddenly roused from my reverie by one of the boys in the room calling out in a shrill tone:

At the same moment another of the boys thought it a capital joke to throw a bolster at me, which, descending precisely on my face, for the moment half smothered me, and so irritated my temper in the anomalous condition of my mind, that forgetting my boyhood for the nonce, I sprang out of bed, seized the offender roughly by the shoulder, and administered a couple of boxes on the ear, with such lusty good-will, that the whole room rung with their vibration.

"Take that, you insolent young monkey!" I cried in a stern, contemptuous tone, which amazed the offender, who was as nearly of my own size and age as might be.

"I say," retorted the boy angrily, "none of that girl's play with me; if you please, come on and fight like a man, if you can!" and the boy doubled his fists and threw himself into a very orthodox pugilistic attitude.

This brought me to my senses, and recalled me to a consciousness of my absurd position. However, there was, of course, no retreat, and I prepared for the inevitable contest. He had told me to fight like a man. Little did he imagine how much of a man I was. Ten years of adventures had given me a self-possession and courage very different from the mere effervescence of boyish audacity. Confidence is strength. I looked upon my antagonist as a child. My manly pride almost disdained such an enemy. He had scarcely returned my blow when I assailed him with such decisive resolution, that in a few moments he was grovelling on the floor at my feet, bleeding and vanquished.

The other boys applauded me admiringly, as I strode scornfully back to my bed-side and began to dress in silence.

It was the first time they had witnessed any thing of the kind on my part. Though not by any means weak or small for my age, I was of an extremely effeminate appearance. My complexion was singularly fair and delicate; my hair soft, light, and wavy; whilst previous to the change wrought in my character by the dream, I had been remarkable for the gentleness of my manners, and though not timid, had always a voided quarrelling and fighting as much as possible. But now I had acquired all the stern combativeness which ten years of arduous struggles rarely fail to impart to the human disposition. Accordingly, when on descending to the school-room Dr. Whopham severely reprimanded me for my violence, I showed no manner of contrition for the offense, but looked coldly and indifferently at the Doctor, who in my eyes was now no more than a vulgar pedagogue, very much my inferior in acquirements and talents.

"Do you hear, sir?" said the Doctor; "I say that I will make an example of you."

"You had better not," said I sarcastically, thinking of a repartee I had made to Washington Irving a year or two before, (in the dream;) "I should make a bad example to a certainty."

"You shall be flogged, sir," said the Doctor, losing all patience. "By G——, I'll not be bearded by any boy in my school. I will flog you this very day."

"Why not," thundered Whopham, growing purple in the face with rage, "you poisonous young viper?"

"Because if you attempted such a thing, or effected it by force, I would infallibly kill you."

"Kill me!" cried the Doctor; "the young wretch, the unprincipled, immoral young monster—he threatens to murder me!"

"Why, what's the matter with the boy?" said the head usher, coming up; "is he mad? He used to be the most peaceable and gentle boy in the whole school, and look at him now; his face is like a Satan's."

"Wicked, but angelic," said I, laughing. "Mr. Polyglot, I thank you for the compliment."

"Does the devil possess the boy?" exclaimed Dr. Whopham, looking at my erect attitude of defiance with a mysterious feeling of dismay, and perhaps imagining that I relied upon the rank of my relatives, who were of wealth and distinction, to bear me out in my rebellious conduct.

"Hark you, you couple of old fools!" said I, with an indescribable pleasure in their utter confusion, "we have had enough of this. I meant to run away, but perhaps you may as well expel me. At all hazards, here we part; so good bye for ever. Boys, good bye!"

As I spoke, I made a dash at the nearest school-room window, which was open to admit the fresh air, vaulted over the window-sill, and manfully took to my heels. In a few hours I had distanced all my pursuers, for I was the best runner at the school, and I did not spare my legs. For several days after I could scarcely walk. Meanwhile I had taken the rail to London. I was safe. I was free. I was to all intents and purposes the man of my dream, without his position, his fortune, or his fame; at least, so I fondly fancied. And now what was to be my course? At all hazards, I was resolved not to return to my relations. How could I explain to them the change that had taken place in my being? They would have confined me as a lunatic, or sent me back to school as a culprit. My first resolution, then, was to preserve my personal liberty at all costs. Any thing was better than the slavery of a school-life—even starvation; but that I did not apprehend. I had a gold watch of which I could nearly guess the value. I raised ten pounds (fifty dollars) upon it the next day. Half that sum, judiciously invested, supplied me with clothes suitable to the appearance of a man several years older than myself, which I had resolved to assume. A pair of spectacles fitted with green glasses, a stiff cravat and shirt collar, and a rather clerical suit of black, were my whole means of disguise. Being nearly as tall as the average run of men, I was thus enabled to conceal my extreme youth, and to enter upon the career which I had proposed to myself as the source of my future income. This career was literature. Nor need it be wondered at that I adopted the pursuit which, in my dream-life, I had already carried to such a successful issue.

In a few days, by assiduous labor, I had dashed off one of those strange, wild, improbable, plausible, and supernaturally interesting stories of which the literature of all nations scarcely furnishes a dozen examples. I knew, however, by my old dream experience, what a new aspirant for literary fame had to expect from publishers. I also knew how to deal with this despicable race of moral Jews, who discount thought and devour the mental wealth of genius precisely as their prototypes eat up the fortunes of the members of rich and noble families. Accordingly, I took excellent precautions against their ignorance on the one hand, and their impertinence on the other. I introduced myself to the firm of Grey, Brown, Yellowboy & Co. as the private secretary of a young gentleman of fortune, who indulged in literary ambition. I spoke with sincere admiration of my own genius, that is, of my imaginary master's; finally, I presented the MS. of my story as a work which had been produced under the most singular auspices. It was, in fact, I said, a translation and completion of a fragment never printed, which the illustrious Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann had left behind him, and which, by incredible labor, my young employer had succeeded in deciphering and translating.

The publisher was extremely anxious to see the author, whom I did not forget to make the cousin of a Duke, and a man of noble name and family. But I told him that, until after the publication of the work, such an interview would be impossible, as Mr. Percy Egremont (my supposed master) had even then started for Rome on a secret mission from the home government. The publisher, who could not penetrate my grave demeanor and green spectacles, treated me with distinguished politeness—not the less that I alluded to my own prospects of a diplomatic career under the patronage of Mr. Egremont. He purchased the copyright of the work; and had good cause to rejoice in his speculation, for it ran through five editions in the space of as many months, and I found myself both famous and, comparatively speaking, rich. The publisher happened to be one of the most honest of his tribe, and I had received for each edition of my little book—which, by the way, was expensively printed and illustrated—the sum of thirty guineas, in all one hundred and fifty, or about eight hundred dollars. Thus I had achieved at a bound what, in my dream, and too often in the real lives of authors of the highest merit, was the result only of years of toil and drudgery—a position. I had a name, and the command of a publisher. I could draw money in advance, if I required it, on my mere promise of an unwritten book. At fifteen years of age I was one of the happy few whom success stamps with the mark of the most exclusive of all nobilities, acknowledged superiority. But I had the memory of ten years of battle in my heart. In secret I felt all the sadness which poets are prone to who weep the miseries of humanity—all the weariness of life which a varied experience of its pleasures and its cares produces in the mind of the earnest thinker. Meanwhile other sensations natural to my age, and stimulated by my unnatural extension of experience, began to exercise an empire over my soul which neither reason nor prudence could contend against. The beauty of fair and gentle women haunted my dreams. The melody of angel voices, heard in poetic reveries, resolved themselves into the musical accents of silken-haired and blue-eyed girls. I had slid imperceptibly into society through the agency of my publisher and the literary men to whom he had introduced me, since, on the undeniable success of my book, I had laughingly thrown off my mask and declared myself to be Percy Egremont in person.

And, as Percy Egremont, I was every where welcome. My extreme youth—for, though none suspected my real age, I could not be supposed to be more than nineteen or twenty at the very farthest—my fame echoed by every newspaper and review throughout the kingdom, my girlish face and gentle manners, all contributed to make me a sort of general pet lion. Even my brother authors loved and spoke well of me. How could they suspect, beneath my effeminate aspect, the iron will and hardened heart of a man practised in all the wiles and stratagems, inured to all the tempests and convulsions of a worldly and insatiable ambition!

If, with all this, I felt at times that my life was after all a sort of protracted imposture, a kind of sublimely methodical madness, what mattered? I was the last person in the world to underrate the value of a dream. So I dreamed on, and took no thought for the morrow.

I had made the acquaintance, amongst other young men of literary tastes, of Lord Arthur Carisbrook, and by him had been introduced to his mother, the dowager Lady Carisbrook, and his sister, Lady Rosina, a girl of eighteen, who had just been presented at Court, and was in all probability destined to be the recognized beauty of the season.

The moment her dark-blue, languishing eyes fell upon me, a flood of new-born vitality streamed through my frame. My chest seemed to expand, every fibre of my body to dilate with an ecstatic sensation of power. I felt myself a man indeed, and capable of contending with men. But, alas! I was still at least ten years older than I looked!

"What a pretty boy!" I overheard the Countess say to her son as I turned to speak to Rosina.

"Yes, mamma," replied the young Lord, "you would hardly imagine that he was the author of 'Nairad.' "

"Why, dress him in Rosina's clothes," said the Countess, "and he would look more girlish than your sister."

I bit my lips with vexation. But the expression of Rosina's eyes, which, as she was tall, were precisely on a level with my own, soon distracted my thoughts from this mortifying remark. Rosina was, in truth, a girl worthy of a poet's love. She was full of animation, yet free from coquetry; she appreciated art, she enjoyed nature, she adored beauty. She had only one fault—an intense fear of ridicule. She had a soul brave and lofty enough to have defied menace, and dared persecution; but her courage faded before a sarcasm; a sneer descended on her resolutions like a blight upon the nectarines. This peculiarity of her character I discovered at our first interview, thanks to my supernatural knowledge of the intricacies of human fancies and motives.

At the same time, I conceived for her one of those insane, unspeakable, delicious passions which can only come into existence under rare and extraordinary circumstances. Such passions know no middle path; they bring with them either supreme happiness or intolerable misery. In my case, it required the most careful policy and perfect self-restraint, to give even the hope of a happy result. I do not allude to social difficulties. The love of Rosina secured, an elopement was a cardinal remedy for all such obstacles. But to be loved, and loved as madly as I myself loved, by Rosina, it was absolutely necessary that I should avoid ridicule. My weak point was my youth. Feeling that any affectation of disguising it would only render me absurd, I resolved, with the policy of a true politician, to annihilate its weakness by making it a tower of strength. Accordingly I assumed the part of a gay, careless boy-poet. I made no pretense to the dignity of maturity. I took liberties with every body, and allowed every body to treat me as a precocious youth, who had no idea of appearing otherwise than he was. Lady Carisbrook took a great liking to me—she little thought what exquisite art I had employed to ingratiate myself—and I was invited to join a large party of fashionable people at her country mansion.

It was on this occasion, that I hoped to bring my schemings to a happy climax. By my boyish vivacity and unassuming manners, I acquired the affections of nearly all the guests assembled. My subtle jests passed for random flashes of humor. Sayings, which Talleyrand might have been proud of, were repeated as happy blunders of a prattling youth. My authorship of "Nairad," which might have opened the eyes of any one of ordinary perspicacity, was for the time forgotten. It was only when alone with Rosina, that my tone and manner underwent a total transformation. To her, I discoursed naturally and freely, with all the gravity of a philosopher, and enthusiasm of an ambitious genius. For her ear I reserved the stores of my mysteriously acquired knowledge, all the wonders of my daring projects and aspirations. I made her my confidant and friend. I never said a word of love. I even forced myself to look at her without betraying my passion. I had but one object—to teach her to respect me. In the presence of third parties I avoided showing even the most shadowy indication of the love that consumed my soul. Thus I escaped the ridicule of rival suitors, the odious comparison with their robust forms and whiskered faces; thus, in short, I convinced Rosina of my superiority, before she had even dreamed of comparing me with others.

All went well. My policy was triumphant, and at length the crisis was brought on, which was either to establish my complete success, or utter failure.

"It is because, my dear Lady Rosina, the mass of mankind are not worth talking sense to, as they are barely capable of understanding nonsense. Besides, I am a mere boy, comparatively speaking, and it would be bad taste to show myself wiser or cleverer than older people. I have also the misfortune to look much younger even than I am; my face is——"

"More like a pretty girl's than a man's," said Rosina, laughing, with a wickedly puzzling expression.

But my agony was of brief duration. Rosina took my hand in hers, and pressing it in a way that caused me the most delicious thrill of enjoyment, said, in a very different tone, and with a look that penetrated through all my artificial panoply: "Percy, I think Alcibiades, at your age, must have been what you are now, a combination of the beauty of a woman and the soul of a hero!"

Scarcely had Rosina uttered these perilously flattering words, than I had clasped her lovely form to my heart in an embrace of frantic delight, and pressed upon her lips a kiss that caused me to turn faint with rapture. In another instant I was at her feet. I looked up. She was trembling from head to foot. Her eyes were swimming in tears. She said nothing, she raised me gently; one more passionate embrace, and at the sound of the dinner bell, we hastened to put on an indifferent aspect, and join the assembled guests in the drawing-room. Henceforward our eyes might have served us as telegraphs.

And now, laugh who will at what follows. Years of peril, vicissitude, and wild adventure lie between me and that hour. I yet shudder to recall its eventful moments. On entering the drawing-room I met face to face a newly arrived guest. Almost petrified with horror, I recognized—Doctor Whopham. I saw, too, with the same glance, that he, too, had recognized me. Exposure was inevitable. Nevertheless I did not lose my presence of mind. I tried the only chance I had.

"Doctor," said I, shaking him by the hand, and speaking in an under tone, "silence!—silence at any price—at any price!"

But the schoolmaster either would not or could not understand me; probably the latter, as he was a man of heavy and obtuse intellect. He stared at me for a moment in stupid amazement; then burst out in a tone that was audible from one end of the room to the other:

"What! you here? So I've caught you at last, Master Darkman, have I? Your relations have been half crazy about you. Don't frown at me, you young villain! Ha, ha! gentlemen and ladies, would you believe it? this is one of my boys who ran away, some six or seven months ago, from my school. Well! this is a dies fortunata! His relations have offered all sorts of rewards for his recovery. Excuse me, your lordship, but how, in the name of Scylla and Charybdis, did this boy come here?"

I did not regard the supercilious smiles and broad grins of the faces that surrounded me, all radiant with infernal curiosity and enjoyment of the ridiculous scene. I turned, crushed as I was in soul, with a proud and calm air, towards Rosina. She was laughing—yes, laughing aloud at my hideous discomfiture! As her eyes encountered my look of eternal reproach, she burst into a yet more extravagant fit of laughter.

We were always a fierce and violent race, we of the Darkman family. A man darkened by a fearful crime was its legendary founder. And now all the blackness of Hell seemed concentrated in my heart.

"Dog!—idiot!" I cried savagely, "what is the meaning of this farce—this incomprehensible insolence? Apologize at once, and choose other subjects for your jests in future."

"Oh, indeed!" said the schoolmaster. "Oh, indeed! you call me dog and idiot, do you? Wait till I see your father, or till I get you back to school, and have you flogged as you deserve. Only let me——"

At this moment, the coarse speaker was interrupted in his diatribe by a blow on the head from the pedestal of a massive bronze lamp, which in my fury I had seized and wielded as if it had been a mere bamboo cane. Amid a general cry of horror, the Doctor fell senseless to the ground, and a stream of blood from his fractured skull began to form an ominous pool upon the carpet. I was only restrained from repeating the blow by the united efforts of the bystanders.

Some weeks elapsed. The schoolmaster did not die. He only became a lunatic, which, to a man who was born a fool, was perhaps no great misfortune. I myself was liberated, on the ground of temporary insanity, which my incoherent ravings in the delirium of a fever that had supervened on the last-named events not a little encouraged. Pale, wasted, and broken-spirited, I, some months later, being on a visit to an aunt in London, ventured to knock at Lord Carisbrook's door. My former friend received me, to my amazement, with more than his usual cordiality.

"Are you prepared," said I, "to hear a story which vulgar minds would call incredible?"

"I assure you that I am burning with curiosity to hear the explanation of your mystery."

I told him all—even to my interview with his sister, and her terrible laughter.

"And now," said he, "I will tell you something, since it appears after all that you are a man of an honorable family. Rosina did not join in the brutal laugh at your misfortune. She loved you too well, to take a pleasure in your ridicule."

"Yes; but if you would save Rosina another fit of hysterics, you will leave me and join her in the next room."

In another instant my future bride was in my arms. To real love its object can never be ridiculous. Two years later the marriage of the only son of Sir Lionel Darkman to Lady Rosina Carisbrook was announced in the papers.

And strange to say, the memory of that dream never faded, but remained, as it were, an integral part of my life. When other subjects failed us, it was a constant resource for conversation; and Rosina, smoothing my hair with her white hand, would say, gently smiling, "Now tell me some of your adventures in dream-land."

And when ten years were elapsed, the two memories, of the visioned and the real life, remained strangely distinct; and I perceived that the latter was, indeed, but a continuation of the former. Indeed, Rosina often whispered—what my own vanity would have scarcely ventured to suggest—that I had become at last a greater man even than the man of my vision. Perhaps this flattering fancy was but a dream, like the other. At any rate, I doubt whether I shall ever dream again half so pleasantly!

LET us commence, like a respectable Sphinx as we are, by a riddle. What is humor? Do you give it up? It is the meeting of two opposite ideas from which a third is evolved, as in the concussion of the two flints which blew up Baron Munchausen's bear. Humor is the music of discords, just as poetry is the echo of harmony. The difference between them is, between being tickled, and being caressed or sympathized with. Humor is the point in which pain and pleasure meeting produce a third element, which strangely partakes of the nature of both. It is a sort of voluptuous torture, like being pinched in the arm by a pretty girl. Hence, some humor makes us cry, and some makes us laugh, according to the quantities in which the radical elements are mixed. Less prettiness and harder pinching, or less pinch and more prettiness, is the question. Humor is the identity of contraries, like every thing in Hegel's metaphysics. In fact, humor is so essentially subtle and mysterious a matter that it would seem to be extremely difficult to describe, or, in the language of modest authors who are apt to confound their own stupidity with the universe, indescribable. It is precisely for that reason that we have so minutely described it.

But, in case one description be considered unsatisfactory, we will give the opinions of the seven wisest men we know—the seven wise men of America—on the subject.

"Humor," said Twanky, "is a knife, of which the handle is smooth and the point sharp."

"Humor," said Cranky, "is a sort of red pepper, which burns while it pleases the palate."

"Humor," said Spanky, "is the smile of a coquette, which has a double meaning, like the esoteric and exoteric philosophies."

"Humor," said Zanky, "is a mint julep in which bitter and sweet are so exquisitely blended, that it is impossible to distinguish where one leaves off, or the other begins."

Hobbes, as is well known, attributed laughter, which is the outward development of a humorous idea, to a sense of exulting superiority, and even pleasure in the pain of another. But this crude theory needs no examination. It is evident that in the majority of cases which provoke our laughter, there is no room whatever for such a feeling. Our own line of explanation is far more consistent with facts. The enjoyment of humor is indeed akin to eating a cucumber with vinegar and pepper, or an acidulous fruit-pie with sugar. Contrast, and contrast only, is the radical element of humor.

The poet delights in resemblances, the humorist in discrepancies. Humor is poetry topsy turvy.

Not long since, some droll fellow, to whom pen and ink were unluckily accessible, deliberately asserted that poetry was a disease—like scrofula.

Now, so far from this being the case, poetry is the acme of health. It is the overflow of moral and corporeal redundancy of strength. All great poets have been men remarkable for their physical beauty and perfection. For example, Shakspeare, Goethe, Dante, Petrarch, Milton, Byron, (who swam the Hellespont, notwithstanding his defect in the foot,) Lamartine, Tennyson, etc. Where will you find such a collection of faces and forms as these? Each of them have, in their own time and country, been celebrated for their majestic stature, or personal beauty.

On the other hand, we have our doubts about humor. We suspect that, uncombined with poetry, of which it is the engine reversed, whence all poets are humorists, though all humorists are certainly not poets, it is at least a mental malady. We fear that your regular humorists are mostly queer-looking fellows, apt to be dwarfish and wrinkled, with sharp noses, and a diabolical sort of grin, with small piercing eyes, and thin wicked mouths. We know many of this stamp, and, notwithstanding our own sacred character as philosopher and poet, cannot help feeling an odd creeping of the flesh in their presence. We draw our prophet's mantle uncomfortably tight about us, and catch ourselves calculating the chances of their hitting the well-known holes in our garment with the arrows of their unscrupulous sarcasm. An unreversible, that is, an unpoetical humorist is an imperfect creature, a sort of madman or devil-possessed demoniac.

We never felt ourselves a match for one of these human goblins. Their incessant sharp-shooting, their shower of insignificant hits, and adroit turns and paradoxes, is quite dazzling and confusing. A man, whose mind is cast in the mould of reason and love of truth, will ever be "bothered" in a contest with such antagonists. The true healthful man is afraid of his own strength; he cannot return the little rattle of taps and flips, from fear of striking one blow that may be mortal—at least to the temper of his opponent. Habitual banterers are terribly sensitive in their own persons.

Humor, then, is, in the abstract, to poetry and art, what fungi, weeds and wild berries are to the oaks of the forest, and the fruits of the orchard, and the flowers of the pleasure garden. Every land has its own weeds, fungi, and wild berries, and every nation its own peculiar humor. It is our wish to describe the special character of humor belonging to a few of the more important nationalities. For the present, lest our task should prove endless, like the Indian serpent which encircles the universe, we will confine ourselves to England, France, Germany, and America, the living representatives of progress. They will furnish us with ample stuff for analytical comparison. So, as when in Southey's "Devil's Walk," the Czar of all the hells exclaims:

we, not being desirous of imitating the devil's example, will take care in tossing that tails shall turn up, and, accordingly, as the spectral army of Napoleon cried in the song, "France is our watchword."

We will begin with the humor of France, of beautiful France, the land of Rabelais and Molière, of Rochefoucauld and Talleyrand, of Paul de Kock and the Charivari. How the old jests and repartees rise up before us, at the thought, like the grinning skulls of departed boon companions—the Yoricks of our youthful days of frolic! We are in Paris; we jostle brother dandies on the gay, crowded, dusty Boulevards; we lounge in cafés whose walls are mirrors of interminable reflection, on sofas of everlasting red velvet; we sip eternal coffee from white cups, on infinite marble tables; and newspapers without end, affixed to inevitable mahogany sticks, are spread before us by garçons in white jackets, numerous as the poet's

whose devotion to our individual happiness, so far as the resources of Parisian cafés go, appears to be of a most perennial and inexhaustible nature.

Once more we walk the arcades of the lively, glittering Palais Royal—Palais National, we mean, if any thing be now national in France, save humor; we pause and stare into the curiosity shop, where there is the dear old fan, made of hummingbirds' feathers, as some think, others say floss silk; and the candelabra man, who stands on his brazen head, like the Colossus of Rhodes upside down, with a socket for a candle in each of his brazen legs, thus illustrating the fable of the hungry man, hollow to his heels, of our youthful reminiscences. There, too, is the marble bust of nobody in particular, standing on the Chinese cabinet that never came from China, and a small army of little bronze men and women, who may think themselves lucky that they are not flesh and blood instead of bronze, so uncomfortable is their general style of attitude. And there, also, is the set of Indian chessmen, with real elephants and castles, and small warriors for pawns, looking altogether much too expensive for anybody but an emperor to play with. We pass over the old china, with brick-dust colored roses, and the sticks with the heads of griffins, and other terrible and fabulous animals, ready to bite your hand the moment you attempt to lay hold of them. Yes, we pass over those and many other remarkable things, and we make our way across the Place du Carrousel, where there is a bude light, and an arch, stuck up out of sheer extravagance, and precisely because it is not wanted, a most useless and fine-gentlemanly structure! We cross the bridge of the "Arts," or of the "sacred fathers," it matters not to us, and we find ourselves in the Quai Voltaire, opposite the old Hôtel Voltaire, which faces the Tuileries, and devours the substance of foreigners with carpet-bags, who, mayhap, deluded by its chipped and unpainted aspect, have walked into it in search of economy, like a mouse seeking luxurious living in a mouse-trap. We cannot help it—we know it is a weakness, but we cannot help looking up at those windows on the first floor, erst the dwelling of that lovely and most gracious young baroness, whose only fault was that she had run away from a monster of a husband, and somehow, for want of papers of some kind, could not make it quite all right with the police, notwithstanding the devotion of the ugly femme de chambre who perjured herself black in the face—she was very brown to begin with—as her mistress pathetically assured us.

We painted the portrait of that lovely young baroness, at least we engaged to paint it; but it all ended in three-cornered notes, which a friend of ours, the leader of a new socialist school, assured us was a proof of her liberality in politics, as the triangle is the symbol of equality in what may be called modern political heraldry.

The fact was, that when the charming young baroness discovered that we were not professionally portrait painters, she set us down as rich milords in mufti, and rather astonished our strong minds by a broad hint at ten thousand francs a year, and a carriage. Such are the surprises young philosophers of adventurous temperaments are apt to encounter at Paris!

We turn from the old hotel and its romantic reminiscences to the long line of book-stalls, or rather book-boxes, arranged for nearly half a mile in unbroken line along the parapet of the terrace overhanging the Seine. An old man in a pale-blue frock, with dark-blue patches, and a queer cap, watches us intently. Perhaps he merely regards us as a possible customer; perhaps he sees something wild or Eugene Aramish in our looks. We take up a volume of Gavarni's caricatures—a startling reminder that we are not writing reminiscences of Paris, but a treatise on National Humor. We return to our muttons, or rather our muttons return to us. Dreams! vanish!

Let us try, Gavarni-like, to put a few bold touches into our cartoon. Let us say that French humor is preëminently the humor of the passions and feelings; that English humor is that of the interests and of social relations, the German of the abstract philosophical and political idea, the Italian of the artistic sentiment, the Spanish of the grotesque and the fanciful, Arabian of the moral, and American of the purely and essentially comical intention. Having said all this, let us admit that the distinctions are but rude, reckless generalizations, implying a predominating, but by no means an absorbing element.

And now for a few examples of French humor. If many of our illustrations be old or familiar, let us at least care that they be good of their kind. It is a poor joke that will not bear repetition, and the newspapers of all nations take care that the axiom shall not fall into disuse. We have known even originations of this poor brain of ours go the rounds of the English and American papers in a way that amazed us. Assuredly the man who invents a droll story or says a smart thing, needs be in no fear of wanting readers in this journalizing world, where even a novel platitude is pounced on with such vulture-like alacrity. The consumption of fun is greater than the production. The people demand it as a necessity of their natures, and the will of the people should be respected.

"Make way for the representatives of the people," said somebody at the commencement of the late French Revolution, as Lamartine and his colleagues were proceeding to the Hôtel de Ville.

"Make way for the people themselves!" retorted a body of the insurgents they encountered.

This reminds us of Lamartine's famous reply to the demand for his head, raised by some of the most violent during one of his harangues.

"I wish you had the head of Lamartine," replied the poet smiling; "you would be more patient and less bloodthirsty."

Talking of the poet-statesman reminds us, by antithesis, of Prince Talleyrand, who certainly was any thing but a poet, though he would make a very good hero of a poem for any one witty enough to treat such a subject. Talleyrand is one of those men whose fame as a wit and a humorist is not to be disputed. Such names have this remarkable peculiarity, they become in a manner bonded warehouses or pounds for stray witticisms and anecdotes of unknown origin, to which they lend a certain aureole or halo. Just as the fifth book of Moses is popularly attributed to that author, whose death takes place in the course of the narrative, so are countless jokes, good, bad, and indifferent, remorselessly fathered upon Talleyrand, Theodore Hook, Lord Byron, Beau Brummel, and a few other piquant celebrities, perhaps as a sort of reparation for the numberless examples of their really genuine "good things" which have passed away unrecorded with the occasions that gave rise to them.

Talleyrand's bons mots were infinite. We wish our memory were not the sinking fund it is, or we would give a few of them. One story, however, we do recollect, and that one is eminently characteristic of the habitually cunning and sarcastic diplomatist.

A lady was extremely desirous of possessing Talleyrand's autograph. As if to prevent the possibility of an improper use being made of his signature, the astute minister wrote his name at the top and close to the edge of the blank sheet of paper which was presented to him.

Washington Irving attributes to Goldsmith the saying commonly given to Talleyrand, that the use of language is to disguise thought. The real fact is that it is one of Rochefoucauld's maxims; and talking of Rochefoucauld we cannot, however well known may be the mot, pass over his name without mention of his most bitter and perhaps most brilliant stroke of humor. It is a jest which only a ducal cynic, a fine gentleman of the old school, or a professed satirist, could possibly have uttered.

The French Seigneur has not lacked disciples. His opinion has been adopted by a large school of eminent suicides. Laman Blanchard the wit, Haydon the artist, and many others who did not see the necessity of living—in other words, who made up their accounts summarily—found, as Byron has it,

It may be said that Rochefoucauld's philosophical sarcasm had nothing to do with these events; that the suicides in question would have occurred had the repartee never been uttered. Possibly; yet it is well said that the last hair breaks down the camel. To a hesitating resolution the last hair is often a jest. Who knows how often Rochefoucauld may have broken the back of a suicide's lingering love of life by his pitiless maxim?

We remember ourselves a solemn incident which occurred some years ago, and which tends to confirm the above position. It is not humorous, nevertheless we will take the liberty to interpolate it. It cannot be quite uninteresting, for it is a fact.

One evening we were introduced, at the studio of Thomas Woolner, the English sculptor and poet, the friend of Tennyson and Carlyle, the plastic chief of the Pre-Raphaelite school, the delicate poet and generous friend—now one of a party of literary and artistic adventurers in the gold diggings of Australia—we were, we repeat, introduced at Woolner's studio to a tall, thin, pale, deep-eyed man, named Ashford. He was the sculptor's inseparable companion, and had been named the "philosopher" on account of the peculiar bent of his studies, which chiefly turned on chemistry and natural science. We observed that the "philosopher" regarded us with peculiar interest, and that he appeared particularly eager to lead the conversation to the topics which were supposed to be the special object of our labors. Soon we were involved in a deep and still deepening discussion of the mysteries of life and of the destinies of the soul. Our arguments in favor of the indestructible and eternal nature of the individual spiritual essence were listened to by Ashford with marked attention. His objections were feeble, and as it were spasmodic. He seemed to feel a strange pleasure in allowing himself to be carried away by our enthusiasm for "progressive immortality." Yet, after all, he parted from us without any apparent care for improving the acquaintance.

When next we visited our friend the sculptor, he welcomed us with a grave and sad expression. "Have you heard," said he, "that Ashford has poisoned himself?"

"Poisoned himself!" we exclaimed; and the tenor of our conversation, with our own remarks on the nothingness of death, flashed strongly across our memory.

"Yes; with prussic acid. He had, it appeared, long contemplated the act. What decided him I know not. He had a small independence, just enough to keep him from want, and yet deny him the enjoyments of life. His finely sensual and intellectual nature could not endure this barrenness of existence. Life was too bleak a prospect, and he despaired. So he thought it wisest to die."

We may be mistaken, but we have often fancied that but for our meeting Ashford might yet have lived.

Death is a serious thing when before our eyes; but it is strange how distance alters our appreciation of even the most horrible incidents. Let us take from Balzac, the prince of French novelists, an example of this anomaly:

In the Père Goriot (the King Lear of modern life) two students are arguing the question of conscience. One of them maintains, in opposition to his friend, that interest is the only real motive, and that the dread of the reaction of crime upon ourselves is the only source of moral scruples. "For example," he says, "suppose that you possessed at this moment the power to destroy by a mere act of will a mandarin dwelling in the centre of China, and that no connection between the two events could ever possibly be traced, and that by this operation you could become suddenly a millionaire; would the mandarin's life be fairly insurable?"

"Egad! I am at my five-and-thirtieth mandarin already!" replies the second student ingenuously.

But Rabelais, even when dying, would seem to have kept death at a distance from his fancy, for he is related to have said, "Bring me my domino—Beati sunt qui in Domino moriuntur!"

Our theory of contrasts is here fully carried out. At the great exhibition of paintings at Paris in 1851 we recall another fine instance of this quality in humor.

There was a large picture exhibited, in which some god, angel, or genius of something or other, was driving with outspread wings a chariot and eight fiery horses.

"Superfluous outlay!" exclaimed Cham, the great French caricaturist; "why keep a carriage when you have wings?"

Cham is the most popular artist of the Charivari, the best and most popular comic journal in the world. It is written by three men only, though it appears daily. Their names are Taxile Delord, Louis Huart, and Clément Caraguel. They all write very much in the same style, though perhaps Delord is the most brilliant writer. But their humor is inexhaustible, and on the whole vastly superior to the coarse and heavy buffoonery of Punch, rather impudently called the London Charivari.

But the true Charivari is free from the cant of its English imitator. Keen as is its satire, it is not the less severe that it is clothed in playful language and fanciful images. Punch is a mere snob (one of themselves) or a henpecked old Mr. Caudle, by the side of the Charivari. It is in their illustrations alone that any comparison is possible.

The way in which week after week, a year or two ago, Louis Napoleon was ridiculed under the disguise of reports concerning the Emperor Soulouque, whilst the republican party was symbolized by the character of Cacambo, from Voltaire's Candide, was indeed a splendid example of triumphant satire. Yet perhaps, after all, the Charivari is greatest in its adversity. At this present moment, when the press of France is gagged in every way, when the bayonet is at its editors' throats, the Charivari still manages, under the most ingenious disguises, and with ever-changing metaphors, to pour forth daily a stream of contempt and ridicule of every act of an all-powerful government, and is at the hour we now write the only surviving republican journal in France! Why M. Napoleon has not had the witty triumvirate shot, we cannot understand. Perhaps he affects to despise their satire. But what politician, that can read the future, does not see that ere long his overthrow and ruin must furnish matter for an article and a caricature in the two next mornings' Charivari!

If we turn now to the humor displayed in French literature of a more permanent order, we find in Molière, in Voltaire, and in Le Sage the same epigrammatic style of description and analysis. We compare their neat, pungent hits, that go straight to the mark as the ball of a practised rifleman, with the elaborate facetiousness of the English, or the complicate and many-idea-made-up-of drollery of German writers, and we unhesitatingly give France the pas. The French are the best stylists in the world. And why? Because it was in France that language first became a science, and authorship an art, since Greece and Rome had fallen, and with them the results of their civilization. Possibly the best writers of English prose have formed themselves on a French model. And what was the model of the French writers? Strange to say, infidels as they were, it was the Bible. It is in the works of Orientals who flourished thousands of years ago, who wrote perchance whilst Rome was yet a wilderness, and Athens a petty sea-port, that the simple and concise forms of speech are to be found which in "Candide," or in "The Devil on Two Sticks," delight us by their terse clearness and delightful simplicity. Extremes meet; the rudest and the most polished speech is found to be the same. Voltaire's Zadig, Le Sage's Gil Blas will be read after many Monte Christos and Mysteries of Paris have gone to the tombs of oblivion.

If the mantles of these great humorists have fallen on any modern Frenchman, it was on the late lamented Henri de Balzac, whose collected tales, under the title of the Comedy of Human Life, form a panorama of French manners and ideas and of human character such as but one other writer has yet presented, and that one is Shakspeare.

The works of Balzac are a series of curious studies, of a marvellous fidelity in the artistic execution, and an exquisite distinctness in the creative conception. His humor is free, abundant, and varied. Yet he throws around every subject a peculiarly poetical charm. In one of his works (The Great Man of the Province at Paris) he describes the struggles of a young poet in adversity. One chapter of this work opens with a most enthusiastic invocation of a great philanthropist, a friend of the unfortunate, and a patron of letters—in a word, Fricoteau! And who do you think Fricoteau was? He was the proprietor of a cheap restaurant. There did many students and eke poets and rising Balzacs, (destroyers of countless mandarins, not to mention tailors,) with slender purses and large appetites, dine royally for a franc. "But in truth," pursues our author, (we only quote from memory,) "taking the abundance of horses and the vast yet surviving amount of cats into consideration, it was possible to conceive that this great philanthropist might not only have escaped loss, but even realized some small profit on his viands, but for one recklessly adopted principle of his establishment, which sooner or later must have insured the ruin and downfall of Fricoteau and all his noble philanthropy. In large letters in his window was announced, and the announcement was no trick of trade, but a solemn truth, Pain à discrétion—bread at discretion! That is to say, without discretion, beyond all discretion. What discretion, in the name of youth and hunger and poverty, could any human being expect from the people who dined at Fricoteau's!"

On this last flash of Balzackian humor, feeling that we cannot stop all our lives in France, or fill all our space with French matter, we take one bound into Germany. We are at Berlin—though we might almost fancy ourselves still at Fricoteau's.

Close to the Linden, the Broadway of Berlin, (or rather three Broadways abreast,) stands or stood the Catholic church, and behind the Catholic church, which occupies the centre of a square, is, or was ten years ago, when we were students of eighteen, with less beard and more good humor, the Café de Prusse, popularly spoken of as "Ostermann's."

Nobody ever insulted Ostermann by calling him a philanthropist. He would have scorned the idea. He was a big, bald-headed, vulture-eyed old miser. He had grown rich, and while we were at Berlin had his locale fresh painted, an infallible sign of prosperity in an eating-house. It betokens superfluous capital.

Ostermann's customers were nearly all students. The University building was within a few minutes' walk, just across the Linden, and they came straight to Ostermann's from the lecture-rooms. It was very convenient. The more aristocratic Café de Belvidere was still nearer, and many went there, especially the fast men, and young "somebodies." But Ostermann's was cheaper and more popular. Most of its patrons subscribed by the month. For three dollars American they received thirty tickets, each of which represented a somewhat larger sum on the bill of fare than its actual cost, as a premium to subscribers. The tickets were like bank notes, payable in dinners, and might be used at any time, transferred, sold, or lent to any body with an appetite. We ourselves accidentally carried away a few of these tickets from Berlin in our pocket-book, and having, nearly a year afterwards, forwarded them by post to a friend, had the satisfaction of hearing that they were duly honored. Such was the system of dining at Ostermann's.

What made us think of all this in connection with Fricoteau's was a circumstance that occurred to us at this very establishment. We have said that Ostermann was not a philanthropist. Nevertheless, like Fricoteau, he gave "bread at discretion." It was the custom of the country, and the bread was only rye bread after all. One or two cents' worth of bread was decidedly the very utmost any man could possibly eat at a sitting. We remember making this calculation at the time. Thereupon, however, turned the incident we have to relate.

It appeared that a poor student was in the habit of dining at Ostermann's on the very economical plan of ordering a basin of soup, the charge for which was some three cents, and consuming a most disproportionate amount of the great "staff of life."

This, the miserly old restaurateur was not slow in observing, and it so chanced that we were dining in the Café de Prusse precisely at the hour when his indignation, at what he considered a downright swindle and imposture, had fairly boiled over. We overheard him say to the waiter: "I tell you, Hans, it is a rascally fraud! Day after day he comes here as cool as an iceberg, and eats an Erbsen-Suppe, or a Kartoffeln Salad, or a——yes, there he is now, eating a Pflaumen-Suppe. Donner Wetter! Potz tausand mal!"

And there indeed he was, a tall, somewhat thin young man, with a very long, light moustache, pointed beard, and fine curling hair. His dress was good, his linen irreproachable, his countenance grave and intelligent. Even as I looked at him, he calmly broke off about a quarter of a yard of the literally staff-like loaf which lay along the centre of the table, and proceeded to sop some portions of it in the plum soup (simply plums stewed with sugar) to which old Ostermann had so savagely alluded.

This was too much for the latter. He bustled up to the table, and said in a bullying tone, "You had better dine somewhere else in future. You——"

We know not what else the old fellow might have said, for the student, who, like ourselves, had overheard the colloquy with the waiter, arose, and with the most sublime self-possession, dashed the whole mess of stewed plums in the face of his assailant, and exclaimed aloud in a tone of comic indignation:

At that moment we regarded the student as a sort of hero. His courage, in boldly facing the shameful exposure of his poverty, appeared to us most admirable. We shouted an enthusiastic "Bravo!" whilst, amid a general and threatening murmur of disapproval, the restaurateur shrunk away, wiping his face with a napkin.

At this moment a friend of ours entered, and after saluting us, shook hands warmly with the hero of the soup adventure, who turned out to be a very curious character. He was a sort of German Mark Tapley in a higher walk of life, and certainly deserved some credit for being "jolly" under circumstances of a remarkably discouraging nature. Not only had he to maintain himself whilst studying at the University, but his mother and sister were also dependent on his exertions. However, he was a man of decided energy, and what with lessons and a few odd literary jobs, including an occasional inaugural treatise in Latin for some wealthier, lazier, and stupider student, he managed to make both ends—not meet—that was hopeless, but come near enough, at any rate, to be bridged over by debts, privations, and endurance. We became very intimate, and his inexhaustible humor was a source of continual amusement.

One evening, another student, named L—— was complaining that he had been cheated at play by some Polish swindlers, and that one of them had had the impudence to dun him for a sum of twenty dollars which he pretended to have won.

"Well," said the humorist G——, "as you are rich, L——, you may as well pay him; but there can be no harm in getting the money changed into farthings; or stay, as he might change them again, suppose you put the notes between two brick-bats, and pack them loosely; or still better, send them by post, wrapped up in a few sheets of pappendeckel, (pasteboard,) so that the postage may not be much over the amount inclosed."

Another time G——, after a long conversation on animal magnetism, and its kindred sciences, galvanism, electricity, &c., gravely informed us that he had solved the great problem, and would immediately share with us the secret, of how to raise the dead.

"The secret is simple," said G——, without moving a muscle: "Carry them up stairs."

G—— went with us to hear Liszt, the great pianist, who was creating at that time an immense sensation at Berlin. In the course of the concert G—— suddenly whispered to us, "Did you observe?"

It required all our power of self-restraint to avoid an explosion, which might have caused us, in the then state of enthusiasm for the great musician, to have been summarily ejected from the concert-room, if not thrown out of window incontinently.

G—— had a peculiar faculty for hoaxing. He had a dexterous way of exciting expectation without a suspicion of the coming absurdity. We remember once at a supper table, his suddenly starting, slapping his forehead, and exclaiming that he had hit upon a plan by which any one could make a large income without labor or capital.

"In the first place, steal fifty thousand dollars," began the solemn humorist.

The last time we saw G—— was in London. A number of Punch was on the table, praising the Prince de Joinville for his exertions in saving the passengers from the wreck of the Amazon, and concluding by saying that he was worthy of being a true son of John Bull for his heroism.

"I suppose," said G——, "that Joinville will change his name to John Veal in consequence."

The Germans are very fond of serenading, and this passion was at one time carried to such an excess in Göttingen, that all singing at night, except in parties of four, was forbidden by the municipal and university authorities. One night an unlucky student was caught bellowing out a most uproarious stave, and was accordingly arrested by the watchman.

"Off, fellow!" said the unmelodious Bacchanal; "can you not hear that I have a quartetto voice?"

Goethe, in his tragedy Goetz of Verlichingen, resolved to attack the pseudo-refinement of the day, introduced in the scene where Goetz is summoned to surrender his castle a very coarse popular expression of contempt, which was, however, expunged from later editions.

The Duke of Weimar, walking with the poet, who was also his minister, in the streets of Frankfort, heard a carman make use of the identical expression.

"Do you hear that man quoting you?" said the Duke; "what a thing it is to be a great poet!"

But Goethe, the writer, as Emerson calls him, was, indeed, a humorist of the first order. The scene between Mephistopheles and Martha is without a rival out of Shakspeare. We shall never forget Seidelmann's acting as Mephistopheles.

Next to Goethe's Faust, Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl, the man without a shadow, appears to us the most strikingly humorous work in the German language.

"I was travelling in the arctic regions, and my shadow froze to an iceberg," is one of the extraordinary excuses which Peter Schlemihl makes for his unfortunate peculiarity. "A rich man arrived, a bankrupt with a very pale shadow," again says Chamisso. This single passage proves that by the shadow he typified a man's reputation. The German critics, however, wrote and disputed much on the subject, and Chamisso was beset by entreaties to explain his allegory. In reply, the poet was in the habit of sending an exact scientific definition of a shadow from the Encyclopedia.

Heine, the German, Jew, poet, and satirist, much resembles D'Israeli in the character of his mind. He is the prince of exaggerators. In one of his poems he speaks most enthusiastically of a great patron who had fed and clothed and assisted him in every way most munificently and generously. "It is a pity," adds Heine, "that I cannot embrace him, for I myself am this excellent man."

We will quote one of his shorter poems, as we happen to have a translation "all ready cut and dried," as the saying goes:

AGNES.

"I took a reed and wrote upon the sand,
'Agnes, I love thee;'
But the wicked waves came rolling
Over the sweet confession,
And blotted it out!

"Fragile reed! changeable sand!
Rolling waves! I trust ye no more,
But, with mighty hand, from Norway's forests,
I tear the loftiest pine,
And dip it in the boiling crater of Mount Etna,
And, with this flame-dripping giant pen,
I write upon the azure vault of heaven,
'Agnes, I love thee!' "

There is nothing more extravagant than this, even in Hoffmann or Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, the two subtlest humorists and most fantastic writers in the world. These are the men on whose writings we should love to dilate. But it would be impossible to give the slightest idea of their style in an article like the present. Ludwig Tieck is also very felicitous as a humorist, and Wilhelm Hauff much resembles Dickens in style, being quite an exception to the general love of his countrymen for complicated phraseology and fantastic abstruseness.

If brevity be the soul of wit, the Germans are certainly the least witty nation of the earth. Even the French are apt to be somewhat wordy in their humor. Your Englishman is the true joker, the real man for fun. But here let us pause for a while in our illustrations.

It here becomes necessary to fix our meaning accurately, and to draw certain distinctions.

Now, despite the opinions of divers learned pundits and punsters, we hold the opinion that wit and humor are at bottom the same thing, and that to say where the one leaves off and the other begins is a vain and useless distinction.

If any thing, wit may be said to be the acme of humor, the point of the sword of which humor is the edge. Humor is more pleasant to the mind than wit, because it is more in harmony with the ordinary level of the thought, whilst wit requires a certain amount of exertion in order to appreciate its points.

Strolling or lounging in the shade of trees upon the green grass, we are disposed to be humorous. After a champagne supper, in the excitement of a select party of good fellows, the inclination to wit is apt to develop itself. Humor is a steady flame, wit an explosive fire-work. Humor is a convenient garment, wit a useful weapon. That which is but humor as long as we keep it to ourselves, may become wit if thrown at the head of another person. Humor is the reed as it naturally grows; wit the arrow into which it is manufactured. Humorists are loveable, wits formidable. It is quite possible to be a tolerable wit with very little humor, because it is the application, not the raw material, that differs in the two commodities. On the other hand, a very fine humorist may indulge very rarely in wit, from a natural benevolence and evenness of disposition.

It is not every body who could so far conquer the natural respect for another man's feelings as to say with Wilkes, when Lord Thurlow exclaimed: "If I desert my king, may God desert me!" "No, he'll see you d——d first."

We need scarcely allude to a well-known replique of Douglas Jerrold, on meeting a great bore, who asked him which way he was going. "Going on," replied Jerrold, suiting the action to the word.

A London writer named Reach, it seems, pronounces his name as two syllables, thus: Re-ack. Dining at Thackeray's one day, the author of Vanity Fair addressed him innocently as Reach.

"Re-ack, if you please," said the young author, ("it made him sick," he said, "to be called Reach.")

After a little time, Thackeray again addressed his guest: "May I assist you to a pe-ack, Mr. Re-ack?"

Some people would have hesitated at such a personality, and might nevertheless have been greater humorists than Mr. Thackery, great though he be.

All hail, dark London! smoky Babylon! vast and mysterious city, in which a traveller may wander for years and yet find new regions to explore, new phases of human misery or folly to study. It was in London we made our first professional joke, first learned that the faculty of striking a balance between two contrasts was a marketable property.

"Sir," said the publisher of the "Illustrated Mercury," "we can only offer you three shillings sterling (six American) per dozen for jokes, and five shillings per dozen for illustrated comicalities."

Truly, since the store-rooms of our mind have been so tightly packed with metaphysics, political economy, (the dismal science of Carlyle,) cranks, levers, geological coal systems, ichthyosauri, rules of perspective, electrical, galvanic, and magnetic phenomena, moral regenerations of mankind, canons of art, historical reveries, and we know not what other chaotic minglings of heterogeneous "ideation," we (poor devils of students that we are!) should laugh somewhat loudly at so practical a proposition.

O editor of a defunct Illustrated Mercury, long buried in the intramural graveyard of Anglo-metropolitan oblivion! Couldst thou and thy paper—for the two go together in our fancies, for ever inseparable—rise from the dead, and offer not three English shillings, but three Athenian talents of gold—not far from three thousand dollars as times go—for the same quantity of jokes, (attic, at least, if written in the traditional garret,) as thou didst so tersely phrase it, we, poor as we are in dollars, greedy as we are of gold, the talisman of power, should nevertheless be reduced to a most humiliating confession. Ichabod, Ichabod! the glory is departed! It seems to us almost incredible that we ever could have possessed the faculty of making jokes by the dozen!

Yet, but ten years ago, to the elasticity of brain of eighteen years, this mercurial proposition was a sort of compact pocket Eldorado. We had no fear of exhausting the "diggins." To knock words about like nine-pins or billiard balls was a mere relaxation from heavier toils. Somehow the ideas went with the words, or got jammed between them by accident. It was quite a relief to make a dozen conundrums and say, "There! there's three shillings at any rate!" in the intervals between composing two chapters of the "engrossing romance of supernatural and appalling interest," which the advertisements announced, and of which we were, of course, the pitiless manufacturers.

What a place is England for comic periodicals! After the Illustrated Mercury had, as the penny-a-liners say, "relapsed into that obscurity from which it ought never to have emerged," we ourselves started half a dozen at moderate intervals, and were connected as contributors with nearly half a dozen more.

Oh, the humor of those humorous journals! We do not mean the published or exoteric, but the private or esoteric humor. The writings were indeed mere jokes compared to the lives of the young literary adventurers who edited them! And where are they now? Scattered abroad to the four winds of heaven. Some dig gold in Australian mines, some in Paris sustain a wild existence by irregular contributions to more regular periodicals, some ply pen and pencil in the great republic, (sole land of earth to whom poet and ploughman, patriot and pauper, are alike welcome,) whilst others are at length reluctantly admitted into that older clique, of which Punch is at once the organ and the support—Punch, the survivor!

Yes, Punch has survived all its rivals. Its publishers, strong in their wealth, have succeeded in scattering at length the army of the opposition. Punch stands alone—the representative of modern British humor. Its writers have grown rich and dull. Its tone has become respectable and tame. It repeats itself over and over again. It harps upon single strings, till the string is worn out by mere friction. As each new number comes out, people say, "How stupid Punch is this week!" The writers have worn themselves out.

The writers have worn themselves out? How so? Why, then, have not the writers of the Charivari worn themselves out? Why did not the writers of the Spectator wear themselves out?

Because the latter were and are superior men—men of imagination. There is no poetry in Punch. They cannot reverse their engine—the stokers of the Punch Locomotive. The writers, with scarcely a partial exception, are men of critical, not of creative, minds. Hence they are superficial by necessity. They make the most of what they see and hear, but they never penetrate into the future. They are not really progressive. They evidently take up the newspapers, and make jokes (and very bad ones of late) over their paragraphs.

Why, then, does Punch continue to exist? Because there is one man of genius connected with it, and that man is JOHN LEECH the artist. He is a real humorist, not a dry caricaturist, like his colleagues the writers. There is as much exquisite beauty in some of his female faces, as there is drollery in his exaggerated social absurdities. He is the man of Punch. Were he to die, Punch would gradually sink into obscurity and non-existence.

The reader will perhaps be surprised when we assert that the writing in several of the rivals to Punch that were started, was vastly superior in every way to that of Punch. The cause of their failure was not want of talent, but want of purpose. They took no hold on the sympathies of their readers, they appealed to no class of minds or men. They were taken up like toys, and thrown down again. They were toys, and the prettiest toys tire. There was only one English writer who knew what was the real element of success, and his best attempt was crushed by the exertions of the Punch publishers with the book-trade. His engravers were bribed to be behind time, his posting bills were destroyed instead of being distributed, and deliberately false statements as to the non-appearance of his paper were made by wholesale houses in the pay of Messrs. Bradbury & Evans.

Punch, to a certain extent, is consistent. It represents the London shop-keeper, and at the same time the moderate aristocrat. Its satire of classes is feeble, its attacks on individuals unscrupulous. Twice Punch was beaten in the open field. Once by Silk Buckingham, the great traveller, who demonstrated in a pamphlet that the cause of the malignant attacks made upon the British and Foreign Institute, was the fact that Mr. Douglas Jerrold, one of the chief writers in Punch, had been struck off the list of members as a defaulter. Once by Alfred Bunn, the theatrical lessee, who brought out an exact parody on Punch, in which he literally lashed them into silence. They had attacked him with pitiless personality, and done their best to ruin him, by continual repetitions of the attack. He turned round upon them at last, and exposed their obscure origin, the degrading pursuits in which they had been engaged, and the bankruptcies, &c., through which they had gone. He might have said to them, in the words of Julia's maid to Don Alphonso, in Byron's great humorous poem:

The defeat was as utter as that of the young Life-Guardsman, who at a London party satirically asked a poet who wore a moustache, "to what service he belonged."*

[*It is a part of the English bible of prejudices, that none but a military man in a horse regiment has a right to wear hair on his upper lip.]

"To the great army of martyrs," replied the poet with a yawn, languidly removing himself from the bore's vicinity.

The same humorist being asked whether he was for a monarchy or a republic, replied, "That depends on whether I am to be king in the monarchy; otherwise I would rather take my chance of being chosen president of the republic."

It is related that Macaulay once, entering the House of Commons, pointed to Benjamin D'Israeli, and said to a friend, "There sits Young England, represented by a middle-aged Jew."

What D'Israeli would have retorted had he heard the sarcasm is hard to conjecture, but we are impressed with the idea that Macaulay would scarcely have had the best of it. D'Israeli is a very caustic and penetrating satirist, and in his "Vivian Grey" and "Contarini Fleming," the humor is of a very high order. England boasts, at the present day, a very respectable array of humorists. There is Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, who succeeds, to our taste, better in the comic than in any other line. There is Charles Dickens, there is Thackeray, there is George Borrow, the author of "Lavengro;" there is Kinglake, the author of "Eöthen;" there is Bon Gaultier, otherwise Martin, the poet, and inimitable translator of Goethe's poems; there is William North, author of "Anti-Coningsby," and the "City of the Jugglers;" there is James Hannay, the author of "Fontenoy," and of "Biscuits and Grog," the naval satirist of Punch. There are many more, whose books are, in the English phrase, more or less "at all the libraries." Nor must we forget the brilliant author of the "Revelations of Russia," "Sixty Years Hence," and "The White Slave."

Let us see what America can array against these, or rather what she can add to them; for the republic of letters, at any rate, includes both nations.

Washington Irving still lives, a host in himself. There is Lowell, the author of the Biglow Papers, and the "Fable for Critics," the best poetical satire since "English Bards." There is Herman Melville, there is Harry Franco, otherwise Tom Pepper—the C. F. Briggs of private life. There is Whittier, there is Nathaniel Hawthorne, there is Shelton, there is Ik Marvel, or Donald Mitchell. There are many more whose names we need not recall to the reader; though not to mention "Sam Slick" would be truly a sad omission, so, Canadian though he be, Judge Halliburton shall have his place in our catalogue, as his fun has its place in our memory.

The Americans are a great nation, and the first sign of their greatness is, that they have originated a new style of humor. We shall not quote examples, because those we should select would probably be familiar to most of our readers. We will merely observe, that as America is a nation of nations, a grand composite order of human architecture, a sort of Yorkshire pie, which, from the combination of every thing, produces the one thing desirable, so American humor is the combination of the humor of all other nations, with a new element of its own; and that element is vastness. It is a great, an extravagant, a towering humor. It goes up in a balloon to tie its own cravat, it is so tall; so deep is it, that many men die in looking to its bottom, one looking till he drops down dead, and the next goes on where the last leaves off. It is a humor that will some day make fun of all the rest of the world. It is already a terrifically long boy. Before long it will be a formidable Titan.

And now we look back upon our labor, and we perceive that, after all we have by no means realized the idea with which we started. Let us hope that the reader's acuteness has drawn the conclusions which we have failed to point out, and his imagination bridged over the chasms which we have failed to fill up. But we feel ourselves so incompetent honestly to excuse the fragmentary nature of our work, that we can only fall back upon a parable.

"It was a vast, flat, cylindrical, amber-tinted, sharp-flavored cheese. The countryman, a true clod-hopper, who had brought the parcel to the hall, gazed despairingly on the comparatively small effect his efforts had produced on its vastness, as the master of the house entered.

" 'Why, Roger, what a long time you take to make a meal!' said the master impatiently.

" 'Ah, zur,' said the rustic, 'it's an a'mighty lot of cheese to get through with only one pot of beer and a half quartern loaf!' "

Evidently the man labored under a singular hallucination with regard to the necessity of finishing the monster cheese before him "right away," as a point of sacred obligation. Nature, however, was stronger than principle. Chucks the boatswain said, when he tumbled up on deck without breeches, "Duty before decency." But though the world seems constantly to be expecting it, we really cannot, as earnest anecdotosophers, having a "mission to fulfil," seriously regard it as any man's duty to perform an impossibility.

Now, our own case is precisely analogous to the rustic's. Our subject is the cheese, and we sit before its mountainous mass with an awful sense of responsibility. We feel that in the abstract we are bound to eat it up, as it were, and digest it totally, whilst in a practical point of view, we can only manage a scarcely perceptible nibble on its margin.

We are not the devouring element, nor is the reader; and were we to write all that might, should, could, or ought to be written on the vast theme of national humor, both we and the reader should inevitably perish of old age in the process. Fifty years of American Whig Reviews would not suffice to contain the enormous work, and our sons would have to continue the task for the benefit of the reader's descendants, sæcula sæculorum, till the day of judgment itself arriving, should bring forth a final and decisive critique on the hereditary composition.

THIS is not a tale of spiritual rappings. I never heard any. Possibly I am not worth a rap, being only an artist. My table does not hop, or rear up, or fly. Between you and me, it is lucky it does not. If it did, the claw would come off, to a dead certainty. I think it right to mention this, and to warn any playful young ghosts or ghostesses of the fact. Now to my tale.

Aurelia Garford and I loved one another passionately, so passionately that at the age of seventeen we resolved to marry. Both our parents opposed the scheme. We had neither of us any money, and though I thought myself a Titian, the portraits I daubed were poor things even for sign-painting. But we could not wait. We grew desperate. We determined to run away into the wide world.

The wide world! How narrow it is, after all! A gimlet eight thousand miles long would bore a hole right through it. And what is eight thousand miles? Less than most people walk in a couple of years. 'What is any thing compared to every thing?' as the editor down east observed.

Aurelia's parents lived in Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street. Their house is near the corner of Fourth Avenue. It is a long way 'up town.' Some say there is no such street. But that of course is nonsense, because I know Aurelia lived in it. Many people, no doubt, have started off in the cars to look for the street, and never found it. It is not easy to find; though, as it is the next street to Two-hundred-and-twenty-first street, it is not so difficult, after all. But I knew the street like a book. There was only one house in it, and that was only half built, owing to the owner's want of funds. I need not add that that house was the house of Aurelia's parents.

There was a large garden to the house. People can afford space for gardens up in Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street. It was a very nice garden. Only one thing grew in it, and that was grass. But, give me grass to walk on. Trees are all very well for climbing, and timber is useful for building. Fruit is a capital thing if you want to eat, and flowers are very pretty if you care to look at them. But Aurelia and I only wanted to walk about with our arms round one another's waists; and we preferred grass to trees, as we did not want to climb like squirrels, or build like carpenters. We valued grass even more highly than flowers, because we preferred sitting down upon it, and looking into one another's eyes, to gazing at all the roses and magnolias in creation. And as for fruit, we scorned to think of earthly peaches or apricots, when our lips could be so much more sweetly occupied in exchanging celestial kisses, of which no amount could possibly give us a surfeit.

It is my deliberate conviction that the garden of Eden was a grass-grown bit of land, with good high fence round it to cast a shade in hot weather. The rest was love, which makes a paradise of any place.

We resolved to run away. And we did. We met one afternoon behind the wall of the grass-grown garden, and made for the cars. As we went along, I summed up the items of my happiness, drew a line, and calculated the total. The items were:

I was in a state of tremendous exhilaration. My soul cut capers and threw up its hat inside my breast; at least so I conjectured from the thumps I felt against the walls of that portion of my body. Aurelia and I took one long-drawn, champagnish sort of kiss, just before we turned the corner of that, to many, apocryphal Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street, and in another minute we were at the rail-way station.

He had come home two hours before his time from his office down town, where he was supposed to make money somehow. Not that he ever made any. His wife had a small income of her own, and that supported the family. Mr. Garford, at least so it appeared to me, was allowed to play at business just to keep himself out of mischief.

'Hollo, young people!' he cried, jovially, 'taking a walk, hey! Where are you off to? and what does my pretty Aurelia carry in that confoundedly bulgy basket there?'

'Oh, papa!' cried Aurelia, whose self-possession was upset by the sudden rencontre, and the dear girl burst into a passionate flood of tears; tears of disappointment and vexation, I conscientiously believe.

'Hollo! what's this, what's this, young gentleman?' said old Garford sternly, smelling a rat for the first time.

'Why, Sir,' said I, perhaps stupidly, impelled by an irresistible impulse, 'if you had not met us so unluckily, we should have run away and got married.'

'Hum!' said old Garford, looking at me fixedly; 'is there any particular reason for your getting married in such a hurry?'

'Oh, is that all? Very well. You need not run away; I have not the least objection to your being married.'

'Stop a moment. I have a great objection to your marrying without any thing to live on. Much as I was attached to Mrs. Garford, Sir, I should never have dreamed of marrying her unless we had had between us sufficient to support a respectable establishment, Sir.'

'But, Sir,' resumed Mr. Garford, who evidently took a pleasure in playing his part of heavy father in the drama; 'but, Sir, you perhaps imagine that I can give my daughter a fortune. You anticipate——'

'Not at all, Sir,' I interrupted, eager to disclaim all interested motives 'I know very well that you cannot give your daughter any thing.'

'Indeed, Sir, indeed? And pray how do you know that I cannot give my daughter a fortune? Are you aware, Sir, that the business I am engaged in is one by which some of the largest fortunes in this city have been realized, Sir?'

To use a somewhat worn but expressive phrase, I had hit my intended father-in-law 'in the raw,' and all attempts to conciliate proved fruitless. Nor did a hint from Aurelia, that 'papa knew very well he had not made the rent of his office for the last two years,' at all mend matters.

Finally, Mr. Garford positively forbade my farther visits or correspondence with his daughter, until I could show him that I was worth five thousand dollars clear, and making an income of at least two thousand a year.

Thus we parted. I made several attempts to see Aurelia, but failed. In the end I resolved to set to work to make the required sum and income with the least possible delay.

Luckily I made friends with a very clever painter, who undertook to put me in the right way. I had to begin again. The fact was, I had a tolerable dexterity in the blending of colors, but I drew like a Chinese, or a Yankee as I was. My master was a Frenchman; he had studied at Paris under Delaroche. He opened my eyes. I was quick. In a few months, with considerable labor, I could produce a portrait at any rate tolerably correct in outline and perspective. This at once raised me above the majority of my rivals, and I soon procured considerable custom.

I had just laid the first stone of my fortune in the shape of a hundred dollars deposited in a bank, when an overwhelming blow destroyed the whole edifice of my hopes.

I received a letter announcing the death of Aurelia from her father. She had been dead three weeks when the news reached me. My friend the painter was present. He saw me turn pale and cover my face with my hands.

I threw myself on a sofa and wept convulsively. When I had exhausted the first violence of my grief, my friend approached me, and in a tone of grave sympathy asked me of what I was thinking.

'Yes, a daub of my own, but which reminds me at least vividly of the original. I have also a daguerreotype, but daguerreotypes have always a cold, ghastly look.'

'Yes, paint her as an angel of heaven; realize your memory of her beauty on the canvas. Leave a monument of your love and talent behind you. Then die, if you please.'

The artist's suggestion pleased me. No youth of eighteen is in a violent hurry to die, even for love. I resolved to adopt my friend's idea, and a gloomy sort of ambition seized me to make this work a work of art worthy of its model. Nay, I even dreamed of posthumous fame; of going down the stream of American art-history, as the man who painted a real angel, and then pursued its prototype into the world of angels.

I commenced my task that very day, and labored as long as the light allowed, without cessation. My master aided me by his counsels; and when the work was complete, he laid his hand affectionately on my shoulder and said, 'Truly you are a pupil worthy of a greater master!'

We had the picture framed and sent to the exhibition of the Academy. On the very first day my triumph was unquestionable. 'An Angel' was decidedly the attraction of the exhibition. The same afternoon an offer to purchase it for a large sum arrived from one of the richest merchants of New-York. I sat with this letter in my hand trying to read it by the already waning light in my studio, when I heard the door open and some body enter. Supposing it to be the painter, I did not look round.

Presently I raised my eyes, and beheld to my horror a shadowy figure in white, with a face of unearthly pallor.

I confess that fear seized me. My shattered nerves, my recent over-exertion, my fasts and vigils, had increased my nervous sensibility to an alarming degree. I tried to reason with myself, and account for the vision on grounds of mental delusion, when I was startled out of all reasoning by the figure saying in a low but distinct tone:

'Can ghosts embrace?' I cried, rising dubiously, and gazing more assuredly at the pale phantom.

And I did try; but it was no spectre; it was a living, breathing angel I folded in my arms.

'And I believed you buried. They told me so at home. I have had a fever in consequence; see how pale and thin I am!'

'What could have been your father's motive for such conduct and such falsehood?'

'Yes; he has caught a partner with money, as mamma says, and she thanks GOD she will not have to pay the rent of the office out of her own income any longer.'

'Flatterer? not at all. But look at this—an offer of seven hundred dollars for the picture. An hour ago I would not have sold it for seventy thousand. But now—suppose we take the seven hundred dollars and run away at once?'

'Well, Sir,' said he, 'I congratulate you on your success. We shall be happy to see you at Two-hundred-and-twenty-second street this evening, if you are not otherwise engaged.'

Shortly afterward I was married. As soon as Aurelia and I were alone in the carriage that bore us from the church, I said to her, smiling, 'My dear little ghost, I sincerely trust you will haunt me to my dying day!'

'I will try,' said Aurelia, looking full at me with beautiful and fathomless eyes, 'to be your ghostly comforter as long as I live.'

It is my opinion that a ghost is very much improved by having a body attached to it.

WHY the fancy has seized me to write the strange history which follows, is to me inexplicable. My utter indifference to human sympathy, human praise, or human opinion, which will soon be seen to be no vain affectation, would seem to render such an act superfluous. Perhaps the necessity for some species of action, which even the inert granite is supposed to be imbued with by the progressive spirit of Nature, may account for the proceeding. Since, however, I intend to write, I propose to write intelligibly. It is difficult to describe sensations where memory alone must furnish their corresponding ideas. Were I a human being, in the strict sense of the word, I should, if I may judge by what I see others do, apologize for the imperfection of my narrative. As it is, I shall reproduce the images of the past with the fidelity as also with the indifference of an echo. It is perhaps the first time that a DEAD MAN has spoken in the language of the living, though approximations to the phenomenon are to be found in many writers of the day, whose works, I being absolutely destitute of passions, can alone dispassionately criticise. Weak minds will either fail to comprehend, or recoil with horror from my revelations. To the thinking few, they will be a curiosity, which I affirm gravely to be unparalleled in the annals of literature, or the records of history.

I was not always a living corpse. I am not a natural monster. I was born alive, in the full sense of the word. Nay, I was the result of an unbridled passion, and gifted with all the fiery vitality which such lawless indulgences not unfrequently produce. My mother was an Italian Princess, my father a private soldier in the Prussian cavalry. My birth took place in secrecy, and with all the precautions of pride and shameful terror. I was brought up in an atmosphere of mystery, and though invisibly protected, was, from my earliest recollection, an utterly isolated being. At the age of one-and-twenty, after completing, as they say, my studies at the University of ——, I was placed in possession of a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars invested in the English funds, and informed that henceforth I was my own master; whilst I was supplied with a plain and probable legend to serve as a convenient substitute for a more authentic pedigree. It was under these circumstances that I set out on my travels, in the prime of youth and love of enjoyment. My form was tall and powerful, my face of a rare and marked beauty, and my talents of that order which make the great heroes, poets, and criminals of this imperfect world. My destiny was in my own hands, and I became, if not the greatest, at least the most extraordinary of earth's children. I state these facts in their naked simplicity, because what is termed vanity, is so utterly impossible to a being of my unique nature, that I can waive all common forms, and introduce myself at once in my true colors to the reader.

I shall commence by a brief account of my youth and education, or rather of the early movements of my mind, which led me to adopt a course so singular in its audacity, both of conception and execution.

My two dominant passions, before the extraordinary events which it is the main purpose of this tale to record, were an intense longing for exalted sensations of pleasure, and as a means to this end, a burning thirst for knowledge. Having renounced all religious creeds, and set at defiance all social prejudices, I resolved to make the aim of my existence the attainment by study and experiment, of the most certain methods of scientific enjoyment.

I was naturally what the world calls pre-eminently selfish; as if one man could be more or less selfish than another; as if, in obeying the laws of his organization, any one could act otherwise than yield invariably to the strongest motive, as if any motive could be aught else than a certain amount of force acting upon an individual being!

But I will not philosophize. My human and living readers would not understand me if I did. Their perceptions are clogged by passions and prejudices. Hence truth is strange to them, and even terrible. There are some few, eagle-eyed who can gaze upon the sun, undazzled. To these my philosophy would be impertinent; to the mass it is incomprehensible.

I will tell my story without obscurity. I will use the plainest language, and speak to popular acceptations.

I was then, a voluptuary, but not a common voluptuary. I saw that the ordinary mines of enjoyment were soon exhausted, or only to be worked more deeply by labor that defeated its object. I perceived that the most crowded paths of pleasure turned back, by circuitous courses, in never-ending circles.

I did not, as the cant phrase goes, awake from my illusions. I had read, seen, and thought too much. I was too clear-headed to have any illusions. Where others saw misty prospects, I saw naked facts. I summed up, and found the balance on the wrong side. My experiment was a failure.

I had travelled, I had seen the wonders of art, and the beauties of nature. I had had access to the best, and to the worst of society. I had labored, and been rewarded by fame. The book which I wrote, won the applause of a nation. I foresaw that it would obtain new triumphs in foreign lands; and my foresight has been confirmed by fact. Lastly, I was united to the woman I loved; who brought me thrice the fortune I expected, and a mind cultivated beyond my hopes. And with all this—I was dissatisfied. I craved for intenser pleasure; more exalted excitement, and I could not disguise from myself that it was so. I reflected deeply.

"What," said I, "is happiness? Is it a monotony of sensations, which are taken to be pleasurable on the faith of popular opinion, whilst the inward voice still whispers languor and tedium, whilst half the day is passed in a dreary vacuity of mind, which is, at best, merely the bare negative of pain? Is it a feverish working and striving for objects which on attainment invariably become insipid and indifferent?"

"Certainly not. Reasonably regarded, it is surely a positive, appreciable state of consciousness, in which we can say without hesitation to the moment, in the words of Goethe, 'O linger yet, thou art so fair!' It is a certain condition of the nervous system, and without that condition—misery."

I fell to watching myself studiously at different times, and under various circumstances.

I observed that, at a certain stage, wine produced sensations of extreme delight. But I also observed that these sensations soon gave way to other and more sombre feelings; that, in fact, there was a happy crisis in alcoholic stimulus, which, when once past, could not be recalled on one and the same occasion. Indulgence, too, in wine was, I perceived, followed by a vague, dreary despondency, that lasted incomparably longer than the brief passing moments of delicious exhilaration it produced.

On the whole, it was better to leave the mind to nature and mere mental excitements, than to attempt to light the sacred fire at the now neglected altars of Bacchus.

I need not say, that to become vulgarly intoxicated, was, with me, out of the question. There are some strong brains that defy the utmost possibilities of wine. I could have poisoned myself, but I could not render myself an unreasoning animal, by any amount of spirituous liquors. Often I persevered to the last, and when all my wild companions had sunk, I may say in many cases fallen beneath their potent draughts, I alone sat erect, and at worst discovered that my stomach was a weaker organ than my head. In such cases a feeling of awful and gloomy sadness would possess me, and after sitting long in silent and strangely lucid meditations, I would walk home calmly in the gray of the morning with little outward indication of the debauch from which I had emerged.

It was evident that no cascades of wine—even though they beggared Niagara in their ruby or topaz-like curves—could overarch for me that enchanted palace, in which I desired to spend my days, and defy the adversary—Pain, Evil, Devil, Typhon, Ariman or Sathanas, in a word, the dread foe, named or nameless, described or indescribable, of human happiness and its continuance.

Apart from all more palpable causes of suffering, man sits between Memory and Desire, between the Past and the Future, as between two rival mistresses, each dragging him towards her by turns with uneasy passion; whilst before him, and as it were balanced on an eternal and invisible tight-rope, sways the only nymph that can bless him with her love, the only goddess he can really and truly possess, if indeed he can possess anything, the divine Present—and he—dares not clasp the radiant virgin to his heart, dares not drive to the East nor to the West, along the interminable roads of space, the furies that torment him, madden him, and devour him, now, then, and evermore!

For my part, I said to the sad and pale brunette, the angel Præterita, and to the blonde seductive blue-eyed spirit Futura, a like farewell. The genii of Past and Future ruled the race of man-the Earth-God. But one was a rebel and an outlaw; and that one was I.

I said to the Universe, "Let me feel happiness, not merely dream it." And everlasting echoes from all the depths of Kosmos, even from the farthest bounds where creation, ever encroaching, borders upon awful chaos, everlasting echoes answered "DREAM!"

And I replied to the spirits of the Infinite, and demanded proudly, "Ye blind legions of monitors! where in nature is your unclouded happiness? where is your perfection?"

Then I ceased to ask counsel of any men or spirits. For I was determined to be my own guide, and my own teacher, since all the wisdom of the world had not yet led to happiness. Therefore I scorned its pretensions, and derided its impotence with justice.

I became a great smoker. I purchased the rarest tobaccos and the costliest pipes. I had a perfect museum of meerschaums, nargulés, chibouques, and tubes and bowls of all sorts of shape, size, and contrivance for the inhalation of the fragrant weed. I purchased, at extravagant prices, the choicest boxes of cigars. I smoked grandly, incessantly, infernally. The atmosphere grew dark with my smoking; at least to my imagination. I wrapped my soul in the incense of tobacco. I created worlds of fancies out of its wreathing vapors. I began to think I had found the resource I wanted, and I often exclaimed in dreamy ecstasy—"Divine Nicotiana!"* I doubted whether the vapors which inspired the Pythoness did not arise from the hookahs of the priests smoking in solemn divan in the subterranean halls of Delphi. And I gave them high credit for having so well preserved the secret they had discovered.

[*Nicotiana is the scientific name for tobacco. It is derived from a Frenchman of the name of Jean Nicot who first imported it to France.

At the same time, like a true Turk, I took care to have the finest coffee of Mocha prepared by the most perfect machinery. I found that, after fasting, the effect of coffee upon the nerves was almost supernatural; but combined with tobacco, it was Elysian. It produced an intense state of enjoyment, during which, I would discourse with a marvellous eloquence to my adoring Mira, who was never weary of following the train of my prolific and far-stretching fantasies. How easily in this period of my madness (as I have since learned to deem it) did I unravel knots in science and philosophy, that had puzzled the wise men of ages. How intuitively did I seize on combinations, whose results, in the hands of practical men, might have rendered them the acknowledged benefactors of the world, and enriched whole nations of workers! But with me, all was a reverie of selfish recreation. I created glorious plans, I foreshadowed mighty inventions, as a voluptuous exercise of the mind; I played as it were grand symphonies on the most intellectual themes, and the compositions perished with the dying sounds, like the fantasias of musicians, which are never to be repeated.

But this could not last. My powerful organization resisted for a time the exaggerated abuse of drugs, which, common though they be, are in excess, like all other substances, the deadliest poisons. Smoking destroys the appetite, and ruins the digestive powers. Its effect upon the nerves then becomes tremendous. I soon made this discovery. A neuralgic irritation attacked me, which, as I still pursued my diabolical fumigations, went on with a fearfully crescendo movement. Deadly sickness of a peculiar inactive character, fits of the horrors, in which all things became repugnant, wearisome, and nauseating; ideas of suicide, and awful despondencies, descended upon me like a flight of vultures on a dying antelope. I abandoned the poisons. My prostration was complete and unbearable. I partially resumed them, and tried change of air and scene. I just recovered sufficiently to be able to suffer more acutely. I had evidently, at least temporarily, undermined my constitution. It was at this period, that, like a demon watching his occasion, opium became my comforter.

For the first time a book fell into my hands, a dangerous book, which has made many wretched: I mean "The confessions of an English opium-eater." This work, as all the world knows, was written by Thomas de Quincy, an Englishman of letters, who is still living. And with regard to this de Quincy, I will mention one thing that is curious. He is intimately persuaded that he is a great philosopher. In reality he is a fragmentary poet, imbued with considerable transcendentalism. His book is extremely amusing, but the reverse of philosophical, for it arrives at no conclusion. It is an opium book in more senses than the writer would have you believe. Such as it is, however, this book was the immediate cause of my taking to opium.

Its first effects were delightful. It tranquillized my irritated nerves, and I entered, as it were, a new world of dreamy speculation. An invisible barrier seemed raised between me and the external world. Nothing troubled me, nothing annoyed me. I was on the verge of being utterly impoverished by a dispute as to the title of my wife's property. But it gave me no uneasiness. The danger passed away as it came—like a fleeting fancy. The only thing that slightly interfered with my peaceful ecstasy of indolent reverie, was the apprehensions of my wife. She had heard that opium-eating was a shocking thing, and she could not at once get reconciled to the idea. Nor would any thing induce her personally to taste the talismanic liquid—the happiness in bottles, as de Quincy has aptly termed it.

The effect of opium in producing dreams, so forcibly dwelt upon and splendidly illustrated by that writer, I need not enlarge upon. Enough to state that the number and variety of my visions were infinite. Ages were crowded into nights. The most monstrous and gigantic images were familiar things. Time and space were extended beyond all conception, except that of an opium-eater. Nevertheless, opium palled upon me, and the opium-dream-world became almost tedious. I had, too, an excessive dislike to the taste of laudanum, which, strange to say, increased rather than diminished. One day I returned home with a small vial of bright green liquid in my pocket. It's very color had a mystic poisonous fascination. How much more potent and cabalistic was its spell than the dark, thick, brown, drowsy-looking laudanum! It was Haschisch. Haschisch is a sort of Indian hemp (Canabis Indicus). The liquid in the vial was an extract from its stalks. This Indian poison is mentioned in Lamartine's Vision of the Future, and in Alexander Dumas's Monte-Cristo. Their exaggerated, or rather apparently exaggerated descriptions of its effects have no doubt caused the majority of their readers to consider this marvellous drug as a mere figment of the poet and novelist's brains. It has, however, a real existence, and is in extensive demand amongst the initiated. In effect it resembles opium, but is more exhilarating, and less narcotic. I continued for a whole year to increase my doses of this new elixir of happiness, and did not find myself assaulted by any of the horrible fancies which de Quincy complains of, as the after results of opium. Like King Mithridates, I was becoming familiar with poisons, and they began to respect their master. But, though I lived as much in another world from that of ordinary mortals, as if my habitation had been in the planet Uranus, I could not escape a more terrible poison than even the Hydrocianic, commonly called Prussic acid, in which, as an antidote to certain effects of the Canabis Indicus, I freely indulged. Ennui, the spleen, that mysterious and tyrannical malady, pursued me, even into my poison-guarded dream-world. I grew accustomed to the life, the old dreams and fancies recurred, and became tiresome. Already I meditated a deeper plunge in Venemum. I fell in, accidentally, in some review, with an account of the Arsenic-eaters of Styria, and of the results of that mania, in heightening the personal beauty of its devotees. Certainly the pure delicacy of Mira's clear fair complexion left no room for improvement, except in the fancy of a madman. Nevertheless, I longed to try the effect of an arsenic varnish—if I may so express myself—upon both her and my own countenance. Who could tell whether seeming more beautiful to one another, our love might not acquire new strength, and develope new sources of delight. I was in the midst of a profound reverie or rather Haschisch dream on this subject, when I received a letter from a scientific friend, announcing the discovery of the effects of inhaling ether, in destroying sensation and rendering surgical operations painless.

I thought that new light burst upon my soul. In one instant, I became a convert to an entirely new system of nervous influence. I rushed out to buy some rectified sulphuric ether, and a machine for inhalation. The latter consisted of a bottle to which was attached a flexible tube, about two feet long, and two inches in diameter. I eagerly poured in some ether and applied the funnel-like mouth-piece to my lips. After a few inspirations of the vaporized ether, I felt a most marvellous and delicious effect. I felt a stream of joyous expansion steal rapidly through my veins, even to the tips of my toes, which tingled with delight. I at once felt the vast superiority of inhaling the stimulant over swallowing it. Instead of going through the tedious process of digestion, whose functions it disturbed and impeded, as in the case of wine, the purified and refined spirit (for ether is but rectified alcohol) entered at once into the lungs, thence into the aerated blood, and thus through every part of the body with the crimson flood of impatient arteries, and so back with the blue current of the veins, to evaporate harmlessly, leaving nothing but its memory behind it!

"Hence!" I exclaimed, "wine, coffee, tobacco, opium, haschisch! away henbane, arsenic, hydrociana! Coarse and noxious stimulants, narcotics, and nerve-swindlers, who wrap the soul in cumbrous veils, that, like the robe of Dejanira, invades the life of your votaries. I am no de Quincy, I, to mock myself with vain half realized fantasies, to stand up to the middle in Styx, and murmur vaguely—Suspiria de profundis!"

And now a new field opened to my researches. The world of gas spread temptingly before me. Little do the vain mob understand the import of that word—to them the emblem of emptiness. "It is all gas!" they cry. Yes, truly every thing is gas, is, was, and ever shall be gas. The most solid and material things resolve themselves into mere gaseous combinations. A little more of one gas, a little less of another, and lo! all the varieties in nature are produced. All was originally gas. Chaos was the confusion of gases. All must resolve itself ultimately into gas. You and I are gas, and gas is every thing.

I became a man of gas, a maker and an experimentalist of gaseous mixtures. I remembered the exhibitions which in my youth I had witnessed of the effects of laughing gas, the inhalation of which causes the wildest intoxication, or rather, exaltation of the brain, and causes those who breathe it to exhibit the most fantastic feats, illustrative of their predominant passions. If there is truth in wine, in gas there is revelation. Yet the man in whom reason is the ruling faculty, will subdue all outward indications of the mighty afflatus. There is a supreme gas, a gas of gases, and its particles are souls. All other gases exist by numerical arrangement, as Pythagoras well conjectured, when he prefigured the atomic theories of modern days. But there is an ultimate atom, a gas which is the basis of all others, and without which all is vacuum.

I knew that in an atmosphere of pure oxygen, the gas essential to life, and at the same time the agent of all decay, the sour stuff (sauer stoff) as the Germans call it, an animal could live, and live with a wondrous acceleration of all the physical processes. In man this rapid consumption of matter was accompanied by an equal intensifying exaltation of the mental faculties. On this fact I founded my experiments, and the result was at length, the combination of oxygen with other gases, in an artificial atmosphere of the most astounding and admirable qualities.

To breathe this air, was to breathe positive enjoyment. It was vaporized nectar and ambrosia. Its respiration was the life of a God. But it was also the embodied Sansar—"the icy wind of death." No mortal could live more than a few months even in its partially diluted perfection. It was the short life and merry of the reckless popular adage, reduced to palpable embodiment.

On the other hand, this rapidity of life was only apparent. For we measure time by sensations; and the exalted powers of sensation, confirmed by breathing the wondrous gas, gave time a supernatural extension similar to the life of dreams, but free from all their shadowy indistinctness.

My resolution at once was taken. I would live and die in this glorified atmosphere. I would bid farewell to all that was earthly, without hesitation. I bought a magnificent chateau in the South of France. I furnished it by the expenditure of one-third of my fortune, in a few days, with all the luxury that imagination could suggest. I fitted up my apparatus for the production of the gas, and engaged, at the rate of some thousands of francs, monthly, a young chemist of first-rate education, and superior energy and abilities. To him, I confided all the management and regulation of the apparatus, and also the absolute control of the servants, and of the whole establishment. One suite of rooms, the most splendid, and with the finest prospect in the chateau, were to be my own enchanted habitation. Into these apartments, except at certain times and with due precautions, no servants were to enter. Every thing that I required was to be sent up through the floor, by means of tables that screwed up and down, by noiseless machinery. No one was to disturb me on any pretext; no letters were to be given me, and, as the chemist was poor, almost starving when I first patronized him, I knew that so long as every month brought him a little fortune in itself, I might count on his absolute devotion. Besides, I deceived him as to my intentions. There was only one room—the largest and most splendidly furnished in the house—which was to be actually filled with the life-accelerating gas. It communicated with the other apartments by carefully constructed double doors, and of course it never entered the mind of the chemist that I intended to live and die in the deadly atmosphere which he was to create, or that, after so carefully ordering these hermetically closing double doors, I should purpose fixing them wide open, the moment I was shut up within my mysterious domicile, and thus causing the whole suite of apartments to fill with the same ethereal poison.

In other respects, the chemist was just the person I wanted; he was patient, faithful, and industrious. At the same time, he was a cold stern man, well fitted to repress any insubordination or curiosity on the part of the household. And now all was prepared for the experiment. It only remained to persuade Mira to be my companion. For I confess that without her, ever the potence of the marvellous gas must have failed in its action on my nerves. Her love had become a habit, a part of my being, I could not live or die without her.

She was an entirely exceptional woman. When I married her, some three years before the date of my final experiment, she was only sixteen years of age. Her beauty (I can find no newer or more intelligible image) was of the order which the finest painters strive to impart to their embodiments of angels, and beings superior to man. Its supreme loveliness was not in its delicate regularity of feature, dazzling whiteness and purity of skin, and majestic symmetry of form. All these seemed merely indispensable conditions of such an individuality. What made her irresistibly pleasing to the perceptions of an imaginative and thoughtful man, was a certain calm, unalterable dignity and noble gentleness, that placed her above even the possibility of any of the meannesses and pettinesses of the sex. She had the strong mind of a man, with all the purity and softness of an exquisitely delicate female organization. In temperament, she was my opposite, although intellectually, there existed between us a perfect sympathy. She was as calm and serenely contented, as I was feverishly dissatisfied and eager for excitement. Yet she understood and entered into all my wild speculations, as into an interesting drama, of which she was the sympathizing spectator. She was my only confidant, my only friend, my only real companion. With all my restless cravings for greater intensity of enjoyment, her love was my world, my treasure, and my hope—the more so that I might almost be said to mistrust its possession.

That Mira loved me, was indeed indubitable, yet there was a calmness, a purity, and passive even tenor in her love, that could not be called coldness, and which yet in a manner disappointed the fiery adoration with which I loved her. I would not have lost one of her kisses for all the embraces of all the beauties of the earth; and yet, to my fierce and impassioned nature, there seemed more snow upon her bosom, than a poet's simile implies, more than perchance would ever melt beneath my lip's ecstatic pressure.

In the delusion of my wild tempest-tost soul, which, after all, was but that of a mad poet's, astray in the deserts and primeval forests of thought, I knew not that the crown of her glorious beauty and of my delicious, because never satiated, passion, lay in the very qualities which I regretted, and which I insanely hoped to conquer by my infernal and pitiless inventions.

To my surprise, I had no difficulty in persuading Mira to enter the enchanted atmosphere. A first trial of its virtues was of course decisive. We gave ourselves up to the intense joy of a life, to which pain, care, and sorrow, regret for the past or apprehension for the future, were necessarily strange. The outer world became nothing to us. Love, exalted to a degree of power which to the breathers of common air is inconceivable, appreciation of beauty and delights which are alike inexplicable and incomprehensible, made up the sum of our existence. I pass over, therefore, the seven times seven days of our ethereal life, a period which in ideas and sensations was equivalent to the ordinary lapse of ages, and hasten onward to the extraordinary catastrophe which left me what I am—a monster, more rare and wonderful than the sphinxes and chimeras of old, my fabulous prototypes.

Nor let the reader foolishly imagine that, because memory or science give me the power of describing passion, and thereby exciting his sympathies, that I personally do or can feel any echoing vibration of the wild chords which I cause to resound. Unearthly is the music—unearthly the musician.

Opening from the grand saloon of the chateau, was a superb conservatory of more than ordinary dimensions, commanding a view of one of the most splendid landscapes in the world. In the foreground, yet not sufficiently near to intercept the view, rose from the side of the hill, on which stood the chateau, the mingled foliage of an old and primitive forest, while beyond was visible the shining stream of the Rhone, lying, like the crooked sabre of some gigantic Paladin, upon the greensward; and far, far beyond rose the bluish shadowy outlines of mountains behind which the sun would set in golden glory, that made each snow-crowned peak a throne worthy of Sathanas—"the Emperor of the furnace."

Round this conservatory were arranged a collection of strange exotic and tropical plants, so as to leave the centre unoccupied, save by a few couches, chairs and tables, on which lay volumes of poetry and philosophy, and portfolios of exquisite engravings and drawings. This was our favorite sitting-room. It was only necessary to open the glass doors between it and the saloon, to fill it with the same enchanted air; and I may mention as a curious example of the effects of this atmosphere on vegetation, that the grapes which were quite green and hard on its first introduction, ripened perfectly in a few days, and were the largest and most luscious fruit I had ever tasted or seen. It was one of Mira's greatest enjoyments to call me to watch the camelias budding and flowering actually before our eyes! Were I in the humor I could write a hundred pages on the wonders of vegetation with which my residence in this gas-world made me acquainted. But I refrain without difficulty. To me no science is worth a thought.

In the centre of this hall of crystal stood a white marble statue of Minerva, the only statue in which that goddess has ever been represented entirely without drapery. The figure was Mira's. I myself modelled it during the first year of our marriage, and it was carved by one of the most eminent French sculptors, who afterwards died mad from a hopeless passion for the original. The fountain sprang from and formed the foliage of a glass tree stem, against which she leant, whilst the point of her spear drooped earthward from her arm, as if languid with the warfare against folly. Her head alone was covered with a helmet, which imparted a singular charm to the divine beauty of Mira's countenance.

At length, one day, towards evening, after seven weeks of solitude and happiness, which no Paradise could more than realize, a fatal accident destroyed at once our enjoyment, our experiment in science, and our lives. Yes—I learned it afterwards—we were killed by the merest accident. My chemist who managed the gas-generating apparatus, forgot to examine the metre at the proper time. The gas continued to enter in unprecedented volumes, and its effects were speedily perceptible.

We were seated in our favorite place in the conservatory, our eyes turned towards the setting sun, listening to the swelling and harmonious cadences of Weber, produced by a self-playing instrument of the rarest workmanship, which I had purchased at Paris for an enormous sum, of its inventor, when a more than usual ecstasy seemed to possess us. Our arms, entwined round one another's forms, seemed to contract almost convulsively, our eyes, our lips met with delirious love, and—I remember no more. When I recovered possession, not of my senses, but of my consciousness, I was still seated upon the sofa, on which the angel of death had surprised us, whilst on the marble pavement. at full length, her face turned upwards with an expression of supernatural felicity, lay Mira—Mira, my wife, friend, and goddess—the fairest and noblest of women. She was dead.

Mira was dead. That was evident. But what was I? I rose, and regarded curiously the culpable chemist, who, having discovered his oversight, had hurried too late to our rescue. He had thrown wide open the windows of the conservatory. I inhaled the common air of the sky. But, though I breathed and moved, however incredible may appear the statement of a fact, hitherto unknown to science, I was to all intents and purposes as much a dead person as Mira herself. That is to say, I was dead to all sensation, emotion, passion, or by whatever other phrase may be described the action of the external world upon the sensitive being. It is true, I could hear, see, feel, taste, and smell, but such sensations had no longer any influence upon me either in causing dissatisfaction or satisfaction. My sensations were mere facts to my consciousness and no more. Mira was dead, that was a fact. She lay there, pale and beautiful, before me—a fact. I myself had lost the half of my life—a fact. The chemist, who was the author of these hideous calamities, as men would say, stood trembling before me—another fact. In a word, I was a living corpse. One class of nerves, the nerves of sympathetic sensation, appeared either paralyzed or exhausted of their circulating fluid. Love and anger were no longer my attributes. I had reached, truly, and at one stride, the centre of indifference told of by some philosophers. But it was a centre of indifference which they talk of without understanding. I did not understand it—I was in it.

The chemist stood pallid and trembling before me. He was a cold, unimpassioned, little impressionable man. But in the presence of my dead eye and marble rigidity of feature, he trembled involuntarily. No doubt he mistook my absence of emotion for some tremendous effect of internal passion. He evidently dreaded an explosion of a terrible nature. But I merely said—

For one moment, he looked at me with a most extraordinary expression, then, overwhelmed by the icy look with which I covered him, he departed in silence.

I remembered that his salary from the beginning was unpaid. Nor had he ever the courage to ask for it. Of course I could have no motive in sending it to him. The happiness of others was to me no longer a possible subject of interest. A man takes no interest in others, who can take none in himself. The chemist, driven to despair by poverty, committed suicide in the course of the same year.

At the end of a week, the body of Mira was buried. In the mean time, from physical habit, as it appeared, I one day took up a book—a volume of poetry. It was no longer poetry to me, but a collection of signs representing certain phenomena. A book of arithmetic was to me of precisely equal interest.

I had eaten and drunk nothing since the great catastrophe, though I had been urged to do so by people to whose entreaties and pity I was alike indifferent. But, remarking that my body was wasting away, I ate a measured quantity, which I continued to do regularly afterwards, though without any appetite or enjoyment.

But I had reason and power of command over my body as much as ever. those operations which formerly were the result of impulse, I had now to perform as pure acts of will. The only reason why I did not quietly await death, was a clear intellectual consciousness of the fact that I was in an abnormal state, and that it was also possible that I should return to the natural conditions of humanity.

Without being a desire, the discovery of the means of effecting this change became my only object; and in order to attain what, in reality, I cared nothing about (the contradiction is only apparent), I spent years in trying the most extraordinary experiments in natural science ever imagined. Perfectly indifferent to the success or non-success of my experiments, I yet worked on. If I might be said to have any thing left resembling a desire, it was a passionless inclination towards abstract truth, which seemed to be a sort of mechanico-spiritual law of my being. But to compare this mere gravitation towards an abstract centre to the ardent enthusiasm of ordinary men of science, would be absurd. And here, I recognize the impossibility of conveying to a living man the impressions of a corpse. Therefore I abandon further attempt at illustration.

Perhaps one fact may explain more than much analysis. After some years, during which time I made numerous scientific discoveries of the most remarkable character, I lighted upon the secret. I had it in my power at any moment to return to life, to rise again from the dead, and once more to share the passions and cares of men. But I had no motive to change my condition. I remained a corpse. The discovery was to me—a fact.

Why should I again inhale the gas of happiness and destruction, why revive to an existence that would be a type of the fabled hells of legendary lore? Mira is dead. I am a living corpse; and I am the only being bearing the shape of man who could ever honestly declare himself to be perfectly contented with his lot.

IT is a strange thing to reflect upon, that mankind only exists by my permission. It is a thrilling thought, a terrible consolation, that I have but to will the deed, and in a brief space the surface of this globe would be my empire, and its inhabitants my slaves; nay, that were I to go a step further, the race itself must disappear from the scene, and I—I alone remain, the solitary tenant of our planet!

Fortunately for thee, O reader—probably incredulous—of this incredible, yet true history, and for all thy brother mortals, I am not the demon which I have been represented. The sufferings I have endured, the wrongs which I have experienced, the savage cruelty, the bitter neglect which I have encountered, have not destroyed in my soul that germ of good which I inherited from ancestral eternity, which grand and noble studies have fostered and developed, but which pain and injustice have vainly combined to demonize.

So long as I am sane, the existence of the world is secured. No one but a madman would surely dream of so immeasurable a crime, so stupendous a caprice as the wholesale murder of a world of animate beings!

But lest it should be deemed that I claim more credit than I deserve, for this forbearance, that I exaggerate the causes which might, in a mind of a different order, have destroyed the fair flower of mercy, and induce a fiendlike exultation in misanthropic vengeance, I will narrate the principal events of a life which have resulted in so marvellous a denouement, as the potential conquest of the world. Henceforth, let. pedagogues and schoolboys moderate their laudations of a Sesostris, an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a Napoleon, whose power was, compared to mine, as nothing, whose conquests were insignificant indeed, if contrasted with my sublime abnegation of conquest.

At the age of eighteen, after a violent quarrel with my father, who was a rustic, at once proud, narrow-minded, irascible, and vindictive, I was mercilessly bidden to go seek my own living, fairly turned out of doors and driven from the home of my youth, a sad and penniless vagabond.

I made a small packet of a few necessaries, and with a savage recklessness, engendered by long years of hard treatment and ill-usage, turned my back forever upon the ties of blood and domestic affection. The whole idea of my life was metamorphosed like the colored stars of a kaleidoscope. But my star was not in the ascendant.

After walking about a mile, I seated myself upon the gate of a field by the roadside, and gave way to serious reflections. I felt less depressed than astonished by this sudden change in my life, and the difficulties which threatened me. Being of a determined character, the idea of return and reconciliation did not for an instant occur to me. But the prospect of the wide world before me and my own energies as my sole fortune, was a dazzling and embarrassing thing to contemplate. Whilst I thus meditated, I saw the figure of a woman coming towards me. It was my mother returning home. I flew to meet her, and in a few words disclosed to her what had happened, and my unalterable resolution. She turned very pale; wept on my shoulder for a long time; then, thrusting her slender purse into my hand, said firmly:—

"God bless you, my dear, dear boy! May success attend you! Write to me often, and tell me where to address you. Forgive your father his unkindness. It is his temper, not his heart, that is at fault."

"Dearest mother," I replied, embracing her, "tell my father that, if possible, I will deserve his respect, by my conduct."

And so we parted. Then, and not till then, I wept bitterly in the desolation of my solitude. But even as I wept, I strode onwards in the direction of the great city, which I had never seen, and which my imagination painted in such attractive yet awful coloring. For the first time the fear of the world was on me, and I felt a dim presentiment that for the poor man life is a battle.

Nevertheless, this journey was to me a period of happiness. The wild sensation of liberty was in itself a glorious stimulus. Hope of success was unclouded by knowledge of the world. For the last time I enjoyed fairly the freshness of physical nature, and took, as it were, a sad farewell of my old friends, the green trees and the shining rivers. Thenceforward I was to tread the dry, dusty streets of the cities, and to inhale the atmosphere of human care, competition, and misery; I was to exchange communion with the invisible spirits of the universe, for association and contention with the embodied spirits of men, when I had yet to learn first to fear, then to hate, and lastly to despise. To love mankind is denied me. How can the victim love the executioner, or the tyrant the slave?

When I entered the city, a few dollars were all that remained to me. I hired a cheap and obscure lodging, and resolved to take the first employment that offered itself. For several weeks I sought unsuccessfully for a taskmaster. At length, after being reduced to the verge of destitution, and even making some unpleasant experiments as to man's capacity for the endurance of hunger, I found a small clerkship in a hardware store, where for a miserable pittance of a few dollars weekly, I exchanged some twelve hours daily of my life and energies. The man who employed me was a man of iron, like the goods he dealt in. He was shrewd, calculating, and mean, yet at the same time not without a certain ingenuity and enterprise which induced him to listen to my suggestions as to some improvements in the tools he dealt in. The speculation, which involved little outlay, and no risk, was successful, and a small increase of salary was my reward. But the passion for invention once indulged, I became involuntarily a clerk of the most objectionable kind. I committed frequently oversights and mistakes in ordinary matters of business, and was, in consequence, after several disagreeable scenes, in which I was sufficiently abused by my master, dismissed summarily, and driven to seek for a more satisfactory occupation.

Meanwhile I had obtained admission to a public library, and finding myself now at leisure, gave myself up to a devouring passion for study, which in a few weeks got me considerably in arrear with my landlord, and gave me an intense distaste for the slavery of clerkdom. At this crisis, I formed the acquaintance of some young men connected with the press, and having written a few articles which were published in a weekly paper, resolved rather to trust to the hazardous chances of the pen, than to pursue a more certain but uncongenial career.

From that epoch my life was indeed a battle, a battle with necessity in its grossest and most revolting shape. Not possessing the slightest talent for rapid and superficial composition, I produced, at the expense of vast thought and labor, articles of a really useful, but to ordinary editors and readers, of a most unattractive stamp. It was with the greatest difficulty that from time to time I could earn the little absolutely necessary to support existence. Having no ambition or genius to become a successful author, I toiled on in a state of the most melancholy despondency, only forgetting my misery in the visions of scientific discovery and combination which the books I perused continually suggested. Such was the eagerness with which I read every work I could procure on natural philosophy, that at the end of little more than two years I had a command of the leading facts in most sciences sufficiently to enable me to launch out into the boldest and most original speculations. A peculiar clearness of arrangement and power of analysis had always been the characteristic of my mind. By degrees I began to relax in my passion for reading, and to find myself absorbed in a course of the strangest and most audacious reflections.

The knowledge of my masters in science ceasing, by familiarity, to dazzle, I began to criticise their reasoning with a stern sense of equality. I felt myself one of their republic, and began to aspire to the high places, which too often appeared to me but usurped by their occupiers, for want of a bold disputant of their authority.

One night, having no other place to sleep in, owing to my inability to meet my rent that morning, I betook myself, on the strength of a solitary cent, my only wealth, to the cabin of a ferry-boat, where at least I was sure of shelter from the cold, and a seat to rest on. In the course of the night a gentleman of remarkably pleasing and gentle manners seated himself at my side, and, probably reading in my worn features and shabby garments the secret of my position, commenced a conversation with me, by a remark as to the coldness of the weather, which he followed up by observing the change which had taken place in the climate of late years; thence, with easy gradations, he led me to discuss with him the theories of cosmogony, and, apparently struck by the novelty of my remarks, took the liberty of inquiring whether my profession was literature?

"I have no profession," was my answer; and its subdued despair did not escape the stranger.

"They are embodied mathematics. I have studied them deeply; but they are the A B C of science."

"Ha!" said the stranger, "embodied metaphysics?" At this moment the steamer touched the quay.

"By Jove!" exclaimed the stranger, suddenly, as if vexed by something he had forgotten, "I have not left that note in Wall-street. Perhaps you pass that way. Would it be offending you to ask you to leave it as you pass? It is of vital moment; and I shall be happy to pay a dollar for the service."

"That is quite unnecessary," said I, with the unconquerable pride of poverty; "but I will leave the note to oblige you, with pleasure."

"Oh! very well," said the stranger, and hastily scribbling something in pencil on the leaf of his pocket-book, he folded it into a small note, turned for an instant to the light to write the address, placed it in my hand, wished me a friendly good-night, and strode away like a man in a great hurry, leaving me to relapse into my despondent misery.

I was disappointed. I had expected that he would at least express a wish to see me again after so interesting a conversation. There was, too, something selfish in exacting a gratuitous service from a man so palpably poor as myself. I looked at the note. To my amazement the address was "To the bearer." I opened the paper and read these words:—"Young student, I should have been glad to improve your acquaintance and serve you if possible; but, weary of life, having seen, felt, and experienced much, resolved no longer to bear upon my heart the misery of all mankind, I die by my own will—my life a failure. But for you—courage! You can endure, I could only act. Adieu."

This extraordinary note enclosed a bill for fifty dollars. I pursued the stranger—but in vain; I knew not what direction he had taken. Two days after, I read in a paper an account of a suicide committed at a hotel, by a gentleman answering in every respect to the description of the stranger. A great sensation was produced by the event. It appeared that he was an Englishman of distinction, and some celebrity as a poet, that he had expended his whole fortune in acts of extravagant benevolence; and that, being too proud to endure existence on the ordinary terms of humanity, he had given me his last fifty dollars, and departed for another life with the coolness of a traveller who sets out for another continent.

But, to return to the night of our meeting. After my unsuccessful pursuit of the stranger, I returned to the ferry-boat with a heart divided by the most opposite emotions. I had found and lost a generous and noble friend. It seemed almost as though my life had been saved at the expense of another's. On that night I shed the last tears which earth has been able to extort from my hard nature. Bitterly I wept, till with the dawn of morning I once more found myself treading the hard pavement of the dismal and deserted streets Oh! those streets,—those sad, cruel, rocky streets! how often in great cities have the weary steps of neglected and despairing genius made mournful music for the sorrowing angels of heaven, longing to snatch them up to their white bosoms midway upon the martyrdom of glory! But he who would ascend the mountain, must scale the precipice. He who would rise to heaven must first descend to hell, unless, like me, he stray madly into that country of which no traveller has written, no poet fabled; icy and desolate region where the sun's rays are pale and cold, and the heart ceases to vibrate in harmony with nature, whilst yet continuing to pulsate in mockery of life.

I satisfied the cravings of my famished body, and for two days continued without cessation to make fruitless inquiries for the stranger. On the third morning, the news of his death reached me. Then, and not till then, I began to form projects for my own future. But I was a changed man; the solemn incident which had interrupted the monotonous misery of my life, had stirred all the hidden depths of a soul fathomless as the abysses of space, of which indeed every soul is the microcosm. I seemed to have inherited the terrible burden of which the stranger had spoken in his note. It was no longer my own petty miseries that occupied me, but the idea of the universal misery extending over the habitable earth.

"O! great and noble spirit," I murmured, "never, never will I forget that thy latest act was one of strange and penetrating kindness to an unknown outcast. As thou hast lived, so will I live; our roads may be diverse, our aims shall be the same; and, if ever I feel tempted to degrade my soul by a mean or cowardly action, I will pray to thy disembodied self to inspire me by thy invisible presence with strength to resist temptation."

I now resolved to quit New York. I had written a work on "Imponderable Fluids," for which I had been unable to find a publisher; and I had made several practical inventions, which no capitalist would entertain, on account of their startling novelty, the great expense of carrying them out in practice, and my incapacity from sheer poverty to produce working models of my inventions.

I determined to go to London. Surely, thought I, in the market of the world, I shall find men ready to appreciate my discoveries—publishers eager to purchase my works. I will go to London; I will accumulate wealth; I will pursue my investigations of the profoundest arcana of science; I will study; I will experimentalize; I will invent; I will create machine giants, with limbs of iron, compared to which all engines of the past shall be as feeble pigmies; I will annihilate poverty, by illimitable increase and facility of production; I will overthrow the fallacies of political economy, by the revolution of all existing relations between labor and capital; in a word, I will become the God of the earth, by the power of unrivalled knowledge, and I will make a paradise of my kingdom, by the grandeur of the ideas which shall guide the use of my power.

Such were the reveries of a madman, who, with fifty dollars for capital, and a new idea for an introduction, set sail for England, to commence a sleepless war against that concrete mass of ignorance, selfishness, and stupidity, which is called society; that chaos of vile materials, which seems to exist only for intellect to mould, to revolutionize, and contend with, until finding a grave of rest, amid the heterogeneous confusion of discordant elements and monstrosities of repulsive vitalism.

On the dial of Time are mighty numerals; millions, and quintillions, and decillions of years, fabulous periods over which thought passes as over seconds of human measure. Ichthyosauri no longer drag their hideous length over the slimy surface of an infant globe. Dodos, in ranky vegetating isles, the wingless birds of an age, when quadrupeds were not, have passed away into the ghost-world of science, from which cunning philosophers upraise them for our amazement. Nature improves with practice. There are many respectable classes of men who shall, ere long, be the ichthyosauri and dodos of future science. Wondering students then shall read how human ichthyosauri were in those days, who ever grovelled in the slime of selfishness and ignorance; human dodos, without wings to their souls, to whom the free air of thought was inaccessible, and how these imperfect, grovelling, and wingless men passed away and became traditions, fossil statesmen, generals, traders, and journalists, to be seen in Barnum's museums of those days, with actual fossil Barnums, as the drollest curiosities amongst them.

During the voyage, I meditated on the vast field of creative activity which my idea had opened. I revelled in the complicated construction of a thousand varied applications of the boundless sources of power and motion my discovery had given me. Often I half fancied that the idea itself might be an illusion, a dream; that I should wake up and find myself cured of the stupendous hallucination. But it was not so. I was the last man in the world to mistake chaos for order, or dreaming for science. I have lived to curse the painful clearness of vision which enables me alike to penetrate, at a glance, the souls of men and the foundations of a system. The idea was a truth; the greatest practical truth with which science had ever dealt.

This truth is, and ever shall remain, a secret. But, lest its existence should be deemed an imposture, and my possession of it a pretence, I will sufficiently indicate its nature to convince, and, at the same time, mislead the studious, who will vainly ponder over the meaning of the enigma, of which the key is in the hands of the master alone. The secret may be torn from nature by others, as I myself did wrench it. From me it shall never part, even as a death-bed legacy.

Force, or primitive motion, is of a nature entirely different from that which all past philosophers have imagined. What is called inertia, is the active converse of motion. All force radiates and converges. The part is equal to the whole. Division and multiplication are convertible terms. Every particle of matter is instinct with perpetual motion. Every motive force is infinite, and moves the universe. But vague, mystical, and meaningless as these phrases may sound to the majority of readers, I dare not proceed. Already I have said too much, perhaps, for the safety of my secret—that marvellous discovery which a thousand times have I explained and descanted upon to fools who could not recognize the talisman when before their eyes, who refused to clutch the philosopher's stone when offered to their grasp. To them the revelation was profoundest silence.

There is one discovery I have not yet made. It is the depth of human stupidity. I hope yet to fathom it. Would there were equal hope of discovering its antidote!

During the voyage, I meditated on all these things, and devised my scheme of action. I possessed the secret so long coveted by men, if not in the precise sense in which they understood it, the secret of perpetual and inexhaustible motion. I possessed, moreover, the knowledge and the power to direct the application of this force to every detail of manufacturing operations, locomotion, and agriculture. I possessed everything but the pecuniary means of demonstrating my ideas by a model which might cost, at the utmost, five hundred dollars.

Reader, for twenty long and hateful years of suffering, I never possessed fifty dollars beyond what I required for my most immediate necessity, and in no one case did I, during that whole period, possess a single dollar beyond the amount which I was indebted to needy and pressing creditors.

The voyage was over. The nights on deck, when, alone of all the passengers, I, wrapped in my rough pilot coat, revelled in the storm, bounded with the waves, laughed at the dashing spray, and held communion with the wild spirits of the sea and air, these were at an end. Whilst on the sea, I felt as if I had a friend in old Oceanus, with his million traditions and unfathomable mysteries. Often 'mid the howlings of the storm I recited poems of my departed benefactor, whose works I had procured at New York—my sole preparation for the voyage; wild, deep-diving invocations of mighty and intoxicating phantasms! Often I sang them to mad tunes, to the roaring sea's accompaniment!

But these were vanished pleasures. Again my feet were on the hard stones of a mighty city, of all earth's cities the mightiest. My feet were on the hard stones—emblem of the hearts I was to encounter, of the fate that was preparing for me.

I had now a task before me: to find a capitalist. In that phrase is summed up for the poverty-stricken inventor all the hell of which priests fable, and at which fools tremble.

Brief shall be my description of this Inferno. I have seen in one week, one hundred capitalists who came in answer to an advertisement, all burning with an insatiable thirst of gold, yet all too mean so cowardly to risk a single hundred pounds for the prospect of unbounded wealth!

In vain I have remonstrated with their unreasonable cupidity. In vain, in other cases, I have frankly told my secret, which they could not understand, and illustrated it by simple experiments, from which they were incapable of drawing conclusions. In vain have I exhausted analogy in striving to persuade a brainless merchant of the feasibility of my schemes.

"Yes, sir," said one, "I see very well that there is something in it. I have no doubt you are a very clever man; but suppose it fails, what becomes of my hundred pounds?"

Another would say, "Ah! yes, on a small scale an experiment may succeed; but on a large scale, it is very different."

"Idiot," I replied, contemptuously, "you never tried an experiment in your life, and if you saw one tried, you were unable to comprehend it!"

"You are a beggarly scoundrel and adventurer, trying to extort money on false pretences, you—" here I stopped the respectable Englishman, by opening the door, and fairly throwing him down stairs, for which offence I—I, the king of science, the discoverer of the greatest of earth's secrets—was imprisoned for seven days in a common jail.

This gave me a lesson. I threw no more capitalists down stairs, but, on the other hand, I succeeded in convincing none of the truth or practicability of my projects. Yet it was not for want of hunting. I hunted capitalists as a sportsman hunts his game. I grew quite a connoisseur in these sort of beasts. I could measure capacities with a look, a man's degree of understanding by a glance at his phrenological development. More than once, I said to a fat, self-complacent old millionaire—"Sir, it is unnecessary to enter into the affair with you. Good morning! Excuse the liberty."

"Minus," I would answer, touching my head with my finger, and leaving him under the impression that I was a madman, and not he—a fool.

The half-enlightened, self-sufficient ignoramuses gave me the most trouble. These miserable creatures would dispute with me, till I told them frankly that they had yet to go to school. The actual men of science were utterly impracticable. They immediately strained every nerve to show themselves superior to me, by demonstrating the fallacy of my views. One only partially caught the profound meaning of my enigmatical hints, for by this time I had grown savagely tenacious of my secret. It was my only possession, my only consolation, and I cherished it proportionately. The consciousness of the power which this secret gave me, raised me above the herd of men, in every other way my worldly masters.

I had become a sad vagabond; I had tried the press, and occasionally got a paragraph into a paper, as what is called a penny-a-liner, but I was ragged, starving, and hunted from lodging to lodging, for the most part. Sometimes I slept in the open air, in the parks on benches, or under archways. My beard was unshorn, my linen unwashed. I became a cynic. I began to despise men too deeply to value their opinion. My sufferings made me ferocious in manner. I was generally considered mad. One day, in a starving state, I took a large book from a bookstall, and walking into the shop, sold it to the bookseller, who, as it was a common edition, readily gave me one-fourth of the price it had been marked in his window. This I thought an excellent joke at the time, and laughed secretly over for many days. The man was a Jew, and I had learned that Jews were cunning people. But I think English traders are quite as cunning, and fully as ignoble.

I grew to hate traders, from the petty shopkeeper who sold me an ounce of chiccory instead of coffee, to the great capitalist, who repulsed my inventions without examination in his selfish ignorance. So much did I hate them, that I often used to mock them for pastime, and ask them, as I passed along, how many people they had cheated that day, and how much one of their pound weights might truly weigh? They scowled upon me in reply, and some answered abusively; but I never stayed to hear them. This race of men in England are all cowards. I considered that if it were possible to rob them, they were to be regarded as no better than the bees from which the honey is taken without mercy.

As I grew poorer and poorer, I consorted only with mechanics, and from time to time a few strange vagabonds like myself, who had seen better days, and we had a sort of miserable sociability; and when we had earned or borrowed a shilling, we would go together and make a meal at a coffee shop, or drink ale at a public house, as they call drinking saloons in England, and be quite happy for the moment in a wretched, obscure way.

Once, however, I wrote an article on galvanism, and forwarded it to the editor of a scientific periodical. To my surprise I received, in a few days, a polite note requesting me to call. When I entered his room, the editor, a little dark man, with small eyes and a very large nose, on which rested a pair of green spectacles, observed my strange appearance with the greatest astonishment. With pretended sympathy, he inquired into my position, and told me that as he was in want of a private secretary, he would engage me at a salary of a pound a week, if it suited me. I eagerly closed with the offer, and wrote for this man, besides numbers of papers for his journal, a most important work on dynamics, which had a large sale afterwards, but on the completion of which he discharged me, and thus once more threw me on the world. But when I learned, as I did from the papers, of the success of my work, published in the little editor's name, I was seized with a fierce anger, and going straight to him, I spoke thus:—

"Man! I am willing that you shall establish a reputation on the basis of my labor, but for the money which you receive for the work, it shall be mine. Deduct, therefore, the four months' salary you paid me, and hand me over the money!"

Now the editor had received three hundred pounds for the work, and my salary for four months was sixteen pounds. Therefore he put on an air of intense astonishment and indignation, and told me that I had agreed to work at a certain rate, that he had honestly paid for that work, and similar hypocrisies, which he concluded by offering me ten pounds as a compromise.

"Wretch!" I replied, "know that the sum of which you have robbed me would have enabled me to produce the grandest invention the world has ever witnessed. Take your choice between exposure and restitution!"

"You know I dictated the work to you," said the little man with marvellous effrontery.

I strode away in silence. I wrote a letter to a newspaper revealing his imposture, that very night.

Two months later I was arrested for the costs of an action for defamation of character, brought against me by the editor, and which I could get no lawyer to defend. I was held up in all the papers to public contempt as a liar, and I only escaped from prison by being transferred to a mad-house on account of my persistence in raving of my invention, and my eloquent letters written to people of distinction, requesting their assistance in producing it.

It was after fifteen years passed in a public pauper mad-house that I succeeded by stratagems, which it is unnecessary to dwell upon, in escaping from its walls, and once more regaining my liberty. I had been carried to the asylum a young man of five and twenty; I escaped at the age of forty, prematurely gray, with a heart hardened into granite by the stern sense of irreparable wrong, and with a power which made me what I am—your master.

I had wasted the brightness of youth in intolerable misery, the prime of manhood in a loathsome prison. The world had been my foe, and vengeance was in my hands.

I possessed the power to bless mankind by infinite material creation. I also possessed the power to sweep them from the bosom of the earth. In the solitude of my mad-house cell, amid the clanking of maniac chains and the howling of demoniacs, a fiendlike thought crossed my brain as the glare of an incendiary's torch flashes across the wall of the doomed mansion. Hitherto my soul had been exclusively occupied with one thought—the happiness of men, the annihilation of their woes; now a new idea forced itself upon me, the idea of destruction, of unlimited havoc, of death made easy by a science to which the arts of Archimedes were mere trifling.

Deeply versed in chemistry, I pondered on the powers and application of explosives, until step by step I ascended the baleful eminence of infernal dominion. That I could carry about my person the means of destroying an army or a citadel was nothing. I lit upon a mode of projection so distant in its range that its operation must appear miraculous, whilst its certainty surpassed the most accurate calculations of ordinary gunnery, at common distances. All this, which in my cell I could but meditate, I have since realized by experiment. On one occasion I destroyed from the summit of a mountain a vast herd of buffaloes grazing at ten miles distance; and it was I, and not the lightning, who at the distance of nearly seven leagues destroyed the Hapsburg tower at Ratisbon, as I could, if I willed, destroy the Hapsburg dynasty itself, did I not cherish it as one of the most splendid curses with which the coward tribe of men were ever afflicted and degraded.

On leaving the mad-house, my first visit was to the post-office, where I found letters announcing the death of my parents, and containing drafts for money from the executors. My father had, after all, died a millionaire. A town had been built upon his land, owing to a new railway communication, and I—I the despised, starved, hunted wretch, was rich enough to have carried out a thousand inventions had I willed it. But I willed it not—my models were made and destroyed for my own satisfaction. My secrets shall die with their discoverer. In contempt of mankind and its meanness, I rove the earth consorting with vagabonds and outcasts. It is for them alone I am rich. No trader's store can ever boast of my presence. I would as soon ask an ape, as a banker or merchant to share my hospitality. I know them, I loathe them, I despise them, calm in the terrible consciousness of unbounded and irresistible power.

The secret of happiness I refuse to men for vengeance. I spare their lives, not so much from pity as from contempt.

THE fragmentary confession which follows was entrusted to me many years ago in one of the great cities of Europe, with the author's permission to publish it after a certain lapse of time. The stipulated period having now elapsed, I hasten to lay before the public a history which must interest every imaginative person in a preëminent degree. The words are unaltered; though, perhaps, in some places a judicious critic would have softened the extravagance of the style.

My nights were crowded with a series of ever recurring dreams, which too often degenerated into hideous nightmares. My days were filled with fancies—to which an all-dominating imagination gave almost the substance of reality. Common life had scarcely a hold upon me: I had none of the sharpness of other precocious children. I was easily duped in the simplest matters, because I did not understand that there was any utility in deception. Being absolutely pure in soul and innocent in heart, I was set down as mysteriously vicious because my teachers could not understand me.

But, in one respect, I was far in advance of ordinary children. My ideas of love and beauty were developed to a degree, even at four years old, which to many would appear incredible. I had indeed but one master passion; and it was only at a later period that the constant thwarting of my imperious cravings for spiritual and physical sympathy aroused to violent activity a fierce combativeness, which has often since led me to the commission of acts of sudden violence and startling retribution, not originally natural to my character.

One fancy, one dominant vision, haunted me incessantly—almost from my cradle. At first it was a beautiful child; then an exquisite young girl; then, as I myself became a man, a superb and glorious specimen of ideal woman. In reality, I thought of nothing else. My school-tasks were performed in order to get rid of an extraneous annoyance, and return to my fanciful world. My games were mere reactions of the bodily functions of the brain, essential to health and sanity. I was always pondering over the attributes—trying to picture the shape and features of my fantastic princess, and holding everlasting imaginary conversations with that inessential being.

If these details appear tedious, or strike the reader as common to many others than myself, I can only regret that they are indispensable to the proper understanding of my after life. Moreover I wish it to be believed that these dreams of mine were strictly absorbing, and by no means exceptional states—that I took no interest whatever in any of the ordinary objects of children, boys, and youths, approaching adolescence.

On attaining puberty a vast change came over me, and for some years I was swept along by a current of passion and adventure, which, at the age of two-and-twenty, left me a sort of moral shipwreck, alone in the world—limited in means, though for the time independent in position.

My early intercourse with the world had brought me nothing but mortification, bitterness, and disappointment. My appearance was singularly delicate and effeminate. My complexion was fair as a young girl's—my soft blue eyes and silky hair would have been admired in a woman. My figure, though accurately proportioned, had neither the imposing height nor the robust development required to carry off the girlishness of my countenance. At eighteen the young ladies called me a "pretty boy," asked me if I used pearl-powder, and playfully kissed me. But they had other looks for their whiskered, manly admirers. In such presence I was forgotten, or treated as a mere innocent youth. Unlike my accursed preceptors, the cruel fair ones would not even give me credit for viciousness. They simply held me to be a milksop. To illustrate this fully, I will describe a scene which took place on my twentieth birthday.

I had then been residing for nearly two years in the house of a distant female relative, whose niece, Aurelia, was a lovely girl about my own age, magnificently developed; with large, dark-brown eyes, splendid shoulders and arms, and a form which the fairest of the graces might have borrowed without blushing.

Aurelia was a fine girl, and had a noble nature; but she could not see in me that chivalrous and gallant cavalier I was so desirous of impersonating. She knew I adored her—had adored her from the first; but she could not look upon me as a serious lover. She played with me gracefully—enchantingly; but, still—it was but play.

I became suddenly sad-almost severe. I stood erect, and said—"Why do you laugh?"

Aurelia looked. This time she did not smile; for there was a wildness in my gaze that alarmed her.

"Nearly a year my senior," I added, stung to the quick by this unpardonable insult.

I saw she loved the man—as it chanced, a despicable puppy, but with the face of a dragoon.

"Against a man!" said I, still more vindictively. "Why, girl—this fellow was caned by my hand but yesterday! and the provocation was one in which your name figured—I beat him like a dog! He does not pretend to fight. Is that enough?"

"Yes, you wicked boy! enough of boasting and falsehood for one day. Leave this room, sir!"

"I do not believe you; and even if there be any truth in what you say, no doubt Mr. Riversham spared you out of pity!" cried Aurelia, crimson with passion.

"Perhaps!" said I, with sarcastic emphasis; and without another word I left the room and the house. How I wished that Riversham had been a fighting man; but he was a "spotted" coward, and my affair with him was at an end.

As for my cousin she hated me ever afterward—and I pitied her. We always affect to pity those whom we despise in fact.

One or two similar repulses, though not carried to the same length, completed my disgust for society and the women it produced. As for women of a different class, they inspired me with positive aversion, save as a passing distraction.

With every day I shrank more and more from the discords of actual life, and gave myself up more to poetry, study, and day-dreaming. My old childish fancies came back upon me with renewed force, and my dreams by night became an object of envy to my waking consciousness. Still, notwithstanding Bulwer's story* (which, like all Bulwer's metaphysical attempts, is a blundering failure,) no man can make the ordinary kind of dreams, or dreams proper, a real source of happiness.

It occurred to me, therefore, to try a novel experiment. Having minutely studied the phenomena of sleep and dreaming, I summed up the objections to dreaming, as a chosen condition of existence, under four heads.

2.—Indistinctness, confusion, and tendency to metamorphosis, or crisis inducing awakening.

How far these objections might be overcome by others I did not pretend to say; but to me they appeared radically insurmountable, and still do so at this moment.

I then contrasted dreams with waking imaginations, or castles in the air; and perceived that the latter were comparatively free from all the above objections, excepting the third—that of unreality to the consciousness. There dreaming had an obvious advantage—for it produced positive illusion, however transitory; whilst mere waking imagination could scarcely be said to approach that point of marvelous coincidence between the material and the spiritual existence.

Given then the problem to produce an intermediate state, in which the vividness of the most real dreams should be superadded to the voluntary creation of the clearest and most consecutive fancies.

I knew that hallucinations were common, in which men perfectly awake, and in broad daylight, saw things which had no positive existence with perfect distinctness. It is true, these visions were involuntary. But what was volition. Did not every combination made by the mind spring necessarily from one centre of action? Was will indeed any thing but modified impulse? Was not the soul, the real being, in fact a vital source of power, a spiritual sun, emitting rays in every direction, these rays being broken, reflected, and refracted entirely according to the media they encountered? Could I not so modify my spiritual radiation as to surround my focus of perception and sensation with images and feelings of my own selection? Was not, in fact, the conceiving so tremendous an idea in itself a step toward its realization?

I further reflected that as every faculty of mind and body was strengthened by practice—witness the effect of gymnastics, and of the exercise of the memory or of the study of mathematics—so might I, by continually making powerful efforts of imagination, so far exalt the power as to obtain over it a tangible and positive control.

Had I imparted my intentions to any one, my experiment would certainly have been regarded as a deliberate attempt to drive myself mad. I therefore made all my arrangements quietly, shut myself up in a suite of rooms, which were only to be entered for purposes of order and necessary supplies, during my brief daily absence for the purpose of exercise, and devoted myself to the absorbed contemplation of the ideal world.

My purpose was to concentrate the whole force of my imagination upon one image of incomparable female beauty, until from being a mere shadowy fantasy, the creation of my soul should become a plain and indestructible vision; nay, I even indulged the hope of endowing my phantom-mistress with qualities palpable to the other senses, and of thus living the remainder of my life in a delicious trance or enchanted lunacy, which should to me supply all the enjoyment which the common world denied. Little did I think that for a brief space I should invade the very empire of the gods and enjoy an existence—which I will not describe by anticipation.

But before I could commence my daring experiment in earnest, a certain physical preparation was indispensable. Active imagination and a hearty or even healthy appetite for food are irreconcilable. A severe course of diet and study was necessary to drive sensuality from its strongholds. Just as a prize-fighter or a pedestrian goes into training for his business; did I, the sportsman of thought, prepare myself for my undertaking.

At the end of three weeks I had gradually reduced my system to that state, when the appetites are comparatively dormant, whilst the nerves are exquisitely sensitive. I had become disinclined to sleep, clear-headed, and enthusiastically enamored of my scheme.

My food was a slice of dry toast and tea for breakfast, and often little more for dinner. Although I went out into the open air in my garden, and lounged upon the grass, I now took no exercise worthy of the name, and far from drinking wine or spirits, quenched my thirst with effervescing drinks of a tendency opposed to stimulant.

Thus, after reading Shelley's poems, Hoffmann's tales, several of Balzac's most spiritual romances, a little of Alfieri, some Lamartine, Tennyson, Goethe, Shakspeare's Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and indeed all his plays but the comedies and earlier tragedies, with an occasional dive into Herodotus, Homer and Æschylus, Dante and Gibbon, the Hindu Vedas, the Zendavesta, the Koran, and the Bible—I found my brain in a state of perfect activity, full of images, free from all lymphatic languor, and thirsting with wild emulation for the indulgence of its own creative potence. Such was the effect of my training bodily and mental. During all this time I neither visited nor received visitors. I conversed with no one, and the silence in which I lived was only broken by the strange songs which I composed and sung—echoes perhaps of Mozart, Cimarosa, Weber, Meyerbeer or other of my old musical idols—echoes strangely varied and confounded with new and marvelous conceptions of my own, which I shall soon have further occasion to allude to.

It was now, sublimated and subtilized to the height of the most transcendental state of thought, and the most ethereal condition of body, that from a chaos of shadowy heroines freshly presented to my mind I commenced, like a spiritual Frankenstein, the elaborate construction or rather evocation of my phantom goddess.

Like Minerva, from the brain of Jupiter she sprang armed with—not spear and shield—but ineffable beauty and majesty from the adytum of my soul. Like Venus rising from the sea, she arose from the ocean of my thoughts, no vague conception, no fleeting fancy, but from the very first a personal, distinctive, individualized creation. Vague and phantasmal, it is true, in outline, certain and immutable in essence.

I said "Come thou, and thou only, my embodied dream of beauty, my perfect spirit-bride!"—and she came, veiled, but immutable, of unearthly, but of permanent texture. By day and night I contemplated her, till the pictured shape became more and more substantial; till the blue eyes deepened, and the white shoulders brightened, and the gold-tinged hair glittered into visible actuality—until she stood before me, or hovered round me, a thing to gaze on without fear of vanishment or fading disillusion, till in one word, I saw my dream-girl even as I saw my own image in the mirror!

Scarcely had the phantom become thus incarnate, than I became aware of the astounding phenomenon that, having once acquired the power over matter, and achieved the masterpiece of my ambition, all minor details and accessories, locality and scenery, required but an effort of my imagination, and straightway they became apparent to the senses.

And what may appear more surprising—if indeed there be any thing surprising in so simple a matter as intensified imagination—is, that at the same time I found myself possessed of a power over sound which imparted to my whole experiment a new and dazzling grandeur of voluptuous enjoyment. All who have had patience to read thus far, must have felt that a grand opera, of all descriptions of dramatic representation, approaches nearest to perfect illusion, and is at the same time the very highest form of artistic recreation yet known to man. The spirit of the master, living in every tone, cadence and harmony of sounds, wraps the whole in a unity of effect, which in tragedy, where all depends upon the actors, is impossible. Besides, music intoxicates the soul, throws it into an abnormal state of exaltation, and annihilates the absurdity of details in the embracing atmosphere of its enchantment.

And I—I had but to think harmony, to hear it. An orchestra of infinite magnificence and extent had become the organ of my will. All limits to tone were for me annihilated. The awful depth of my immeasurable score was lost in the abyss, the piercing ascent played like lightnings amid the clouds, whilst distant echoes sent back everlasting accompaniments from the farthest eternities, world without end!

I now began to hold conversations with Amata, the name I had given to my phantom beauty—conversations, which it is impossible to record, since no earthly language could convey the meaning of those mysterious dialogues, or more correctly speaking, duos. Our language was melody, and we never wearied of its interchange.

Nevertheless, I had not hitherto dared thoroughly to trust my subjugated senses. A hideous dread of a more hideous awakening, occasionally stole over me, and I at length resolved to possess all or nothing, to stretch my acquired supernatural power to the utmost, and decide my fate forever. Hitherto, I had not dared to stretch forth my arms toward Amata. I had been content to dream of burning kisses and passionate embraces, for my dreams were but reflections of my waking hallucinations. But now, with a desperate resolution, like ancient wizard evoking the god of evil, and risking salvation upon the chance, I threw all my life into one supreme volition, and exclaimed to the angelic shape that, with loosened floating robes of diaphanous texture stood glowing in beauty before me, "Come to my heart, Amata! let me live in thee, or die in my despair!"

And lo! immediately, like a white bird settling on a bough, did the supposed phantom Amata glide smiling into my arms, fixed upon mine her dewy lips, upon mine her deep blue eyes of eternal love, and press to mine her snowy breast, from which no mortal sculptor might dare to model! Her radiant hair fell down in silky profusion over both our shoulders; with unutterable triumph and joy I passed my hand over her hair, and skin smoother than satin or ivory, and I exclaimed wildly,

"Amata, Amata! whence comest thou? Art thou, indeed, but a delusive phantom? Shall I lose thee as I found thee? Art thou mine or mystery?"

"Fear not, beloved one!" murmured Amata, in tones more sweet than sounds a crystal struck by rod of silver. "What can man conceive, that Nature yields not?"

And even as she spoke, vast chords began to swell, and the lightning tones to dart, and the deep drums of the abyss to thunder, and all the universe to vibrate in sonorous harmony, as, with my lips glued to Amata's, her bosom pressed to mine—I slept in matchless ecstasy!

Thus did I cross the rainbow-bridge, Bifrost, from earth to heaven, from Mid-gard to Valhalla. And which of Odin's Valkyrs could rival my Amata?

Facile is the descent of Avernus! Rapid is the voyage from the radiant revels of Valhalla to the infernal shadows of the mist-world Nifelhem, cold and sombre Hell of the deep-souled, solemn Northmen!

Where am I?—what hideous world is this, in which fiends beset my path, that glare upon me with cold, hungry eyes, then vanish before the flash of my ever sheathless sword? What phrenzied ghost stalks grimly through the night's black kingdoms, outlawed of gods and men—spirit of despair and vengeance?

Where is Amata—my Amata? Answer me, ye fiends of darkness, on whose heads glitter diadems of ice, on whose bosoms shine stars and crosses beset with hailstone pearls!

Where is Amata?—where is the dead minstrel's child—the echo of my dream, the true, the glorious Amata? Broad, broad is the gulf, broad as the wild Atlantic! and there comes a whisper in the wind—a whisper from Amata,

MAY it please your imperial readership, intelligent and discriminating unit of this great nation of emperors and empresses, in which every citizen is a sovereign in his own right, besides, being (with few exceptions) a general officer and editor of a newspaper—I hereby solemnly propose that we understand one another distinctly.

Nor do I wish to frighten you off the ground at once, by a phantom, which I shall straightway proceed to exorcise with befitting ceremony.

You have possibly, as one of the great army of martyrs, read, or tried to read "Burke on the Sublime and Beautiful." If not; it is of little consequence. There are occupations which pay better than reading Burke.

My intention is by no means to compete with that turgid orator. Whether a man, who could not comprehend the French Revolution, was equal to the task of philosophically investigating the principles of the Sublime and Beautiful, is a question for retrospective critics, and not for a go-ahead speculator more than half-way through the nineteenth century.

I do not, therefore, criticise Burke—I repudiate him. It is not the same concern. No connection with the house of Sublime, Beautiful & Co. Mine is a ready-money business, and conducted on cash principles. Those who run may read, or those who read may run—if they find it tedious.

The grand style is not the grand thing, nor is a treatise on "the grand style" an essay on the grand, but rather on that style, air, manner, form, or aspect, which the desire for the semblance of grandeur causes ambition to assume. As in Peter Schlemihl's story, the shadow is the substance to be dealt with.

Be not disappointed, my grave friend in spectacles, with the long hair and the turn-down collar; nor thou, O azure queen! familiar, doubtless, with Winkelman, Lessing, and Schlegel, in the original German; with Phosphor, in his native Polish, (that sweet Sclavonic Italian;) with Radowitzer, the light of Upsala's University; and Lurckensen, the sage of Jutland, not to mention Glaucopis, the Greek, and Dodonius, the Roman, (whose treatise, De rebus ignotis pro magnificis, was translated by Nostradamus, and printed by Dr. Faustus)—frown not too harshly on my apparent frivolity.

Does not all science deal with phenomena, whilst the essence escapes our analyses?

Did not the late Duke of Wellington, that iron warrior, himself admit, that he preferred mock turtle soup to that of genuine amphibious origin, when taking a "hasty plate of soup" after the manner of great conquerors?

Was not Tamerlane, the subduer of Asia and general ravager of empires, passionately addicted to the mimic battles of the chess-board?

Do not real modern living mesmerised prophet-cobblers dictate books in magnetic trances about things they never understood, and find disciples who put faith in such revelations, notwithstanding the utter impossibility of ever understanding them?

Let us then discourse of the Grand Style, leaving the truly grand to speak for itself when we encounter it.

"What to do, and how to do it—that, sir, is the title of the book I should like to publish!" said the publisher to the author, in a tone as near enthusiasm as was possible to a publisher.

The author dimly comprehended the supposed advantages of the speculation, but he understood the hint and answered accordingly; for, in matters of business, (cash payments excepted,) authors are particularly straightforward. They go straight to the mark; or, as marks and rose nobles are now out of date, we may say, more graphically, that they go straight to the dollar, which is the grand moral centre of all things.

Of course the publisher answered evasively, as became a man who had money to risk, and meditated risking it.

"Think?" said Mr. Scribble—Mr. Heraclitus Scribble, Author of "Life up a Tree," "The Philosophy of Nothingness," and "The Last of the Anthropophagi," a preëminently damned tragedy—"Think, Mr. Inkum, why I think nothing."

"Come, none of your everlasting metaphysics, Mr. Scribble," groaned Inkum, who had published the "Philosophy of Nothingness," and thereby clearly realized the grand dogma, that "out of nothing, nothing came," which vulgar error the work was intended to disprove.

"Metaphysics!" exclaimed the author, "nothing"—the publisher shuddered, but became reassured as the philosopher continued—"nothing could be farther from my mind, at the present moment, than to discuss metaphysics in any shape. I merely was about to observe, that words are one thing, and ideas another. You have mentioned the name of a proposed work, but you have not given even the remotest hint as to the idea.

"I have not, eh? why, don't you see? What to do, and how to do it; that's what everybody wants to know; and a book that will convey the information will reach a sale large enough to wear out three sets of stereos!"

"Yes; but what are people to do, and how are they to do it?" exclaimed the perplexed composer of a tragedy, to be acted, as Poe's raven would say, "nevermore."

"How should I know?" said the publisher, impatiently. "I suggest a book; it is for you, as a literary man, to find out what to put in it. I don't sell ideas—I sell octavos and duodecimos, thirteen to the dozen, with a discount of ten to twenty per cent. for cash. You go, and write two hundred pages, octavo, small pica leaded, explaining what to do, if you can find out how to do it; and I'll give you a hundred dollars down, and a per-centage on the sale after the first edition. Now that's what I consider a fair offer?"

"Yes," said Scribble, who was not a millionaire like you and I, and wanted a hundred dollars very particularly. "Yes, certainly, I know what to do, and that is, write the book, though Heaven only knows how I am to do it! But I trust in Providence—"

"I thought you explained in your other book that there was no Providence?" said Inkum, with a sardonic grin.

"Very true; I had forgotten," said Scribble, confusedly; "no matter, you shall see the introductory chapter to-morrow."

Mr. Washington Scribble walked rapidly along, and having stimulated his ideas by a glass of brandy and a cigar, began to think by the time he was half-way up Chestnut street that, after all, Inkum's suggestion admitted of a very extended application.

"What, in fact, is the idea," mused Scribble, "but an attempt to realize the practical 'philosophy of everything'—by the bye, that would do for a second title, What to do, and how to do it; or the philosophy of everything. I have it! Two hundred pages, small pica—is that allowed for such an amazingly tall subject? however, cost what it may I will begin with a solid foundation; and, of course, a solid foundation can only be laid in true philosophy—the real transcendental business. I flatter myself I've dived a fathom or two deeper than Emerson, who shakes out his ideas like pepper out of a caster." So when he reached home, and took refuge in his study, in the fifth story, our enthusiastic philosopher immediately sat down and wrote as follows:

WHAT TO DO, AND HOW TO DO IT;

THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVERYTHING.

Book I. Chapter I. Section I.

THE FOUNDATION OF ALL THINGS.

"In the first place, there is Nothing. Nothing alone exists—that is, does not exist; for it is a contradiction in terms to affirm that Nothing has any existence. To say that Nothing exists, is to affirm that that exists of which the sole attribute is non-existence; which is absurd.

"Nothing is the unconditioned, the unqualified, the abstract in the abstract, the absolute, eternal, infinite Inconceivable, that is, Uncreated Indescribable. (Good!)

"Nothing is, at the same time, Everything; for Everything is alike unconditioned, unqualified, Inconceivable, and Uncreated.

"It is only when nothing or everything (for the terms are convertible) becomes realized as Something, that, by attaining a phenomenal being, as a finite and imperfect idea, it can be recognized in consciousness, while consciousness is the finite action of the Infinite Nothingness, or Universal unconditioned Being or Ego, which, by the experience of the Non Ego exchanges its negative for a positive state of existence——"

"Well, may I be ——! may I be made into double medium and printed off as a handbook, if I ever read such infernal rubbish!" muttered Inkum, when he had read thus far in the MS. confided to him that morning by Scribble, with a childlike confidence. There were references to Karl, Schelling, Hegel, Mar-heinecke, and other later Hegelians in the margin, which completed Inkum's disgust; for he remembered having ordered a large package of their works from Germany for the use of Scribble, and at a very considerable expense, some year or two before, and also recollected that the account was as yet undiminished. When Scribble called to learn the fate of his MS., Inkum returned it with a brief intimation that it was "not the sort of thing he wanted;" and Scribble departed in wrath, and severely criticised the three next books Inkum published in a paper he (Scribble) wrote for. Eventually the rejected MS. was furbished up as a lecture, and much applauded in Boston, where the people are more up in transcendentalism than at New York or Philadelphia.

Thus you perceive, reader, the grand and important work—"What to do, and how to do it"—still remains to be written, because Mr. Scribble could not help beginning his book at the foundation of all things, and Mr. Inkum did not understand transcendentalism.

Much I lament the accident; and for this reason. The universal character of the work would doubtless have embraced a difficulty, that would have saved me the trouble of composing the present treatise. Doubtless, if he had only had "rope enough," the profound Scribble would have shown how easy a matter to accomplish is that operation, so impossible to all who have hitherto made the attempt, known in familiar parlance as—"doing the grand."

Now I blame nobody for attempting the grand style, whilst I deplore the fatal possibility, that the mere fact of one's vainly attempting the grand, must ensure the inevitable consequence of succeeding in the little.

Makepeace Thackeray, who does the grand in his peculiar way, as I shall presently show, has attacked the question, it seems to me, without thoroughly comprehending it. Perhaps the deficiency in that satirist's reasoning faculties, and the predominance of his perceptive organs, rendered this mistake inevitable. Thackeray has evidently never read Scribble's work on the Philosophy of Nothingness.

He lives too much in the concrete, to thoroughly expand into the abstract. In the boundless abysses of transcendentalism, his mind would be like a fish without a tail, or a ship without a rudder. Thackeray is a materialist of the most material order, and in the refined development of his materialism lies the secret of his strength. He is a very admirable barn-door cock, and is far too sagacious to attempt to pass himself off as an eagle.

He never soars; he mostly creeps comfortably on all fours. He sees a Snob world (in the Carlylian lingo), himself a Snob, and writes a Snob book, from a Snob point of view, in a Snob style, with a Snob moral.

And now the game is fairly started. I feel that all mock-modesty or mock-mercy would be out of place, so I shall at once conclude my preface and dash into the melée.

The one would persuade you that they can do that of which they are naturally incapable.

It may be here observed, that all grandeeism is virtually an attempt to humbug mortal men.

Nevertheless, the grandee must not be confounded with the humbug proper. They are essentially different species of the human genus.

The grandee is morally superior to the humbug, inasmuch as he more or less believes in the delusion he inculcates.

But the humbug is intellectually superior to the grandee, because he knows what he is about, and laughs at the superstition he promulgates.

Physiologically and psychologically considered, both are victims of monomania, like the majority of this mad world. But as Hamlet has been written, and I have a wholesome horror of falling into the category of which bore is the cognomen, I shall not pursue this line of investigation at present.

It is enough to let the unfortunate reader feel occasionally that the illustrious Scribble's pupil is not utterly unworthy of so profound a master as the Author of the "Philosophy of Nothingness."

Nothing is so easy as to be profound. You let yourself down by degrees, plunging into a fresh abyss of mystery at each step, till the bottomless pit of Infinite "Nobody-knows-what-ism" receives you and your listeners, and—you awake to a consciousness that it is late, look at your watch, and go home to your wife if you have one; if not, you go home to your boarding-house and the desolation of bachelorhood. (Anathema sit!)

Before going to bed, always, if you will, take the advice of a modern Democritus, read an essay or two of Emerson. The next morning write out a lucid summary of their contents, in a brief form. I know no better exercise for the mind. If you have no work of Emerson's at hand, a chapter of any book of Thomas Carlyle will equally answer the purpose.

But do not imagine that the task is a mere trifle, as easy as saying one's prayers, or writing a newspaper leader.

These preëminent grandees, I may say, supreme Magnificos, are genii which no fisherman (or fisher of men), Arabian, or otherwise, has yet found means to re-enclose in a portable jar of earthenware—were it even their own proper crania.

The smoke-giants they have developed into, are not to be tricked into condensation, even for a moment, in order that the quick hand of synthesis should clap down the lid of reason, and make potted philosophers of them for all time.

A summary of Emerson and Carlyle! Put chaos in a nutshell! Construct an hour-glass for eternity! Count the stars, number the waves, enchain the winds! Convert Judge Edmonds & Co. to reason! but deem not that any mortal Mantalini can divine the "dem'd total" of Carlyle and Emerson.

Methinks that startled readers exclaim aghast, "What sayest thou, audacious stranger? Son of the night, emergent from obscurity? What awful profanities are these? What insensate youth art thou, that thus invadest the majesty of the Olympian gods?

Minos the king of Crete (post-mortem judge of Tartarus) was a wise man in his day-three thousand years and odd ago. But a stranger came to Crete, a wiser man than Minos. That stranger's name was Dædalus, who, by his surpassing genius and science, constructed wings to fly from the prison of Minos. Likewise Dædalus constructed a man of brass, who did many wonderful things.

From this man of brass some of us are perchance descended. Hence, the impudence of certain men ceases to be a wonder.

Besides, to stick to the old Greeks, and profit by their lessons, did not Hercules beard Pluto in Hades, and steal his dog Cerberus, in scorn of all codes penal and Acherontian?

Better to be a hero, were it only a grandee-hero, than a hero-worshiper—too surely a grandee hero-worshiper.

Oromasdes and Osiris have fallen, the sacred Ibis stands stuffed under a glass case in "Upper-ten" Salons; the mystic crocodile is exhibited in a wooden tub, admission 12½ cents. The Arch Magus, Zoroaster, has followed Orpheus and his mysteries to oblivion's maelstrom; Odin the brave is forgotten by his children, who prefer brandy in a bar-room to beer in Valhalla; Budh himself, and Fo his other self, even now tremble in their pagodas, at the shouts of Chinese sans culottes; Homer is suspected to be a forgery, or an old number of an ancient Hellenic Magazine; Zeus has abandoned Olympus to Mahommed and the Sultan. Old gods and kings, and old god and king-makers are deposed and exiled to bookland. Every dog has his day, and new dogs bark in their turn.

What wonder, then, if a wild scoffer at established things, men, ideas, institutions, and grandees, launch his Viking galley, and Northman-like, makes reckless war upon the throned kings of letters, the temporary demigods of thought. Surely truth is great, and will prevail. Why then fear discussion, free and fearless? Aux armes citoyens!

"By all means. It is probable that you will never see cause to praise any one else."

Conscientiously, I feel myself constrained to answer in the negative. I might qualify, but the question supposed is categorical.

His style being one of barbaric ornament and of a composite order, with an undue preponderance of the Germanic element, is naturally obscure and perplexing to the ordinary reader.

This style is not original. Those who have read Hoffmann and Jean Paul, not to mention Goethe, or the German metaphysicians, (Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Fichte,) must, at a glance, recognize the stolen plumage of this fierce Teutonic Scotchman.

Such unnatural transportations of the forms of one language into another, are by no means uncommon or peculiar to the author of Sartor Resartus.

We have Anglo-Greek, Anglo-Latin, Anglo-French, Anglo-Arabian, and Anglo-Hebrew writers. Then perhaps the German idioms having more freshly emerged from barbarism, are of all the most troublesome and objectionable.

Now, I do not say that it is not advisable to enrich our native English from the spoils of every other language under the sun, by the adoption of new words and phrases of which Johnson was innocent; but I do most confidently assert that a writer who can be so easily captivated by the mere forms of an inferior and less highly developed tongue than his own, displays a weakness of judgment and an incompetence in art, which at once decides against him, any claim he may put forward to a position in the foremost ranks of his country's literature.

Shakspeare was no purist in style, but he wrote English English, as did Spenser, Marlowe, and even Milton, with all his Latin! Hume wrote English, in the most English order, and Gibbon showed what splendor and magnificence our language was capable of, by rivaling Tacitus and Livy on their own ground. Goldsmith wrote with a simplicity and ease equally admirable. Byron, Shelley and Scott, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and a host of lesser poets, have illustrated gloriously the powers and resources of the English tongue; whilst Hope in his Anastasius produced a model of a prose style rarely equalled. In later times we have had Washington Irving and Cooper, De Quincy the opium eater, George Brown the author of Lavengro, Edgar Poe, Hawthorne, and other admirable tale writers, not to mention Bulwer, Marryat, Dickens, Thackeray, and Hermann Melville, to whose doings we shall hereafter refer more particularly.

All these men write English. So does Leitch Richie, Charles Mackay, and Robert Chambers, author of the "Vestiges of Creation." So do Tennyson, Browning, Bryant, Longfellow, Read, Stoddard, and even that most turgid essayist and versifyer, Thomas Babington Macaulay, and that most dreary prejudiced and stupid of historians and political charlatans, Alison.

As a mere writer, or artistic stylist, he is literally a Goth. Nay more, he is a Grandee in style, or, as he himself would phrase it, a great sham and solemnly constituted impostor.

Such mummery or flummery, such artificial "Salmoneus-thunder," may impose on English boys fresh from Oxford or Cambridge, with little in their heads but tufts, ticks, and trilogies, may dazzle the weak minds of aspiring and literary law-students, and young embryo editors; but for us, who have

of Time's vast muster-roll of inspired Demigods, rulers, makers, and teachers of the earth, the rattle of such clumpsy stage properties, excites but a mild pity for the bad taste shown in its employment.

Are we to recognize in this furious denouncer of imposture, this ardent advocate of hero-worship, a true high-priest of thought; or again, to quote his own strange dialect, a "phantasm-captain" and political Bombastes Furioso?

It would be easy to take the latter ground, easy to defend it. But we must not condemn the good nut for its rude shell.

Beneath all the barbaric theatre properties, and bombastic jargon of Anglocised Germanism, moves and lives an honest, brave and truth-loving spirit.

Carlyle is in earnest, evidently. What he is so desperately earnest in, is by no means equally evident.

Like Mephistopheles in Goethe's prologue, Carlyle "finds everything heartily bad" in this "best of all possible worlds." As the Irishman phrased it, "mankind is a great blackguard;" as the wiser Yankee remarked, "human nature is a d—d fool!" In short, Carlyle, like Hamlet, sees that "the times are out of joint," and appears to think that he, Carlyle, in default of a modern Cromwell or other hero "turning up," is about the man to "set them right," or at least impart a broad hint as to how that desirable end may be compassed.

For this purpose, he suggests hero-worship (possibly as a substitute for heroism itself) and the general putting down of shams, and setting up of the real thing in their place. He seems to think that the best man ought to have the best place, without any very clear idea as to how the best man is to be recognized. Finally, in his plans for world reform, Carlyle falls back upon the somewhat primitive resource of simple despotism and "making Quashee (the negro) work," whatever may be his preference for idleness and pumpkin; also, this Latterday Luther suggests that with reference to the lazy Irish, after trying argument, flogging, and one or two other mild expedients, shooting and throwing them over the bridge might prove a sufficient reason, at all hazards, for their conversion.

"Rest, man, thou hast all eternity to work in," might respond a believer in the soul's immortality, with equal propriety.

"Work," says Carlyle, "work! work! work! But what is work, sir preacher? Is my work, your work, anybody's work the same? Who is to decide what is work, or where idleness leaves off, and work begins."

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the wisest and noblest of the German transcendentalists, says—

"The end of the life of mankind on earth is, that in this life they may order all their relations with freedom according to reason."

Observe, freedom controlled by reason is the dogma. What amount of freedom controlled by reason Thomas Carlyle would leave us were he prime minister of the Universal Commonwealth, may be gleaned from a few significant details sparingly scattered through the rabid denunciations, prophesies of utter destructions, and vague generalities, with which his works are filled. For example:

Carlyle suggests giving the crown the right to appoint members of parliament, thus opening a prospect of intrigue and corruption yet undreamed of in England, with all its aristocratic abuses, and, at the same time, forgetting that such crown nominees could never be regarded by the people as on an equality with their elected representatives. Carlyle denounces universal suffrage, on the ground, we presume, of the ignorance of the masses, quite forgetting that a motive to think inevitably leads to thinking, and that slavery and ignorance are inevitable concomitants. Carlyle distinctly advocates brute force for reform purposes, quite overlooking the necessity of all movements being carried out by individual and fallible men, certain (if entrusted with the power) to become tyrants and slave drivers. Yet Carlyle ridicules and abuses kings, peers, parliaments, and all princes, potentates, and powers whatsoever, as heartily as any one. The great difficulty is to find out what he really proposes to do, beyond a general upsetting of the powers that be. The moment he ventures to quit his prophet's tripod, and abandon declamation for legislation, he breaks down utterly. As Schiller said of Voltaire, "an excellent hammer to break, but not a trowel to build." Carlyle is not constructive or inventive. He never originated an idea in his life. His merit lies in the force of his enthusiasm for the ideas he has adopted. In history he fails completely. Notwithstanding his talent for inventing nicknames, and his calling Robespierre "the sea-green incorruptible," he has little appreciation for character beyond a dim adoration of spiritual force. In political discussion, Carlyle is again useless, succeeding only in invective. It might be considered injurious to laud D'Israeli as the "lineal descendant of the impenitent thief;" but it was certainly not a logical proof of that statesman's incompetency. Carlyle is no judge of men. He mistook Sir Robert Peel for the "coming man," and next week (after a life of old-fogy opposition to reform and impudent adoption at the last moment of reform measures,) Sir Robert died, and Carlyle was left without a hero.

Carlyle is a literary grandee of the first class; but I believe that no scholar, statesman, or serious student of human nature, can honestly speak of him as a great man. There is, I admit, a fragmentary vastness about him, which predisposes in his favor, but neither the mathematician nor the philosopher can recognize totalities in fragments; for it is an axiom in science that "the part is not equal to the whole."

It was at a London party. A tall man, with a broad Scotch accent, had pinned a meek-looking gentleman against the wall, and was indoctrinating him with the true principles of hero-worship. Finally—disgusted with the meek gentleman's indifference—the enthusiastic Scotchman was heard to wind up his harangue by these awful words:

"And indeed, mon, it's becoming every instant more clear to me, that ye have not the remotest idea of what a hero is!"

Lest the reader should take me for a counterpart of the meek gentleman, (which my natural meekness might well suggest,) I shall here, apropos of hero-worship, make a few remarks on heroes, which, being a digression, may be skipped, if objected to by straightlaced readers, who deem the road of thought a railroad, and a straight line the shortest cut between two ideas.

Strictly speaking, the world has produced, and the poets sung, but two heroes—the fighting hero and the teaching hero; the warrior, and the poet, prophet, or discoverer of truth.

The greatest hero, the hero preëminently, combines, in one person, the qualities of both.

Indeed the poet (that is the creator) is rarely deficient in the qualities of the warrior; nor is the great warrior utterly deficient in the powers of the creative intellect.

At the dawn of poetry these two types of the hero were seized upon by intellects so mighty, that all after ages have done nothing but copy their creations. I allude to the ACHILLES of Homer, and the PROMETHEUS of Æschylus.

Achilles is the model of the warrior-hero, and the living, impassioned man. He is the ideal of a prince, a noble gentleman, a friend, a lover, and a soldier!

All the heroes of ordinary poems, novels and melodramas, are his feeble shadows.

He is the Rinaldo of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered—he is the knight-errant of all chivalric stories—he is "our hero" par excellence—the hero of all young ladies' dreams. He is Alexander the Great, he is Mark Anthony, he is Julian the Apostate, he is Belisarius, he is King Arthur, he is Roland the Brave, he is the hero of the Crusades, and of the war of the Roses, and of the wars between France and England, and he has a statue in Hyde Park London as Duke of Wellington, most appropriately. He is the aristocratic hero—the great fighting man of civilization.

ULYSSES is the transition from the Achilles to the Prometheus; whose sublime and hitherto unapproachable grandeur Homer dimly anticipated. He is the man of letters and the statesman, as well as the warrior. He is in particular the great explorer and navigator. This peculiarity had almost justified us in classing him as a positively third type of the hero. Ulysses is the Æneas of Virgil, the Hamlet of Shakspeare, the Corsair of Byron, the Leatherstocking of Cooper, the Rob Roy and Dugald Dalgetty of Scott, the hero of all Bulwer's novels, when not simply Achillean, and is realized as Columbus in his highest form, an idea which Tennyson has well grasped in his little poem "Ulysses," from which I cite a few lines, not often surpassed by the poets of this world:

"My purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulf will wash us down,
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles whom we knew."

This forward looking from the dim past into a dim future, reminds me of a passage, the very converse, in Marlowe's Faustus, (a speculative Ulysses, the type of Goethe's Faust,) which has lingered in my memory, after many long years of adventurous wanderings, during which my library has at length reduced itself to—"memory's volumes stored within the brain."

Mephistopheles, at the request of Faustus, has raised for him the phantom of Helen, the most beautiful of her sex, and Faustus thus apostrophizes the renowned mistress of Paris:

"Is this the face that launched a thousand ships,
And burned the topmost towers of Illium?
O, Helen, make me immortal by a kiss!"

The heart that does not thrill at the exquisite power and dreamy passion of these lines, is, I venture to maintain, a hard case for the poet of any age.

Sir Walter Raleigh, Oliver Goldsmith and Lord Byron, are all of the Ulysses order, however widely they differ in details of character. The late Louis Philippe was a queer old Ulysses, most assuredly, and the present Louis Napoleon is an Ulysses of the ferocious order.

But the Ulyssean type is most interesting and remarkable for a cause, which, in all the commentaries on Homer, I never yet remember to have seen mentioned. Homer evidently is himself Ulysses. It is his own wonderful life and adventures that the poet is virtually singing, whilst allegorizing the events of the wandering and adventurous experience. This I divined, by the unerring poetic intuition, at my very first perusal of the Odyssey. Furthermore, I recognized as indubitable the following facts, from internal evidence in the two poems of Homer.

1. That Homer was a man of rank, a king, perhaps, or military leader of his time, and that the story of the blind old beggarman was a mere fable, probably without any foundation, save in the fact that Homer met with misfortunes, and wandered from city to city, seeing many reverses of fortune.

2. That, originally, the Iliad and Odyssey, certain episodes apart, were written by their author's own hand; for which belief, I shall one day give my reasons to the public, on which occasion I shall show that writing was common in Greece at a much earlier age than is generally admitted.

But to revert to the pure heroic type—the Achilles—for a brief space. Let us sum up his virtues in a few words.

5. He is reasonable and self sacrificing; for he nobly forbears, out of patriotic motives, either to slay Agamemnon, who has most deeply wronged him, or to sow dissension in the camp of the Greeks; whilst asserting his dignity by withdrawing his all-powerful aid from the men who had wronged him.

Every one must feel, after this analysis, that the Achilles of Homer is the type of the moral and physical hero of all time, and must be so as long as man is animated by the same passions and instincts as at present.

The Prometheus of Æschylus is, on the other hand, the embodied triumph of spirit over matter.

Prometheus the Titan, warring against Jupiter the king of gods and men, is Genius warring against falsehood and brute force in all ages.

Prometheus, chained to the rock of Caucasus, for "doing good to man," is the representative of unconquerable intellect, and the supreme courage of faith in eternal life and truth. The vulture gnawing at the liver of the great inventor of the arts, is the persecution, neglect and insult which men of science and inventors have in all ages encountered.

Prometheus is the type of the thinker and the reformer. He fights not for glory, but for the right. He endures not in wrath, but in consciousness of his foreknowledge of the future. Prometheus is the impersonation of Democracy contending with the Aristocratic oppressors of Olympus.

He is humanity incarnate: He is indeed "Earth's noblest son." He is a prophetic vision of that "Son of Man," whose mighty word and mightier sacrifice were to destroy the Greek civilization forever. In real life, as in Poetry, he is yet without an antitype.

He is Pythagoras, (and Æschylus was a Pythagorean,) Zoroaster, Luther and Gallileo. The Satan of Milton is his shadow, pale with distance. Napoleon the Great is but a dwarfed Prometheus; yet he, too, was chained to the rock of torment, by his brutal captors. When a true Prometheus appears, he revolutionizes the earth. He is the incarnation of the ideal man, and the kings of this world tremble at the echo of his footsteps, for then established things crumble, and old lies vanish, and a new impetus is given to the life of mortals by a new truth revealed to them.

If Carlyle sins by rudeness of style, and want of originality, save in the invention of odd compound words, Emerson, on the contrary, is perfectly English in his style, and most abundant in original ideas.

His obscurity (and I—having always found Emerson more or less obscure—can only speak from my own impressions) arises not alone from a certain indistinctness in his sentences, or even in his ideas, but from an utter want of system in their arrangement. There is no regular sequence in Emerson's remarks. The cause of this is his tendency to repeat the same idea in so many forms, that a certain confusion is the result.

Emerson comes to be convicted of grandeeism in so honorable a manner, that we half suspect his weakness to be his strength, or his vice his virtue. He is like a rich spendthrift who cannot restrain himself from throwing away his money. His overflowing wealth of ideas produces a sort of Niagara Fall, in which the general stream is broken into spray, during its prodigious descent. Emerson's power of analysis is so wonderful that his power of synthesis can by no means keep pace with it. He is a sort of Bacon of experimental thoughts; a Shakspeare of transcendental ideas. He is great, pure, noble, and brilliant; he is perhaps the greatest thinker in America. But—these terrible buts!—he cannot be said to have discovered a principle, or founded a system. He is perhaps the intermediate stage between the German transcendentalists and the New Science, in which physics and metaphysics are to be forever reconciled.

And this new science? who are its teachers—what are its dogmas? Reader, this is not the time for philosophy. It will depend on the editor of "Graham" whether, in the pages of that popular magazine, the question thus supposed is to be answered.

Yet, before leaving Emerson, let me declare one thing, that he is too great a thinker even to dream of finality in thought, or for an instant to imagine himself aught but a pilgrim of intelligence on the long highroad of eternity. The all-sufficient vanity and domineering oppression of Carlyle are strange to Emerson.

But we have too long detained the perhaps impatient reader in this lofty and perhaps to many uncongenial region. Let us descend to the plains, and look out for less formidable game. Let us redeem a promise, and say a few words about that very popular grandee, William Makepeace Thackeray.

This successful writer owes his success, as indeed do many who attain a sudden popularity, to a superabundance of vital energy, combined with a comparatively low order of intelligence. His perceptives are strongly developed, and with more constructiveness and ideality would have made him a good artist. As it is, he is only a caricaturist, and but a very indifferent poet.

Your most successful men with the masses are men of detail, because they are more easily understood.

The genius, on the other hand, which is the concomitant of more equally developed faculties, rises too far above the level of ordinary intelligence to obtain a circle of real admirers speedily. For example, everybody can appreciate Thackeray, whilst the friends of Goethe or Shelley have to be found here and there dotted over the vast surface of humanity.

Thackeray's works are "adapted to the comprehension of the meanest intelligence." Perhaps it would not be unjust to say, that the meaner the intelligence the better he is understood. He is the great comparative anatomist of the lower orders, or, to speak more correctly and zoologically, the inferior species of the human genius. His "subjects" are all persons of a most commonplace and insignificant kind; specimens, in fact, to use his favorite phrase, of the snob and the flunky. His powers lie only in describing vice and meanness; his virtuous characters are mere masks, names, clothes-pegs; in stage parlance, walking ladies and gentlemen, pitiful "supers." A fine nature is beyond Thackeray's capacity to delineate. He either cannot imagine one, or does not believe in such an entity. As a portrayer of men and manners Thackeray is immeasurably behind Balzac, the late French novelist, (whom all the new French school follow,) whose collected writings, under the title of "The Comedy of Human Life," form the most perfect gallery of French characteristics conceivable. Bulwer and Dickens are far more versatile than Thackeray, who seems rather to vary the social circumstances of his puppets than their mental idiosyncrasy.

The characters which in "Vanity Fair" were novel, in "Pendennis" became insipid. As for the "Newcomes," a cultivated man must find a difficulty in reading it at all. In "Pendennis" the hero (?) is an absolute failure. He is so miserable a puppy that we should scarcely notice the existence of such a being in society, unless to avoid it. He is tiresome even to read about, though not so tiresome as Captain Dobbin in Vanity Fair, or Warrington, the shadow of nobody in particular, Pendennis's pipe-smoking Mentor. The wicked little Blanche Amory is, of course, a repetition, in a new dress, of the wicked little "Becky" of Vanity Fair, the only approximation to a type which Thackeray has succeeded in producing. And all credit to him for that one creation, since it is the greatest his art can afford. Bulwer has created but one—Pelham; and that a poor one. Cooper has given us but one, and that a grand one, in his immortal Leatherstocking. But Dickens—O Dickens! what a host of well-known old familiar faces arise at the bare mention of his name! To name them would be to write a catalogue—a directory. Truly, had not Shakspeare a prior claim to the title, Dickens might well be called the "King of the Typists."

From the causes above mentioned, we are not surprised to find the hideous hallucination of Grandeeism (which, by the way, in its extreme forms sends so many great "emperors," "prophets," and "Jupiters omnipotent and cloud-compelling," to the madhouse) developed to a degree more astonishing than pleasing.

Those who call Thackeray a "good-natured humorist" are silly people who never anatomized a man's brain in their lives, or studied "the proper study of mankind" to any purpose.

Thackeray, pecuniary considerations apart, shows to the deeper view of the critical student, but one aim and end in all he writes, and that so supremely ridiculous that we have long hesitated to describe it, lest to American readers it should appear incomprehensible. This aim is the ambition to convince us that he (Thackeray) is a man of social position, and admitted to the best English society!!! This anxiety, which may be distinctly traced in almost every page of his writings, proves conclusively, what to those who know England and its aristocracy of birth, pride and wealth, requires no proof, that Thackeray has been unsuccessful in making his way into certain circles of more fortunate social grandees. For be it known to the reader, and I care not if the same measure be applied to myself which I mete out to others, that A writer can but write—himself. In fact, every man's works are the shadow of his own mind, and by them is it to be known and judged.

Thackeray, like many Englishmen of good education but obscure origin, finding himself in that Malebolge to personal vanity, the confines of the upper and middle classes in England, felt the iron enter his soul and there canker, till youth and fortune dissipated, he endeavored to cure the yet lingering disease by the bitter device of blaspheming and sneering at the idols he had worshiped, and still malgre lui adored and envied.

Poor man! It is, to souls which soar above satire, a tragic sight to see the feeble ferocity with which Thackeray caricatures a noble lord or scarifies a real fashionable dandy! The best of it is he cannot hurt them. It is not the quills of the "fretful porcupine" but the claws of the kingly lion, which the giraffe of the desert dreads. Thackeray is like a boy making faces at eagles in a cage. His secret awe of their cold scornful eyes renders his satire purely phosphorescent. It is far otherwise when he attacks the middle classes of England. He makes them feel that they are snobs indeed! As to their utter inferiority to the aristocracy of birth, he leaves no room for doubt in their minds! For my part, did I not pity that class of Englishmen sufficiently from my profound knowledge of their meanness and of the political and social causes of their moral degradation, I should despise them for the most snobish of all their snobisms, their stupid admiration of Thackeray, their pitiless and incessant pasquinader!

I do not blame Thackeray for ridiculing these people. It would be difficult for me to express severely enough my loathing for a class, who, whilst cringing with abject servility to the aristocracy that openly scorns them, is callously hostile to the cries of pauperism in its agony, of honest working men vainly demanding justice, and indeed to every sentiment, but the love of gain, or, what in England is the same thing, the abiding dread of poverty, that spectre, which haunts every Englishman's dreams, and tightens every man's purse strings.

Hence, to the poor man, England is a hell worse than any priests have yet reported! There is but one resource for the man afflicted by that moral taint, that stigma of impardonable sin, that abhorred leprosy in England—flight—flight to some land where there is room for human feelings and for human beings.

I do not blame Thackeray for satirizing English traders. What I condemn is the mean character of his satire. He attacks only the form, the shell, the manner, the dialect. The deep-seated moral vice of transatlantic society escapes his blunted worldly conscience. He has no morals either good or bad. He is a skeptic and a materialist to the backbone. Life to him is purely phenomenal—a mere volume of careless caricatures of which he carelessly turns the pages.

I should not have devoted so much space to the criticism of this writer, were it not that he has been the father of a most deplorable school of slipshod social authors, whose imitations of their master's style are so close as to occasionally deceive the judgment of the best critics.

Doubtless more than one mistook the sketches in Harper's Magazine, in which the experiences of "Don Bobtail Fandango" were revealed, for genuine Thackerayian effusions; and, if not published in Putnam, the "Potiphar Papers" might have almost received a similar compliment. With the exception of an impertinent and very vulgar bore, who is constantly introduced in these papers as the Nubian consul, or something of the sort, these imitations of Thackeray are very decently executed. We do not think that their author, who is, we consider, a young man of talent, has chosen wisely his model. No matter, honor to the careful copyist of Egyptian monsters as of Greek beauty. Each man to his trade. Some fish inhabit ponds, some the ocean; each according to his destiny, or as Hawk-eye would say, his "gifts."

As for the rest of the Thackerayians, since we do not wish to make personal enemies of every literary snob in Flunkeydom, we shall leave their catalogue to the acumen of the reader.

Of all grandeeism, social grandeeism, that is the impertinent assumption of social superiority, is at once the most pitiful and the most disagreeable. In America this wretched disease of the brain is, I am delighted to acknowledge, uncommon. It exists only in those of European origin, and those whom a residence in Europe has tainted with the aristocratic fever and ague. That is, feverish craving for acknowledgment of their position, agueish dread of finding it questioned. A word, by the way, with respect to Europeans. The instant they ostentatiously assert their grandeur of position in English society (and in other nations this disease is rare), make up your mind that insignificance and obscurity was their portion in the old world, and peremptorily discountenance their silly pretensions in the new. The man who makes a point of telling me that he is a gentleman, invariably raises a doubt in my mind as to whether he is even a man. True dignity asserts itself silently and irresistibly.

A very comic example of burlesque grandeeism was given by a young English Lord (by courtesy) named John Manners, who wound up a copy of verses, which he had the weakness to print, and dedicate to his friend Smith (which Smith I cannot remember) with these remarkable words—

"Let laws and learning, art and freedom die
But give us still our old nobility!"

However, we excuse a lordling for imagining that lords were a necessary institution. We get on here pretty well without them, it seems to me.

At all hazards, till I find myself a man of fortune, possessor of at least two new coats and a leader of fashion, I shall have the brutality to regard your writers about "High Life," of the Thackeray school, as anything but intellectual paragons. In fine, reader, suppose we both make up our minds to reserve our admiration for grandeeism till grandeur knocks at our own doors. We can then afford to be generous. At present, we will enjoy the rugged satisfaction of being just.

It was in Berlin I first saw the Professor Ariovistus Dunkelheim. I found him seated in his studio, smoking a pipe, with a spiral glass tube six feet long, whose glittering convolutions absolutely dazzled the eye-sight. His head was bald, saving a kind of scalp-lock that came down to a point over the centre of his forehead, and two tufts at the side so stiff and wiry that they resembled horns, and gave the professor an aspect which reminded me of the popular portraits of Satan.

His large, long, bottle-green eyes, with coal-black lashes, and brows that nearly met, had a most unpleasant expression of critical penetration. His nose was thin and beak-like, his mouth a line, which a great artist might have drawn by one masterly stroke of the pencil. His visage was long, and in stature he was very tall. This became apparent as he rose, on my entering the apartment.

"I have heard," said I, "Herr Professor, that you have effected some very curious improvements in the daguerreotype?"

"Improvements!" replied the Professor, with suppressed disdain; "I believe Newton improved on the system of Ptolemy. Improvements, indeed! So they call a new science—the most wonderful science ever invented—an improvement? No, sir, my invention has no more to do with Daguerre's crude experiments, than the man in the moon with the London Bible Society! Look here! you see this polished plate of steel—is it not a perfect mirror?"

"As you see it. But I can do more—do that to which the mere fixing of the reflection is a trifle. However, my hours are precious. I was just meditating on an electric telegraph without wires, as you entered, and had all but mastered the details. Excuse my asking you at once, what is your object in calling upon me?"

"To learn whether you are prepared to take for me, by your newly-invented process, two portraits, the one of myself—"

"Good," said the Professor. "Come to-morrow, at this hour, and your wish shall be gratified."

"And the terms—I merely ask, in order that I may bring the requisite sum with me?"

"I am a man of science, not a trader," replied the Professor. "However, you can allow me to keep copies of the portraits, as I am desirous of increasing my collection of specimens, and as you say the young lady is pretty, her likeness will be an interesting acquisition."

At these words, the Professor seemed very much amused by some reflection that passed through his mind, for his ordinarily inscrutable countenance relaxed into a faint ironical smile, whilst something of a sensual softness came over his dark eyes, as he bowed gravely at the door, through which I vanished.

On the following morning I was punctual to my appointment. Elora Von Rabenstock was on my arm. A modest blush overspread her fair delicate features (a refinement on Danecker's Ariadne,) as Dunkelheim greeted her with a look of unequivocal admiration. His piercing gaze and singular expression disconcerted Elora, and I felt angry with the Professor for being a person of so uncomfortable an aspect. No fault, however, was to be found with his manners. His courtesy left nothing to be desired. Perceiving my intended bride's embarrassment, he strove to relieve it by drawing her attention, to some galvanized reptiles, which he caused to writhe and twist in a very remarkable manner. This would have alarmed many girls of Elora's age. But Elora was an angel of light as well as of beauty.

We had laid the foundation of our love deeper than the passions—in intellectual sympathy. Together we had plucked of the tree of knowledge, as well as of the tree of life, and learned to make the bitters of the one add a relish to the often cloying sweetness of the other. Never was Elora weary of the study of nature, or of the mysteries of science.

Bidding us take our seats before what appeared to be merely two plates of highly polished steel, the Professor next desired us to remain perfectly motionless with our eyes fixed upon their mirrored counterparts. Scarcely had he uttered this direction, when he relieved us from the task by the surprising assurance that the portraits were already perfected. Our astonishment may be imagined, when detaching the two steel mirrors from the complicated apparatus that supported them, and which only became fully visible on their removal, he assured us that the operation was completed.

Without giving us time to gratify our natural curiosity, he placed the plates in a flat morocco case, and informed us that it was absolutely essential that they should remain in total darkness for the ensuing twelve hours.

"For the action," said the Professor, "is of so subtle an electro-galvanic, or, more correctly speaking, magnetic (that is, to use Reichenbach's phraseology, odylib) character, that the influence of the daylight would in a few minutes destroy the impressions. Artificial light, however, unless produced by electricity, will not affect them perceptibly for a long period. It is, therefore, only at night-time, and by lamp-light, that it is advisable to regard the portraits. Now, resume your seats for few seconds longer, in order that I may take duplicates for thyself,—thank you, that will do. Here is your case. It is now noon, do not open it till midnight. Good morning, Fraulein; good morning, my young poet. I know you better than you know me, and shall know you still better—adieu."

And so we departed from the presence of a man in whom I then little dreamed of recognizing the object of an implacable and eternal hatred.

Yet even in the valedictory smile of the Professor was a menacing significance, which I afterwards recalled with horror. It was the grin of the devil when he defrauds man of his soul, the exultation of the priest when he cheats woman of her reason.

I made no answer, for I felt that a sympathetic shudder pervaded both our frames. The same evening, Elora was slightly indisposed, and retired early to rest. Thus it happened that—in the solitude of my own apartment—I first contemplated the results of the Professor's mysterious science. I opened the case, and took out one of the steel plates. I regarded it closely. It reflected my own features like a common mirror. The Professor was a farceur, his discovery a hoax! his mysterious smile the vulgar triumph of a mere practical joker!

"Pshaw! it is but a paltry jest!" I mattered, indignantly, as I dashed what I now took to be a worthless plate of metal to the ground. The disappointment was intense, and I paced rapidly up and down, to calm the feelings of irritation that possessed me. In so doing, my eye repeatedly fell upon the plate of polished metal, as it lay upon the floor. Its glitter became an eyesore and a nuisance. I resolved to replace it in the box, in order that its contemplation might no longer annoy my nerves. In so doing, my glance rested accidentally upon the second plate, the aspect of which at once filled me with astonishment and wonder. It was no deception, I indeed beheld Elora, Elora in all the glow of her matchless complexion and shining hair—Elora, as the most faithful mirror alone could represent her—Elora living, breathing, moving—yes, moving, for even as I gazed the soft blue eyes which met mine, evidently unconscious of my presence, closed gently, and were hidden by their snowy lids, whilst the rose-tinted lips parted slightly in a smile of angelic innocence, and a sleeping beauty's reflection replaced the waking image of my mistress.

The clock struck twelve—but it might have struck fifty, and I should scarcely have given the phenomenon a casual thought. It struck one—two—three—four—and still I remained riveted in contemplation of the changing reflex of my beautiful Elora, whose features had become the index of her dreams, and with every minute that passed expressed some new shade of feeling, some fresh gradation of internal emotion and changeful fancy.

It was, indeed, a glorious gift the Professor had given us! He well might claim for his invention the name of a new and unparalleled science! There could be no doubt but that an inexplicable sympathy rendered the metallic reflector a faithful mirror of the absent Elora's features, with all their variations of expression and loveliness. Delicious thought! From the present moment to the hour of our nuptials, our parting would be nominal and not real. Spiritually united, we could hardly be said to be materially separated; since the magic mirrors would, by the medium of the most noble of the senses, render us forever present to one another. How superior to the cold, ghastly, shadowy, immobility of the mere daguerreotype, were these living portraits of Dunkelheim's!

Elora and I had no secrets from one another! but a hideous reminiscence, at this moment, rose like a phantom of evil to damp my enthusiasm for the portraits. The Professor possessed copies. Hateful and revolting idea! It was no longer Elora, but Dunkelheim, the critical and penetrating Dunkelheim, who would be enabled to watch every change in the expression of my face, to read my every thought, as in an open book, to amuse his leisure with the mockery of my inmost emotions, and—more horrible yet—Elora's! A loathsome and accursed fantasy! to live forever in the presence of such a man as Dunkelheim, to be forever subject to an excruciating moral espionage! to be denied for life, the security and luxury of privacy! to be haunted, in solitude, by an unseen tormentor!

I absolutely gnashed my teeth with rage, and, turning toward the pier glass, by accident was appalled at the deadly ferocity expressed by my ordinarily calm and serene countenance. The reflection that, probably, at that moment, the diabolical Professor was quietly watching my ghostly prototype, caused me, however, instantly to control the muscles of my features, and assume an indifferent expression. It would not do to let the Professor perceive my agitation, as it was my purpose to visit him on the following morning, and, either by fair means or force, obtain from him the restoration of the portraits he had retained.

I passed the rest of the night in gazing on the spectrum of Elora, in which occupation, however, I discovered a new and unexpected source of torture. The perpetual contemplation of her exquisite charm, in their careless and unconscious abandonment, awoke in me such a fever of impatient love, that a hundred times I was upon the point of dashing the tempting mirror to the ground, as I had dashed its companion portrait. But an irresistible fascination withheld me, and I continued to gaze and gaze with an intense and burning ardor that threatened to disorder my intelligence.

At length the hour for morning visits arrived. Before hastening to the Professor, an involuntary impulse guided my steps to the abode of Elora. I found her recovered from her indisposition, and attired in a morning dress of light blue muslin, that gave increased brilliance to her dazzling fairness of complexion. She sprang to meet me with her usual girlish disregard of ceremony, but paused suddenly in alarm, at the unusual paleness of my features, and the passionate intensity of my gaze.

"Oh, Elora!" I exclaimed, suddenly seizing her hand, and drawing her towards me—"the portraits!"—and I told her all.

She returned my gaze of horror and perplexity, then, after a time, she said, gravely:

"My dear Ernest, I will never, never marry, whist that man possesses our portraits—whilst—"

"I understand you, Elora," said I, drawing her closer to my heart; "whilst a detested stranger can, at will, become a witness of our most rapturous moments, our most secret delights, our—"

"You forget!" shrieked Elora, "that even now—" and we recoiled from one another in deep blushes and confusion, whilst Elora, fixing upon me a look of painful reproach, said, gently:

"Alas! how could I imagine all the consequences of an invention so unheard of, so portentous? But my resolution is taken—I go this instant to the Professor's. He either restores our portraits and our peace of mind, or—"

"Or he dies!" I concluded, with a smile, intended to deceive the Professor, but which did not deceive Elora, who would have detained me, had I not rushed, like a madman, from the house.

On reaching the dwelling of the Professor, I learned that Ariovistus Dunkelheim had quitted Berlin that morning in a private travelling chariot, with all his baggage, and left no directions as to letters or visitors.

"Professor or devil! I will find him upon earth, if earth harbors him, or descend into hell in the pursuit!"

"Nonsense," said Elora. "After all, what difference does it make in reality. Let us forget that such a man as the Professor exists. But I have not seen the portraits."

"Certainly, dearest; I was gazing upon you all last night—you must have had delightful dreams!"

"You must!" said Elora, imperiously, with one of those looks that conquer conquerors.

"It is less, I trust, than the sacrifice of your bride?" said Elora, in a lower but not less imperious tone.

"Because a stranger shall not be present at our nuptials!" said Elora, hiding her face in her handkerchief.

Then returning to her former purpose, she again pertinaciously demanded my copy of herself.

"Not for all the gold in California!" I answered. "What! would you deny your lover a privilege possessed by Ariovistus Dunkelheim?"

"He sees us," said I, gloomily; "but he cannot see his own sentence of death engraven on my heart. Farewell, my love; I go to seek Dunkelheim."

And I tore myself from her presence—but I carried the magic portrait in my bosom.

I traversed all Northern Germany, and could hear no certain tidings of the Professor. I saw the face of my Elora grew paler and paler in the mirror, though the reflection was as vivid as ever, and she wrote me letter after letter, announcing her unalterable resolution to remain single, until I laid at her feet the counterparts of the miraculous portraits.

At length, one night, I arrived at Hamburg. The city was in flames. In the midst of the blazing turmoil, a tall man, looking coolly at the conflagration, arrested my attention. It was Ariovistus Dunkelheim. In an instant I was at his side, I laid my hand upon his shoulder, and mentally regarded him as my prisoner.

"Ah! how are you, my good sir?" said the Professor, easily, "you have had stormy times of it since I last saw you, unless I am much mistaken?"

"Very," replied the Professor, "not a day passed but that I amused myself by watching its curious variations, as well as those of the young lady's features. She is certainly pretty. Had you not stood in the way, I would have made her Madame Dunkelheim. I class those two portraits amongst the best of my specimens. Indeed, they are great curiosities in their way, for you must know that it is not every face that can be fixed by the magnetic process, as the pyroluminous rays from the great mass of human bodies are comparatively feeble and scarcely capable of affecting a metallic surface, however sensitive. I would not part with those specimens for ten thousand dollars," concluded the Professor, as I thought, with vindictive emphasis, and a look of field-like penetration.

"Yet I hope," said I, with a painfully affected good humor, "that you will take something less, when no metaphor but actual business is in question. The fact is, I wish to purchase those portraits."

"Very good; I can take copies for myself," said Dunkelheim. "There is no perceptible or intrinsic difference between the two."

"I must request you, as a particular favor, not to take copies; the truth is, I do not wish any stranger to possess my portrait."

"Your living spectrum, say, rather," responded the Professor. "Ah! I understand, the idea of being made the subject of scientific observation, makes you and that pretty girl you introduced to me a little nervous. I wonder a man of your intellect can be so weak. Why, let me see, did you not write the philosophic essay on Spiritual Fortitude and Indifferentism to Phenomena, in our last number of the Metaphysical Review? I despise Metaphysics as a science, but I always read the Review, for the fun of the thing. Come, come, my dear sir, do not think of robbing me of the best specimens in my collection from a mere fanciful fastidiousness. I really cannot spare them!"

"Devil of a Professor!" said I fiercely. "I do not ask you a favor; I offer you a choice; give up those infernal specimens, as you call them, of your accursed science, or die at once by my hand!" and I showed the Professor the barrel of a pistol, concealed beneath the loose sleeve of my great coat.

"The fact is, I have given away your portraits," said Dunkelheim with apparent trepidation.

Even while I paused for a moment, staggered by the awful notion of being the subject of a learned society's criticism, the professor slipped from my grasp, and disappeared in the crowd.

I sought him in vain. A moment's recollection of his discourse showed me that his last statement must have been a mere ruse to escape. Nevertheless, I wrote to the Secretary of the Royal Society on the subject. But no Professor Ariovistus Dunkelheim had ever been heard of in London.

"ELORA, my adored girl! the pursuit of this devilish Professor is the occupation of a life. I am resolved to abandon it and life together, rather than suffer any longer the torments which I now hourly endure. There is but one alternative. Angel of love and beauty, save your
ERNEST."

I departed for Berlin on the wings of passion and hope. For the time, I almost forgot the Professor.

Elora was now mine. She realized in every respect my ideal of a woman. Her soul and her beauty were divine. Her fascinations were inexhaustible in their variety. But a spectre haunted us—an invisible basilisk withered out delights—an unseen hand dropped bitterness into our cup of ecstacy. The Professor—the abhorred Professor—was ever with us. Night and day, his terrible green eyes were upon us. They haunted us even in our dreams.

It was in Elora, however, that this fantastic horror became most painfully developed. My sterner manhood had developed a sort of defiant wrath, which exhaled itself in visions of revenge. Far otherwise was it with my bride. On our wedding night, Elora fainted, after exclaiming, "The Portraits!" in a tone of indescribable emotion. Frequently, she would start from my embrace, with the bitter exclamation:

"Let him see and envy!" once I exclaimed, with a wild attempt to turn the object of our loathing into ridicule.

"He shall die!" I exclaimed, starting up from my seat, and pacing the apartment with insane rapidity. "D—n him forever! He dies!"

At length, after twelve months of vain inquiry and fruitless travel, I one night, quite accidentally, met the Professor Ariovistus Dunkelheim on the Pont National, at Paris.

"It is unnecessary," rejoined Dunkelheim, with a sneer; "I am tired of studying the physiognomies of a couple of frightened turtle doves. I am ready to give you up my copies for the mere cost of the metal."

The Professor became scarlet, as I could observe even by the light of a gas lamp. He gave me a look of intense and unquenchable hatred.

"I have made some discoveries in science," said he, scornfully, as if in answer to my retort: "I have also gained some thousands of dollars by my discoveries."

"You have lost your life by one of your discoveries, yet you have had daily warning for the last twelve months. You read my design, it is true, in the expression of my features, but you did not read its stern immutability. I will trust you no more; you may give me the portraits and yet retain copies; you may deceive or elude me in a thousand ways; you may retaliate upon me throughout my life, for there dwells in you a malignant spirit—the abuser of power."

"No power is supernatural, for there is nothing beyond nature," I answered, coldly. "Prepare yourself for the death-struggle!"

And, before the Professor could utter a cry for assistance my hand was on his throat. A terrific contest ensued, for my enemy was a man of great strength and activity. But my first gripe had decided the result, and in a few minutes I had hurled the insensible body of Dunkelheim over the parapet of the bridge. It fell with a splash into the water, and I returned unobserved to my hotel.

Such things often take place in Paris. I went a few days after to the Morgue, and recognized the body of my former persecutor. I found out his residence, and when his effects were sold by auction, I purchased for a few francs the two plates of metal which had been the cause of so much suffering, and of so fearful a catastrophe. The auctioneer happened to have turned them with the faces downwards, and was ignorant of their peculiar properties.

It was only when I presented them to Elora that I told her how I had killed the Professor.

"I share the crime!" said Elora, proudly. "Henceforward we are at least our own masters, and not puppets, acting for the amusement of a detestable old necromancer!"

"Yes," I exclaimed, "henceforward we are free!" and I clasped my beautiful Elora to my heart for the first time without reserve.

But still, at times, the phantom of the murdered Professor, with his cold, green eyes, will haunt our fancies. I take some credit to myself for having the candor to acknowledge myself a murderer.

It is not my fault that I am not miserable and full of remorse. Elora is so lovely that, if she were to insist upon it, I verily believe I should murder another professor to-morrow!

THE

CITY OF THE JUGGLERS;

OR,

FREE-TRADE IN SOULS.

A Romance of the "Golden" Age

————

PRO.

"Every man has his price."

CON.

"What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

————

By W. NORTH,

Author of "Anti-Coningsby," "The Impostor," Lamartine's "Poetic Meditations," (translation,) &c., &c.

LONDON:
H. J. GIBBS, 4, TAVISTOCK-STREET, STRAND.
1850.

TO ALL

LIVING MEN OF LETTERS,

MY FELLOW-SOLDIERS IN THE WAR OF LIBERTY,

This Leaf,

TORN FROM THE LIFE OF THE AGE,

AFFECTIONATELY CONSECRATED.

I had a dream! start not, 'tis still
Allowed to dream—I had a dream!
Methought, obedient to my will,
An army, like a swollen stream,
Poured from a savage mountain gorge,
With crimson banners floating,
In choral song,
As thunder strong,
Their foes to death devoting.

I stood upon a jutting crag,
My long sword glittering and bare,
And sternly counted, flag by flag,
While swelled their war-cry on the air,
And horsemen, num'rous as the sand
On ocean's shore uncounted,
Still swept beneath,
With song of death,
On fiery chargers mounted.

At length they paused, 'mid silence vast,
As if all earth had ceased to breathe;
And with dread thought my brain, o'ercast.
Began to throb, and whirl, and seethe,
And from the crowded gorge below,
And from each crag's wild station,
Upon me gazed
Fierce eyes, that blazed
With fevered expectation.

And then I knew that all this host
Was mine to govern, mine to lead,
That earth must now be gained or lost,
For evermore enslaved or freed;
And with the thought my heart grew full,
And strength, the child of danger,
Inspired a power
O'er that grand hour,
To earthly doubt a stranger.

I spoke. With eyes the mountain side
Was shining, as with sombre gems—
"Eternal death to all the pride
Of coronets and diadems!
Rise! take thy everlasting throne,
Spirit of truth undying!
In vengeance rise,
To paralyse
The foes, thy rule defying!"

Men are not children of a day,
As grovellers cant, and canters whine,
They tread an everlasting way,
Spirits of essence pure, divine.
From state to state, from world to world,
They rise o'er pain victorious,
This life a stage,
The last turned page
Of progress boundless, glorious.

Spirits of everlasting time!
Men, passing citizens of earth!
Dare to fulfil each thought sublime,
Each passion of celestial birth!
Dare to be all that fancy dreams,
To do all conscience teaches!
Go forth to quell
The brood of Hell,
And storm their rampart's breaches!

There is a plague—a mad disease—
That overspreads the shuddering globe,
Infects the ships that sail the seas,
And wraps the earth with leper's robe—
A burning, savage lust of gold,
The craving soul's starvation,
Self's scheme to rise
To Paradise
On brother soul's damnation!

In vain, with words that pierce like swords,
With love that penetrates like dew,
We offer to these blinded lords
Of visionary wealth, the true,
The only wealth, the only truth,
By reason unrejected—
"The wealth of each,
Of all," we teach,
From man to man reflected.

They sleep the sleep of folly's crew;
No sentinel holds watch. They sleep—
Thus slept the host the Persian slew—
They will not hear; we will not weep,
Though we should wade in blood knee-deep!
They sleep—base, abject, sterile—
Asleep, they wait
Their certain fate,
In torpor's ghastly peril!

"March on!"—Ten thousand trumpets then
Woke every mountain echo round,
And voices of unnumbered men
Returned the blast with deafening sound.
"March on!"—I madly waved my brand,
Like heaven's storm-fire gleaming,
When at my side
A form I spied,
A face 'mid gold locks streaming.

A woman's form, of such bright grace,
And radiant dignity, me thought,
In gazing wildly on her face,
All passion fled, and, wonder-fraught,
I stood expectant of command.
She spoke—"To me is given.
To me alone
Th' eternal throne,
The throne of earth and heaven!

"Love has the power alone to cure
The mad disease of selfish greed;
The sword of Love is reason pure;
The wounds of Love can never bleed,
But are themselves best medicine.
March on!—march on, for ever!
Learn—Truth disclaims
All bounded aims
That now and future sever!

"Beware, beware of pride—the curse
Of spirit chief, as earthly king!
Nor deem thy youth's hot flood of verse
Such song as none but thou can sing!
Armed cap-à-pié, my warriors fight,
O'er earth's broad surface scattered,
Each son of light
An errant knight
Till falsehood's fanes be shattered!

"And hear my sovereign decree,
Which shall in lightning streams go forth,
The Titan, Thought, untamed shall be,
The strong Prometheus of the North;
And mighty poets shall arise,
The clouded heavens clearing,
With lays to shame
Dead kings of fame,
Young earth, in rapture, hearing!"

And as the peerless accents stayed
Above, below, and all around,
In robes of dazzling light arrayed,
Stood living echoes of the sound;
Great, noble forms of god-like men—
Prophets—no more of Edom,
Or Israel.
The choral swell
Bursts forth. Hark!—"Love and Freedom!"

THE

CITY OF THE JUGGLERS;

OR,

FREE-TRADE IN SOULS.

————

BOOK I.

THE OPENING OF THE SOUL EXCHANGE.

————

CHAPTER I.

A BOLD SPECULATOR.

IT was about four o'clock on a spring afternoon. The City was still in full activity. The gold was rattling on the bank counters, and the clerks were cashing their notes as coolly as if the whole affair had been anything but a gigantic juggle. Practical men—too practical to think—were paying in their deposits with a touching and child-like confidence. No suspicion had they that they were trusting to a system, which, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," might at any moment dissolve into nothingness. Practical men do not understand the currency—they despise theorists who do. They swear by Sir Robert the Devil and—everybody is in debt to everybody in consequence.

No matter. It was four P.M. in the City. Attornies were cheating their clients, or assisting them to cheat other people. Merchants were calculating the chances of the markets, like gamblers inventing martingales. Clerks were adding up figures as clocks add up minutes. Cashiers and secretaries were reflecting on the facilities of an impromptu voyage to California. Directors of companies were "cooking" the accounts of their shareholders. Waiters at Joe's, Sam's, Tom's, Betsy's, and other chop-houses, whose proprietors are apparently more proud of their Christian names than usual, ordered countless chops through patent gutta percha telegraphs. Cooks basted themselves with half-and-half whilst roasting before their fires, like Fox's martyrs, bound to the steaks of their tyrants. Crossing-sweepers were industriously clearing streets as dry as carpets and begging of passengers as charitable as cannibals. Usurers were meeting gentlemen who wanted to borrow money at any rate of—nonpayment. Adventurers were keeping appointments with capitalists they hoped to drag into speculations. Capitalists were contriving monopolies by which to crush non-capitalist adventurers. Stock-brokers were playing monkey tricks on the Stock Exchange. Hebrew gold kings were manufacturing intelligence to astonish the stock-brokers. Couriers were dashing off with the commands of London financiers to foreign potentates. Messengers were arriving from the sham, entreating aid from the real sovereigns of Europe. And the plenipotentiaries of the daily press were calmly overlooking the whole ant-hill with sublime indifference to the struggles of its busy insects, generalising for millions the knowledge which, even to those in the midst of the bustle, was too often but semi-obscurity and chromatropic confusion.

This being the state of affairs in the stronghold of the gold-worshippers, the great commercial "diggins" of the eastern world, two individuals—Manichæans of the nineteenth century—descended arm-in-arm the broad flight of steps from the great gate of the Royal Exchange, engaged in low but animated conversation.

Their object was to escape from the crowd, and to avoid being overheard by strangers, as was evident from the cautious glances they threw about them. They paused in the shadow of the Duke of Wellington's statue, which the rays of the western sun grotesquely caricatured upon the pavement. The sun is like all light—a great leveller. As death brings the pretensions, so sunshine brings the shadows of all men to the dust.

"It is an old truism," said the taller of the two Manichæans, "but it never struck me so forcibly before. The world is never thoroughly taken in by an old juggle. Catch a new monster, a child with the legs of an ostrich, or a Bengal tiger that can learn to play at nine-pins, and the mob rushes to pay its half-crowns, and vociferate its admiration; but produce a second pair of Siamese twins, or a latter-day Tom Thumb that may be put into a hat-box, and it is as little appreciated as an old joke of the venerable Miller."

The speaker, whose large black eyes glittered with a peculiar exultation, cast a searching side-glance at his companion.

He was a thin man, in the prime of life, slightly above the middle height, with coal-black hair and whiskers, very large arched eyebrows, and a cadaverous complexion. His features were aquiline, regular, and even handsome. But on minute inspection a variety of lines and wrinkles became perceptible, which united to give his face a cynical, perhaps malignant, expression. There was more assurance than dignity in his manner, and though his frown might have inspired little apprehension, his smile suggested something dangerous, because undefined.

The personage to whom he had spoken was, on the other hand, short, stout, and rather rubicund; with small greenish eyes, that twinkled restlessly beneath the serpentine fascination of his companion's gaze.

"Yes," continued the thin man sententiously, "new roads provoke new travellers. There are fools enough, and knaves enough, and gold enough behind us"—he pointed significantly towards the Exchange by a slight motion of his hand—"to build railways from London to Calcutta, with an extension to Pekin, if wanted. But railways have found their level. They may still transport railway kings, but cannot trust them in any station on their lines. Railways are degenerating into facts, from phantasm Golcondas, as that mad old grumbling dreamer Carlyle would call them, I suppose. There is a fellow for you! who, having discovered the Irishman's axiom that 'Mankind is a great rascal,' gets straightway into a passion, and thinks to turn the river of mind as a hunter turns a buffalo, by shrieking outlandish gibberish and compound Anglo-German Billingsgate! I hate these canting egotistical lecturers, spouters, and scribblers. If a man has an itch for reforming the world, let him do something himself, instead of abusing everybody else. Give me practical men, who take the earth as they find it, and if they can't build their houses on rocks take the firmest sand that offers. There is but one moral principle, and that is self-interest. There is but one maxim worth attending to in life—'Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest.' "

"True," said the stout man, "but buy as cheap as you will, and sell as dear as you will, unless you have an unlimited market—which, with present competition, is scarcely possible—I can't see the facility of making those rapid fortunes you hinted at."

"Therefore," replied his saturnine comrade, "I come back to my old proposition: the newest speculation is the most profitable. Petty traders gamble, commercial genius descends upon its prey like the eagle. Who do you suppose make the most rapid fortunes?"

"I have not been so lucky as I might have been. I have had heavy losses lately. But then I was imprudent, I ran great risks—"

"Nonsense. The poor rogues scrape together a trifle by grinding the life out of their starved workwomen; and Noses and Son, backed by Rotmuck—I beg his pardon, Baron de Rotmuck—may have done something more with bankrupt stock, devil's-dust cloth, and a perfect Niagara cataract of advertisements. Any man may make five hundred per cent. per annum if he only has the capital required to start with."

"Of course you do. Now answer me an easier question. Does not all commerce amount at bottom to selling other men's labour for your own advantage?"

"Why—yes—that is—I suppose so," said the stout Manichæan, who did not pretend to understand political economy, and felt himself already out of his depth.

He was, it must be owned, a rather shallow Plato, and his instructor a somewhat Mephistophelian Socrates.

"Indeed! what is it then?" grunted the stout disciple, completely mystified by this unexpected announcement.

"Selling the men themselves," replied the taller speculator, after a pause, with cutting emphasis.

So sharp, bitter, and to the purpose was every sentence of this man that he might be said, like Hamlet, to "speak daggers." Each of his words was a brass-headed nail, driven into his companion's brain with a miner's hammer.

"Occasionally: the sea-serpent is sometimes seen, Lord John once said a good thing."

"Why, on the principle of 'Buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest,' it stands to reason that a man-catcher who steals his merchandise ready made (begotten, I should say), cannot well lose by the bargain, unless he meet by a miracle with a cruiser, and lose the bargain altogether. But I have no notion of transporting black cattle from Guinea to Brazil. I said something new was the thing. Well, human bodies, black and white, fair and foul, alive and dead, are regular articles of commerce. I propose to enter into a business quite as common, but scarcely recognised on 'Change. In a word—I propose to deal in human souls!"

"Are you the Prince of Darkness, then, or his envoy? Is that a pocket handkerchief or a tail hanging out of your pocket? Why—excuse my saying it—you must be either mad, or drunk, or making a butt of me! Pray talk of pounds, shillings, and pence, but don't speak to me of souls. I neither believe in souls nor devil."

"No," said the pale man, with a concentrated sneer, that made the other almost tremble at his own audacity, "nor in any God but Plutus. But you do not understand me. In the first place, never mix up such childish trash as devils, with or without horns, hoofs, or tails, in a rational discussion. Next, be assured that there is a devil, minus the D, pervading the very atmosphere we breathe. This spirit of evil seems a sort of spice to existence generally, without which it would be confoundedly monotonous and insipid. Thirdly, as to a soul, you have a thinking apparatus in your scull, I presume. You have feelings, especially if kicked down stairs; and you have or have not principles, good, bad, or indifferent, as the case may be. These, or the use of them, men can and do sell every day of their lives. In common parlance, such queer matters are termed souls. The word is understood, why split straws about an expression?"

"A thousand pardons! I thought you were quizzing me by proposing to deal in souls after death?"

"After death! It is you who are quizzing now! What are you raving about? What do we know of death? 'Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil,' said Seneca, who continues to describe all beyond as 'Rumores vacui, verbaque inania.' After death! There is nothing to be said after such an absurdity. You were dreaming of Doctor Faustus. O sancta simplicitas! It is in the souls of the living, not the dead, I propose to speculate."

"Well, there is one thing I wish to know," said the stout pupil, overawed to some extent by his companion's air of superiority, caustic fluency, and Latin quotations; "how on earth can you buy a soul without a body to keep it in?"

"What! still in the dark, or rather still among the darkies?" replied the tall philosopher, in a tone which caused the fat neophyte to apprehend an attack in Greek or Hebrew on his obtuse intelligence; "do you think I want to buy men for the sake of putting them in glass cases? Take care of the souls, and the bodies will take care of themselves. Why, one would think I had proposed something really new—to try an experiment which had never been tried before."

The dark man looked down upon his comrade, with the good-humoured pity of superior genius.

"All things are old and all things are new according to combination and circumstances," he replied, with less sarcasm in his tone. "I have not told you my scheme yet. I have merely thrown out an idea in order to prepare you to understand it. Look about you—look at Downing-street, look at the Houses of Parliament, look at the Church, the Bar, the Press—aye, look at the leviathan Timeserver and its crew; and say whether there are not souls bought and sold, aye, and double-sold in London, wholesale and retail, to an extent beyond all ordinary powers of calculation? Now observe how clumsily, how indelicately, how imperfectly the thing is managed—and mark how splendidly my scheme will come in to supply all the wants of the age. You shall share the speculation. The capital can be raised in shares. The preliminary expenses are not worth mentioning. The very letters of allotment will rise like balloons at Vauxhall—Railways were a joke to it!—The South-Sea Bubble a mere flea-bite! However, talking is dry work; I feel inclined for a cutlet; so we will just turn into the European, and discuss the matter over a bottle of Madeira. By the way, there is a popular prejudice of late against Madeira. It was started for a wager by a fashionable physician. I was dining with him at the time. Where can you show me a stronger proof of the ease with which the world is made a fool of?"

A week had elapsed since the conversation of our two Manichæans, recorded in the preceding chapter.

A man of striking and majestic aspect walked down Whitehall, in the direction of Westminster Abbey, which, gilded by the noon-day sun, towered proudly above the surrounding buildings.

Even so did he himself tower above the crowd amid which he moved. Taller by a head than the average race of men, his breadth of chest and martial carriage alike indicated a fitness for and experience of the camp. More than one trim guardsman involuntarily turned to gaze after the passing stranger. Nor was this military appearance diminished by a long dark brown moustache, which completely overshadowed his upper lip, and a closely buttoned surtout of dark green cloth, from the breast of which a crumpled roll of papers protruded. His features were noble in the natural and uncorrupted sense of the word. His eyes, grey in colour, were of a singular beauty. Their very softness expressed an intensity of self-possession, courage, and penetration, rarely found in eyes which shine more brightly with the borrowed light from without. Their brightness was the brightness of the spirit that flashed through them, as the glances of women through those useful blinds, transparent from the interior of a mansion, but impervious to the gaze of the curious in the public thoroughfare. His broad open brow was smooth as a young girl's, yet pregnant with earnest thought. Take him all in all, he conveyed an idea of the grandeur of a Mirabeau without his ugliness, or of a Dante without his sorrows. His profile resembled that of the living poet Lamartine—his full face suggested the features of the dead warrior Napoleon. Strange combination of imperfect comparisons! Such countenances must be seen; they are unique, and are not to be met with amongst common men. Such an attempt at verbal picturing may seem exaggerated—perhaps inconsistent. But this is certain; there are forms of human grace and dignity, that walk the earth in living incarnation, which do not yield to sculptured gods, or poet's dreams of the ideal. Happy the student who has met with such forms, which the great artist, Nature, at times exhibits, lest the vanity of imagination should wax too arrogant of an unsubstantial superiority.

The stranger's rapid progress was arrested by a mob, which had assembled, regardless of the remonstrances of established authority in the shape of blue coats and metal buttons, before a house recently painted and otherwise externally embellished.

Upon the window blinds of the ground-floor, and upon a large brass plate by the side of the portal, were to be read these startling words—

A porter at the door, in a magnificent livery, distributed to all respectably-dressed people prospectuses printed in letters of gold upon superfine satin note paper. To the rabble of more unpretending costume he gave no prospectuses, but occasionally addressed them in the following scornful terms, varying his discourse with references to his more wealthy auditors:—

"Come, move off, my good people, move off; what are you staring at? No admission except on business, sir. Hollo, you in the corduroys, just get away from those railings, will you? nobody will give anything for your soul, depend upon it—A prospectus, madam? certainly—Like to walk in and speak to the secretary, sir? (This was spoken to a gentleman who had the air of an M.P. at the least.) Now, then, don't stand in the way, little boys—where are you pushing to?—do you want to be packed off to the station-house, you man with the basket?"

At this moment the gigantic figure of the stranger moving through the crowd, as a man-of-war through the ocean, arrived opposite the speaker. The new comer, laying his hand upon the shoulder of the porter, twirled him round like a top without apparent effort, and passed quietly into the office. A pasteboard clerk, amazingly well got up, with a very stiff white neckcloth, and a very wooden face, received the intruder in a most obsequious manner.

"If you will state your business, sir, certainly," replied the stiff clerk, in measured accents.

"To know nothing is your department, I should imagine," rejoined the obstinate stranger.

"Nonsense, I mean no offence. If your masters are here, announce me." And the stranger held out a card, on which a duke's coronet was visible, but covered with his thumb the name, of which the stiff clerk could only see a small piece of one letter, and even that he could not distinguish.

"The Duke of—?" said the clerk, with a smile like the distortion of a gutta percha mask, "I beg your grace's pardon, but I could not see the—"

The pasteboard clerk did not dare to push his inquiries farther, and straightway announced the Duke of Nowhere, who was instantly admitted to the sanctum in which the saturnine speculator of our former chapter was seated. Upon the table before him were rows of books and papers tied with red tape. The apartment was luxuriously furnished. He rose politely as the martial visitor entered.

The stranger removed his hat, and thus more fully displayed the grandeur of a brow stamped with intellectual indication. He met the sharp glance of the speculator's large black eyes with supreme indifference. There were only one pair of eyes in existence that had power over the stranger; and they were other eyes than speculators'.

On the other hand the enterprising Soul Agent felt a vaguely-uncomfortable sensation at the steady look of his bright-eyed visitor, which seemed to take him in at a glance, to measure and judge him at first sight, and to scan him with a quiet consciousness of superiority against which he secretly rebelled in spirit. He resolved to resist this sensation to the utmost, and recover his natural audacity.

"Excuse me," said the Soul Agent, with easy politeness, "my clerk announced you as the Duke of—I really did not catch the name."

"Nevertheless, if we are to transact business together, as I presume we may from your honouring us with a call, it is necessary to know your real name and address—in confidence—in strict confidence, your grace."

"As what the Timeserver calls a guarantee of my good faith," rejoined the stranger, "while their own is beyond all guaranteeing."

The stranger continued, "Never mind the grace, I may be anything but what I represent myself. I may be an impostor. However, that is of no consequence."

"It contains a thousand pounds in gold. Take it in your hand, look at it, weigh it, feel it. You worship gold—respect me, at any rate to the extent of a thousand pounds. There are others where these came from. Now to business. I wish to buy the soul of a cabinet minister—in fact the F——n Secretary. Can you negotiate the matter for me at any price, and to what extent?"

The dark speculator regarded the cavalier stranger with increasing admiration. He felt that cunning with such a man would be thrown away. But there was much to hope from his liberality.

"On referring to my register," said the Soul Agent, in a cool business-like tone, "I find that the soul of the minister in question is in the market. His exact price will require some calculation, for I find that there is a report of his being mortgaged to Russia, and otherwise diplomatically pledged. I will, however, get our actuary to make a precise estimate, which in a few days I can communicate to your grace."

"Good," said the stranger, "there is no particular hurry as to that matter. Now as to the leader of the opposition?"

"Not unless, perhaps, at a monstrous figure. They value him highly, as highly as a Jew's eye. Indeed, I may remark in confidence that he is very much over-rated by his friends."

"Good. When he is to be had at a discount I may treat with you. The chief proprietor of the Timeserver, is he on sale? I will give a liberal price for the rubbish."

"At present he is mortgaged heavily, but will bear additional encumbrance," replied the Soul Agent. "There again the figure is very high, and if I might venture a suggestion, a cheaper bargain might be made with the principal editor."

"Who has no soul to sell at all. Thank you—I have no wish to purchase slaves. My work cannot be done by machines. I can pick up mere instruments, as occasion offers, at clubs, or coffee-houses, or anywhere."

"I perceive that your grace understands business. It is a pleasure to deal with a nobleman of such evident talent."

"Not in the least, your grace. If you could only give me some idea of the line in which you speculate, I could perhaps be of some real service to your grace."

"Thank you," replied the stranger, with distant courtesy, "I have only two more enquiries to make—is there a soul upon your books belonging (if not sold to somebody else) to one Bernard Viridor?"

"He is a young writer, chiefly on abstract questions, and under an assumed name; a poet of the nascitur non fit order, and I believe rather a red-hot democrat."

The Soul Agent took up one of the volumes upon the table and turned over its leaves with great rapidity.

"Here is the name," he said, on turning to letter V, "your description is correct—man of genius—young—poor—pretends enthusiasm—mixed up with treasonable movements—associates with suspicious company. May be had reasonable, I should say, if not too nice on minute points of opinion."

"Principles are very elastic," said the agent, drily, "but this Viridor is ambitious, most likely—may give more trouble than more important people. However, I will undertake the negotiation if fair terms are offered and full powers to treat given, with time to collect information."

"I authorise you to bid as high as ten thousand pounds, with a place worth from five to twelve hundred a year, a seat in Parliament, and an introduction to the first society in England."

"In that case I think we may consider the matter settled," said the Soul Agent, with a grim smile; "a democrat is but an advanced Whig, and every Whig is a Tory on the Treasury bench. This young dreamer is probably in debt, and can be easily reached. Very few souls can stand the test of extreme pecuniary pressure."

"Yes, his relations are all in independent circumstances and comparatively rich. He is of good family, as they call it."

"All the better! A genius, not to say a democrat, is always cut by his relations. That stings the soul and, makes it bitter. It teaches wisdom and destroys childish faith in human nature."

"Whence scepticism, selfishness, and worldliness—that is, venality. You are a shrewd guesser at psychology," said the stranger, regarding the Soul Agent with a sort of interest akin to the geologist's examination of a new fossil.

"You are not so shrewd as I thought, or you would have abandoned logic," resumed the supposed duke. "But I am not here for abstract discussions. You think my affair can be managed?"

"Yes, but it may require great delicacy of manœuvre to bring him to treat plainly,"

"They will not exceed a couple of hundred," said the dark calculator, placing the heavy bag of gold in a drawer, with feigned indifference.

Nevertheless, the stranger, with that keen intuition of a mind at once imaginative and reflective in the highest degree, detected at a glance by the expression of the Soul Agent's fingers, that there was, as yet, little capital at the back of the new speculation. There is no over-refinement of observation in this statement. For those who can read, every square inch of nature is scribbled over with the hieroglyphs of thought.

"We endeavour," continued the Soul Agent, involuntarily infusing a shade more subservience into his tone, "we endeavour to act fairly towards our clients, and to save their money, as far as practicable, in all transactions. In fact, it is our own interest to do so, as rival agencies will open in imitation of our establishment within a few days. However, our immense connections and extended sources of information give advantages to the genuine concern which other firms will vainly attempt to compete with."

"It is indeed," said the Soul Agent, bowing low to the compliment. "And now, your grace, although I have not the honour of knowing your name, I am prepared, if you desire it, to offer you a few shares in the company at par, notwithstanding that they are already at a high premium in the market."

"Your disinterestedness overwhelms me. I will consider the matter as speedily as possible. Meanwhile, one last proposition. May I take the extreme liberty of inquiring at what price your own valuable soul is to be purchased? I am not a poor man, so you need not fear to name a round sum, or even a great prize of a non-pecuniary nature, for which you are doubtless eligible?"

For the first time during many long years the dark speculator felt the blood rush up to his cheeks, his heart—he had one, anatomically speaking—beat quickly, and his whole nervous system intensely agitated.

Destitute of conscientious scruples, and all ordinary weaknesses of sentiment, he had yet one dominant quality, which from its exaggeration amounted almost to a virtue. He was proud—proud as the type of pride, the fallen but unconquered Lucifer. His dark eyes flashed for an instant with suppressed rage. Lived there a man—was this impassible and incomprehensible stranger the man—who ventured to make him the butt of a whimsical pleasantry? An instant's reflection banished the idea. The bag of gold in his drawer was proof conclusive of the stranger's seriousness. Then again, who was this mysterious nobleman whose speculations took so bold and extensive a range? What were his means, and what were his aims? Was he some fabulously wealthy peer, gifted miraculously with the strong intellect of a plebeian student, and grasping in his enlightened ambition the full power which such a position gave him? It was impossible to guess—it was useless to ask. Here, probably, was an opportunity for the Soul Agent of securing at one blow a comparatively vast fortune. But then his grand schemes, his brilliant speculations, his independent balance-holding between all parties and factions, his prospectively enormous gains, which became at the best problematical as the tool of another. He threw his pride into the scale, and independence triumphed. He resolved to reject the offer, and whilst he was about it, to do it grandly. But he overshot his mark. He was not a match for the stranger. Cunning never is for genius.

"I thank your grace," replied the Soul Agent, vainly affecting extraordinary coolness, and vainly hoping to have concealed the inward struggle which the bright-eyed cavalier read, as a mariner reads the signs of a storm in the heavens, "my profession is to buy and sell the souls of other men, but not to barter my own liberty. Besides, I too am rich, and shall be richer, for the profits of such a trade are not easily computed."

"True," said the stranger; "you despise my offer, not understanding its value. Every man has his price. I believe you assume that postulate. But you imagine that to buy you at your own estimate is not in the power of so humble an individual as myself. It may be so—I am sorry I cannot arrange the matter. You will still undertake my commissions?"

"With pleasure," said the agent; and secretly stung at the irresistible domination of his collocutor's nature, he risked a most adventurous and ill-timed sarcasm.

"Perhaps," he said, with difficulty preventing his voice from quivering, "perhaps your grace might not object to sell your own soul if a sufficiently high price were offered?"

"Willingly," said the stranger, frankly, to the consternation of the Soul Agent, who calculated upon a contemptuous refusal. "Sign me a cheque for a million, and the thing is done!"

"Produce the money, or prove your immediate power of raising it, and I will tell you my name."

The Soul Agent, who felt his dignity lowered by this strange badinage, wished his customer or himself at the devil his master's, rather than where he sat at that moment.

"You perceive," said the stranger, coldly, "that it is useless to trifle with me. You are a gentleman of boldness, fertile resources, and experience, but you are trying to make a fortune—I already possess one. Now to me, a million, if there were an object to be gained, would be a mere bagatelle."

A mere bagatelle! The Soul Agent forgot all personal pride at this prodigious announcement. Bitterly he regretted that he had not accepted the stranger's offer. He saw in the stern though beautiful lineaments of his client the expression absolute of truth and power. He felt that he was indeed in the presence of one of the real kings of men, one too who for a wonder appeared equally rich in spiritual and material wealth. A million! he forgot the sarcasm in the fact. Could he, the Soul Agent, have made sure at one blow of even a tithe of that sum—and bolted! Or even supposing this

as a certain poet once defined it, had had the cunning to guard against all evasion of contract? Still, even as the factotum of such a man! But it was idle to regret; he had exposed his weak side—he had allowed himself to be foiled. The stranger would not repeat the offer, at least on terms worth taking into consideration. The chance was lost, but he might yet by zeal recover the opportunity.

Already, without knowing it, the dark Agent had sold himself to his mysterious customer—for a chance.

There is a spiritual as a social scale of infinite gradations. A spirit of the secondary must bend to a spirit of the primary order. Men of genius, the real princes of thought and rulers of the earth, are not so stupid at a bargain as some commonsense bunglers imagine.

"A second customer like your grace," said the Soul Agent, with a courtier-like cringe, "and I should lose all faith in my tact as a man of the world. Luckily, you have no second!"

"Perhaps I have the more principal," said the stranger, accepting the agent's homage, and condescending to a jest, but not to a smile, in order to restore his collocutor's equanimity.

The Soul Agent laughed, but it must be owned his laughter was a little ghastly, and smacked of the music in Robert le Diable.

"Adieu, for the present," said the stranger, feeling his triumph complete, since philosophy teaches that no man will laugh at a bad pun unless thoroughly subjugated.

The stranger bowed gracefully, though slightly, took his hat, and departed in silence.

The pasteboard clerk, seeing his master grinning the visitor out, with a politeness very far beyond his usual reserved and dignified demeanour, kow-towed in so painful a manner, that he could be likened only to a wooden doll jerked convulsively by an ingenious application of whip cord.

As he issued from the street door, the stranger gave the porter, who was still at his post haranguing the small boys, a second twirl to get him out of the way, and taking a gold-lettered prospectus from that official's hand, strode rapidly away in the direction of the Horse Guards, where the infallible clock informed him that he had passed full an hour in the society of the Soul Agent.

Within two minutes of his departure, an emissary of the dark speculator was dogging his footsteps.

TOWARDS sunset on the same day two persons of the greatest importance to this history were assisting the world-movement in a retired chamber of the ducal palace of the St. Georges.

This palace was now the property of Arthur Bolingbroke Darian, ninth Duke of St. George. The extraordinary misfortunes of that famous race, which rival those of the fated House of Pelops in Grecian fable, as also the terribly rapid mortality of the last three dukes and others of their blood, are facts well known, doubtless, to many of my readers. But as some circumstances in connection with these surprising events have been grossly misrepresented, which from my peculiar position I am enabled to correct, I shall not apologise for briefly recounting the facts in their naked simplicity, as they occurred, so far as can be ascertained or reasonably conjectured up to the present time.

Roland Bolingbroke Darian, the fifth duke, married, some twelve years previous to the date of this narrative, the second daughter of the reigning Prince of Falkenheim. He was an only son, and, with the sole exception of the present duke's grandfather, Sir Arthur Darian, and his family, every collateral branch of the race was either extinct or utterly lost to genealogical science.

In the third year of his marriage, the duke Roland, accompanied by his young wife, proceeded to Stamboul, it was supposed upon a secret mission from the Home Government. He there became very intimate with a Russian nobleman of high rank—then Envoy Extraordinary to the Porte.

Some months afterwards the body of the Russian was found, shot through the heart, in the sea, at Pera, and the greatest excitement was caused by the event in the diplomatic circles of Constantinople.

At the same time a most hideous catastrophe divided the public attention. This was no other than the suicide, so much disputed about in the English and French papers, of the young and beautiful Duchess of St. George. By degrees a general murmur of suspicion began to connect the two events, and the darkest hints were thrown out as to the probable guilt of the Duke Roland. No rational doubt, whatever may have been adduced to the contrary, could exist as to the duchess having perished by her own deed, as the bottle of poison was found in her hand, and a written declaration of the fact upon a table in her dressing-room. But with the death of the Russian it was different. He was known to have entertained a violent passion for the deceased princess. The duke had been heard upon more than one occasion to express, the strongest hatred of his supposed friend. All else was wrapped in impenetrable obscurity. Fabulous particulars were circulated, but the best proof of their utter falsehood is, that when, at the instance of the Russian court, the grand vizier instituted the most severe investigation, no clue could be discovered as to the mode by which the murdered count had met his fate.

The subject had given way to more recent horrors, when, as will be perhaps remembered, a letter appeared in a widely circulated English journal, purporting to be from a gentleman who had long resided at St. Petersburg. This letter, I have ascertained from private sources, was written by a person of extraordinary abilities, formerly employed at the court of the Czar, in the organisation of certain new institutions, which the Emperor was desirous of establishing. On account of his liberal principles, however, and suspected propagandism of republican ideas, he became a political fugitive, and, with great difficulty, escaped across the Polish and German frontiers, arriving, after incredible hardships, in the British capital.

The letter in question most distinctly declared the writer's conviction that the death of the Russian Envoy was solely attributable to the long arm of the Czar himself, who, secretly enraged at the Count's conduct, and suspicious intimacy with a man of such anti-Muscovite opinions as the Duke of St. George, caused him, like many others, to be assassinated by an imperial emissary.

The Timeserver most indignantly rejected this theory, and with their "noted ferocity to the fallen," heaped additional opprobrium upon the now shunned and execrated nobleman.

The Russian was an old flame of the Duchess. St. George had married her against her consent by flattering the avarice of her family, to whom, though reigning princes, a son-in-law of such standing, with a quarter of a million rental, was an object of no small moment. In an insane fit of jealousy, the duke had subsequently murdered his rival, and the wretched princess, if not more immediately his victim, had hastened to escape the ill-treatment of a monster through the gloomy portal of the tomb!

Such was the insinuated conjecture of the day, and of the Timeserver, its misleader and parasite. Those who have perused its French, German, Hungarian, and Italian dispatches and articles may surmise that there were substantial, not to say golden, reasons for their persevering policy on the subject.*

[*A very curious circumstance occurred to the author of this work, in connection with the real architype of the Timeserver order. An intimate friend, Dr. A——, son of the celebrated German poet and historian, knowing from the fact of their having been fellow-students at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin, that the author was conversant with the German language, came one evening to his house and requested assistance in translating a most important letter addressed to the ——— Ambassador, which the latter had placed at the disposition of the great journal in question. The letter contained the most interesting account of the then state of Hungary, which was at the time inaccessible to correspondents of the press. By joint effort the letter was decyphered and translated. It told in favour of the Magyar cause. It was consequently entirely suppressed, and no use whatever made of the valuable information it contained. How long will hireling printers and scribblers continue to influence the opinions of a free nation? How long will the more honest portion of the press endure the overbearing insolence of a joint-stock imposition? And people praise the talent of its miserable automata! Pshaw! it exhausts the patience of real men of letters to behold such childish infatuation!]

Be that as it may, neither the revilings of the press, the coldness of friends, nor indeed any other outward influence, seemed to affect the duke after the death of his wife. He retreated to Syria, and in a lonely Maronite fortress contrived to pass unmolested the few remaining years of his life in a sort of savage royalty, guarded by Eastern mercenaries, and utterly destitute of all European society. If the world were not so mad just now after the sneering school of literature, I would simply say that he had loved and been deceived, and that his heart broke. He was a strong man, strong in mind and body, like all the St. Georges—an old Saxon stock crossed with northern fire. Perhaps the climate killed him. Enough, he died; and after considerable delay, the news reached Sir Arthur Darian of his kinsman's death, and of his own accession to the dukedom.

Sir Arthur set out for Syria to raise a tomb to his predecessor, and to take possession of the vast personal wealth which had accumulated in the late duke's coffers during years of indifference to pomp and lonely exile. Sir Arthur, his eldest son, and two of his daughters—he had a third who was too unwell at the time to accompany him—arrived before Smyrna. The plague was raging. It broke out on board the vessel in impertinent defiance of all quarantine regulations. Of the whole crew, passengers included, only ten persons escaped the virulence of the disease. One of these was a servant of Sir Arthur's. He himself, his son, and daughters, perished amongst the first victims. His son survived him by a few hours, just long enough to secure an empty title for his epitaph. Thus the race of the St. Georges was supposed to be extinct. Sir Arthur had had a second son, it is true, but the desperately wayward disposition of the young Arthur had, on his growing to man's estate, produced such terrible quarrels between father and son, that the latter had eventually broken out into open rebellion, and the former, in a temporary crisis of rage, had allowed his son to depart for the continent without hope of aid or resources for the future. From that time he had been completely lost sight of. No intelligence could be obtained through any of the embassies abroad, and finally even advertisements in the papers had been resorted to without success.

Nevertheless, after returning to England, and hearing the horrible news of the sudden destruction of his late master and family, Thomas Stanley, the young valet of Sir Arthur, resolved to set out upon a desperate pilgrimage in search of the lost heir to the dukedom. Not knowing to whom to apply for means, or where immediately to find the Lady Genevra Darian, who was at a distant Spa with some friends, he set off with his own small savings in his pocket, and commenced wandering over Europe with an extraordinary fixity of purpose that denoted a rare heroism of character. Reduced to actual poverty, he made his way from town to town on foot, picking up a knowledge of the language, and literally begging as he went. He had a turn for reading, and had imbibed the notion, from the generous sentiments met with in books and publications containing fiction or poetry, that literary men were more liberal in money matters than others. Acting upon this idea, he inquired in every town whether there were any writers living in its precincts, and straightway seeking them out, told his tale with such truthful and honest pathos, that in no one instance did he fail in obtaining assistance. Now, we hear much cant about the improvidence of men of letters—scarcely any one makes mention of their equally conspicuous generosity. It is thought a great deal to give two or three poets trifling pensions, and the nobility patronize a Literary Fund which doles out paltry alms to distressed talent on conditions of exposure, which render suicide preferable to the average pride of educated humanity. Why do not literary men unite in forming an independent association, conducted on noble principles, without the degradation of noble patrons? There is but one excuse for their not so doing; and it is, that strangely disunited as they are in all other respects, there is no body of men more ready practically to assist one another in pecuniary difficulty than authors. I know at this present moment at least a dozen men with whom I scarcely share an opinion, who would if requisite divide their last guinea with me as a matter of course, and without even the notion that they were exercising more than ordinary liberality. I do not know one man of any other profession on whom I could reckon with certainty even in the most extreme case of emergency. I loathe the crawling toadyism of certain scribblers ("before the public, and behind the age," as my friend Bellew has it), who write about our sacred and supreme order with a view to bring even its most insignificant members into contempt for their personal conduct and so-called eccentricities. Let them beware! there is, perhaps, a Prose Dunciad yet to be written, in which some of these would-be satirists may figure strangely, should they continue to shoot their nauseous rubbish at our doors.

More than one poor village poet, whose verses no printer would print and scarcely a friend listen to, emptied his purse into the hands of the ragged pilgrim with a regret at the smallness of the offering. Many a provincial editor, besides giving from his scanty private means, raised considerable subscriptions for the wanderer by an appeal in his weekly columns. Nevertheless, poets and literati generally are neither very numerous nor wealthy, and he fasted not seldom or was indebted to the rude hospitality of a peasant for a night's shelter and a meal.

He made, occasionally, applications to the rich proprietors or traders of the places he passed through. They treated him mostly as an impudent impostor, or got rid of him cheaply by the copper congé of a common mendicant.

How are we to account for this marvellous zeal on the part of a mere paid servant? Very simply—he was low in station, but high in soul. He knew that the lost duke was the friend of the poor, and that all his disagreements with Sir Arthur had originated in his inveterate assertion of man's equal rights and duties. He recollected the night of young Darian's departure, when in the midst of a drenching storm he quitted his paternal mansion. Stanley opened the door. Darian seized his hand, wrung it convulsively, and said in a firm but deeply affected voice—

"Stanley, you are a good fellow! Serve my father carefully, watch over him. His health is not good. But if my youngest sister, Genevra, marry, follow her and devote yourself to her service. I shall never return, but remember I was your friend."

Darian departed through the tempest. Stanley sobbed like a child. His young master had once saved his life at the hazard of his own, when incautiously crossing a railway on horseback in defiance of an approaching train. But the last pressure of Darian's hand had electrified his heart. Thus, he set out to beg his way over Europe to seek the lost son of a father who had relented too late.

For my part, I can hardly help shedding tears when I think of that honest, resolute man and his desperate travels, with the fearful and unheard-of recompense of all his toils.

WE now find ourselves, like the gentleman who circumnavigated the globe, precisely where we were at the commencement of the preceding chapter.

The two personages there vaguely mentioned as not holding sinecures in this history were by no means willow-pattern specimens of human clay. Of the dozen or twenty persons of genius living at the present moment on the face of the earth, two are about to be introduced to the reader.

They were both seated at a large table covered with a chaos of letters, books, and papers, of every description. The one was a famous Magyar, the other an English poet.

Basiline Arpath was the most beautiful woman, the most accomplished scholar, and the most impassioned poetess of all Hungary. Like many others, the élite of European intellect, she found in England a refuge from the vengeance of the political thieves and murderers who, in central Europe, for the time, feasted on the blood of the patriots, and, by the very stupidity of their crimes, ensured their ultimate downfall. Strange combination, which caused the same land to become the refuge of the hoary miscreant M—t—ch, and the pure and heroic Basiline! of the old and decrepit trickster, and the young and lovely patriot!

But not the eye of the most practised theatrical habitué could have detected in the present attire of Basiline the sex to which she belonged. Her dark hair, which was still of considerable length, and once might have served her for a robe, was now parted at the side, and curled upon her shoulders, after the fashion of a German student. Beneath her ivory forehead a large pair of spectacles partly concealed the magnificent blue eyes, with their long lashes, and finely-pencilled brows, whilst interfering with the exquisite lines of her straight, perfect nose, and full, oval visage. Upon her upper lip was a slight semblance of beard, which, without in the least injuring its beauty, diverted the eye of acute spectators from closely criticising a mouth too delicate in shape for even the gentlest of the harder sex.

She had risen from her seat, and now, with the companion of her literary labours, paced up and down the lofty and richly decorated apartment. The Englishman was a man of square and symmetrical build, and certainly rather above than below the highest average stature in this country. Nevertheless, the disguised Magyar was, thanks to rather high-heeled boots, within little more than an inch of her companion's height. She wore a loose paletot of dark blue cloth, which did not betray the graceful and gently undulating proportions of her slender figure; full grey pantaloons, beneath which boots, suspiciously small, were scarcely seen, completed her outward costume.

The poet wore a simple, and, narrowly inspected, somewhat threadbare frock coat and trousers of the student's favorite colour. His arms were crossed upon his chest, which was broad and athletic; his deep-set eyes, of a fine hazel, with their somewhat heavy brows, of a much darker colour than his hair, were the only feature that rivetted attention in a countenance of uniform and delicate paleness, with features regular in form and serenely guileless in expression. An habitual contraction of the brow, the result of intense thought, had given, perhaps, more sternness to their gaze than was desirable; but they were eyes of strange, magnetic potence, and were yet unlowered to man. His light brown hair was pushed back carelessly from his face. An artist would have called him superb; a dandy would have set him down as a queer-looking person; no woman would, perhaps, have admired him at first sight; few would have troubled themselves about his looks on closer acquaintance.

They paced the room, conversing in those clear musical tones which are not unfrequently the property of persons whose words express the purity and grandeur of their thoughts. The deep contralto of Basiline alternated harmoniously with the rich barytone of Viridor—that was the poet's name—a name yet known to few, but destined to become one of the most popular in England ere many months had elapsed.

Even while they thus paced the room, the door opened, and the martial stranger entered. His eyes rested upon Basiline with an inexpressible calmness of delight.

"Yes, here I am," said the Duke of St. George, "and rare news I have in my pocket: but how fares it with my friends?"

The duke took the small white hand of Basiline in his own, and gazed at her for some instants, as if longing to clasp her to his heart. But he suddenly restrained the impulse, and turned to Viridor, with whom he cordially shook hands.

"We have been busy in your absence," said the poet, pointing to the table, "your grace will—"

"What! still that detested nickname!" exclaimed the duke. "Is it quite impossible to beat into your philosophic scull the belief that I really am a republican without limit or reservation? Call me plain Darian, in the name of all truths, divine and human; or I shall think you love to taunt me with the duncehood of my ancestors!"

"You do not know Arthur Darian, or you would not question his sincerity," said Basiline, mildly, yet proudly, with a look of adoring confidence at the duke.

"Well, then, Darian it shall be, now and for ever," said the poet, gaily, again squeezing the hand of his friend with energetic warmth.

And Darian it shall be in this chronicle, says a man who detests nicknames to the full as heartily as his hero.

The real Dux—duke or leader—is in no want of the titular prefix. His actions make his simple name the noblest of titles. The sham Dux, who neither leads armies nor minds, is not the less a cypher for the absurd assumption of a dignity to which he has no rational claim. There were many Cæsars—there are idiot despots in Austria who still glory in the sarcasm—there was but one conqueror of Gaul and writer of commentaries, who died in the Capitol at the base of Pompey's statue.

Where are the modern Bruti?—or is their greatness proportionate to the pigmy Cæsars', their tyrants?

"And now for your rare news," said Basiline; "we live in an age of thunderclaps. For my part I have seen things so strange, and so incredible to all but eyewitnesses, that I fancy I am past surprises."

"Indeed, young gentleman," said Darian; then lowering his voice to a whisper inaudible to Viridor, who was standing at the other side of the table at which Darian had seated himself, near Basiline, he added, "would it not surprise you if I told you that I had never loved you?"

"Well, I own that were you to believe anything so absurd, I should be astonished into thinking you a maniac," said Darian, in his usual voice; "but no more child's play. Viridor, excuse my rudeness in reminding my fellow-soldier of an old camp-adventure. There is no friendship without confidence, and before we part to-day you shall have mine and this young scapegrace's to the full. Now for my news. We live at a curious juncture in moral history. Of course, men were always selfish, rapacious, venal. Nevertheless, for many centuries there flourished a sort of dim substitute for virtue and justice, which has latterly been gradually fading away, doubtless before the advent of a loftier and nobler principle. This principle, soon to be universally diffused by expansion, from the centres of in dividual greatness, is neither more nor less than the 'Love one another' of the great prophet, at length understood, and after ages of study discovered to be the perfection of wisdom. The fading substitute I alluded to is called Honour. Look at modern aristocracies, at modern gentlemen, the class elect of education, of refinement, of moral and religious culture. Listen to their speeches, their dialogues, their jests. Read their books, their articles, their reviews, and say whether the chivalric honour, which alone saved the middle ages from a relapse into primaeval barbarism, is not a dead letter in the present age. What do you hear on every side? Sophistry. What do you see? Expediency. 'The end justifies the means,' is the secret or avowed doctrine of the day. How false, how illogical, how contemptible is this cowardly doctrine in the eyes of a philosopher! It is indeed time that great thinkers should arise, and set their lion-like paws upon the mediocrities of routine, who meet an emergency with a 'dodge,' a crying evil with a snivelling lamentation, and a refutation or demonstration with a—working majority!"

"A working majority!" exclaimed Viridor, almost savagely, "a playing majority, you mean—a gambling majority, who risk the happiness of millions for the miserable stake of a little patronage, even for a few paltry bribes from advertisers in the Timeserver, willing to exchange a douceur of five hundred or a thousand pounds for a permanent situation!"

"Legally attainable—you forget they always add that reservation," said Basiline, smiling disdainfully.

"They also state," said Darian, "that the utmost honour (!!!) and secrecy may be relied on. Yes! men dare to advertise, and the Timeserver dares to publish, propositions which the guarantee of secrecy alone could render possible in a city less shameless than this modern Babylon—a Babylon, by the way, as my sister Genevra remarked, without the architectural distinction of a tower worth describing by an Herodotus."

"To show the fallacy of ends justifying means," resumed Darian, "it is only necessary to reflect, that if such a system were fairly carried out, the present always being sacrificed to the future, there would be nothing but permanent violation of the rights of individuals and the principles of justice, with permanent prospects of compensation to a permanent succession of sufferers, sacrificed to temporary pressure. But the gold-worshippers in practice, materialists in theory, and thought-loathing, brute-force blunderers in policy, are now rushing to extremes."

"Extremes meet," said Viridor; "the popular proverb anticipated what German metaphysicians laboured to prove. I am no despiser of Hegel. I believe that our enemies may go so far as to rush of themselves into the torrent of truth over the precipice of error."

"Profoundly reasoned, my dear Viridor; you are aware that I have always held that the great struggle of modern revolution, between democracy and aristocracy, sympathetic love for man and superstitiously exclusive selfishness, human vis inertiæ and centrifugal force, ignorance and knowledge, conservation and reform, Whiggery and honesty, childish finality and infinite progressive ambition, fear of losing the old and courage in creating the new, genius and duncehood, and by what other synonymes the contest may be described, is at bottom neither more nor less than the grand philosophical question of Materialism v. Spiritualism—the system of Death and the system of Life. A crisis is now at hand—read this prospectus!"

Viridor took from the hand of Darian the gold-lettered handbill which the latter had received from the Soul Agent's porter, and with no small amazement read aloud as follows:—

"GENERAL AGENCY

FOR THE SALE AND PURCHASE OF HUMAN SOULS.

CAPITAL UNLIMITED.

————

MANAGING DIRECTORS,
IGNATIUS LOYOLA GREY, ESQ.,
ROBERT RUSSEL BROWN, ESQ.

ACTUARY,
* * * (Author of the 'Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation.')

PHRENOLOGIST,
THEOPHRASTUS DONAMANY, ESQ.

PHYSICIAN & MESMERIST,
DR. PARACELSUS WRIGGLEDUM.

EXAMINER EXTRAORDINARY,
LORD BLOWAM & TALES.

INFORMER GENERAL.
SIR JAMES RATTAM.

"The object of this company is to facilitate those negotiations which, in every civilised community, must constantly occur. It is a long-established axiom that every man has his price. No sensible man, in the present age, even affects that absurd and impossible virtue—disinterestedness. If any man does good to another, he does it because it pleases his own feelings—in other words, from a purely selfish motive. He expects to be paid in gratitude, if not in money. Visionaries and theorists may act from fanciful impulses, but honest men pay their way as they go, and expect to be paid themselves for the trouble of existing. The soul, or galvanic mainspring of the human machine, regulates all its movements. Therefore everything a man does for money, or other payment, is a sale or mortgage of his soul to another person. It is the intention of the Company to undertake every description of Soul Agency, from the purchase of a young wife for an old roué, to that of a ministerial or opposition majority. All sorts of cabinet work skilfully arranged. Foreign diplomatists bought and sold with the utmost dispatch. Authors of books, and writers for the public press, secured on the most reasonable terms. In all these commissions the commission required by the Company will be extremely moderate.

"Estimates forwarded of the market value of any soul, in any part of the globe. All prepaid communications attended to with the greatest punctuality. The strictest confidence may in all cases be relied on.

"N.B. No letter, unless enclosing a remittance for preliminary expenses, will receive attention.

"A bold, barefaced enterprise, is it not, captain?" said Darian to Basiline, when Viridor had finished reading the prospectus.

"Certainly a wonderfully shameless document!" said Basiline, herself inspecting the production of the crafty Soul Agent, as if to satisfy herself of its reality.

"Still," said Viridor, "there is in its very daring earthiness a sort of leaning towards the nobler creed."

"They acknowledge, at any rate, the existence of a soul as the prime central mover of all activity—that is something in our favour," rejoined Darian.

"Which is about as great an admission as that the world turns round," said Basiline, playfully.

"It would not turn round if they could help it," said Viridor, laughing bitterly.

"I will tell you where our great obstacle lies," said Darian, gravely, "not in any arguments our enemies oppose to us, but in their utter and marvellous ignorance and obtuseness. The most obvious reasoning, the most noble truths, the most brilliant genius, falls blunted before their ægis of icy stupidity. They neither know nor care, they neither feel nor think. They stand still, they fancy themselves well off, or at any rate are too weak to cherish a strong desire, even of personal improvement, and they say—Let us alone. We are compelled, as it were, to kick them before us, since, unlike the celebrated animal seduced by the bundle of hay before his nose, they are insensible to the most obvious prospects of speedy personal advantage. If they only knew their own interest, I would excuse them for not heeding anybody else's!"

"Because, in that case, they would have reached the acme of moral and social policy, which teaches that the bliss of each is the bliss of all, and that individual enjoyment, founded on general suffering, is a pitiful and dreary illusion."

"You do well to retort upon me with quotations from my own system," said Darian, "when you see me rushing into inconsistencies."

The chronicler cannot here refrain from repeating a sentiment expressed by him in the pages of a satirical extravaganza, otherwise much richer in nonsense than wit:—"It is difficult to speak consistently of inconsistent people."

"I propose," said Basiline, "that we now resolve ourselves into a committee on the general state of politics in Europe."

"A council of war," said Darian, "a council of war. We are all soldiers of the great army."

"I would we were as skilful, or at least as resolute, with the pen, as with that meaner weapon, the sword," said Viridor, seriously.

"Alas!" said Basiline, sighing, "it is so easy to fight, so hard to think patiently for a great cause. So simple to die, so troublesome to work, so natural to hate bad men, so difficult to love Good alone, and in it all mankind, friends and foes, for its sake!"

"True, true," said Darian, regarding the beautiful Hungarian's animated countenance, from which she had removed the disfiguring glasses, with ineffable pride and tenderness. "True, it is easier to be dazzling than great. But before we proceed to council, it strikes me that it would be well to let our noble friend more fully into our confidence, in order that no mystery may stand between our free sympathies. Are you not of the same opinion?"

"I am," said Basiline. "To the friend of your boyhood, and to the man whose aims, hopes, and principles are in such perfect harmony with our own, nothing should be concealed."

"Then, my dear Viridor," said Darian, "prepare yourself for a rather prolix and romantic narrative. I will be as brief as occasion permits."

"My dear friends," said Viridor, much affected, "for a lonely student like myself, obscure, unloved, and neglected, to have found two such friends, is in itself a greater happiness than I can express. I scarcely dare to believe it, and often half encourage the notion that our chance meeting at the opera, which I had visited for the first time during several years, after so long a separation, our accidental conversation and recognition, with my introduction to Captain Arpath; and the last week spent in your delightful society, and in such ennobling labours, must be all a dream of pleasure, from which I shall awake—"

"I never flatter," said Basiline, "but I feel well in your presence that a greater than Byron is with us."

"For every age a man," said Darian. "Woe to the age that cannot receive its prophet!"

At this moment, a well-dressed gentleman entered the apartment, after knocking carefully, and stated simply that dinner was on the table, and every one else assembled.

"We will join you instantly, Manton," said Darian. "I did not think of it before, but my walk has given me an appetite; the story must be deferred. Proceed, my dear Viridor, our friend Manton will lead the way."

Darian turned back for an instant—he was alone with the Hungarian. A strange smile lit up her features. He pressed her to his heart for an instant, imprinted one kiss upon her beautiful mouth, and rapidly followed on the track of the poet, who was exchanging a few remarks on the news of the day with Manton, a personage whose position will be explained more fully in the ensuing chapter.

THE dining-hall in Darian's palace was vast in size, and adorned with regal splendour.

Pictures by renowned artists, of modern and ancient times, hung from the walls, alternating symmetrically with statuary in the purest style of art. The ceiling of the lofty apartment was painted in fresco by a famous master of the Italian school. The floor was carpeted with the richest product of the eastern loom. The furniture was old and massive. A vast table in the centre of the apartment was covered by an abundant but simple repast. Covers were laid for about twenty persons.

Presently the door at one end of the room opened, and a party, to all appearance of ladies and gentlemen, entered. In reality they were simply the domestic officials—or, as a servile race have made and named them, servants.

The Roman empire is fallen—slavery is said to be extinct in its Christian provinces. But the feeling and the word survive. The Latin servus, or slave, has bequeathed his title to the European servant. Polite mockery countenances the slavish sentiment, and the proud noble signs himself the obedient servant of the plebeian he despises and tramples on. Everybody is the servant of somebody; there are slaves under every roof.

"I remember, some time ago," said Viridor, on a subsequent occasion, to Darian, "a very near connection of mine, an old and hardened aristocrat, expressing, as the extreme of hideous and awful presumption, and, as he thought, by a sublimely impossible hyperbole, the fear that, the next thing, he supposed, his servants would expect, would be to sit down to dinner at the same table as his family! This was à propos of a beer-revolution in the kitchen, the surreptitious visit of a Don Juan of the police force, or some similar accident. My reply was, that such would probably be the fashion with his grandchildren, when advancing education and improved domestic machinery had rendered the relative positions of master and attendant simply a question of division of labour, and contract between man and man. He retorted by a bitter sarcasm, implying that I was a Socialist. This he regarded as the severest insult within the pale of conventional abuse. Though neither a disciple of Fourier or St. Simon, I confess I bore the imputation with imperturbable tranquillity."

"Yes," said Darian, "even to that shocking pass must we come at last. For my part, I never could hear any vulgar-minded person express contempt for servants without reflecting that they were like all living creatures—immortal spirits soaring upwards towards perfection—and pitying the meanness of the sentiments that have degraded them to their present position. Every feeling, every act, that tends to reduce to a machine a being possessing volition, reason, and affection, is a treason against nature—the Infinite Republic of spirits!"

"How else prove my sincerity? Yes, I encourage my domestics to amuse themselves in their leisure hours with reading and rational conversation. I give them free opportunities of air and exercise. I allow them in the evenings to indulge in dancing or music, if it pleases them. All I require in return is, that they fulfil their duties, as per contract, with fairness and regularity."

"As usual, the complete refutation of all old saws on the subject, such as 'Give them an inch, and they will take an ell,' &c. On the contrary, their zeal is positively troublesome. Their cleanliness, their assiduity, their anticipation of my wishes, compel me almost daily to express personal gratitude for services which common menials would never render. They respect me without fearing me—they obey me without cringing. As to familiarity breeding contempt, it is all nonsense; unless by familiarity be understood a coarseness of manner, which ought never to exist between the most intimate friends. I am, in fact, surrounded, by friends who love me as the Arabs love the chief of their tribe. It is astounding what an alteration a few months have made in their habits, manners, and language—even in the expression of their countenances. They were slaves, spies, flunkies, ready to bear contempt, and to compensate themselves by roguery. They are free men and women, respecting and respected by one another. Several of them have married."

"There is a nursery at their disposal. They can pay for deputies during illness out of their wages. I know my expenses, which, from the simplicity of our living, the enormous saving of a common table, and the utter absence of waste or pilfering, are not one-third of such an establishment under the old system. I know my expenses, and I insist upon their not being increased by one sixpence without my authority. I give freely—I allow no indirect thieving. I have explained to them my views and principles—they understand and sympathise with them. I have told them that I consider property merely as an office of trust. I have shown them that I enjoy no greater bodily comforts than themselves. I have proved to them that I work as hard as any of them, though in a different manner. And what is the consequence? So far from leaguing against me, as most servants do against their masters, I have found by experience that on one of them endeavouring to impose on me, the others have instantly resented the attempt as an offence against their whole body, and at once requested the dismissal of the offender, lest suspicion should attach to the community from the fault of a single member. But as, on reasoning with delinquents in the only two cases that have occurred, I convinced them that honesty was indeed their best policy, I have not found it necessary to give a single domestic his discharge, since no repetition of the fault has occurred in the household."

"It realises," said Darian, "what the schemes of Cabet, Louis Blanc, Considérant, and all other followers of Fourier, St. Simon, or Owen, will utterly fail to effect. They madly dream of destroying property in all its complicated forms—of annihilating competition—the stimulus and spice of commerce; in a word, of crushing the freedom of industry, and reducing society to a machine. We know such chimeras to be antipathetic to human nature, its love of liberty, activity, emulation, and acquisition. We take the world as we find it, and develope existing conditions on a logical system. They ask for a new chaos, in order to create a new world from its ruins. The hope of progress is in individual genius and individual exertion, the principal fountain of all general improvement. The political revolution we require is material, the social revolution must be moral in its nature. The government must counteract selfishness, the great evil, by taxation and vigour; the press, by reason, and appeals to the intelligence and the hearts of the citizens. When all men cease to be selfish, perfect community of goods may exist without laws to enforce it. Before that period, not all the legislation of all conceivable republics can maintain such an institution for an hour. But, in truth, all perfection, all absolute ideas, are unattainable goals. Existence is an infinite progress, and in the infinite there is no consummation possible."

On the present occasion, the male and female domestics joined with perfect politeness in a conversation on the events of the day. They were dressed simply and plainly; the women rivalling in the neatness, and even elegance of their attire, the costume of respectable milliners or shopwomen; the men, I am compelled to confess, looking very much like clerks, tradesmen, or other more dignified people.

Darian took the head of the table. The beautiful Hungarian—the supposed Captain Arpath—sat on his right, Bernard Viridor on the left of their friend. The major domo, Manton, took the foot of the board, and the rest filled up the other places. A remarkably pretty housemaid, who, but for her red hands, looked amazingly like our fair friend Lady Rose D——, actually sat in the next chair to Viridor, and divided her attention between that republican poet and her left-hand neighbour the coachman, who looked rather like Lord Ch——d, only more honest, and told several sporting anecdotes with great modesty and humour, even arguing with Viridor and his master—both accomplished horsemen—on some points connected with the training of the noblest of all domestic animals.

What a thing it is to be a philosopher! Viridor extended his sympathies even to the wrongs of horses, and Darian joined him, maintaining a theory of horse-education which astounded the coachman, and may some day astound the world of grooms and ostlers!

It was remarkable, at this patriarchal meal, that although wine was liberally supplied without distinction of persons, the greatest moderation prevailed. The females, in general, abstained altogether from wine, or contented themselves with a single glass of some light French or Rhenish vintage. The cook only, an artist of some talent, indulged pretty freely, which, considering his recent exertions, was but natural. The repast has been described as simple. It must not, however, be imagined that it was rude, or that it was by any means prepared in the barbarous style of ordinary English dinners. Good cookery is at once the most salutary and the most economical, nor is instruction in this necessary art the least important part of that national education hereafter to be alluded to. The intrinsic cost of a most exquisite dish is often trifling; nothing prevents the poor man and his family from enjoying it but ignorance. Truly a philosopher feels almost ashamed of preaching the, to him, palpable truisms, that Ignorance is the source of all pain—Knowledge of all pleasure.

This truism Prometheus, by the lips of Æschylus, that poet of awful grandeur, more than two thousand years ago declared to mankind. Prometheus, the incarnate wisdom, was, it is true, delivered from the rock of tyranny by Hercules, the incarnate Force. Since then he, and, alas! how many of his Titan brethren—prophets, poets, philosophers—have wandered over the earth, through obscurity, and scorn, and fiery martyrdoms, teaching in vain the great and eternal lesson. They teach it yet. But how few are their converts! Men have comprehended printing, gunpowder, steam, the most complicated machines, the most marvellous calculations, the most hidden secrets of nature—the most simple moral truths they have not comprehended at all.

One would almost imagine that the simplest things were the most difficult to understand.

"Prometheus gave fire to man." To what wonderful uses has not man applied the gift! Clocks, locomotives, electric telegraphs, a thousand manufactures, a thousand arts, bear witness to his ingenuity. And not one mortal in a myriad can cook a dish of soup fit to be eaten!

When dinner was over, and the cloth removed, Darian rose, and, accompanied by his friends, retired to the apartment we have already mentioned. But before they took their departure, he handed to the major domo the Soul Agent's interesting circular, saying with a smile—

"You have now all a fine opportunity of making money in an easy manner. There will be people enough who will pay liberally for the soul of a spy over my actions. The office would be a sinecure, as I have nothing to conceal, and care not who knows what I do. Only remember, it is 'First come, first served,' in such a matter!"

"Who feels inclined to set up as a Judas Iscariot?" said the senior footman, amid a general fire of jocularity at the bare notion of betraying such a master as Darian.

THE evening was chilly, notwithstanding the month was May. A fire was lighted in the grate, which threw strange flickering shadows upon the sculptured supporters of the marble mantlepiece. On a small table before the fire steamed an urn of fragrant coffee. Two long Turkish pipes were in the hands of Viridor and his host—even the Hungarian trifled with a Spanish cigaretto.

"George Sand would have felt quite at home as one of the party," said Darian, with a peculiar tone.

"George Sand!" exclaimed Viridor. "O the wondrous phantoms which the thought of that name calls up! Spiridion, Andre, Consuelo, and all the living creations of her genius, arise before me at its mention! Do you know, Darian, I once loved that woman, whom I have never seen? I was a mere boy, I read her works—I formed an ideal image of her face—I obtained her portrait—found it realised."

"And why did you not seek her presence?" said the Hungarian, "you who could have so well accorded with her in feeling and in intellect?"

"It was pride," said Viridor; "I was a boy—I had done nothing—I could not bear the idea of a woman's superiority."

"You surely do not imagine that such a woman as George Sand would have measured you by the breath of fame?" said Darian.

"No, but I doubted my own power. Years afterwards, though in reputation a pigmy compared to a giant, I should not have hesitated, but it was too late."

Viridor was silent for a few minutes. A strange panorama of reminiscences of far lands and fair faces passed through his mind in that brief period. Suddenly he aroused himself from his reverie.

"I claim your promised narrative," he said, addressing Darian, with lively interest.

"Re-light your pipe, and help yourself to coffee," said Darian, "and I begin at once. You," he added, turning to Basiline, "can correct me if I blunder."

All three drew their arm-chairs a few inches nearer to the hearth-rug, and Darian commenced as follows:—

"I was born, as you are aware, the younger son of a baronet of very moderate fortune. When we were at school together, you, Viridor, had every prospect of becoming incomparably the richer of the two. When I grew up I was destined for the bar, like yourself. Like you, also, I felt an insuperable hatred to a profession which I felt ought to be left open to the talents of every reasoning man. The conceit, arrogance, and toadying snobbism of my young legal acquaintances increased my disgust. I conceived only one clear notion of English jurisprudence. As the American editor defined England herself to be a capital country to emigrate from, so I regarded the English law chaos as a capital nuisance to get rid of. Visions of a grand simple code, prepared by a college of lawyers and philosophers, which every man might carry in his pocket, danced before my imagination. Meanwhile, I took to studying politics. Soon, beneath all the plausible jargon of economists, parliamentary leaders, party editors, and club oracles, I discovered, or believed that I discovered, gross and fundamental errors. In nine cases out of ten, the fallacy of an argument lies in falsely assumed premises. Like two diverging lines, the farther the reasoning from cause to effect is prolonged, the wider becomes the discrepancy. Ignoble and imperfect principia being once admitted, all sorts of delusion and absurdity follow as a matter of course.

"I resolved to drop my plumb-line into the deep ocean, to adventure amid the vast solitudes of abstract thought, and to build the foundations of my system in the everlasting centres of the universe. I reduced the three great sciences to three simple definitions.

"Philosophy proper (Ontology, Metaphysics, the Logic of Hegel,) I conceived to be the science of the Infinite Spirit World, uncreated, eternal, and self-existent, eternally progressing; to seek enjoyment and shun pain infinitely, the only rational or possible principle of any existence.

"Moral or Ethic science I comprised in the two words—Universal Sympathy—or the knowledge that the interest of the one is the interest of all sensitive beings linked by the common law of life, above mentioned.

"Political science I considered to be the application of this truth in the most noble and extended possible sense.

"From these general principles I deduced all details. I knew that Perfection was eternally unattainable, but that it could be approached infinitely. I had no panaceas, warranted to produce milleniums at the first application, but no amount of difficulty could frighten me. I set to work to study the most practical questions of the age. I saw that but one thing was wanted to their solution—MEN—bold men, with clear heads, and capacity for explaining and simplifying to others the ideas they themselves possessed. Unfortunately, I could not resist the temptation of trying to make proselytes. With a terrible faith in the greatness and prevailing power of truth, I preached republicanism even in the bosom of my family. No man is a prophet in his own country. I was virtually turned out of doors one stormy night, leaving my youngest sister fainting on a sofa, and the brave-hearted man who opened the door for me in a state of emotion I have rarely witnessed. My father and elder brother tried to look grand when they gave me my choice between recanting my democratic opinions or banishment from their society. I thought they both looked rather silly, as, without making them any answer, I embraced my sisters and departed. I felt instinctively that I quitted them not to reencounter them on earth, but I little dreamed of the horrible fate that, with one exception, so shortly awaited them.

"A year afterwards, whilst you, Viridor, were at Paris, amid the vortex of its Revolution, and at the right hand of that hero of modern days, Lamartine, I wandered over awakened Germany, and finally, as an officer in the Hungarian army, went through that terrible campaign which has left behind it seeds of vengeance and glory yet to bloom upon the fertile hotbed of the fallen Austrian empire.

"There is a hideous tale extant of a man, who, being magnetically entranced at the moment of death by a disciple of Mesmer, remained for a space of many months in a state of living death, neither eating, drinking, nor giving otherwise any sign of vitality. It was, in fact, a mesmerised corpse, which, on the spell being dissolved, or, to speak technically, on being de-mesmerised, instantly fell to pieces in a state of almost liquid putrefaction!*

[*By Edgar Poe, the late lamented American poet and novelist, a man of surpassing genius, to whom I shall have more than one occasion to allude. So artistically and naturally was the story alluded to worked up, that it passed everywhere current as an authentic narrative at the time of its publication.]

"A more perfect type of Austria's destiny could not be desired. Preserved and magnetised by the Czar's Satanic agency—we are willing, for once in a way, to couple mesmerism and devilry together—the actually defunct empire is only waiting the first awakening thunder of a new revolution to display its internal rottenness, and crumble into irreparable decomposition.

"Well, all Hungary rose in arms against a government of scoundrels, backed by an army of slaves. To give any detail of my personal adventures, or even of the war itself, would occupy whole days, and require references to maps, without which all description would be unintelligible. Enough that from first to last I was engaged in eleven battles, and nearly fifty skirmishes; that I was present at the taking of seven, and the defence of four, cities and fortresses; that, thanks to my former military tactics, I obtained, by almost unparalleled promotion, the nominal rank of lieutenant-general from the hands of Bem himself; that I was repeatedly in consultation with that man of brilliant and fertile genius, Kossuth, and with the other leaders of the patriots. Perhaps—excuse a soldier's vanity—perhaps, had my advice been taken, Hungary might have been saved. I have studied the black art—the art of war—in the pages of history, and in the conversation of veterans. I am convinced, with Napoleon, that it may be reduced to one dogma—rapidity! rapidity! rapidity! We had admirable leaders—Bem, Dembinski, Klapka, and many others, distinguished themselves in a thousand ways. Bem was the hero of the war. But even Bem was no Napoleon. His courage was greater than his resources. By a peculiar stratagem, I would have marched on Vienna at all hazards, fought a pitched battle under its walls, and raised the standard of liberty and rebellion in the heart of the enemy's country. I urged my plan on Kossuth—he approved it. I urged it on the generals, separately and in council.

" 'It is the most dangerous, the most desperate, of all the plans proposed,' said Dembinski.

" 'For that very reason the most likely to succeed!' I explained; 'and if it should succeed?'

"Strength," said Viridor, "is in reality a mental, and not a physical quality. Nearly all men of powerful intellect possess great bodily vigour, especially for the bearing of fatigues, watchings, and hardships."

"Every fact of my experience during the war confirmed that theory," continued Darian. "My best officers had been literary men, artists, and members of the learned professions; like myself, soldiers by inspiration, rather than education. They were quicker at understanding the boldness of my tactics than the regular officers, whose brains were full of petty points of discipline and conventional manœuvres. My aide-de-camp had been editor of a newspaper in Buda—my most efficient artilleryman, mathematical professor of a public school in Prussian Poland. The Poles were the best soldiers in the armies of Hungary. What a nation of brave and noble hearts has been sacrificed in Poland!"

"They will yet rise," said Basiline; "Resurgam is written on their tomb in the very unrelaxed oppression which is required to keep them in subjection."

"Let us hope so," said Viridor, sighing. "If we ever could cease to be cosmopolites, our swords should be for Poland and Hungary."

"We shall live to fight for both, and not in vain, I firmly believe," resumed Darian; "but to my story. I must pass over all subordinate incidents, and come to the, for me, one great event of a war without a parallel in modern history.

"There is a small town between ——— and Pesth; it contains about eleven thousand inhabitants. In this town I was quartered with a detachment of about six hundred light infantry, and perhaps thirty or forty mounted volunteers, chiefly German students, who had fought, during the siege of Vienna, at the barricades. After the taking of the city, and the cold-blooded murders of Robert Blum and Messenhauser by Windischgratz, fearing themselves to be assassinated with the mockery of a court-martial, they contrived to cross the lines either with forged passports, disguised as peasants and old women, or favoured by the darkness of the night, and enlisted themselves, as a matter of course, under the Magyar standard. They fought like devils. They were splendid young fellows. Not one of them survived the campaign.

"There is noble blood enough upon the idiot emperor's soul, and that of his wild-beast counsellors, to paint all Hell with crimson! Pshaw! I rave—there are no words for real passion! What I feel no poet, no art, can describe."

Darian paused for a moment and covered his face with his hands. The thought of his old companions in arms, and of their dreadful fate, choked his utterance for some minutes.

At length he resumed, in a voice terrible from its depth and menacing calmness of passion.

"Not one survived. They yielded themselves prisoners of war to a detachment of H—y—u's army, and were shot in cold blood to a man, by the orders of that vilest of assassins.

"Cowards, who flog women," said Darian, fiercely, "are not particular to a few murders more or less. I must hasten on with my narrative. It is idle to indulge in expressions of indignation, disgust, or contempt, which would end in exciting the brain to madness. It is enough that we have sworn the destruction of the Austrian empire; that we have sowed, and are sowing, the seeds of its utter and irremediable destruction.

"Every day we were expecting reinforcements. A body of eight thousand Austrians was advancing upon the town. Our position was one of imminent peril. The town was quite incapable of being defended by so small a force as I possessed. I resolved to wait until the Austrians were almost at our gates, in the hope of the promised assistance, and then to retreat gradually in the direction of the expected succours, with which, if sufficiently strong, I proposed to return and recapture the town.

"It was late in the afternoon; I was seated in the study of a certain doctor, at whose house I had established my head-quarters, awaiting a little refreshment, when my aide-de-camp, the editor, abruptly introduced a most extraordinary visitor to my notice.

"He wore a ragged peasant's blouse, trousers which seemed scarcely to hang together, and a sort of sombrero hat, which was the only tolerably well-preserved portion of his squalid attire. His hair hung down, long and matted, on his shoulders; his moustache and beard mingled in a tangled mass on his chest. His face was pallid and emaciated; his hands and arms were of alarming meagreness; his feet were bare and bleeding from the rough roads. In his eyes was a sort of wild fire which bordered on insanity,

" 'Who are you?' I demanded in the Magyar tongue, which, with my peculiar faculty for languages, I had learned to speak so correctly as not to be distinguished from a native by any but people of the best education.

"No answer. The man seemed to be studying my countenance with intense closeness.

"Suddenly the man clasped his hands, his face broke out into a smile, and he exclaimed, to my astonishment, in the purest English—

" 'What! Mr. Arthur!—don't you remember me? Stanley—Thomas Stanley—?' He fell back, exhausted, into a chair.

" 'Stanley!' I exclaimed, 'my father's servant! Can it be possible! And what brings you here, and in this beggar's state? What news of my father, of my brother, and my sisters—my sister Genevra, is she well?'

" 'I'—Stanley began, but it was evident that he was too exhausted to continue.

" 'Stay,' I cried, 'pardon my selfishness. Ah, doctor! some food, in Heaven's name, and some clean clothes for this man! He is a countryman of mine, I fear he is ill—he is dying!'

" 'No,' said the doctor, 'he is only exhausted by fatigue and want of food; is it not so?' he added, in French, addressing Stanley himself.

"Stanley nodded assent, and murmured faintly, 'Since yesterday morning—no food—I heard you were here—I walked,' and he paused from sheer inanition.

"At this moment, one of our officers entered the apartment, and announced the fact that the head of the Austrian column was already visible from the walls, at about two miles' distance.

"Almost simultaneously, a messenger arrived, bearing the news that the Hungarian succours were within four hours' march of the town.

" 'That the town is not tenable for an hour. It offers too many points of attack for our handful of men.'

" 'Right! there is no use in sacrificing the men. I have made up my mind. Give the order to march at once. You will take the command for the moment. You will march to meet Solaki and his detachment, and return with them to save, if possible, the town from being sacked, and the inhabitants from—'

" 'Just so. I must remain here a few minutes—till this man, who bears, perhaps, vitally important news, recover the power of speech. I can easily overtake you on horseback.' The major departed.

" 'Then there is danger,' said the aide-de-camp. 'I will not desert you living, general.'

" 'Then stay,' said I, 'double rebel as you are, and console yourself by the reflection, that if you are not shot by the Austrians you will be sentenced by a Magyar court-martial.' But as I spoke these words, in a tone of dismal jocosity, I squeezed the brave fellow's hand, which was white and soft as a woman's, in a way that proved my appreciation of his generosity.

"Meanwhile, some bread and meat were brought in, and Stanley, after a few mouthfuls, became sufficiently recruited in strength to inform me of the death of my father, my brother, and my sisters, and my own consequently changed position and prospects in the world.

"I cannot say what effect such news might have had upon me under other circumstances. At the then present juncture, it made but a vague and bewildering impression. I was too much occupied with immediate peril to give much thought to anything extraneous. Stanley's own brief description of his wanderings and devotion to my person affected me much more strongly. I saw him before me in his famished and pitiable plight. I could realise that idea. All else of his narrative seemed remote and dream-like. Indeed, I dared not dwell upon the thought of my family losses at a time when the lives of thousands were possibly dependent upon my activity and decision.

"Already too much time had been spent in words, though not twenty minutes had elapsed since the departure of our soldiers. My horse and the aide-de-camp's were at the door, but a distant sound of clashing arms and trampling footsteps announced the fact that the foremost Austrians were already at hand. At the same time, an old workman of the town rushed into the house with the information that a small party of the enemy had, under cover of a wood, gained a position whence they commanded the road by which our troop had so recently retreated.

"This unexpected misadventure cut off our escape by the plan originally proposed, and left us but one chance of avoiding immediate capture or death. It was a desperate chance, but even a chance is enough to sustain human hopes, and we adopted it without hesitation. Abandoning our horses to their fate, the aide-de-camp and myself hastily put on a couple of peasants' frocks, which were at hand, with suitable continuations, whilst the doctor thrust our uniforms into an empty cask in his cellar. We then, by the application of ashes from the stove, begrimed our faces and hands, and, accompanied by Stanley, whose costume needed no improvement in raggedness and dirt, went out at the back of the house, and, after a considerable circuit, had the audacity to mingle with a crowd of terrified people in the marketplace, who cried, 'Long live the Emperor!' and 'God save the General H——u,' on the principle of a man who tries to coax a bull-dog of whose bite he stands in momentary apprehension.

"The Austrians entered the town with fife and drum, and the general, who established himself at the Hotel-de-Ville, immediately issued a proclamation that a public execution would take place within the space of two hours, being no other than the infliction of fifty lashes upon the famous Basiline, Countess of Arpath, for her high treason and contumacious rebellion and conspiracy against his Majesty the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary."

Viridor started at the name of Arpath, and looked with evident suspicion towards Basiline.

"My sister," said the fair patriot, in a tone that left the poet still undecided as to her sex, which he had begun to suspect during the last few hours.

"Well, I will not enlarge upon her virtues or her loveliness. Enough, Viridor, that, not contented with stirring up the Magyars to insurrection by her splendid ballads and odes, which ran like electricity from one frontier to the other, this noble girl, scarcely nineteen years of age, actually adopted the Hungarian uniform, mounted horse, and on more than one occasion spurred through the thickest fire, addressed the flagging soldiers, and carried dispatches of the most vital importance to the army for Bem himself. It was in one of these expeditions that she had fallen into the power of the Austrians. H——u resolved to make her an example. He is one of those wretches who almost convincingly confirm the descent of man from the lower animals. Like Greenacre, Manning, and other criminals of their class, he may be said to occupy but a 'mid station between the brute and human being, having all the blind ferocity of the former and all the artificial vices of the latter. He attained his present position by interest alone, having committed, in the early part of his career, several acts of meanness and cowardice, which most unaccountably failed in securing his ignominious dismissal from the service. But to flog women requires no manly qualities.

"I heard the dastardly proclamation. I had never seen Basiline Arpath, but I knew her by her poems—I knew that death would be to her infinitely preferable to such a fiend-like infliction. I resolved to save her at all hazards, even at the expense of her life and of my own."

At this crisis in Darian's narrative, Basiline, who had gradually drawn her chair closer to the young general's, could no longer sustain her assumed character before Viridor. Her head fell upon Darian's shoulder—he drew her towards him with his left arm, whilst their right hands were locked in one another, and their whole attitude and expression denoted the confidence of a love without drawback, the sublime adoration of a woman for her hero, and a lover for his mistress.

Viridor needed not to be further enlightened. For the first time the marvellous beauty of the Hungarian struck him with the force of an explosion. Strange to say, a deep sadness fell upon him at the spectacle. His thoughts wandered away from the narrative he was listening to, and a selfish regret divided his attention with the past danger of his friends. Strange fatality! This man, whose bold career and high genius the reader has yet to become familiar with, gifted by nature with rare beauty of person, captivating manners, and a heart of the most intense passion and delicate sensibility; this student of almost universal science; this accomplished man of the world, without a vestige of worldliness, had attained the age of five-and-twenty, and had yet to utter, yet to hear, the first protestation of love, in the only sense of the word worthy of its sacred ecstasy! In a great soul, not all the heroic expansion, not all the fiery activity of intellectual ambition, can fill up the terrible void left by the unsatisfied craving of the affections. The most brilliant courtesans are vainly prodigal of their smiles and caresses upon men like Viridor. No study is so absorbing, no wine so potent, no fame so enchanting, as to avert the dire reaction of the thirsting principle of love. Hence the terrible gloom, the lasting melancholy, of many great and noble minds. Difficult to please, they are often unsuccessful in pleasing. Perhaps the respect their lofty character inspires destroys more tender and familiar sentiments. Perhaps a certain profundity in their remarks frightens by its mystery, or wearies by its incomprehensibility, less gifted intelligences. Perhaps even the very strength and sincerity of their emotions cause them to appear easy conquests, and therefore to be underrated by women of ordinary understandings. Perhaps even their very excess of delicacy and chivalrous behaviour towards the sex operates to their disfavour. But this subject is too curious to be treated summarily. We return to Darian's narrative.

"Time passed on," continued the Magyar leader, "Some delay occurred in the preparations for the execution. A feeble hope began to dawn in my mind that the expected assistance might arrive in time for the rescue of the prisoner. Nearly three hours had elapsed since the departure of my troops. Night had fallen black and threatening. The sky was covered with dark heavy clouds—occasional flashes of lightning illumined the market-place, which we overlooked from the upper window of a house in which we had taken refuge. The owner of the house was a staunch patriot, but had so frankly welcomed the Austrian officers quartered under his roof, that they respected the sanctity of his wife and daughter's apartments, in which we were concealed. As there was no light in the room we occupied, we could stand without risk at the window, and watch the proceedings of the soldiers in the square below, as well as the shadows of the Austrian officers on the blinds of the Hotel-de-Ville, from the door of which building they were constantly issuing with fresh directions from the general. It is probable that considerable anxiety as to the arrival of their main body prevailed in the Austrian councils. There were not in the town above seven or eight thousand soldiers at the time. But a large reinforcement was expected every instant. I afterwards learned that H——u had arrived thus in advance of his army by a mere accident, having calculated on the previous capture of the town by a large body of Lombard and Bohemian troops under the Count Xavier von Strahlenberg, who, meanwhile, had been utterly routed by Dembinski, and put to flight in the utmost disorder and confusion.

"At length a funereal roll of the drum announced the immediate preparation for the commission of the hideous crime. A square of infantry, drawn up three deep, surrounded the post to which the victim was to be attached.

"Every other man in the first lines, facing the centre of the square, bore a flaming torch. The smoke of these flambeaux formed black, rolling, wave-like clouds, with lurid edges, above the heads of the assembled executioners and spectators, and imparted a mysterious and spectral character to the scene. At the windows of the houses, and at one end of the square below, were dimly visible the pale, horror-struck faces of old men, women, and children, intermixed with visages of stern and gloomy menace, that seemed like multiplied reflections of the same countenance, adding, as they did, to their national resemblance, one uniform expression of deadly and inextinguishable hatred.

" 'Can human or superhuman daring do anything to save Basiline of Arpath?' whispered the ex-editor in my ear, with unnatural calmness.

" 'Yes,' I replied, 'if you will yet obey me as your general, an attempt may be made—not altogether desperate.'

" 'General I will obey you to the letter. It is useless to economise our lives. Every instant we may be discovered. The first Austrian ruffian that takes it into his head to enter these apartments brings our death-warrant.'

" 'Hear, then, my orders. Within an hour our troops may arrive. We must create a diversion that will more than occupy that period. There is but one physical weapon at our disposition, and that is—Fire.'

" 'I understand you,' said the aide-de-camp, embracing me fervently. 'General, you are indeed a born leader of men! If we can but leave this house unnoticed, trust me within ten minutes the Hotel-de-Ville, and the house which faces it, shall be in flames. I take that upon myself. I can mingle with the crowd unnoticed, whilst your great height would render you suspected the moment you attempted to force your way through the people. I shall not want assistants.'

" 'I depend upon you. Now descend the stairs. If you are taken, and we in consequence discovered, I shall sell my life as dearly as I can. I will not trust to Austrian faith, and courts-martial of hireling cut-throats. If you escape for the moment, I follow in your track, and in case you are frustrated in the attempt to fire some building in the market-place, I station myself in the foremost rank of yonder ragged populace, and with one or other of these English rifle-barrelled pistols which I have under my blouse, I drive a bullet to the heart of Basiline Arpath before one blow of the Austrian lash can descend upon her form.'

" 'What else can I do? I shall be bayonetted instantly, unless my first pistol do its work so well as to leave the other for its master.'

" 'Right! right! right!' gasped the editor, and with another rapid embrace, he commenced on tip-toe his noiseless journey. For an instant he turned back, and laid his pistols upon a table.

" 'In my case, arms would only betray me, if examined,' he said, coolly; 'each man to his duty. Mine is to play the fire-king. Friends, au revoir!'

"I saw no one else leave the house. It was the Buda editor, who had picked up this disguise from an ante-room on his road. I did not know it, but there was a sentinel at the door. To this hat and cloak we all owed our preservation.

"Almost at the same moment a procession descended the steps of the Hotel-de-Ville. A figure in the midst, covered with a long mantle, and bare-headed, was evidently the illustrious prisoner.

"I now turned to Stanley, who had hitherto clung to my side, his eyes fixed upon my countenance with an air of stupefaction, indicative of either an incipient derangement of intellect, or of intoxication, produced by the wine and food taken after so long a fast. I conjured him to remain quietly where he was, as his ignorance of the language might prove fatal to us both, whilst his state of weakness and exhaustion would render him incapable of any necessary exertion. I explained to him our position and prospects, and perceiving that the victim of H——u's brutal cruelty was already within the fatal square of soldiery, I resolved to dare the descent of the staircase without further delay. Accordingly, I had commenced my retreat, with the same caution as the editor, when I found that Stanley, having concealed the pistols of the former under his tattered frock, was following me with anything but similar stealthiness. However, it was no time for remonstrances. Fortunately the Austrians quartered in the house were all occupied by the coming spectacle of torture. We reached the door in safety, and I found myself face to face with the sentinel. He demanded the password.

" 'Here,' said I, thrusting my purse into his hands, 'or here,' and I shewed the pistol under my blouse, at the same time walking rapidly on, in order to give the man no time for reflection.

"Stanley followed at my heels. The sentinel gave no alarm. He could not have imagined that anything beyond the escape of a couple of fugitive patriots was at stake. Whether merely mercenary or more generous feelings influenced his conduct is impossible to determine. We mixed with the crowd unnoticed, and a sense of freedom of action, however limited, raised my desperate hopes, and fortified me in my perilous resolution.

"Every instant was now of indescribable interest. The noble lady was stripped of her garments, which were of masculine fashion, to her waist. H—u himself stood in the interior of the square of soldiers, and superintended the proceedings. He was engaged in a vivid altercation with one of his officers. It will hardly be believed, but he was desirous of pushing diabolical outrage yet further by the removal—I cannot proceed. Enough, that by the testimony of one of his own soldiers, wounded in the subsequent affray, I learned that the danger of a mutiny amongst the surrounding guards alone prevented him from insisting on his command being fulfilled."

During this portion of Darian's recital Basiline had risen and quitted the apartment. Viridor listened with a brow pale as that of a corpse, on which the cold perspiration stood like frozen dew-drops; whilst the fire of his deep eyes reflected the fierce passion that burned in those of his companion, at the hideous reminiscences he evoked.

"And now," continued the latter, "ensued a scene of horror rarely dreamed of. I pass over my feelings on beholding for the first time, under such frightful conditions, the face and form to me without a peer, even in imagination. The glare of the torches plainly shewed me the unabashed glory of a beauty, rendered divine by its heroic resolution. There was a sort of triumph even in its mute agony. I never felt like a wild beast before. But then I must have torn H——u to pieces with my teeth and hands to have appeased the savage thirst for vengeance that shook my whole frame with its strength. I strove to control my agitation, in fear lest my aim should falter, and my plan for saving Basiline prove abortive. I say for saving, because, had she not died under the lash, I think it highly improbable that her life would have been spared by the monsters who then executed the designs of the Austrian cabinet in Hungary. But I must keep to mere facts and bare newspaper description, or I shall never end my history.

"Three soldiers were ordered to advance from the ranks. H—u himself, handed a huge whip of bull's-hide to the foremost, a mere lad, and directed him to lay down his musket and commence the torture.

"The soldier obeyed—he looked at the victim—her eyes encountered his—he staggered backwards, and fainted at the very feet of his general.

"The insensible body of the first soldier was removed. The second did not hesitate. He said some words in a bold tone to H——u. The latter replied by a rapid gesture of command. The soldier did not lay down his musket—he placed the barrel against his forehead and blew out his brains. A general murmur arose, but H——u was apparently unmoved. The third soldier came forward. He prepared himself to execute the command of his leader. He raised the whip—I raised my pistol. He struck the first blow. I pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire, and the whip struck only the post above the head of the prisoner. I put on a fresh cap, but before I could do so, the third soldier had adopted a new line of policy—he affected drunkenness—he reeled and balanced himself, and appeared to be calculating his aim with imbecile accuracy. The trick was too gross. H——u struck him sharply with the flat of his sabre. He still persevered in his assumed part. The exasperated ruffian then wounded him severely with the point of his weapon. At this atrocious action, the feelings of the soldiers could be no longer restrained; many of them gave vent to such exclamations as—

" 'We are soldiers, not executioners! We are ready to fight men, not to flog women!'

"H——u regarded the mutineers in dismay. But their officers contrived to restore discipline by actively arresting several of the delinquents.

"In the midst of the confusion a sudden cry was raised. It was soon re-echoed from mouth to mouth, amid a scene of general confusion and consternation. 'Fire! Fire! The Hotel-de-Ville is on fire.'

"My aide-de-camp had been successful. He had seized the moment of the greatest interest in the execution to effect his object with a band of desperate patriots, about twenty in number. They had suddenly entered the rear of the building, and thrown some combustibles into a room filled with papers. The whole building was pannelled with wood, so that to extinguish the flames was almost hopeless. Nearly all the incendiaries were bayonetted on the spot. The aide-de-camp only escaped by falling flat on the ground, and assuming the part of a dead man, until the increasing flames drove the Austrians from that part of the building.

"In the midst of the tumult a rocket was seen to ascend in the distance. I now knew that succour was at hand, I shouted loudly an Hungarian 'Vivat!' It was caught up by the populace. In another minute I was in the centre of a mêlée of Austrian soldiers, and Magyar workmen and citizens, cutting with my knife the ropes by which Basiline was bound.

"H——u and the greater part of the soldiers had retreated to the other end of the market-place. Four pieces of artillery were only awaiting the separation of the soldiery from the townspeople to be turned against the latter with fatal certainty.

"Bearing Basiline in my arms, I endeavoured to gain a side street in possession of the crowd. Meanwhile, retained by the pressure of surrounding bodies, I became the helpless witness of a most unexpected catastrophe.

"Stanley, who, during the preparations for the execution of H—u's inhuman command, had exhibited almost uncontrollable excitement, now quitted my side, and without heeding my repeated calls to turn back, plunged madly forward in the direction of the spot where the Austrian general's plume was visible, surrounded by his panic-struck officers. These, by their extreme eagerness to escape down the street leading to the northern gate of the town, shewed that a more pressing danger than the attack of an incendiary mob threatened their safety. Meanwhile, a gradual separation was taking place in the market-place between the Austrians and the townspeople, so that Stanley found himself crossing a comparatively free space, encumbered only with dead or dying men, who had been trampled down in the confusion. The Hotel-de-Ville, now completely in flames, lit up the square far more brilliantly than the extinguished torches.

"Stanley continued to plunge forward—all eyes were on him. Words occupy time, yet all I am describing happened in an instant. He arrived within two yards of the disordered lines of the Austrians. He shouted in English the words, 'Damn you for a cowardly villain!' and fired both his pistols at H——u, one after the other, killing an old officer at his side, and carrying away the very plume of the general himself. But H——u was yet unhurt, and Stanley, pierced by five bayonets, fell dead in an instant before the first line of the Austrians, without uttering a groan. As he fell, his eyes turned towards the place where I stood with an ecstatic glare of triumph. I left Basiline, whom I had covered with my blouse, and instinctively dashed forward to Stanley's rescue. In so doing, I stumbled, and fell over something on the ground. It was the heavy whip, with loaded handle, intended for the execution. I picked it up, as being no contemptible weapon, and rose in an instant—just in time to catch the last glance of my devoted friend. He was dead—dead in the odour of sanctity—of exalted heroism. He had lived a menial, he perished a martyr!

"Let men who are apt to treat those of their brethren whom circumstances of education and means compel to minister to the wants and pleasures of more fortunate mortals, reflect that there may be even in their own circle hearts like Stanley's, which demand but the opportunity of action, courage, and self-sacrifice, to acquire the admiration of mankind. All blood is red—every soul is divine. Less is the gulf between the rudest labourer and the most polished gentleman, than between the greatest noble and the least of true poets or philosophers. In the end the strongest must triumph. Aristocracy has crushed the people, and Genius is crushing Aristocracy. Will they never hear us, Viridor, these children of the night, these darkened hosts of spirits? Have poets divined, thinkers reasoned, prophets prophesied, so long, and must, after all, the sword be our Cæsar of appeal? Must we take the scourge of wrath to drive these money-changers and sellers of doves, these place-hunters, match-makers, and tax-grinders, from the great temple of the earth, which they desecrate with their cruelties and defile with their selfish vices?"

"Darian, Darian! my dear friend—the only friend whose thoughts ever echoed my own!" exclaimed Viridor, leaning forward with clasped hands, and gazing upon the republican leader, his face radiant with inspiration. "Did not our great Master, the Master we honour by our deeds, whilst ignorance worships his name in worthless formulas, did he not say, 'I came to bring not peace but a sword?' Have nearly two thousand years elapsed, and are we, His heirs in spirit, compelled still to repeat the gloomy creed of discord? Is there no new, no unheard-of chord to strike, which may vibrate in the hearts of nations? True, indeed, is the type of man's exclusion from happiness! The flaming sword yet guards the Eden of love! Proceed, my dear Darian, with your narrative, and pardon my wandering interruption."

"Pardon the eruption of a volcano!" said Darian, with a serene smile. "I have nearly concluded my story. We shall have time for other matters afterwards. Basiline will return, and there is the whole night before us!"

"The cause of the Austrian panic became now evident in the shape of several Hungarian dragoons, who, amid the shouts of the people, entered the square from the street opposed to that by which our enemies were retreating. So sudden was their arrival, that they were present at the first volley of musketry fired by the Austrians, who covered the retreat of their comrades, upon the insurgent populace.

"A struggle and carnage ensued, which baffle all description for horror and confusion. The spread of the fire to the houses behind the Hotel-de-Ville, the ringing of bells, the shrieking of women, the reports, and echoed reports of thousands of muskets, carbines, and pistols, the clash of arms and tramp of horses, all conspired to fill my brain with a sort of vertigo, increased by neglect of food and the extreme excitement of the previous events. I conveyed Basiline, who was insensible, and seized by convulsive shiverings, to the house I had formerly occupied in the market-place, and which was, from the direction of the wind, secure at least from the fire. Then having seized the horse of a fallen dragoon, I mounted and rode in pursuit of the flying Austrians, with the Magyar horsemen, who shouted my name with frenzied delight, as soon as I had communicated it to those nearest to me. When we issued from the gate of the town, a singular spectacle presented itself. The clouds had cleared off without a storm, and the moon, nearly at its full, rendered every object in the plain distinctly visible.

"The Austrians were flying before us without even the pretence of order. Some had left the road and were making for the cover of a neighbouring forest already referred to. Others were trying to cross the swollen river on the right; and immediately in front of us, was a small party of horse, making the most violent efforts to penetrate a mass of infantry before them, so dense and crowded as actually to prevent the cavalry from outstripping them.

"Amongst these I thought I recognised the General H——u. The bare thought inspired me with ferocious exultation. I spurred forward like a madman, followed by some twenty Magyars who were considerably in advance of the rest. We penetrated to the very centre of the Austrian horse, and with a savage delight I could almost feel ashamed of, I seized the terrified H——u by the arm, and inflicted at least a dozen blows with the whip upon his back that literally tore his uniform to ribbons, and drew blood at every stroke. I held him in such a manner that he could make no use of his sabre, even had his terror permitted the attempt, whilst his companions were too eager to continue their flight to turn to his rescue. His yells resembled those of an infuriate bull, and he would have remained my prisoner had not a shot from one of our own party killed my horse under me, and compelled me to relax the gripe upon his arm, which, if I mistake not, will, like the blows of my whip, leave a mark on his body not to be effaced with life. The strength and swiftness of his horse saved him. He escaped with the remnant of his vanguard, as his after-cruelties and butcheries testify. But if you go to Vienna, before the coming revolution, you will know the reason why Field-Marshal the Baron von H——u dispenses with a valet-de-chambre.

"I need not add anything further at present to explain to you how Arthur Darian and Basiline Arpath became inseparably united."

IT was long past midnight, as Viridor left Darian and Basiline, in that state of mental exaltation when the brain is, as it were, flooded with electricity, a sort of waking clairvoyance seems to transcend all material obstacles to the spiritual vision, and the soul, half disembodied by its intense sympathy with external life, becomes conscious of a power almost miraculous in its influence.

Some day, when cloudy verbalism has ceased to be mistaken for philosophy, when the dim-souled sneerer at transcendental illumination has been taught that all is not mysticism which is not commonplace and tangible (plump, haudgreiflich, as my ex-friend Teufelsdroeck Latterday would express it)—some day, when the grand decree "Let there be light," has been extended to the moral as well as the physical world, this exaltation of spiritual potence, this faith "that moves mountains," will be recognised as the supreme moment of intellect, and once more the true Poiêtes, or Creator, the real Vates, or Prophet, will be reverenced by a race who indeed realise the saying of the naturalist that "two-handed walks erect, and regards the heavens."

Viridor walked, or rather, as it were, floated along; for in his intellectual rapture, he was scarcely conscious of any mechanical function. He did not even hear the objurgations of a cabman, whom his impetus nearly sent spinning down an area; and he shook off the arm of a fair fallen angel, who strove to arrest his progress, without even being aware of the attempt.

He thought of Darian and Basiline—he compared the strange adventures related by the former, with his own perilous exertions during the reign of the Provisional Government at Paris, where, though incapable of ostensible occupation from his foreign birth, he had, as the confidant and agent of his idol Lamartine, played so important and mysterious a part in those days of marvellous excitement and activity. Again he dwelt upon the noble character of the love of Darian and his beautiful Magyar—a love combined with so heroic a devotion to the cause of European liberty. He marvelled at the grandeur of their resolution in deferring all consummation of their passion by marriage, until the achievement of some distinguished triumph for the cause to which they were devoted. He contrasted their delicious anticipations and prospective felicity, with his own mournful isolation. He asked himself wildly, to what signal disadvantage of mind or person he was indebted for such an eternal winter of the passions? He recalled his brief dreams of affection, his bitter disappointments, his dreary satiations, disillusions, and disgusts. Then he rapidly pictured an ideal adventure, a romance of rapid encounter, of mutual recognition, of love at first sight, of sympathy, of delight. And then he fiercely tore away his thoughts from such enervating indulgence, and revolved in poetic phrenzy magnificent sentences, oracles of lucidity, irresistible thunderbolts of truth, and verses of transcendant harmony, which swept him along the pavement as a war-charger its rider, until he also, like his friend in the forenoon, was checked by a crowd, and abruptly roused from his enthusiast reveries to a sense of the sub-realities of existence.

He found himself in Whitehall, before an illumined mansion. It was that containing the offices of the Soul Agents. Ever since the morning, the dark speculator and his coadjutor had found it absolutely necessary, from the rush of visitors eagerly enquiring into, and offering patronage to the Company, to engage the whole of the house for their business, in place of the modest suite of chambers on the ground floor, which they had originally rented. They bought out the other tenants regardless of expense, and so energetic was their furnishing upholsterer (whose soul, by the way, was, already signed, sealed, and delivered, in the strong-box of Ignatius) that the whole mansion was in a few hours fitted up as consultation and waiting-rooms, for the accommodation and privacy of the soul-dealing public. The third floor alone was devoted to some dozen soul-appraisers and clerks. These drew up their registers, estimates, and reports, from the notes and informations constantly sent or brought in by a staff of intelligent out-door soul-commissioners and reporters, whose omnipresence in society, and relations, direct or indirect, with every proprietor of a soul worth sixpence in Europe, became subsequently a source of no small wonder and admiration.

But in the private audience-chamber of the original promoter, the dark Ignatius, was the vital mainspring of the establishment. From his clear head and bold invention issued every idea carried out as fact by the association.

As for his fat friend, Robert Russel Brown, he partook equally of the heavy dullness of Sir Robert the Devil and the flippant superficiality of Lord John Twaddle; he was as little capable of understanding finance* as the former, or politics as the latter. But he had a turn for share-jobbery. He was an embryo George Mudson of the soul-market. They called him Lucifer Brown afterwards, just as Mudson was nicknamed the Iron Czar. He became a truly accomplished swindler, and was much courted by the nobility. The subtle Grey, (a very distant relation of the Grey-tribe, who swarm Downing-street, &c.—as may be surmised from his talent) the profound Ignatius, was comparatively little spoken of at any time. Brown had the glory, and got the testimonial. Brown also came in for the newspaper battery, and the sarcasms of the comic writers; he grew fatter than a bishop, he grew richer than Aladdin, he bought souls by hundreds, by a scratch of his pen, or a handful of scrip, but his own soul was no more his own than Lord Rattlesnake's. The dark comrade of his way governed him by a look. Brown had found all the original money capital, it is true, but Ignatius had found all the capital in ideas. And everything starts from an idea—a company, a party, a religion, a book, an empire, even a world, must have been conceived before it could have been created. Ideas govern matter; nay, they form it, they consolidate it, they realise it. This is one best reason why Materialism is preposterous as a system. The belief in it is itself a chimera. No man can really believe in the impossible, and the material reasoner, by that very super-material act of reason, overthrows the very thesis he would establish.

[*When I say that Sir R. cannot understand finance, I mean that he is incapable of conceiving the higher and more philosophical development of that important science. That he understood how to juggle the public, and fill his own pockets by a law which is virtually a legalised robbery, I do not for an instant dispute.]

Viridor gazed up at the new Temple of Corruption. He read the inscription on the illuminated blinds. The broad doorway was thronged with people going in or out of the house. It was all brilliance, bustle, and life. Suddenly there was a great darkness. The gas was turned off, the windows ceased to be illumined, the crowd dispersed, the gate was closed, and the pale moonbeams fell upon the silent building. Viridor still lingered against a small stone pillar on the edge of the pavement.

"Even so," he muttered, as the change came over the Soul Agent's offices, "even so will your system and your tribe vanish from the earth."

"You remember the shibboleth of Contarini Hening," said a voice at his elbow—"Time."

"You quote but a poor authority. I will return the compliment by quoting Bernard Viridor—Eternity."

The Soul Agent laughed. "It is too late now," he said, "to apologise for the liberty of addressing you."

"In that ease, I will remark, that had you not mentioned a man whose soul is at a premium in the market, I should have said that your quotation was rather a vague and unsatisfactory reply to my own!"

"Perhaps it has not yet struck you that man, as a creature of time, would be a monster, and that an eternity is requisite to render his existence a consistent theory."

"Very simple. You hint that yonder speculation may last long enough to satisfy its promoters. I imply that it will be destroyed soon enough to please me whenever it happens. The swiftness of thought is inappreciable, but time itself is but the succession of thoughts. Somebody said—'Work, man—hast thou not all eternity to rest in?' I say, 'Rest, if it please you, for you have all eternity to work in.' "

"An easy creed," said the Soul Agent, pleasantly, "yet the copy-books tell us that Procrastination is the thief of Time."

"He is a nice sort of mystic moralist," thought the Soul Agent, who recognised Viridor from a lithograph portrait he had procured since Darian's visit.

"An interesting acquaintance, were it only as a study," thought Viridor, who recognised the Soul Agent by Darian's description.

"I should like to discuss these matters more at leisure with you," said Ignatius, in his most agreeable manner.

"Nothing easier—visit me at my chambers next Sunday, if it will suit your engagements, and we will smoke over the subject."

The somewhat mystified Soul Agent, whose brain was indeed a little obscured by the multiplicity of business he had transacted during the day, exchanged cards with the poet, and they separated with mutual salutations.

As they uncovered their heads in the moonlight, a fanciful spectator might have likened them to one of the fallen spirits of the abyss, exchanging a few friendly words with some old comrade of his former home. So they parted: the Soul Agent to join a mistress, who loved him in spite of himself; Viridor, to seek his lonely chambers in the Temple, where his books and pen were his only companions. The former felicitated himself upon a chance which might facilitate an affair too important to be neglected—the latter revolved a scheme of no ordinary magnitude and originality.

On reaching his dwelling, on the second floor, No. 23, Grace Court, Temple, Viridor's ideas were distracted by a very peculiar fancy.

There was but one key to his chambers, and that was in his possession. From the first day of his occupation he had been under the necessity of giving this key daily to his laundress, for the purpose of arranging the apartments, making the bed, and other necessary proceedings.

Now, since that afternoon, no person could have entered the rooms, and, nevertheless, Viridor took it into his head, that the position of the arm-chair, in which he usually wrote, was changed, and also that his papers were not in precisely the same condition in which he had left them. As, however, the character of the old woman who attended to the matters above-mentioned was above suspicion, he gradually threw off this fancy, engendered, possibly, by over-excitement of the nerves, and after writing for some hours, betook himself to rest with the dawn, to dream for a few hours of political revolutions, Soul Agents, and beautiful Magyars, which latter spectres haunted his imagination with a dangerous and annoying pertinacity.

THE Soul Agency was established. In the columns of the Timeserver, the Morning Ghost, the Daily Nous, the Cobbler, the Humbug, the Scrambler, the Globule, the Evening Gun, and other daily journals, of all shades of politics, appeared the startling advertisements of the new-born Company.

The world at large, and even the world not at large, in Whitecross Street and the Bench, applauded the invention to the skies. The former saw a new field for speculation, and the latter imagined themselves suddenly possessed of property, the existence of which they had hitherto scarcely suspected.

Money-dealers rubbed their hands at the notion of a new relish for their dinners. They had fed on human flesh so long that they rather took to the prospect of a change of diet. They saw the road clear for new juggles and new victims, and they sang Jubilate, and rattled the devil's counters in their breeches' pockets.

Ministers, or to speak more correctly, the clique of insignificants who let things take their chance, and confine their notions of government to pocketing salaries, providing for relatives, selling patronage, and keeping down talent—ministers highly approved of the new speculation. They foresaw the possibility of securing a majority so beautifully compact and conveniently abject as to save them an immense deal of anxiety in future divisions. If they could once bring their political "niggers" to the perfection of training enjoyed of old by Sir Robert the Devil's Sugar-Question rescinders, who could say how long they might suck the blood of sleepy old John Bull? They might stick in office till literature had educated the people! They might dine in Downing Street till virtue had as many friends as religion! Till the arrival of the Millenium! Or in case that event turned out a mistake, until Doomsday itself! Oh! there was a great deal to be done by ministers on the new system. Lord John Twaddle was quite in high spirits. Sir George Grub and Sir Charles Woodenhead were more confident in their mediocre feebleness than ever.

As for the great Earl Grub, whose plans for getting rid of our colonies by disgusting them with the mother country, and goading them to justifiable rebellion, are so little appreciated by less eccentric politicians, he thought immediately of a few more constitutions for Australia, and a few more governorships for his cousins.

But Lord Pumicestone, the only man possessing an idea in the Cabinet, immediately resolved to bombard somebody's capital, and formed a vague design, on the spur of the moment, of invading Italy and Spain, with a remote view to conquering the world, and governing it afterwards upon rigidly Pumicestonian principles.

Such were the vague aspirations awakened in official breasts by the opportunities which the Soul Agent's speculation abundantly offered.

Precisely similar were the thoughts of those politicians in opposition who had any thoughts at all.

In short, both parties appreciated the advantages of a definite system of warfare, and prepared to measure their purses and talent for driving bargains with the utmost alacrity.

Byron was quite right in calling England a nation of shopkeepers. Life in England is essentially a system of traffic. The power of capital is absolute in the hands of those who know how to use it.

Curiously enough, there is scarcely a man in the country who has the slightest notion of what can be done with capital. Nor did I ever yet meet, personally or in print, with a man who even clearly understood the nature of capital itself. As I am not myself a capitalist, and for a secret and peculiar reason do not intend to become one, I can throw out a few hints upon this subject, more dispassionately, perhaps, than persons whose own passion for acquisition blinds them to the rational explanation of this exciting mystery.

Now, so far from this thesis being a mere poetical figure, as some may think, or a piece of cant morality, as others may imagine—it is a downright, plain, material truth.

This appears strange and paradoxical. But if any one suspect that I say it for the sake of saying anything smart and startling, he is grossly mistaken. I once did write a satirical novel* for pure fun. I did not observe that many people found it out, but I myself was perfectly aware that it was a tissue of extravagant nonsense from one end to the other. I have often wished to make this confession, and I do so now, because I wish to establish very different relations with my readers. This book is a true expression of my thoughts and feelings. It is practically and typically founded on the observation and consideration of nature and man, synthetically and analytically regarded. There are certain ideas—advanced spiritual banners. Their shadow is upon us. We so-called writers of fiction, in seemingly throwing the mantle of fancy round the forms of reality, in fact but strip the actor and the stage of life of their paint, trappings, and artificial illusions. We exhibit mind under matter. We are showmen at a great fair—I will not say a "Vanity Fair," lest I should infringe the domain of a rival school. We say, "Walk up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the live lion stuffed with straw—walk up, and see the big names stuffed with impotence!" Such is our vocation, as such is my egotism. I would not put it in a regular preface, for fear everybody should skip it. To return to our text.

[*"Anti-Coningsby" was written at the age of nineteen years, in six weeks, currente calamo. Since then, six years of earnest study and reflection, together with the perusal of some six hundred volumes in various languages, on every class of subject, have left the writer an altered, if not a better man.]

"Gold is but a chimera." By gold of course I mean property—capital—in a word, wealth.

Now I think it will be admitted that if a man do not know what he possesses, and can moreover have no real certainty that he possesses anything at all, the thing which he undoubtedly does possess can only be regarded as a chimera—in fact, an idea, and an idea by no means of the clearest.

Before illustrating this position by example, let me, however, admit, once and for all, that the chimeras are really worth having. There is a satisfaction in chimeras which is indisputable.

Let us, then, suppose that a man possesses a house which produces the sum of £l00 a year. Such, at least, is the description which the chimera-cherisher would give of his property.

But suppose that within three months that house is to be burned to the ground, and the tenant with it; what does our friend virtually possess? A house that will bring in £100 a year? No—a piece of land, with a ruin upon it, which nobody cares to buy, perhaps, or build on. In a word, nothing in the form of a house, and a rental which is a chimera. Case the first.

Suppose the house insured. This chimera has another element. Either it is a building and a rent, or a sum of ready cash. But if the insurance office fail, or resist payment successfully? Still a chimera. Case the second.

Suppose the house of eternal durability. What can secure tenants, or guard against diminution of rent and value? It is still a chimera. Case the third.

His title may be bad, and he may not know it. An obstinate chimera. Case the fourth.

It is evident that the proprietor of the house neither knows what he possesses, nor whether he possesses anything. At best he has but an utterly uncertain interest in the property, for he may die to-morrow.

And this rule applies to all property, to all capital, to all earthly possessions.

Possession is said to be nine-tenths of the law. Yet, the man is himself possessed who talks of possession as a reality. We possess, in truth, but one thing—a soul and its activity.

Had not M. Proudhon denounced property as an impossibility, in addition to its being a theft, I should have set him down as a blockhead, with all his subtlety of logic. As it is, I by no means rate him as the terrific monster he is pictured. He is like a child in a dark room, groping for the door. Some day he may find the handle, open it, and see the light of day. Till then, I am sorry a thinker of his ingenuity should occupy such disagreeable quarters. There are more dangerous chimeras than his extremely popular just now in the soul-market.

Capital, then, is a chimera—yes, but a very different sort of chimera to different minds.

The thousand pounds which gives the poor old lady thirty pounds a year from the funds is a very different capital from the thousand which produces its annual five hundred to the intelligent tradesman, besides giving employment and subsistence to some twenty or thirty workmen, shopboys, &c.

The Marquis of ——'s half million of rental, which passes not through his hands but through his imagination, as waste water passes through a sewer, is very different from the same sum passing through the factory of the great cotton-lord who supplies half Europe with calico they could not fabricate in small quantities with ten times the outlay in time, labour, and money. And again, how different would be the same capital passing through the multiplying channels which a soul of grand and enlightened enterprise might contrive. That capital might represent the regeneration of a country, the revolution of an empire. In a word, capital is—what the intellect makes it. Stamped with a thought, the piece of representative gold or paper becomes doubled, centupled, infinitely multiplied, or—annihilated, and utterly neutralised.

I answer, A chimera, a bit of metal dropped down a drain, or a germ of infinite human activity, pain, and pleasure—the trinket of a fool, or the wand of a magician.

What, then, is currency—what is credit—what is commerce? It needs something more than a Sir Robert, aye, or a blundering Macgrubbins to boot, to answer these questions.

To be a statesman it is necessary to learn something beyond statistics (particularly Macgrubbin's statistics*), There is a philosophy in politics, which these devil-may-care, happy-go-lucky legislators, know as little of as the sable citizens who, in the words of the humorist,

[*For some instances of Macgrubbin's accuracy, see "Analogies and Contrasts," a most amusing and instructive work, by the author of "Revelations of Russia," &c. For additional instances of his carelessness and stupidity, apply to the present writer, or to Macgrubbin's own Dictionary of Trade.]

And this sort of people are talked of as practical, useful men, lead parties, and govern nations! O my dear brother literati! do you not think we might do something more than write articles about our inferiors? Do you not think that it is high time we should cease playing the prompters' part to these miserable actors—cease teaching these overgrown babes of intelligence to play at government, and take a little of the governing of the world into our own hands, if not as our born right, like the aristocracy of blood (of blood in more senses than one), at least as the defenders of the people, which we, and we only, represent, in this age of transitions?

When the first Soul Agency was established in London, it was high time something should be done to avert social paralysis. A dismal torpor, not the dreamy laziness of the luxurious lotus-eater, but the torpor of a stagnant pool of writhing reptiles, devouring and leaping over one another, was fast threatening the world with the realisation of an editor's dream, revealed to the present writer some months ago in New Bubbleton Street. This dream was no other than the serene theory of a dead level in intellect, free from those thickets of philosophy and mountains of genius which obstruct the path of the unostentatious pilgrim of life. This dead-level Utopia of "Buntley's" editor was to be brought about by universal education, which, apparently, was to stop short at a certain point, and in no case to be pursued beyond it. Everybody was to be "up to the mark" (of "Buntley's" editor), and nobody above it. There was to be a world of able, but no great men; lots of talent, but no genius. Such was the tendency of progress ("Buntley's" editor's) prophecied to me by a very respectable and gentlemanly man in a white neckcloth. A pleasant theory for a man whose soul was an irregular polygon, full of ups and downs, ins and outs, recesses and projections!

I presume that my article must have been below the ideal dead level of New Bubbleton Street, for it came back one day, looking very dull and heavy, owing, doubtless, to the society of other dead-level MSS. at the New Bubbleton autocrat's. Now, to show how minds differ in this world, I have not been able for years to read—even in the last stage of literary poverty, at a club, divan, drawing-room, or coffee-house, where everything else was engaged—a single article of the dead-level magazine, without breaking down in the second page of it. And yet this dead-level theory has no lack of partisans. I need not cite examples, and make enemies of half the critics in Europe. So I shall merely observe that I think it a very flat system.

Nevertheless, at bottom it was the old Whiggo-Conservative notion of Reform; for, after all, every man is a reformer as soon as he fancies he can gain anything by reforming.

And the proof that conservatism is as great a chimera as capital, is, that nobody is ever contented with the present state of affairs. Every class looks to some remote Atlantis for their vision of happiness. The only difference between the tory and the radical (I sink the hybrid whigs—as mere chimeras themselves) is, that the former looks back to the past, whilst the latter looks forward to the future for the realisation of his ideal. And the reason the tory is a blockhead, and the radical a rational being is, that while the past is irrecoverably lost to us, and not to be revisited by any human contrivance for locomotion, physical or spiritual, the future is the constantly attainable land of promise into which we are ever penetrating yet more deeply, and which offers inexhaustible domains for conquest, and inexhaustible novelty for our entertainment.

The past eternity is a road that has brought us to an unsatisfactory present. The future is a railway that bears us to unlimited anticipation. And to prove that the future is worth more than the past, if anybody were insane enough to doubt it, let us take one simple commercial illustration. We can borrow money to an almost boundless extent by the mortgage of the future, but no mortal Rothschild would lend one sixpence upon the security of the past.

The new plan for speculation in Souls, that is, for dealing in realities instead of chimeras, came just at the proper crisis. All new inventions do. The world of men, and even of spirits (vide Kepler), is, without knowing it, a great self-governing Republic. The forms of their Parliament are somewhat grander than the standing orders of the House of Commons, and their speeches and acts somewhat vaster in compass. But the analogy is perfect. A new religious, moral, metaphysical, or political system, a grand discovery, such as printing, gunpowder, steam, telegraphs, and magnetism, a revolution as in France, an emigration as to California, a grand school of poetry or art, all such gigantic, change-producing facts, are the propositions of the M.P.'s of intellect, adopted and carried by the universal suffrage of opinion and feeling.

It was proposed to the age to bring things to a crisis by straightforward Soul-dealing—and the age adopted the idea.

The whole public rushed into the speculation. The less they understood the nature of the commerce, the greater was the excitement in its pursuit, and the deliciousness of the chimera. Money was to be made out of nothings. They called human souls NOTHINGS!—these brain-darkened bipeds of practical experience! It took them a long time to find out their blunder. Meanwhile, what victims! what fortunes gained and lost! what hearts broken! what thrones of love, and hope, and happiness, abdicated and overthrown!

The new trade had one good effect, at any rate. Capitalists began to study the nature of a Soul, and to form more correct estimates of public and private characters and abilities, than they had hitherto dreamed of. It was astonishing how stupid people began to find their level, and comparatively honest men to rise in estimation. Vanity and self-conceit were awfully tried by the soul-speculating régime.

Some very audacious spirits, however, actually raised their market-prices by downright impudence and brag, not to mention advertisements, which proved a great card in these, as in all other transactions.

There was a comic writer, who had established and ruined seventeen satirical periodicals, besides two tailors, one boot-maker, and a friend (who was obliged to emigrate to the City and turn light porter, after living so luxuriously fast, that not even the weakness of trustful humanity could, in any measure, keep pace with his downward progress). This comic writer, who could make jokes as readily as a child makes faces, published an advertisement in the Timeserver, the Morning Ghost, and the Tumbler, not without a certain "rude sagacity" in its colouring, which is worthy of insertion in Mr. D'Israeli junior's "Curiosities of Literature."

"TO THE SPECULATIVE.—Will be sold, a tremendous bargain, a SOUL of Five-hundred Russell power, warranted not to turn rusty, even if used for very dirty work. Will cut up any amount of books or men per diem, so long as the congenial spirits be supplied for the body, not forgetting the domestic smoking apparatus. Taken altogether (and whoever takes it will find it a taking affair), the Soul in question will be found to answer, combining, as it does, the cunning of the boa constrictor, with the innocence of a pigeon (at a billiard table). The advertiser wishes it to be distinctly understood, that there is nothing methodistical about him, and that salary is not so much his object as real stunning employment. Address, pre-paid, to the Crocodile Coffee House, Cuba Street."

The papers teemed with advertisements of similar offers, each possessing its peculiar spiritual advantages. Meanwhile the Timeserver proclaimed, in its most inflated bombastic style, that Soul-dealing was a great fact. The Morning Ghost, and the Humbug, denounced the importation of foreign ideas as an unjustifiable attack upon British intellect, and claimed protection for the Soul merchants of this country against foreign competition. All agreed in giving share-lists of the various Companies, which had now arisen on the model of the Dark Speculator's establishment, and the money articles in all the papers teemed with hints as to the market value of particular Souls. "Ben Sidonia was done for the account at ninety thousand, and a seat in the Privy Council—Jawes was steady—There was a move in favour of Lord Mammysick—O'Slasher was at a discount—A high figure was offered and taken for Musty—Shuffleton was offered on any terms, and refused—A half share in the Earl of Puddleduck was rising as the market closed, but bidders were shy," &c.

Every day increased the rage for this sort of speculation. Even the ladies, who influence human affairs to an extent little appreciated by superficial thinkers, were seized with a passion for slave-holding. The prices they gave were often extraordinary, but, from their natural love of intrigue and mystery, were rather conjectured than known in the Soul-market; just as certain events in romances are, to use a standard Colburno-Bentleian phrase, "more easily imagined than described."

Many of them were less admired even for their personal charms than for their wonderful financial dexterity. Capital in their hands seemed to expand like air. Everything they touched rose to a fabulous extent in the market.

It began even to be whispered, by bankers and students of currency, that smiles and kisses seriously affected the circulation.

Be this as it may, the Royal and Stock Exchanges, Capel Court, and all the other resorts of the Soul-dealers, no longer sufficed for a raging mania of speculation, which acted upon all classes like the animalcule clouds of cholera, which of late settled with such deadly weight upon the metropolis.

A general report spread through the town, and a great deal further, thanks to the all-pervading press, that the new Soul Exchange would be opened by the Prince of Darkness in person.

The clergy, who had supported the new speculation from the facility which it offered for buying savage converts (which the Soul Agents supplied, wholesale or retail, from India to Otaheite, on the most moderate terms), though bitten by the mania as badly as any other class of the community, were rather shocked, to do them justice, at this marvellous announcement.

However, a Puseyite bishop, who was of a conciliating turn—when it suited his interest, clearly demonstrated that the great precept of forgiveness to our enemies could not be more nobly carried out than on the occasion offered. It was therefore resolved to treat the distinguished personage in question with all the honour and respect due to his rank and sublunary importance.

It turned out, eventually, that the Prince was not in town, and his place was supplied by a committee of noblemen, amongst whom I observed the countenances of the Dukes of N——e, S——d, &c, &c, whilst the procession consisted of one half the people in London, and the lookers-on of the remaining moiety.

In the evening there was a grand illumination, and a dinner in Hyde Park, at which some ten thousand people sat down, for in England nothing can be done, even in connection with the Soul, without the unavoidable ceremony of a public dinner.

BOOK II.

————

THE GRAND EXHIBITION

OF THE

SOULS OF ALL NATIONS.

————

BOOK II.

————

CHAPTER I.

PARTIES.

BEFORE proceeding to record the extraordinary events to which Free-Trade in Souls gave rise in this famous City of Jugglers, it is necessary to glance briefly at the general state of mundane politics in those days.

Political creeds are simply the outward and practical development of inward moral principles. I have before explained, and so has Balzac of France (a spirit of singular acuteness), that for the philosopher, that is, the observer and reflector, every part of nature is a type, or rather a sort of anagram, of all existence. This analogy arises from a metaphysical cause which I do not remember to have found mentioned in any book. Every fact, every idea, and every relation of facts and ideas, has, like every point of the earth's surface, an antipode or negative. Between the two extremes of un-likeness extend infinite gradations of likeness. Hence the universal and inevitable analogies which we discover at every step in the pilgrimage of science, since without absolute negative there must be resemblance in a precise ratio to the degree of negation contained by the object of analogism.

Let those who read the above paragraph, and consider the necessary connection of all things past, present, and to come, reflect a little upon its import before they consign to contempt even such sciences as astrology, chiromancy, phrenology. Nature writes her revelations in a thousand forms. Yet under all forms there is but one Truth, which fills eternal space and time with the vastness of its elaboration.

The political institutions and opinions of a nation are plain evidences of the standard of morality it has attained. In reality, therefore, the great parties in a state are the professors of various moral systems. Leaving certain critics and supposed wits who occupy much print and paper in these days to ask amazedly, "What the—— does the author mean by such sentences as the above?" and then proceed to shew that as they do not understand his meaning, he must necessarily be a blockhead, I shall at once give as plain an account as possible of the chief parties, varying of course in relative proportion, but little in character in different countries, which at that time existed upon the face of our remarkably imperfect planet.

All mankind, then, were, always have been, and still are, divided into three great classes:—

I. The Idol-worshippers, or Aristocrats.
II. The Gold-worshippers, or Plutocrats.
III. The Fire-worshippers, or Democrats.

In accordance with the saying that the first shall be last and the last shall be first, I shall commence my description of these classes by the most useful, the most enlightened, and the most misrepresented of them all.

The Fire-worshippers, or Democrats, derive the main articles of their faith, political, moral, and religious, from the great Persian prophet Zoroaster, whose pure and lofty system may be conceived from the following brief quotation:—

"Teach the nations," said Ormuzd, the supreme principle of Good, "that my light is hidden under all that shines. Whenever you turn your face towards the light and follow my command, Ariman (the spirit of evil) will be seen to fly. In this world there is nothing superior to light."

Such are the words of the twenty-second chapter of the Zerdusht-nameh, and such is the sublime belief of the worshippers of fire, that is, of light, truth, genius, and virtue. All existence is a perpetual progress, an endless conquest of Evil by Good, of darkness by light of falsehood by truth, of mental and bodily serfdom by human dignity and liberty.

The true Democrat fights under the banner of Oromasdes, against the fiend Arimanes. His aim is to enlist all mankind, aye, and in a sense yet too grand for mortal comprehension, all Spirits of the Infinite, in the army of light—that is, of boundless liberty, and infinitely progressive happiness. The true Democrat* well knows the insanity of a selfish grasp at enjoyment based on the misery of his immortal brethren. He well knows the irresistible power of the God he serves, and the futile opposition of his opponents, who dream of pleasure in the shadow of sympathetic pain.

[*I have prepared a work remarkable, at least, for one quality—brevity, in which I have endeavoured to state plainly the result of the most advanced eclecticism, in the form of an ontological, moral, and political system, which will be published at a price accessible to the humblest student, the instant the reception of the present volume shall have indicated the advisability of such a proceeding.]

He sees that there is no standing still, no conservation, no whiggo-finality, in nature. All celestial science forces upon him the conviction, that in the infinite star-world there is a perpetual spiral motion within motion, revolution within revolution, never for two minutes allowing any heavenly body to occupy the same point in space, or ever return to the same point which at any previous period it had occupied.

In the spiritual, moral, and material world he finds the same eternal principle of progress. It is useless to talk to him of waiting. He cannot wait, any more than a comet can pause in its elliptic career. In his belief the best moment for Reform is the instant anything existing is known to be capable of improvement; the best right to power is the intelligence to exercise it; the best course to follow is to speak the dictates of his conscience in defiance of all temporary interests, and to die for the smallest truth, rather than to lie for the most luxurious living!

He is a Republican, because he himself would deem it a crime to accept a crown from any source but the free election of a nation. He is tolerant, because he abhors the falsehood of belief regarded as an act of volition, or of religious teaching as a trade and profession. He is humane, because he knows that all the wealth of the earth cannot buy one instant of happiness comparable to the supreme delights of individual and expanded affection.

And he is a Christian, because Christianity is the religion of democracy, of faith, hope, and charity; exalts the humble, makes a servant of the would-be master, ordains more than justice between man and man, and points even beyond the tomb to a progressive felicity, determined by present moral advancement—a heaven in which there are many mansions, and because its Divine Founder baptised, not with water, but with fire—not with form, but with spirit.

The Gold-worshippers, or Plutocrats, are creatures of a very different stamp. They are Materialists in their way of thinking, and what is called matter of fact in policy. They do not believe in any principle at bottom but expediency. They lose sight of the main chance in trying to look to it too greedily. For the main chance is happiness, and they waste so much time in grasping at the means, that they have no leisure left for the end. In fact, more than two-thirds of them downright mistake the chimera money, for the reality enjoyment. I have known Plutocrats, who were so occupied with gold-digging—there are mines of that metal everywhere—that they never, to their dying day, knew what it was to thoroughly enjoy a good dinner, and take their time over it. Not only their higher mental faculties, but even their animal senses, were miserably uncultivated. Fresh air, trees, grass, and the glorious blue sky, had no existence for them. They grubbed away their lives in dusky holes, which a Fire-worshipper, with the fiftieth part of their means, would never have lived a day in. They snatched a chop or steak daily, in a great coat and hat, on a narrow bench with a straight back, in an uncomfortable attitude, and having bolted their food, which they washed down hastily, with curious liquids, of devilish invention, bitter taste, and bilious results, they returned to their dusty holes—counting-houses in the city, or elsewhere—got satiated with figures, dreamed of chimeras in the shape of profits, which profited nobody, and returned home to their families, weary, dull, and glad to go to bed, too tired to dream, and very dismal beings altogether, I fancy.

No class of men abuse visionaries and theorists like Gold-worshippers. On the same principle, the greatest rascals always rail at dishonesty ten times as loudly as other people. The fact is, a downright Plutocrat is the most utter visionary extant. He has an idea that he is rich, and that is all. He himself is a slave and a slave-driver at the same moment. His task is to squeeze the largest profit out of the labour of poorer men than himself. But with all his squeezing he is a mere money-collecting machine. Perhaps his wife and daughters lead a pleasant life on the strength of it; perhaps, eventually, some spendthrift son or nephew has the satisfaction of scattering the thousands in a way about as meritorious as that of its accumulation. It is a piece of disgusting imbecility to praise any man for the industry shewn in raking together a fortune. In nine cases out of ten it is a vile instinct, on a par with the propensities of certain animals who have a passion for burying all sorts of things in the ground. There are more misers than is imagined. As for making provisions for their families, it is mere egotism. If a man's son, nephew, cousin, or other relative, be well provided for, what merit is there in giving such an one a superfluous amount of wealth—that is, of concentrated power over the labour of his fellow-creatures? If the said kinsman be in want of the necessaries and comforts of life, why not share with him during life, and enjoy the spectacle of his happiness? Happy will be the hour for society which, denying to men all power of testamentary disposition, shall compel them to exercise during their lifetime the generosity and humanity for the want of which no post-mortem liberality can compensate. But of this hereafter—To revert to the characteristics of the Plutocrats.

There is a bad perseverance in their dispositions. Neither priest nor reasoner can turn them from their desolate purpose. They have no conception of a higher intellectual life. Whether prime-ministers or traders, old clothesmen or attornies, they are equally incredulous of all motives but self-interest—that is, self-interest in the strictest sense of personal gain. They know the strength of this motive, and they appeal to mankind by its agency alone, for they set down all people as fools or impostors, who profess to hold such principles in disregard.

They are all Jews in heart, if not by circumcision. The Mosaic law is their favourite book of reference. An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, is their grand dogma. These are the men who support capital punishment. They have the worst opinion of mankind. They know how capable they themselves are of every crime dictated by cupidity, if not defended by the danger of penal retribution, and they attribute like feelings to all the human family.

They are so distrustful and cautious where any feeling is concerned, that they constantly throw away even the most palpable pecuniary advantage; and so stupidly reckless where mere lucre is at stake, that they daily figure in the Gazette as victims of over-selfishness and miscalculation. Their Christianity is mere Judaism in disguise. They are false, dishonest, hypocritical, and mean. They cringe to your face, and rob you when your back is turned. They are so cowardly in the dread of selfish loss that they can be frightened into anything—even into generosity. And they cordially hate the poor. They believe that poverty is sufficient motive for any degree of vice or crime. But they have no pity for the victim, though they hear every Sunday a divine prayer for relief from temptation, They have made poverty itself a crime, and they would have crucified the Saviour over again, had he lived in their times, not for publicly urging rich men to share all their possessions with the poor, but because he was a man without property himself, and "had not even where to lay his head." They would have imprisoned him for libelling such respectable men as the Scribes and Pharisees, and they would have locked up the Apostles as incorrigible mendicants. Only the other day they gave the modern Barabbas of railways a testimonial, and they allowed Waghorn, the enthusiastic originator of the Overland Route to India, to die of a broken heart, in poverty and disappointment. They support the Timeserver newspaper, and even the Timeserver is unequal to their representation.

The Idol-worshippers, or Aristocrats, are, strange as it may sound to unphilosophic ears, the least important, though the most showy, of the great factions of the age. They are the disciples of an exploded system, which they cling to with love, yet have not the ability to maintain by arms. Slowly and surely they are committing suicide as a class, alternately yielding one point after another to the opposing principles of the democratic and plutocratic parties.

Had they the greatness or courage to throw themselves into the arms of the Fire-worshippers, to destroy, as it were, their exclusive life by a glorious act of self-sacrifice, they would rise from their ashes to-morrow, like the wondrous bird of fable, and by their new character of enlightened benefactors of mankind and leaders of progress, become even greater in their regeneration than in their old worn-out character.*

[*It was my intention to have proposed a plan of this nature to the late Lord George Bentinck, which would have brought him into power almost immediately. My republican freedom, however, was too far in advance of the "stable mind" to be appreciated. Since then I have seen the folly of any attempt at coalition between men of thought and their most troublesome scholars. They know no medium between tyranny and flunkeydom, though to the full as apt for the latter as the former vocation. Well, my noble boobies, if you will not be our friends, you shall be our instruments. We will drive you before us with the sword of reason and the whip of satire. We are the stronger. Even whilst I write, the hour is striking, and the balance turns in our favour. The press is no longer the fourth estate, but the first! Hear this, and sneer, if you will, my lords and gentlemen. I do not sneer—I strike!]

But they have neither the devotion nor the intelligence, as a class, required for such heroism. On the contrary, deluded by the hollow cat-like caresses of their deadly foes, the Plutocrats, they have by a thousand concessions endeavoured to conciliate that implacable and heartless race. Fools! when by making one tithe of those concessions to the honest, working, suffering people, they might have defied for ages the brood of deadly vermin who, slowly and surely, are devouring every vestige of their ancient glories, whilst the wise sons of light look on with stern indifference, prepared to crush the Plutocrat, so soon as the destruction of the helpless Aristocrat shall have been satisfactorily accomplished by his agency.

These Aristocrats, or Idol-worshippers, found their practical creed upon the Greeko-Egyptian Mythology. Their education is Greek, or primarily Egyptian, at the fountain-head. They fill their minds with traditions, legends, and fabulous pedigrees. Like the Greeks and Romans, they believe themselves the descendants of the Gods. They fancy that something of the ancestral hero or demi-god still mingles in their blood. Though they admit that the first man was made in the image of his Creator, they have a secret suspicion that the family likeness is better preserved in their own case than in others. They flatter themselves that they are china and the populace wedgewood; that they have some mysterious superiority, quite apart from education and other natural influences. They despise everybody but themselves, and they despise one another also.

Any man may profess Democracy or Plutocracy, and be recognized as a real Fire or Gold-worshipper by the followers of Moses and Zoroaster. But to be received by the Idolaters it is necessary to be something more than an Idol-worshipper. You must prove your descent from the Idols themselves (Eidola, or chimeras), not that there is much reality in these pedigrees—on the contrary, they are notoriously easy of fabrication. Men live by contriving them. It is the Aristocratic chimera which is found to answer, whether sham or real, with equal virtue—

"For well we know that serving men and grooms
Oft give the lie to half an hundred tombs."

I have now briefly described the three leading forms of opinion in the civilised world. They will be rarely found in their pure and unadulterated strength. Few Fire-worshippers are free from a dash of idolatry—or, at least, of Hero-worship—a noble weakness, but still a weakness in the eyes of a philosophic Gueber, whose Gods are the eternal abstractions, the never-to-be-attained, but for ever approached, ideals of beauty, happiness, and wisdom.

Let who will stay to worship Cromwell. The true Fire-worshipper has left Cromwell behind him, nay, perchance, he may be Cromwell himself—a new incarnation, revived and strengthened for a grander and more terrible contest.

In like manner the Aristocrat and Plutocrat, with feeble dashes of Democracy, are mingled in infinite variety of proportion, till, in the end, results the Bosh-worshipper, or Somnocrat, who does not know his own opinion on any subject but his immediate wants, who is swayed by every latest speaker, ignorant of every principle of policy, and, whatever his station may be, from the peer down to the ploughboy, in terrible want of a rational and initiative education. He is a mental sleep-walker. He is one of the mob. He is the human ether in which the real Aristoi of intellect float like the vessels on the seas. He does not read this book, and if he did he would not understand it.

Thus the reader, being far from a Bosh-worshipper, will understand what I mean, in the course of the hundred volumes I may have occasion to publish before Fire-worship becomes the established system, by the terms—Idol-worshipper, Greek or Aristocrat; Gold-worshipper, Jew or Plutocrat; and Fire-worshipper, Gueber or Democrat.

As, however, life is uncertain, and I may possibly die before completing this work, much less the other ninety-nine threatened volumes, I entreat the young thinkers of the age to treasure up in their memory the above association of ideas (mnemonically arranged for the purpose), in order that they may escape the infernal confusion of all real moral distinctions which the brilliant but contradictory journalism of the day is so apt to induce. * * * * * * *

The sun is setting. I hear the murmur of the human ocean, the mighty hum of the vast and potent city—I feel as an orator addressing a mighty army. Young England! it is your cause I am pleading! Your would-be leader has been thrown down long since, with his antiquated follies—but it is no leadership that I would wish to usurp! A curse on the hateful ambition which tempts the sacrifice of principle for power. Better to be loved by one spirit in Nature than to be bowed down to by all the hosts of heaven. Youth of England! give me a little corner in your hearts; believe in my sincerity, even should you deride my pretensions.

There is but one real pay for the soldier of thought—the affection of his fellow-citizens.

IN this world one thing is as important as another. Twice two make four. Every atom of the universe vibrates in accordance with every other atom. Above all, the lightest breath of passion reacts with intense potence upon all passionate entities. Hence the loves or love-dreams of such a man as Bernard Viridor are by no means unimportant to an episode in modern history like the present. Just as every body in space must be somewhere, must occupy some portion of the infinite extension (vide Baruch Spinoza), so a strong and reckless Fire-worshipper must be doing some very considerable amount of good or evil, by commission or omission, during every active moment of his being.

Therefore, my dear brother Fire-worshippers, let me entreat you to beware of falling in love just at present. For my part, I wish I could ensure my heart against fire (of that description) until the Republic (metaphorically speaking) were fairly established in the five great empires of Europe, and sundry smaller nationalities.

For the last few weeks Viridor had been much troubled in his mind. Almost daily for several hours in consultation with Darian and Basiline, he had gradually allowed his interest in the beautiful Magyar to deepen into an intensely painful sentiment. It is superfluous to say, that never for one instant did the idea cross Viridor's imagination that she could be more to him than the wife of his dearest friend. In these grand natures justice and honour are instincts too powerful for question or sophistication. Basiline was Darian's. Viridor knew it. Darian was his friend. The poet-philosopher would have despised himself had he allowed one covetous thought or impure desire to rise in his breast with regard to Basiline. Yet he felt as one

[*Lamartine's "Poetic Meditations." I could wish for the sake of the marvellously beautiful ideas and images contained in these early poems of Lamartine, that they should become popular in England. My translation was a true labour of love, for I gained neither money nor fame by the work. The Press almost universally ignored the book on account of the cheap form in which it was published. A single thousand copies only have been sold, although Lamartine said, in a letter of exquisite delicacy, written to me on the occasion, "Henceforward my work is as much yours as my own." It would seem that my poems were destined to as just a fate as his policy in its translation, according to the Timeserver. I would fain see this neglect remedied, not from personal interest, but because I should like to share with others the enjoyment of such writing as France's greatest bard's, with whom but one living poet, Alfred Tennyson, can be even compared by a student superior to all bias of national or stylistic prejudice. The translation has, at least, one chance of publicity. Though the reviewers scorned it, the publisher stereotyped it.]

Why had not Basiline a sister, the counterpart of herself, to make his happiness as she made Darian's?

Viridor strove to resist the fever of vague desire that consumed him. He was not one of those who can quench the flame of the spirit in the degrading satisfactions of the flesh. To use the phrase of our ducal Republican, Viridor was a volcano in eruption. For years past, from the dawn of manhood, and the first storm of youthful passion, the sails of whose vessel were swelled by fancy and boyish sensuality, he had exercised a stern control over his feelings. I do not mean that he had been a Puritan. Such folly were incompatible with the nature of one imbued with the profoundest knowledge of man's mental and physical requirements. But he had remained cold, calculating, and indifferent with regard to the fairer sex. He had cherished his ideal—he had no longer dreamed of seeking it. Once or twice he had caught vague glimpses of seraphic forms, eyes lighted with the true fire, but they came like shadows, and departed. They eluded his grasp, or dissolved into commonplace phantoms, in his eager embraces. They borrowed their enchantment from distance. He lost the impression before it had placed its stamp upon his heart. He was still Viridor the lonely, the sombre inhabitant of the unmeasured Vast, the dweller amid Titan thoughts—dim, nameless, abstract rulers of the Infinite world of spirits.

He had concentrated the rays of his spirit on two points in existence,—Humanity, that is, the liberty and happiness of mankind; and Friendship, that is, the immediate interchange of sympathetic ideas with men of noble feelings and lofty intelligence like his own.

But the noblest and most expanded philanthropy, however it may elevate the mind, partakes often of the sad dignity of Prometheus on his rock—the vulture grief yet lacerates the breast, and Jove (the worldly tyranny of inferior spirits) yet taunts his victim from the established throne of power.

And friendship, how rare is its perfection? In boyhood it shines most brightly—it is indeed a passion, as D'Israeli boldly describes it.

I recollect in a critique on "Coningsby," the reviewer denouncing that passage, one of the best and truest in the work, as an example of preposterous exaggeration.

There is little chance of sympathy in opinion between the author of "Coningsby" and his satirist. Yet I am glad to take this opportunity of reparation for an attack, however well deserved, far too extravagant and personal to admit of literary justification. In my opinion the Protectionist leader is a man of brilliant imagination, keen perception, profound analysis, and at bottom noble and generous sentiments. Selfish ambition has blasted him like a lightning-stricken oak. His intellectual life, his splendid invention, are paralysed by the falsity of his position. At heart he is a Fire-worshipper. His aristocratic fury is a mania, a melancholy disease. An aristocrat of nature's making, what hideous madness drives him to sell his soul for the homage of an aristocracy of acres, whose nobility, indeed, perpetually springs from the dunghill which they throw in the teeth of the parvenu?

But it is not even yet too late. He stands high enough for heroism. Let him shake off his own chains, let him liberate the noble slaves on whose subjection he weakly prides himself, let him renounce the insane project of mounting to heaven on a Babel tower of material grossness, let him be himself once more in defiance of party and in contempt of office, let him stand forward as the impartial champion of the truth of the people and his own nobler nature, and I will not hesitate to entreat his pardon for all the ridicule I have heaped upon him. For, by the light of heaven! this man's genius is deserving of a grander cause than the mere advocacy of high rents versus Manchester cotton-spinners!

To return to Viridor and friendship. It is only in boyhood that friendship can satisfy the heart. It has no guarantee of duration. How many devoted friends does a man, in the course of his life, lose sight of for ever! How many disappear gradually by unaccountable coldness! How many are lost by a chance word, an accidental slight, a difference of opinion, or a coincidence of admiration! We soon grow accustomed to these losses. We respect and esteem our acquaintance whose characters command our appreciation, but we no longer build our happiness on individual attachment. We know the evanescence of friendship, we enjoy it calmly, free from the lover-like jealousy, doubts, quarrels, and reconciliations of boyhood. Youthful friendships are too often indiscriminating impulses, the friendships of manhood are founded upon judgment and reason. All this the young poet felt, and was lonely even with his friends.

Viridor could not banish from his thoughts the vision of the Hungarian's beauty. In the middle of his political and philosophical analyses he paused, laid down the pen, and mused on Basiline. The tones of her voice, her exquisite gentleness, combined with such heroic daring, her graceful attitudes and motions, all combined to perplex and unsettle his mind. He could not be said to love Basiline, for the utter absence of hope prevented him from contemplating such a possibility. He thought of her as of a beautiful type, of something he longed for, yet despaired of finding.

But desire, like faith, is a potent magician, and often does much to bring about its own fulfilment.

It was evening, and Viridor sat alone in his chambers. His sitting-room was a large dreary-looking apartment. The walls were of panel, in colour of a dingy brown, which once had approximated to white, but was now dirtying fast in the direction of mahogany. The high mantlepiece was of carved oak. There was but little furniture in the room. The most important item was a large square table in the centre, at which Viridor, seated in an old arm-chair, was then writing, or rather trying to write; for he drew caricatures on the margin of his M.S. in an absent manner, and especially made several attempts to delineate a profile of exquisite purity and delicacy, which resembled in part the ideas originally formed of the virgin mother, in part the ideal type of Faust's Margaret, with a certain indescribable espieglerie which belonged neither to the saint nor to the sinner in question.

He was interrupted in the creation of these remarkably slight works of art, by a gentle knocking at the door. For full an hour he had been listening with the keenest attention for the footsteps of his expected guest upon the stairs; nevertheless, he was taken by surprise after all, in a moment of abstraction. He rose hastily, almost sprang to the door, opened it, and admitted, a female figure of slight, graceful outline. The lamp upon the table had a non-transparent shade, consequently the only parts of the room it lighted to any extent were a large circle on the table and a small circle on the ceiling. The latter, by the way, was very deceptive in the notion it conveyed of the colour of the plaster, which the smoke of more than one tenant had darkened without the interposition of renovating whitewash.

"How glad I am to see you!" exclaimed Viridor, taking the hand of his visitor, and raising it to his lips; "I hardly ventured to hope you would really come."

"Pray be seated," said Viridor, and he looked round for a chair. There were several in the room. But on one was a pile of papers, on another books, on a third a drawing-box, and he was ultimately obliged to offer the seat which he had just risen from, and to seat himself provisionally on the chair covered by the smallest pile of papers. Indeed, not only did books and papers encumber the chairs, tables, and mantleshelf, besides various more orthodox receptacles, but they were even scattered over the floor, and in one corner of the room, underneath an easel, formed a chaotic pyramid of books, MSS., drawing-boards, and old gloves, which filled the members of the party of order who came there with downright despair.

From week to week Viridor had contemplated a clearing up and arrangement of this literary chaos. But his incessant occupation, and repugnance to all mechanical exertion, had caused him to postpone the mighty effort, until the confusion had reached a pitch which would have daunted the boldest of reformers. As for allowing any profane hand to touch his sacred medley of Sybiline leaves, it need scarcely be mentioned that the bare idea filled him with horror.

"Never touch a scrap of paper in my rooms," was Viridor's injunction to his laundress, delivered in so solemn a tone that the old woman would have committed sacrilege off-hand in the nearest cathedral rather than have transgressed this injunction of the poet's.

It may be imagined that the papers became a rather dusty chaos in time. Viridor's chambers were a good place to read Goethe's Faust in.

The lord of this sombre domicile removed the shade from the lamp, and thus revealed all the disorder of the scene, which his fair visitor regarded with no small amazement.

For his part, Viridor drank in the beauty of a face which it will require all the art of description I possess, not to mention what I may steal or borrow, to pourtray but feebly to the eye of the indulgent reader.

Reversing the usual formula of novelists, I may say that it was a face more easily described than imagined. That is, every word of my description may be correct, and yet may fail to convey to another the impression which I desire to reproduce.

The age of the stranger might be about seventeen years. The innocence of the child seemed to mingle with the conscious dignity of the woman in her fair oval countenance. Her broad longlashed eyelids drooped with a charming modesty. Her half-opened mouth, faultless in its classical formation, revealed teeth white as the cliffs of England seen from a distant vessel, regular as the pearls of a lady's necklace. She was pale by the natural complexion of her fair clear skin; and her silky hair, which was banded on either side of her forehead, was of a rich yet far from deep brown, a sort of intermediate tint between blond and auburn, which, like her finely marked brows, looked dark in contrast with the forehead it encircled.

When she spoke she fixed her soft calm eyes upon Viridor's features with an inexpressible gentleness.

The rudest libertine would have hesitated to insult such incarnate purity. The most abject worshippers of gold or rank could not have ventured on an impertinence, though she wore but a little black shawl of the humblest manufacture, and a plain cotton dress faded in colour by repeated washing. A close straw bonnet, lined with blue silk, completed her external attire, and formed an artistic setting for the gem of beauty it contained.

It is wonderful how much beauty gains by a wise selection in the hues of its adornments. I should like to see some ladies I meet occasionally, introduced into a picture with their rainbow glories. And I should like to see some artists I know take lessons in prismatic harmony from certain other scientific enchantresses of my acquaintance! It would be a mutual profit, I assure them.

"Well," said Viridor, "I hope you have not been chased by any more mad cows, since I had the pleasure of seeing you?"

"O no sir," replied the stranger, in a voice which made even the most trivial words pleasant to the ear, "I have not dared to walk in the park since. I'm so frightened."

"They should remove the cows," said Viridor, "it is too bad to risk their frightening or tossing every little girl who likes to take a stroll in the sunshine."

"Poor things!" said the stranger, simply, "they do enjoy the grass so! I should not like to turn them out. O no! I can walk somewhere else, in the streets, or anywhere. Though I don't like walking in the streets, people are so rude."

"Have you often been insulted, then, in the street?" said Viridor, with a slight flush, and a tone of lively interest.

"Not exactly insulted. But gentlemen speak to me, very politely sometimes, but still it is hard that because one is all alone, one should be treated like—like—"

"Ah!" said Viridor, coming to the rescue of his fair visitor, who seemed embarrassed for a phrase, "and what do you say to these impertinent people?"

"Oh, I never say anything, I look at them very severely—so—" and the stranger frowned in a way that made Viridor smile.

"Yes, I don't think such a severe frown as that would have much effect upon these rude men we were speaking of."

"But you only see the comedy, you know I can't look as I do when I am really offended. Nobody can act feeling, can they?"

"Well, I think not, myself. At least I do not think any one could deceive me by the expression of his features. Yet they say that hypocrites succeed to a great extent in the world."

"Very likely. But they must be very stupid. It must be so much trouble. I don't care what people think. I do what I like, and I always like to have my own way."

"Perhaps it is, but I do like it; so it is no use pretending I don't. Oh! what a pretty picture, what a dear face—the lady's!"

And the stranger rose and went to the easel on which an unfinished sketch was standing, for Viridor was in the habit of relaxing his mind from severer studies by the cultivation of the arts.

"I am glad you like it," said the poet, "for I painted it, but it is not yet finished; indeed it is scarcely begun, it is a mere daub, pray do not criticise it too closely."

All this was no affectation of the painter's, but strictly true. Nevertheless his visitor continued to regard the sketch with evident delight. And here I will venture on a word to my artist friends. Next to the poet and philosopher, I rank the artist. I love beauty as another form of truth, I find art to be subject to the same grand philosophy as ethics or politics, and as much in want of radical reform as either.

As in policy the imperfect carrying out of high and noble principles is infinitely preferable to the best working system of base and inequitable expediency, so in art the attempt to pourtray the beautiful and the sublime, however feeble, is still incomparably greater than the most successful triumph of mere mechanical imitation.

There is an absurd mania pervading the artist youth of the day, in favour of very accurate copyism of individual nature. In one sense they may be called a model-school, for we recognise our friends the models with painful facility. Like babies crying for the moon, they seem to have grown jealous of the sun, and to have conceived the idea of competing with the daguerreotype on its own ground. This is a chimerical project, both from physical and spiritual causes. Their details may be correct, but their general effects are discordant and unnatural. Instead of making nature the basis, and breathing into it the breath of life by art, they destroy the freedom of their original designs by reducing them to conformity with nature, that is, model nature—stiff, constrained, artificial, and lifeless. Hence the wooden character of many elaborate paintings, which painfully remind one of the late Madame Tussaud's wax-works. No insult is intended to the wax-works, by the way, which sometimes nod and wink their eyes so cunningly as to deceive the unpractised spectator. But the wooden style of painters deceives nobody—but themselves. They fancy they are artists, whilst the philosopher knows them to be mechanics.

There is more genius, more real art, in many a woodcut of Leech or Gavarni, or etching of Hablot Brown, not to allude to the outlines of Rotsch or the grotesques of Doyle and Grenville, than in dozens of paintings of vast pretentions, which it would be invidious to particularise. In one thing the most cultivated and least cultivated tastes agree. And that is in preferring the roughest sketch, with meaning in it clearly conveyed, to the most finished piece of light-shade and colour-work without it.

For my part, I like to watch the effect of paintings or drawings upon the feelings of persons of delicate minds, but ignorant of art and artists. They are not caught by mere copyism. They know which represents nature best, the mind or the model. They feel the difference between a work of intellect and one of mere machinery.

He was walking across the Regent's Park, near the railings of the Zoological Gardens, which there offer a gratuitous, but very remote view of the lions, when he saw a young girl running, in the greatest alarm, before a cow, which, with tail erect, was sadly belying the gentleness of her sex. Viridor drove off the cow with his stick, and returning to the fair fugitive, found her in a state of alarm, palpitation, and breathlessness, which did not admit of his acting otherwise than he did, in offering his arm and endeavouring to reassure her by every means in his power.

When they gained the long walk, and the frightened girl began to recover from her terror, and to feel herself in perfect safety, she was profuse in her gratitude for Viridor's interference, exaggerating very naturally the danger he had run in her defence.

Viridor, struck by her beauty, and sensibly affected by the repeated pressure of her small hands, which, though gloveless, were white and delicate as a princess's, could not bear the thought of parting from her without cultivating a further intimacy. As she stood by his side in the golden sunset, which they regarded in silent sympathy of admiration, he felt a long chained hope and desire become wakeful in his breast.

Who should say that chance, or rather the happy combination of harmonious spirits, whose will, conscious or unconscious, is the synthesis of Destiny, had not thrown in his way thus unexpectedly the long-sought jewel of his desire? What, if in the love of this fair child of poverty and obscurity, he should discover the noble heart and sweet consolation he had begun to muse on as a dream?

His whole being was moved even to its foundation. The ice melted, the stern spirit of endurance gave way, and passion entered where stoicism had crouched in desolation. The fire of manhood was lighted up, and his heart demanded its satisfaction with a voice which no cold reasoning could silence.

Viridor had no scruples, he had no prejudices. He cared no more for disgracing his proud relatives by a mésalliance than for enraging them by his ultra-republican opinions. He worshipped the sacred fire of conscience, the light of truth in thought, in feeling, and in action. He was not one to sacrifice real happiness to chimerical ambitions. The ordinary ideas which such occasions suggest scarcely presented themselves to his mind. He had but two apprehensions—

Had this lovely daughter of the people yet learned that she possessed a heart? If not, was he the man to teach her that knowledge?

Viridor was not vain. He was proud, even to occasional arrogance, towards the petty intellects he had to cope with in his war against folly and baseness; but he was free from personal vanity. He had either been unsuccessful with the sex, or unconscious of his successes. He had associated altogether too much with men, and too little with their gentler comrades. He was somewhat stern and unbending, little skilled in small talk, utterly hostile to coquetry, flirtation, and dandyism. He fancied himself destitute of personal attractions. He had no confidence in his powers of pleasing women. He attributed any slight triumph he had gained, rather to pity or politeness, than to any honest appreciation of his efforts. In a word, he had a dismal presentiment that he was about the last man in the world a beautiful girl of seventeen could fall in love with.

He was wrong. His fair companion had fallen in love with him already, and with a love far more powerful and lasting than his own dawning passion. She did not know it, she did not reason upon it. But for the first time in her life she clung to the arm of a man in confidence and joy. She looked up into Viridor's face, and his dark eyes seemed to shed rays of soothing happiness upon her soul.

Before they separated, Viridor had, unknown to his companion, read the inmost secrets of her thoughts. He found in her feelings of exquisite refinement, and a pure, loving, and just instinct of thought, combined with an affectionate, impressive, and rather obstinate character. What chiefly pleased him was the constant reference she made to her "dear father," for whom she seemed to entertain a species of admiration. Above all, Viridor gained the conviction that love was to her a mystery yet to be revealed.

When he asked her to visit him, she assented without hesitation. If not ignorant of the so-called impropriety of such a proceeding, she was indifferent to worldly opinions. She came punctual to her engagement. Viridor made tea. He had bought a cake and some other delicacies, which she partook of, with artless satisfaction. She laughed heartily at the student's clumsy contrivances, and the deficiencies of his ménage. She begged him to smoke, if he wished it, as her father always had his pipe of an evening. He was now out of town, and she was staying with her sister, who was married to a newsman. They had a small shop over the water. They would not mind her being out for a few hours, and if they did, she did not care, for she had a will of her own—not that she would annoy her sister for the world. Her sister was the dearest girl, and not at all like her. Quite the reverse—her sister was dark, and very pretty, with large black eyes, and her husband James—that was Mr. Mullens—was so fond of her. They would think she had gone to see Laura. Laura was her friend—the only friend she had in London—such a nice girl—only one year older than herself—But really she must be going, it was getting late, it had struck nine long ago. And she rose to take her departure.

"Grace," he said (he had found out that her name was Grace Morton at their first interview), "dear Grace, I am many years older than you are, but—"

"But what?" said Grace, smiling, and helping her host, in his turn, out of an embarrassment; "but you never saw anybody half so pretty as I am? Now do say so, you may as well pay me a good compliment whilst you are about it!—not that I believe anything men say, they are such deceivers, as the young lady said in the play the other night."

Viridor stopped the mouth of his pretty banterer with a kiss, as anybody would, I am sure, have done under similar circumstances. As she retreated from his embrace, her form, supple as a reed, rested for an instant almost supported by his arm.

"Grace, dear Grace!" said Viridor, "forgive me for my freedom!" and for the first time in his life the proud Viridor bent his knee to a mortal. The noble object of his early passion could not boast of such homage as he yielded to the dignity of the lowly and neglected child.

When he rose, the head of Grace rested upon his shoulder without any effort on his part. They stood thus for a few moments in the enjoyment of feelings it is unnecessary to descant upon, when a sudden sharp knocking at the door aroused them from their dawning love-dream.

"Farewell, dearest," he said hastily, with another kiss, which this time escaped objection—"To-morrow?"

Viridor opened the door. The Soul-Agent entered. His great dark eyes at once took in the shrinking form of the young girl, who hastened to slip away, whilst Viridor thought of Faust, Margaret, and Mephistopheles, and wished Ignatius at the devil his prototype's.

MOTIONING the dark speculator to a chair, Viridor followed Grace Morton from the room, and once more took leave of her upon the staircase. He returned with the pressure of her small hand yet tingling upon his own, but with an aspect and manner completely changed in expression.

A minute ago he had been all tenderness, childlike playfulness, and pure emotion. In a word, he had been the Viridor of Grace.

He reappeared the severe and critical thinker, the man of intuitive penetration and indomitable firmness of resolve. The Soul Agent beheld again the mysterious being he had encountered on his former visits, with the same pale tranquil countenance, and mild inscrutable eyes, before whose gaze his own was ever lowered. There was no trace of confusion of consciousness on Viridor's features. As the waves close over a pebble which disturbs their glittering surface, so did the thoughts of the poet close over the departed maiden.

Few men possessed greater self-command when necessary than Bernard Viridor. He had studied in the school of suffering. For seven years past, from the date of his nineteenth birthday, and return to England from a foreign university, his life had been passed in battles—battles more terrible than Darian's, with foes more implacable than the Croats of Jellachich, or the Cossacks of the Czar.

His father, a man of independent fortune, had destined him for the bar, but a subtle pettifogger of the worst class of attornies—worst, because covering their rascalities with every external appearance of respectability—adroitly lured on the older Viridor into throwing away five hundred guineas, and his son into the bargain, upon certain articles of indenture, by which Bernard became for five years the articled clerk of the said adroit pettifogger.

The young student, fresh from German club-rooms, salons, and lectures on psychology, history, demonology, and other dusky sciences, signed the deed with a dismal presentiment of impending evils, and the obscurest notions concerning the nature of the profession he was entering into.

Having nothing to do in the office, which he was supposed to attend daily between the hours of ten and six, and the working clerks being frequently interrupted in their conversation, gymnastics, operatic sotto voce reminiscences, and other unbusiness-like and illegal amusements, by their necessary labours, he was unable to get through a very considerable amount of that valuable work, Sir William Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of England."

One of the first things he lighted on in that Arabia Petræa of the law-student was an utter denunciation of the practice of preparing for the bar by the routine of an attorney's office.

Viridor bitterly regretted the false step taken in the dark by his father and himself. Meanwhile, he was occupied in solving an insoluble problem. This was no other than the union of the noble and joyous career he had marked out for himself, and the dry and detested vocation which had been chosen for him.

Had been chosen for him? No, that is incorrect. He had had the choice between Law and Church—between Mr. Lumber's office and an English university. An English university! after three years spent in all the freedom of German student life! It was like going back to school. Viridor was full of ambition. The germs of grand designs already slept on his soul. He would enter the world at all hazards, he would do something for himself. He would become independent.

Already he had learned that dependence, even upon a father, is servitude. True generosity is the rarest of all virtues. What is ordinarily called by the name is a mere sham. Nine fathers out of ten expect, for every hundred pounds of allowance given, their hundred pounds' worth of free-will sacrificed as return. Viridor soon felt this; and it preyed upon his mind, like a cancer on the breast. He over-rated the value of the obligation, instead of looking upon it as a mere act of duty, like most young men of his age. Instead of taking casual reproaches as to neglect of business or extravagance at their real value, as expressions of anxiety for his welfare on the one hand, or petulance of temper on the other, he allowed them to lacerate and excite his feelings, naturally susceptible, to a painful degree of intensity. Hence, perpetual jars and disagreements, attacks and recriminations. Hence the devotion of Blackstone and Coke upon Littleton to the infernal gods, and the irremediable loss of Mr. Viridor senior's five hundred guineas in the abyss of Lumber the pettifogger's pocket!

The elder Viridor was a gentleman of the old school, though little more than twice the age of his son. A man may have amazingly old ideas at forty even, especially if he inherits them with his plate from his grandfather or great-grandfather before him. Old Viridor, then, was a Tory, and, I believe, admired George the Third, and held Pitt in reverence. He took in the John Bull and "Blackwood's Magazine," reading the Morning Herald with rigid punctuality. In his library was much calf and morocco, and a complete edition of the classics, both Greek and Latin authors. But had you looked for a poem or romance later than the time of Sir Walter Scott, you would probably have been disappointed in your search. In conclusion, Mr. Viridor was a tall, handsome, imposing-looking man, courteous and affable in his manners, universally liked by his acquaintance (except those he had cut or been cut by owing to a certain fiery temper of his), and particularly pleasing to ladies, for whom he had a most chivalrous and honourable respect. Add to this, that he had a taste for reading, and considerable knowledge of art, evinced in a fine collection of pictures and engravings, that he possessed all gentlemanly accomplishments, and something under a thousand a year from landed property, and the picture may be considered tolerably accurately sketched.

He had been left a widower during the childhood of his son, and had married a young lady of great personal but no pecuniary attractions, which I consider a point in his favour.

In truth, Mr. Viridor was far from mercenary. His vice was not so much gold as idol-worship. He worshipped power, position, worldly and recognised respectability. And he had a spice of the tyrant in his composition. He liked to guide, to govern, and to plan. He liked blind obedience to his commands. He liked the very branches of his trees to grow the way he ordained. He was the architect of his own house, which was built as never house was built before or since. He had his coats made according to his special system. He was born to command, but could scarcely obey even the clearest dictates of reason opposed to his own stern volition.

He tried to mould his son after his own thought, instead of allowing free development to the youthful faculties. He was not content with a legitimate influence, he would have governed Bernard absolutely, and for this purpose resorted to means of undue severity.

But it was too late. Years of foreign travel and study had emancipated young Viridor's mind. He already lived for himself as an individual incarnation of an individual spirit, with aims, ideas, and ambitions peculiarly its own. He was totally unfit for passive obedience to a father, or the constraint of a lawyer's office. He rebelled against both, at first secretly, then openly. Viridor the elder never for an instant imagined that he was at all in fault. He allowed his son a hundred and fifty pounds a year; there was an excellent career open before him, with ample and certain expectations in the distance—what more did he want?

A little happiness, a little peace and quiet affection, a relief from eternal lectures, or, still worse, silent but severe looks of reproach for trivial and involuntary faults, and last, not least, a little less acrimony on the subject of occasional small pecuniary advances, rendered necessary by Bernard's utter ignorance of the value of money.

Viridor, indeed, was rarely extravagant, but he had a horror of appearing mean. This is the real secret of many a comparatively innocent spendthrift's wastefulness. Hence he was always in debt, and always anxious and careworn about things, the importance of which he over-reckoned, but which he had neither the self-denial nor resolution to avoid.

In addition to the above requirements Viridor desired more than all to escape from the profession of the law in every shape, for which he had gradually conceived an implacable detestation. Not one particle of his soul ever entered into his legal studies. Like Darian, he saw nothing in English law, common and civil, but a monstrous mass of evil forms mingled with good principles, crying loudly for reform. He would be a legislator—but never a lawyer.

A crisis arrived—a few hot words from the father were taken literally by the son, whose passion for absolute free agency could no longer be restrained. The office of Lumber was deserted for ever, the allowance withdrawn, and Bernard Viridor thrown upon his own resources.

Had Viridor the younger possessed any worldly prudence, he might easily have conciliated and managed his father. Had Viridor the elder relied upon paternal affection, and not paternal authority, he would have certainly succeeded to some extent in swaying his son. But the latter did not consider his interest, and the former was too obstinate and proud to take any trouble to study the mysterious though candid disposition of the embryo poet.

Thus, with mutual misunderstandings, they parted. They did not meet again for years.

The ruling passion of Viridor was for literature. With considerable versatility he had already produced a variety of tales, poems, and translations. They had been printed, and what was more, paid for by the proprietors of sundry not very distinguished periodicals, now mostly gone to that "ulterior bourne" which Mr. Carlyle occasionally hints at, as the probable destination of all earthly entities.

At the moment of his quarrel with his father, he had fortunately made a most brilliant hit by a political satire he had ventured on in a style and tone quite novel and extravagant. It was reviewed in almost every paper in the kingdom, praised and abused with equal exaggeration, immensely read, and sold like wildfire.

(By the way, I wish I knew a wildfire shop, that I might make an investment in that article. Will any dealer in that comparatively useful description of fire do me the favour of enclosing his card?)

Accordingly, on the strength of his satire, and a limited power of drawing upon his publisher in advance of his next work, Viridor quitted the Arabia Petræa of law to pitch his tent in the Arabia Felix of the belles lettres.

The change was mightily agreeable. It was the air of liberty and life, from frowns, inuendos, and lectures. Oh, if parents, rulers, and legislators, all who have authority over an individual, a province, or a nation, would but learn the downright inefficiency of severe measures, in operating real reform, either in a child or in a multitude! If they would but throw all brute-force dogmatists and latter-day prophets over the bridge—in spiritual signification—and strive to govern by the only two principles that have real power absolute over thinking spirits—REASON and LOVE! For I tell these semi-thinkers, these incomplete entities (êtres imparfaits, as George Sand terms them), these weak deriders of that transcendant optimism which is neither more nor less than sublimated Christianity, and more especially I tell this same latter-day fury,* much read in German illuminism, with small understanding of its revelations, that both they and he are objects of great and serious commiseration to the earnest seekers of light, and hopeful leaders of crusades without end, against Pain, Ignorance, and Falsehood, that trinity of everlasting hatred.

[*This man pretends to pity Lamartine! That poet and statesman has his faults, like all men of genius. But when I remember the days of February, 1848; the hero-orator at the Hotel-de-Ville; when I compare the works of Lamartine and of Carlyle, the subtle refinements and lofty elevation of the former's ideas, with the crude indigestions of Kaut, Fichte, Goethe, Jean Paul, &c, of the latter; when I ask myself what Carlyle would have been in the place of Lamartine; when I consider the respective places they will occupy in history; when I see in the one the poet, hero, and historian of all times, and in the other the paradox-monger, imitator, and word-gushing pamphleteer of a passing day—I do not pity—I laugh. And this Carlyle speaks contemptuously of George Sand. Silly Scot!

"Du gleichst dem Geist, deu Du begreifst,
Nicht mir—"

Would be no inapt reply from that glorious spirit, whose very blunders are worth all the "slush element" of Carlyleism I ever waded through.

(Pen! pen! cease thy digressive mania, or this history will remain a fragment to the end of time!)

The next two years of Viridor's life were years of marvellous fortune. In the most unexpected way, by literary successes of various kinds, including one anonymous drama's triumph, he obtained and spent more than a thousand pounds sterling. But he had to make great mental efforts for his years, and what was worse, to endure an amount of care and excitement disproportionate to the untaught fibres of his sensitive organisation. His health gave way. On coming of age, he found himself in miserable health, pressed by debts, incapable of energetic exertion, and deprived, by a sudden turn in a law-suit, of property the sale whereof was to have produced his future means of independent income. It was a period of general reaction and pecuniary scarcity, produced by the mad speculations of the preceding year. Literature was, as it were, suddenly becalmed. Viridor's new book was a comparative failure. He risked his last hundred pounds in a publishing speculation, which failed, owing to his illness, inexperience, and the neglect of his subordinate agents. As if by magic, he found himself without resources, with exhausted credit, neglected by his relations, forgotten by his friends (at least, so he imagined), and, by way of a climax, arrested for debt and thrown into prison.

Strange to say, his mind, relieved from its tension by this extreme plunge into misfortune, no longer preyed upon the frame it had well nigh exhausted. He recovered partially in health, and when he managed to arrange with his creditors, emerged, as one out of a dream, from the dismal scene of his incarceration, to find himself reconciled with his father, broken in spirit, and obscure in position—a mere shadow of the once brilliant Viridor—vegetating upon a miserable pittance, and so utterly changed in character, that for some time a lunatic asylum appeared his probable, if not certain destination.

For nearly a year he lived in utter solitude, doing literally nothing but walk about in a state of hopeless melancholy, and gaze with childish interest at the shops or passing carriages of the metropolis, or the fields and trees of the suburban landscapes. Twice he attempted suicide, and twice by a singular chance escaped alive from the ordeal. Some inferior percussion caps in the one case, and the unaccountable non-effect of a large dose of opium in the other, were the causes of this escape.

Then came a violent reaction. He arose suddenly from his lethargy, applied himself to study and literary labour with restless assiduity, and found, to his own surprise, that his genius had developed itself in its torpor, that he had learned not only to understand but to sympathise with his fellows, that the boy had ripened into the man, the neophyte into the high-priest, that the dreams of his young vanity, which he had so bitterly condemned, might after all become developed into realities. He saw the nullity of his factitious reputation and fleeting success. But the broad road was before him. He no longer trusted to blind inspiration, but he began to see his way to the real fountain of truth and grandeur. He resolved before all things to educate his mind. He undertook the severe toil of thought. By day and night he meditated on the great fundamental principles of the sciences, the arts, and their practical application to life. He recognised, at length, that in all things the most sublime and noble system is the truest and the best. He kept that grand idea before his eyes, even in his lightest contributions to the floating literature of the hour. He was respected, if not applauded. And thus, during years of poverty bordering on actual want, and petty sufferings without limit, he arrived at the triumph of fully developing and comprehending that living philosophy of the age which even Darian was yet incapable of pursuing and elaborating in all its details. And this wondrous systematic intellect and lofty intuition it was that made him, at the period of our narrative, a personage of such secret but vast importance in the great movement of the European world, at an age when many men are still struggling through the noviciate of a profession, or blushing at their youth amid the circles of the Idolators and the Gold-Thugs.

This was the soul, rudely and imperfectly described, which the subtle Ignatius had undertaken to bargain for.

It may be imagined that the philosopher who reckoned his disciples amongst the natives of every civilised country of the globe, was in small danger of being won over by the propositions of his adversary.

Nor would the dark speculator, in all probability, have attempted the negotiation, had he at all comprehended Viridor's then position. But in the eyes of the agent, Viridor was simply the needy man of letters, the gentleman of broken fortunes, and the young man of five-and-twenty, who had his way to make in the world.

He did not know that Viridor had but to ask for thousands to receive them without a question or a condition, that myriads were prepared to rise in arms at his word, that the destiny of millions of men were as surely dependent on the impulse given by his spirit, as the descent of the scale is dependent on the additional pound thrown into the balance by the meter.

The spies of the Soul-Agent could penetrate the cabinets of ministers, but not the changing council-chambers of the supreme Illuminati. They could betray the secrets of freemasons' lodges, but not the formless mysteries of spiritual brotherhood; they could enter the club of the conspirators who desired physical-force revolutions, but not the united souls of philosophers who, with the invisible lever of thought, moved all humanity from its inmost centres of action.

It was the third interview of Ignatius the Plutocrat, with Viridor the Democrat. He had made no progress as yet towards subduing the scruples of the Fire-Worshipper, nor could he be said to have lost ground himself, since every inch backwards in his system was a foot in advance towards the purer creed.

It was, after all, an unequal contest—the false glitter of gold against the true light which it reflects, the metal that can be consumed against the fire that consumes it. Granted, that the latter operation requires some chemical science not possessed by every dabbler in experiments at the Polytechnic Institution.

"Pray do not stand on any ceremony," said the Soul-Agent, "if I am in the way, say the word, and I will leave you while it is yet time to recall a more agreeable visitor."

"Thank you," said Viridor, "I had no wish to prolong the interview. Well, what news from the Soul-market?"

"Nothing particular to-day, except a rise in the value of out-door agitators and demagogues. One very violent fellow was bought for five hundred pounds by the Duke of Rackrent."

"What do they want with him—is he to be silenced, or proclaim his apostacy through a speaking trumpet?"

"Precisely. It is a dangerous plan, and a doubtful. I told the duke so, but what can one do with these blockheads? However, I am but a plain Soul-Agent. I neither care for nor interpose in politics."

"Not at all, I wish them all happiness. But I believe that the man who does something practically useful is the greatest benefactor of society. Now, I have founded the Soul Exchange, and put men in the way of saving more time, that is, money, than they can possibly do by any other recent improvement in machinery. If they would only do away with speeches in Parliament, and vote point blank on every bill proposed, the effects of the system would be wonderful."

"Wonderful," exclaimed Viridor, "considering that two bills out of three are blunders! We should be inundated with laws which would eat one another up in the execution!"

"You are quite right about the blunders. But let me ask you one thing—is there any blunder possible that could do more harm than procrastination?"

"Perhaps not. Because, after all," said Viridor, meditatively, "a positive evil is more easily grappled with than one arising from mere inactivity and uncertainty. A bad law could be repealed, and would serve as a test for the remedy required."

"Exactly so, it is easy to discover improvement when there is something to improve. Look at the number of amendment acts, The great vice of government is laziness. Oh! if we had but a man like yourself at the head of affairs we should soon see a new life breathed into the old machinery!"

"Say, rather, that you would soon see the old machinery replaced by new. You are aware that I care little for traditions, glorious old constitutions, and other worn-out lumber, inherited from our ancestors."

"I am aware that you care only for your country," said Ignatius, trying to look sincere, which was a great effort on his part.

"No?" said the crafty agent, brightening up, and hoping that, after all, the literary politician was not so ridiculously virtuous as he pretended. "You do not care for your country? Why should you?"

"Why indeed?" said Viridor, "I was born here, it is true; but I have travelled. I speak English; but I can also speak French, German, and Italian. Why should I confine my desire to benefit mankind to a single country of the many by which the earth is covered?"

"If you were but Foreign Secretary, such sentiments would do you honour," said the Soul-Agent. "Now I have no doubt but that you have formed a plan of European policy already, in case of accidents," continued Ignatius, with an almost imperceptible tinge of irony, provoked by the absurd idea of Viridor entertaining such projects in his present obscure position.

"Should you become First Lord or Home Secretary, I presume you are ready to propose a remedy for Irish pauperism?"

"In short, you are armed at all points?" said the Soul-Agent, with a mixture of respect for the confident audacity of the young author, and suspicion of his sincerity in all he professed.

"I have studied and reflected upon most of the important topics of the age, and as I believe rather in the application of à priori principles than of partial experience, I should not hesitate to undertake any responsibility, so long as I could satisfy my conscience by devoting my whole energies to the carrying out of the ideas I have faith in."

"What! you reject experience—the source of all wisdom, knowledge, and even principles?"

"I do not reject it, I profit by it to the utmost. And the first thing experience teaches me is, to beware of trusting to experience. A grain of judgment is worth a pound of precedent. It has been said, that there is nothing new under the sun. The fact is, there is nothing old. Beyond the sphere of mathematical truths there is no repetition in nature or life. No two generals or statesmen were ever in precisely the same position. Besides, even the fact that one course of action succeeded on a previously similar occasion is no proof that even then another course might not have succeeded better. I am for obtaining all possible knowledge of the circumstances in which I am placed, but I reserve to myself perfect liberty of acting upon the information obtained."

"What a pity it is that you are attached to no party," said the Soul-Agent, "that talents of the high order you possess should lie as it were idle, when they might be turned to such profit for your fellow-creatures."

"Undoubtedly. I have before hinted to you that there is more than one opportunity for you to enter the political arena with every prospect of attaining the highest position."

"In still plainer terms," said Ignatius, encouraged by the easy tone of the poet's remark, "I have three bonâ fide offers for you, of the most brilliant nature."

"That is little. I can exert more influence by a scratch of my pen than I could by a dozen speeches to men who had made up their minds not to be convinced beforehand. What more?"

"Very little—I could make as much by scribbling nonsense, if I wished to sell my soul to public caprice."

"In the second case, an estate for qualification, bought out and out, clear of encumbrance, by subscription."

"A pleasant prospect truly. I should encounter my subscribers at every turn. They would point me out to their friends, and say, 'Look there, that is our speaking machine; we got it up in fifty shares of so much per man!' We may dismiss that."

"Ten thousand pounds in hard cash, is the third proposition, with a place into the bargain, if you desire it, and social advantages not to be surpassed."

"A single individual. The transaction may be made strictly confidential. Between you and me, it comes from a man of very high station, and, I suspect, ultra-liberal opinions."

"I know the man," said Viridor, who was well aware of Darian's ruse, the object of which was solely to increase his (Viridor's) importance and influence amongst the soul-dealers.

"You know him?" said the Soul-Agent, who, though he had easily ascertained the name and rank of his first customer, was, owing to the incorruptibility of Darian's attendants, unable to gain particulars of the latter's personal associates.

"Nothing more. Arthur Darian holds the opinion that a soul which can be bought is not worth having."

"And so you are content to be this young duke's aide-de-camp, free, gratis, and for nothing?" said the Soul Agent, whose eyes were gradually opening.

"And you are content to renounce even the means of carrying out your principles. You reject the only road to power. You resolve to continue in comparative poverty, obscurity, and helplessness, when by accepting either of the real offers I have to make you—"

"Confound his faith!" thought Ignatius, "I shall lose my best customers. I have engaged to find them a soul to animate their unwieldy bodies of voting clods and talking sticks, and I find nothing but an obstinate fanatic. Let me see you to-morrow, and learn your final decision," said the dark speculator aloud, rising to go, "I entreat you not to throw away such opportunities for mere fanciful illusions. The man who belongs to no party is a cypher ignored by all."

"The man who devotes himself to any party, in the sense you understand it, is something still worse."

"I cannot see the force of what you say. Man is a gregarious animal. You yourself are always speaking of harmony as the grand principle of happiness and progress."

"True," said Viridor, "but remember that there is no harmony without difference in music, and that no two notes, unless divided by a full tone, can possibly harmonise, whilst every nearer approach, short of absolute unisonance, produces the most appalling discord. For my part, I am my own leader of the opposition, my own pope, and my own master of transcendental eclecticism. I wish other people would think as freely. Freedom of opinion, combined with toleration, is the noblest mental condition I can imagine. The difference between such independent spirits, and the servile supporters of Jack This or Bob That's measures, is as great as that between the straw in a bundle on the pavement of a stable and the single valuable tube through which a thirsty Yankee sucks his sherry cobbler in the dog-days!"

"Ha, ha!" laughed Ignatius, with a forced hilarity, "I see you are not in a vein for serious discussion," and he took a hasty leave, anxious to escape without further displaying his chagrin at the failure of one of his most important negotiations.

"Wait till I buy your soul and publish your memoirs, my poor Mephistopheles of the nineteenth century!" muttered the poet with a smile, as he also took his hat, and in a few minutes followed the Soul Agent down the dusky staircase from his chambers.

IGNATIUS LOYOLA GREY quitted Viridor's chambers in a far more pleasant frame of mind.

Since he had become a Soul Agent by profession he had gained some curious experiences. The great fact—by the bye, Ignatius was the originator of that much-abused formula—the great fact of his experience was the astounding ignorance which prevailed in the world as to the relative value of the most valuable of all commodities.

He was constantly buying and selling, for his clients, souls, not worth their weight in electricity, at the most ridiculous prices, and, on the other hand, disposing of real diamonds of intellect for a few pieces of dross which would not have purchased the favors of the most facile Aspasia.

That very morning he had bought three Irish M.P.'s, an Italian chargé d'affaires, and a Cabinet Minister's mistress, for a total of six thousand guineas, after considerable chaffering; whilst a man of science in difficulties had been easily bargained for at a solitary hundred.

As for Viridor, the longer he resisted all the Soul Agent's temptations, the stronger grew that worthy's passion to effect the purchase; indeed, he only awaited the first sign of relenting on the part of his temptee to make, himself, an offer which should throw all the others into the shade, and make Viridor's soul his prey before anybody else had time to outbid him. Ignatius well knew that he could then make his own terms with his clients. Curiously enough, all three parties were anxious to make Viridor's soul their property.

The Aristocrats wanted him because they required men of talent to support their falling cause, and could produce none themselves.

The Plutocrats wanted him, because they fancied that his writings were of a dangerous character to their gods, and threatened the pillage of their plunder-caverns.

And Darian, as we have seen, bid for him on the Fire-Worshippers' behalf, by way of mystifying the Soul Agent.

Meditating on these things from his special point of view, Ignatius emerged from the temple without feeing the porter who opened the useless wicket. He dismissed the splendid carriage which awaited him, with an impatient gesture, and the words "Timeserver Office—two," and continued his way on foot, towards the city. At Blackfriars-bridge he paused, and leaning over the parapet, contemplated the water in profound meditation.

"This country," murmured Ignatius, "is on the verge of a great moral and physical convulsion. The men in power are too feeble to bear up against the storm which is coming. Before long there will be only two political parties in the country, Republicans and Limitarians. I must make friends with the stronger party. But which is the stronger? The king of to-day is the vagabond of to-morrow. The convict of yesterday may be the hero of its anniversary. What folly to be always calculating the future! It is speculating on female frailty in the arms of beauty—foreseeing indigestion in the freshness of appetite. At the worst, one can but die!"

The Soul Agent turned round gloomily, and for a few minutes regarded the diorama of varied human countenances which in spectral gloom flitted across the bridge, coming, one by one, within the rays of the nearest gas-lamp, and the vision of Ignatius.

They were a rare collection of wild caricatures, those faces! What havoc had Nature made of her ideal types of human beauty and dignity! What fatal accidents, corroding and destroying influences, had worked upon those masks since their first infant outline! To gaze upon them was enough to rouse the soul from apathy, to drive it to reform, or rebel against a state of things whose history was written in such fearful characters.

There was a thin mechanic, with his pinched and sallow features, careworn brow, mouth painfully contracted, and sharp anxious eyes vainly peering forward into a future of unresting toil and privation. He caught the Soul Agent's glance, and an expression of defiant hatred darkened all his countenance. Chartist and Socialist as he was, the well-dressed lounger, the idle gentleman, was an abomination in his eyes. Hunger breeds hatred, and the poor man soon imbibes the belief that his poverty is the rich man's crime.

Then came a young girl whose countenance would have been beautiful, but for a reckless and insolent boldness that sat upon it, like a reptile on a marble goddess. There was an unnatural flush upon her cheeks, the flush of wine—she was too young for paint—there was a smile of forced voluptuousness about her full lips, a vicious humidity about her large dark eyes. Her shawl seemed to have slipped from her shoulders, and fell, not ungracefully, in half studied, half careless folds, displaying the round and swelling proportions of a figure which many a queen might have envied. She paused, and stared familiarly at the Soul Agent. There was a time when that sharp, sarcastic visage would have repelled and frozen her heart in an instant. But what cared she now? she saw only the man, the black coat, white linen, and kid gloves—in a word, the possible customer.

"Not that I am aware of," replied the Soul Agent, a little disconcerted by this sudden address.

"You look quite a 'grave man,' " continued the girl, still quoting Shakespeare, that poet of the people, "I hope you have not dropped your heart into the river."

"I never had a heart, my dear," said the Soul Agent, in his most biting tone, "and I suspect you would have been better without one yourself."

The girl passed on with a disdainful toss of her head, and a twitch of her obstinate shawl, whilst two city clerks presented themselves to the criticism of Ignatius.

How very pale, thin, threadbare, and cypher-like they looked! Fourteen hours a day they made entries, and added up columns of accounts in a dusky warehouse, Their lives passed away like revolving water-wheels. Some day they will die, and be replaced by other machines like themselves.

They were walking Number Ones, and added together, they made—Two. If ever they caught a snatch of pleasure, they were too tired to enjoy, or too bewildered with the change to appreciate it.

Next followed a fat cheesemonger, with a round, unmeaning face. He had passed so much of his life amongst cheese and bacon, that he felt almost a cheese or a pig himself.

Then passed a sweep, and an Irish bricklayer, with a brick-dust complexion and a short black pipe, and an old woman who resembled Sycorax, and three more girls of easy virtue, who stopped to sing the Soul Agent a verse of a strange song; and many other quaint masks, with souls behind them, catching a feeble glimpse of existence through the dim and distorted medium of their perverse senses.

All these the Soul Agent carelessly scanned, till, hearing a clock strike the half hour, he strolled leisurely towards the office of the Timeserver newspaper.

In a dismal court, not far from the Thames, stands the vast factory from which issues a stream of words singularly resembling in character the river in its neighbourhood.

If beneath the turbid waters of the Thames there be cats and dogs in a state of advanced decomposition, beneath the flowing paragraphs of the Timeserver there are ideas and suggestions no less foul and insalubrious. If the Thames water, unfiltered, be poison to the stomach, the tone of thought in the Timeserver is, to minds that cannot sift it of its hackneyed fallacies, to the full as dangerous. If the Thames, with all its hidden filth, be still useful to the world, so is the Timeserver, with all its lies in masquerade. Both have their uses and their abuses. Neither of them have a pure drop in their veins. Both are daily recruited from sewers of corruption. As there is more merchandize embarked and disembarked in the Thames than in any other river, so there is more news conveyed and misrepresented by the Timeserver than by any other journal. Of the two, it were difficult to say which we swallow with the greatest repugnance, Thames water, or Timeserver articles.

The Soul-Agent arrived at the door of this literary Pandemonium. He was a great man there; though few, even of those employed in the establishment, were aware of the fact. Scarcely noticing the few persons he encountered, and who saluted him with suspicious awe, he made his way along a passage, and up two flights of stairs, to a mysterious-looking door of red cloth. On ringing a bell at the side, this door flew open, as did also a second door covered with iron plates, which faced him as he entered. Having passed the second portal, Ignatius found himself in a small snug chamber, with a large office table in the centre, and a fire burning in the grate, which, in fact, consisted of several letters undergoing annihilation at the hands of a gentleman whose back only was visible.

He was an elderly man, with a very bloated face, a slightly humped back, and disproportionately short legs. His nose was large and red, his eyes small, and half buried in his fat cheeks. Eyebrows or lashes he did not, to appearance, possess. His dress was clerical in cut, with the exception of a heavy gold chain round his neck.

At the noise of the Soul-Agent's entry, the person occupied in burning the papers looked round, and nodded in a familiar, though uneasy manner. He was a large-featured, coarse-looking man, something like the barristers one sees in courts of law, bullying witnesses. His head was nearly bald. His dress was that of a cockney sportsman. There was profound cunning in his sharp greenish eyes, and a sinister expression about his large jaw, which could not fail to strike even a superficial observer.

"Good evening, Grey," said the sportsman, "you are just in time to give your opinion. The Austrian remittance falls short this week."

"It is the third time since the close of the war," said the humpback, in a mild croaking tone.

"Do? Confound the rascals, give it them in a thundering leader, teach them to pay their debts of honour, d—n them!" replied the green-eyed gentleman.

"Yes, spare the rod and spoil the child," said the hunchback, "but the times are changed."

"I mean," insinuated the small gentleman, "that we have not so strong a hold on them as we had. They can do without us."

"Pshaw, the rascals do not see an inch before their noses," rejoined the sportsman, "they trust to their infernal bayonets too much, like everybody else just now."

"I will see the ambassador this very night," said the Soul-Agent sternly, suddenly assuming a tone of leadership, which his companions rarely resisted; "we must remember that though, as a quorum, we represent the committee of shareholders, we have to account for our acts. Besides, Twiggins, you are really too hasty altogether; you made us give ourselves the lie last week point blank, about the Roman business. Even the Timeserver is not unassailable, and the cursed Daily Nous watches us like a cat after a bird. They are a little timid in Bobbery Street, but they will take their opportunity, depend upon it, if we indulge in any glaring inconsistency just now."

"I thought we had thrown consistency overboard long ago," croaked the dwarf, with a mock humility which Ignatius fully understood.

"Yes," replied the latter, "as a principle, but not as a blind. It is all very well for a French mouchard to deny himself the luxury of a shirt, but he cannot dispense with a dickey."

"Comparisons are odious," said the cockney sportsman. "However, let Grey see their poor devil of an Ambassador, and we will hang fire till we get his answer, eh?" And the speaker, having delivered this sentiment with great assumption of importance, looked towards the dwarf for his approval.

"Just so," said the humpback, whose eyes were riveted upon a piece of paper, on which Ignatius was scribbling a few words.

"Will that do, Mr. Somers?" said the Soul Agent, passing the slip of paper carelessly to the dwarf. Its contents ran thus—

The dwarf, whom we have heard called Mr. Somers, appeared to read these few words with acute attention several times. Once or twice he raised his pen, as if to alter, but refrained on detecting the eye of Ignatius fixed upon him with a peculiarly indifferent expression, that he had learned to interpret differently. He therefore contented himself with underlining the word very, and handed the paper to Twiggins.

"All right," said the sportsman, thrusting the piece of paper into an envelope, and dropping it through a letter-slip in the floor. "I hope, for the editor's sake, he has not written his article beforehand."

"Not he," said Ignatius, "that sort of men have but one spur—necessity. Not even wine can stimulate the brain of an old hack scribbler of all work. By the bye, has the Pope written to explain the deficiency?"

"O yes, there was a letter from the Cardinal Raggolini yesterday," replied the dwarf; "the Rotmucks are holding back with their loan, like Jews as they are."

"Not a bit of it," interrupted Twiggins, "I have obtained a piece of information which explains the whole business. Baron de Rotmuck shewed a great deal of pluck in the matter. He asked the Pope to remove all objectionable laws respecting his countrymen. The Pope and the Cardinals refused. Rotmuck obtained a private interview with Pio. 'I'll tell you what,' said the baron, 'your Holiness may be Pope of Rome to-day, but I am master of Europe to-day, to-morrow, and the day after. I am the greater man of the two. But I have my fancies. I know you and your long-robed knaves to be capable of cheating a Jew, or even a Greek, and that is saying a great deal. No matter; have the extreme condescension to kiss my great toe, and the loan shall be taken up at all hazards to-morrow!' To this the Pope replied, that he would pray him out of purgatory (and into a worse place) first. 'Then,' said Rotmuck, coolly, 'if your Holiness require money, I shall raise my demands, that is all; so you may guess my terms, you who are fond of having your toe kissed by the people.' "

"Who told you that story?" said Ignatius, laughing at the off-hand style of Twiggins's anecdote.

"Why, if you will know, I had it at dinner yesterday, from Ben Sidonia himself."

"His romances are good," said the Soul Agent, "and so would be his speeches, if any man could make head against facts as plain as the sun at noonday. But Hebrew heroism is a scarce commodity, I fancy."

"No," said Ignatius, "the standing orders will do for him. To turn to a more important matter—the ministry is shaky."

"The odds are two to one against its escape on the A.B.C. question," said the sportsman.

"These poor Whigs," said Ignatius thoughtfully, "they are so fond of office, they want the salaries so much. They are so liberal with every thing but money."

"They have no bottom," said the sportsman; "though they have an uncommon talent for finding the gap in a fence if there is one."

"And if they go out, how long can the landlord party keep their ground? Can they take office at all?"

"Till a grand battue comes off," said Twiggins, "with Free-trade reformers as sportsmen!"

"The deluge that will drown us with them, if we do not get an ark of safety built in time," replied the Soul Agent, with marked emphasis.

"What, Universal Suffrage? why, a vote for every man in the country above twenty-one years of age."

"O, hang the Chartists! I am not afraid of them or their oracles," said Twiggins, laughing; "besides, we have made the middle classes believe that they are robbers and pickpockets."

"You will find the real leaders of the movement party something different from the Chartists you talk of," said Ignatius; "I tell you they are Republicans—men of the Cromwell, Mirabeau, Mazzini, Lamartine, Kossuth order. They have both policy and courage; I know something of their method."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the dwarf; "a few ragamuffins to break windows at half-a-crown a head, and we can command special constables enough to beat the grand army of Xerxes, in numbers."

"And in courage?" sneered Ignatius. "But you are mistaken; the middle classes are suffering too bitterly from restricted currency, over-taxation, and colonial bungling. They are beginning to see their own interest, and it pulls with the people. So must we, if we mean to live out the tempest. As for the ministry—make hay while the sun shines. And now a word on France."

"To-day, to-morrow, the day after. I cannot tell. It gains ground daily, as it has gained ground since '83, We must moderate our tone. If my advice were followed, we should abandon the poor ape of the Elysée at once. Louis Napoleon is an impotent phantom, a mere nominis umbra. In a word, I consider that every commercial interest of the Timeserver depends upon our taking a bold course. Our subsidies are failing us from those we have supported, our name stinks in the nostrils of the public, we are burned in effigy daily. In my opinion, we must either take the lead in liberalism, or perish."

"Humph!" said the dwarf, with that air of stolid scepticism which seems to defy conviction, "I think we had better look before we leap. As far as an extra lift to the Manchester school goes, I should not object."

"No," said Ignatius, "especially when they come forward to annihilate our property, by throwing open the news market to every publishing adventurer. What are we to expect, if penny morning papers become the order of the day? When an advertisement we charge a crown for is to be had for a shilling? when, with no stamp, no advertisement, no paper duty, we are compelled to exert all the resources of our capital, machinery, and organisation, to compete with rivals that undersell us, even on the certainty of loss? What are we to do, I say, when it becomes necessary to reduce our price three-fifths, and quadruple our sale, if we do not manage to enlist friends amongst the masses of the people? when the sudden rise of new journals, advocating new principles, and conducted on new systems, threaten to eclipse even the prestige of our name? when our enormous dividends not only are threatened with diminution, but with utter extinction? What are we to do then?"

"Shut up shop, I suppose," replied the sportsman, with a grim laugh. "But you are giving way to strange fancies, you have taken an extra glass of claret—you surely do not mean seriously half you say?"

"I mean all, and more than I have thus vaguely hinted at. I mean that we live in an age, when days count for years of more torpid history."

"I see nothing of the fiery element you seem to dread so much," said the hunchback, "everything seems quiet. The people are put down, abroad and at home. The continental press is gagged, the bayonet is king everywhere—even in France."

"Trust me," said Ignatius, solemnly, "we are smoking cigars on barrels of gunpowder (once more to quote my friend Contarini). Up to the moment of explosion, we are safe enough; after that—advertise for our arms and legs in any papers you please."

"Well, what do you propose?" said the dwarf, in the querulous tone of incapacity, combined with repugnance to the acknowledgment of superior resources.

"Aye, what?" said Twiggins, carelessly, as if he would have disguised the involuntary respect he felt for all the propositions of Ignatius.

"To strike in to-morrow on some great topic, with twice the boldness, twice the liberality, and twice the brilliancy of a leader in the National or La Presse."

"Well, as you like," said the sportsman, "vive la bagatelle. Life is a toss up—the best shot misses his bird sometimes."

"I wash my hands of the responsibility," said the dwarf, shrugging his shoulders—a very necessary operation, by the way, in his case.

"I undertake all the responsibility," said Ignatius, coldly, restraining the curl of contempt which played about his mouth corners.

"No," said Ignatius, "we must have new blood in the affair. We must have a little of the real stuff about it, or the articles will look too much like mountebanks in mufti. You may dress any man in Bond Street, even a crossing-sweeper, but you can't teach him to walk and look like a gentleman. The old style won't do; and the new ideas will bother our old stage thunderers. I have my eye upon a man who will serve our turn, if we can enlist him for the moment."

"At none at all—but a few words in the proper tone, and a lie which nobody can tell but myself."

"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the two committee-men, "and who is this gullible Phœnix of democrats?"

"Yes," said the Soul Agent, "and now, gentlemen, good evening. I must defer seeing the Austrian ambassador until to-morrow, unless I meet him at Lord Rattlesnake's soirée."

It must be confessed that the Soul Agent had profited by the lessons of Viridor. Strange infatuation! Ignatius yet dreamed of bending to his will the spirit which already began to regulate the pulsations of his own strange destiny.

As the three Parcæ of the Timeserver were about to quit the apartment, there came a sudden ringing at the bell, which betokened urgency or importance on the part of the ringer.

A courier rushed into the room, flung down a packet upon the table, and leaned exhausted against the door.

"It is the Austrian remittance," he whispered, and scribbled on a fresh slip of paper, almost at one stroke of his pen, the words—"Butter for Austria, orders revoked."

The two committee-men nodded assent, and the decree was committed to the letter-box, like the accusations, of old, to the mouths of the Venetian lions.

"They will take care of you below," said the sportsman to the courier, who bowed low, and staggered from the apartment.

"We can divide the notes to-morrow," said the dwarf, with a hideous leer, turning his key in the lock of the outer door.

There were two other locks on the door. Ignatius and the sportsman each followed in turn the example of their companion, and left the chamber of mystery, like the gold of the robbers,* accessible "not to one, nor to two, but to three."

Such are the precautions which rogues are obliged to take one against the other, in the great City of Jugglers.

"I should like to see the Juliet to such a Romeo," said Ignatius. "But I know all about it; it is the agent of Lord John Twaddle he has to meet."

"The devil it is! He takes bribes, then, on his own account? that is against our compact," said the sportsman, moving his huge frame uneasily in his place.

"We must buy him d——d cheap then," said the sportsman, "for his whole party may be at a discount to-morrow."

"So may we ourselves," said Ignatius, "if we let either Somers or Twaddle cast their shadows over our columns. I have a great mind to sell my shares in the Timeserver, and start a rival."

"A man in battle may escape a great many bullets, and yet be shot at last," muttered the Soul Agent.

In the day-time, the glare of sunshine and the turmoil of business distract the mind, and force attention to immediate objects. In the hours of night, forms become vague, details melt into obscurity, and the spirit is enabled to concentrate its power upon the essences of things—upon the supreme abstractions which embrace all minor distinctions.

Viridor gazed upon the stars, the calm and beautiful companions of his long vigils. He strove to collect, as in a focus of light, the rays which had by turns illuminated his studies. That night he desired to be all he had ever felt himself in his most exalted moments. A sudden dread came over him. A black phantom stalked at his side. Cold sweat burst from his pores, the pulsations of his heart seemed to cease, and the giant Despair for an instant threatened to paralyse his whole spiritual being.

He had dreamed a dream which that night was to realise or destroy. He had claimed an empire which that night was to see acknowledged or denied for ever. He had preached a religion—that night was to hail him prophet, or brand him as fanatic.

A new and extraneous influence had disturbed the balance of his soul. The fire of human had dimmed the flame of spiritual love. His ambition had lost its unity; selfish desire had mingled with the passion of the universe. He remembered the moral of the weird romance. Glyndon and Zanoni danced before his thoughts till they vanished, or merged in the pale spectre of their creator, who, like the phantoms of his art, had also fallen—fallen from the Empyrean of the Gods, into the chaos of the earth-lusts, and the shadows of the threshold.

"O, Bulwer, Bulwer! what fatal timidity could check thy bold career? what nameless doubt could cause thy faith to waver? What secret chain debarred thy soul from liberty? So much—and yet no more. So near—and yet to pause. The ears of the world—and yet silent. Speak, speak!—or for ever slumber. And I—I feel the salvation of a world streaming through my veins, and Doubt freezes the torrent. My spirit sees; but clouds obscure my vision. My conscience dictates, but my brain abjures obedience. My science teaches, but my tongue refuses utterance."

Thus musing in feverish depression Viridor strode along. He prayed inwardly to all the spirits of the Infinite for strength in the great crisis of his destiny. He strove to exalt his intelligence by contemplating the present condition and possible future of his human brethren. The Asmodeus, Imagination, removed for him, not only the roofs, but the very walls and doors of every house he passed,—or rather rendered them transparent as those palaces of crystal described in necromantic legends. He saw the juggler-citizens, each in the narrow circle of his own petty lights, intrenching and fortifying himself against the dishonesty of his fellows, whose delusion he contrived. He saw the thousand evils of a system of society founded upon man's pettiest instincts. He saw the endless chain of common cares and miseries that bound men to one another, without uniting them in spirit; that made, of every one, an old man of the sea to some neighbour-Sinbad. He saw the greatness of existing ignorance, and the smallness of existing rulers. He saw the people crying for labour, for education, for food, bodily and mental; and the arbiters of their destinies playing comedies at Westminster, sacrificing truth to party interest, conviction to personal vanity, and the people to everything. All this he saw—and more than this; he saw himself, and others like him, men of thought and action, of power to conceive and realise the desires that burned within the age, excluded by a brute-force tyranny, an idle subterfuge, a legalised conspiracy of orthodox social banditti, from all part and share in the direction of the community to which he belonged; that is to say, he found himself a shareholder in a company, without a voice as to the distribution of his own property—an existing fact, whose existence could not be denied, and yet was not admitted.

The blood of Viridor boiled in its veins. He felt a rebel in his heart against the dogged crew of dunces and conspirators who stood between him and his heritage. His own wrongs alone justified, the wrongs of millions necessitated, his resolve. It was no common oath that Viridor registered, as from the depths of his soul he murmured these ominous words—

"Justice for the people—at all hazards, at every cost. Better were the anarchy of light, than the sombre despotism of darkness. Away with all temporising, with all half measures. If there be a Truth, let us declare it. If there be a Right, let us combat for it. If our cause be just, why should we hesitate to set fame, fortune, and life on the cast? Hundreds, perhaps thousands, have done so. They sleep in death, or starve in exile, beneath the envenomed calumnies of their enemies. The slaves of privilege and of money, the haters of enlightenment and liberty, the advocates of bayonets and bloodshed, of police-spies and passports, have thrown down the gauntlet, and defied us. They have said, 'We are strong, and might is right.' Let us prove to them that we are the stronger—and that justice is mercy."

Thus did Viridor revolve in his breast a war terrible and decisive against the whole oligarchy of Europe. Ever faithful to his grand philosophical dogma that ideas are the origin of all things, he forged the weapons of his party in the Etna of his soul. The Vulcan of the terrestrial gods, he prepared the thunderbolts of truth by which whole armies of giants are stricken down and consumed to ashes. He said, "There is no treason but falsehood, and every honest man is its avenger!"

In this frame of mind, he entered an hotel near Charing Cross, and straightway directed his steps to a large room on the first floor of the building, in which some twenty of his brethren were assembled.

All paused in their conversation at the entrance of Viridor. Those who had already seen the poet, crowded around him, eagerly grasping his hand. Those to whom he was personally a stranger, did not require to be told his name. His portrait was in all their hearts.

As soon as the first greetings were over, Viridor, as Grand Master of the Supreme Illuminati, was requested to preside.

He accordingly seated himself at the head of a table, amply provided with writing materials, and covered with a crimson cloth, in the centre of which, a figure of liberty, with various emblematical devices, was worked in golden embroidery. The other Illuminati took their seats round the table. Their physiognomies would have deeply interested a Lavater. Never since the birth of history had been assembled twenty such faces as were there present. Differing from one another in the most marked manner, in age, in nationality, in individual character, there was, in all, a varied expression of intelligence, earnestness, and enthusiasm, unknown to the vulgar herd. There was not, amongst them, a single example of the coarse, animal, malignant countenances to be met with in every public assembly, even in the Houses of Lords and Commons, where any one who will take the trouble to observe, may see creatures on two legs, which it seems almost farcical to set down as men.

About one half of the assembled council were Englishmen. Amongst the remaining portion were representatives of the German, Polish, French, Hungarian, and Italian nations. Every minute increased the numbers of the assembly.

At length Viridor rose to open the proceedings. Before beginning to speak, he cast one more anxious glance towards the door. At that instant it opened, and the majestic figure of Darian appeared on the threshold.

"Gentlemen," said Viridor, a sudden radiance overspreading his countenance, "I have the most sincere delight in presenting to you a new member of our sacred and eternal order, in the person of Arthur Bolingbroke Darian, commonly known as the Duke of St. George, a true democrat and citizen of the light; late general of the patriots in the Hungarian Republic."

All eyes were fixed upon Darian, as his friend uttered these words in that clear, ringing tone so eminently adapted to command the attention of an assembly.

The impression produced by the new comer was decidedly favourable. Few eyes could regard without admiration, the face and figure of the republican chief. There was something irresistibly prepossessing in the look of his eye, which was not always the case with Viridor, who at times unconsciously adopted a sternness of demeanour, which the ignorant might have mistaken for hauteur.

Darian seated himself on the first vacant chair he could find, between a dark and bearded Roman and a white-haired German philosopher. The silence, which had been momentarily interrupted, was restored, and Viridor again prepared to speak. He looked, perhaps, somewhat paler than usual, and a slight dampness caused his long silky hair to cling to his temples. Not a single line, not even the almost habitual contraction of his brows, disturbed the marble serenity of his broad smooth forehead. His deep, inscrutable eyes flashed with a singular brilliance. Tears glittered on their long dark lashes—tears forced from the heart by intensity of sympathetic exaltation. He stood, poised firmly, like a statue of Destiny, drawn up to his full height, his arms folded on his chest, his head slightly bent, in order to behold the faces of his auditors. With a rapid glance, he scanned the visages of all who were present. In every case, he read courage and resolution, confidence and hope. With a voice that startled his hearers by its concentrated feeling and thrilling distinctness, he began his address:—

"Lovers of light, and brothers in the war of liberty! We have met to-day, for no idle purposes of oratorical display—for no contemptible gratification of vanity in verbal contentions. We are all animated by one great desire—to fulfill to the utmost our destinies as men; to limit our ambition, not by our necessities, but by our powers; to act upon earth in accordance with our glorious nature as eternally progressive beings. The same sympathetic love for all living spirits animates our hearts. The same unquenchable antipathy to all voluntary infliction of pain—that is, tyranny—in whatever shape, fires our intelligence. Whatever our individual creeds or systems, we agree at least in the one great moral necessity of union to happiness. We see no hope for men without union of thought, union of sentiment, and union of action. My friends, do I speak your thoughts?"

"To effect great objects, great means are required. We behold gigantic evils, and history teaches us their wondrous ancientness. We are told by the cowardly, and the weak, and the selfish, that they are incurable—that they are necessary. The apathetic tell us not to hurry, to await the natural course of events, to trust to time and patience.

"But what is the natural course of events? Every step taken by man towards a better and a nobler life! What cognate law fixes a limit to the extent or the rapidity of progress? None. Let us, then, dare to measure our possibility of success; not by the dull cant of those rushlight spirits, who boast themselves pre-eminently practical, because the circle illumined by their rays is but a few feet in diameter; but by the broad inductions of our own reason from history, science, and reflection.

"To make men united and happy—I speak only of approximate union and happiness, for all ideal states of perfection are unattainable as absolutes—to make men united and happy, two things are mainly requisite: Love—mutual sympathy, benevolence, and abnegation of selfishness in its worst sense; and Knowledge—that is, the power of rendering nature subservient to our wants.

"Love, Christian love (there are no Christians yet), destroys poverty by its practice of regarding sins of omission and commission with equal severity. Thus, if the Marquis of X.Y.Z. allow certain of his fellow-men to starve to death, he having ample means to relieve them, he, as a pretender to Christianity, or even humanity, must conscientiously regard himself as a murderer. He is indeed a far baser murderer than the highwayman, who violently robs upon the road; for the latter may have the pretext of desperation and want; but the former commits his murder in cold blood, without risk, and from a far meaner motive. This appears a little harsh at first sight; but on minute inspection, it will be found that the conclusion is irresistible. Begin by supposing the case of a drowning man, whom you could save by extending your hand, but do not; and pursuing the illustration of the idea by examples gradually more remote, you will find that though distance lend enchantment to the view of crime, it cannot diminish its responsibility. The coward, who rolls a stone from the summit of a mountain to crush his foe in the ravine, is certainly no less criminal than the ruffian who boldly drives a stiletto to the heart of his enemy.

"The conscience of the present age must be awakened, its morality enlarged, its philanthropic efforts aggrandised and stimulated. Sects must be annihilated, but Christianity must be revivified. Bishops must become extinct; Church pluralists, deans and chapters, cannibal vicars, and starved curates, be spoken of as melancholy traditions; but the little children and the poor, which Jesus loved, must be cared for, and fed, and clothed; even though tithes be abolished, Church property confiscated, and the white surplices of the trained professors of a religion which is too grand, too noble, and too beautiful for the mechanical exhibitions of priestcraft, be converted into shirts for the labourer, and robes for the fair daughters of the people, no longer driven to sell their souls and bodies, for bread, to the lust of the debauchee, or the avarice of the speculator!"

A burst of sombre approbation followed this uncompromising analysis, and the Grand Master continued his address, in a calm but not less earnest strain—

"By the doctrine of love, the hearts of men must be revolutionised. By the teachings of science, their intellects must be liberated, and exalted.

"Knowledge is the primary source of all wealth and all material comfort. The most expanded charity, without expanded education, is utterly unable to defend the cause of the people against their deadly and only real enemy—Poverty.

"There is a poverty of the mind, as of the purse, a poverty which it is as essential, nay, more essential, to remedy.

"This direr form of poverty pervades all classes. Its evil effects are most terrible in the highest positions. To combat the ignorance, therefore, of the so-called educated classes, is the most important of the duties of a true democrat and worshipper of light.

"Their greatest ignorance is their greatest crime. They refuse to recognise that the real interests of the people and of themselves are inseparable. They reluctantly admit that justice and policy are two forms of the same idea. All their power, all their fountains of enjoyment, spring from the labour of the many, directed by the science of the few. Yet they dream of an indolent luxury, a voluptuous routine, without mental effort or research. They do not feel that property exists but by sufferance; that to work for the community, is the condition of every temporary possession of wealth; that the duties of an office neglected, entail loss of place and salary; that the resources of a country must either be developed in proportion to its population, or devoured by its inhabitants, who eventually devour one another, for lack of other nutriment. And this is no poetic exaggeration, but a fearful truth, and every man who perishes from more or less immediate want, suffering, and care in a community, is a ghastly illustration of the principle I have exemplified.

"All progress originates in individual genius. The world will be governed, reformed, and regenerated for ever, despite all obstacles of time. If the governing powers of a country prove themselves wanting in the ability to govern, they will assuredly fall, and other more potent spirits arise in their room. There is no or in the case, no danger of the world perishing by the folly of a single incarnate soul, or of a single generation. The sons of light rise above the howling objurgations and monstrous apprehensions of all 'latter day' explosions. They mount the ladder of eternity with fearless step; neither dismayed by the chaotic darkness below, from which they have emerged, nor by the dazzling clouds of flame above, towards which they are ascending. The soul is an eternal pilgrim, student, and reformer. Good and Evil, are spiritual light and shadow. We have helped to make the past—we are making the present, we are planning the future.

"Such, Oh my friends, is a feeble outline of the principles I would fain hope all here subscribe to!"

"All, all!" responded the Illuminati, in tempestuous approval, whilst their inspired leader thus concluded his harangue:—

"If I have been prolix, forgive me. I believed that to express fundamental ideas, in which we could unhesitatingly unite, was, above all, the primary duty of the glorious position in which you have placed me—a position which it were mockery to add, I should but insult by comparison with the thrones of worldly rulers. By your free choice you have elected me your President. I confess that before entering this hall, my soul trembled beneath the weight of so sublime a burden. But it trembles no more. I read in the noble countenances around me, the purity of a triumph over all petty and hateful ambitions. It has been our unanimous desire that all fruitless discussions should be avoided. Nevertheless, as I see before me many men older, wiser, and, I would fain believe, even more zealous in the cause of liberty than myself, I entreat you, my brothers in hope, to correct me if I have erred, to question me if I have been obscure, and to supply my deficiencies where I have failed in expression.

"It now only remains for me to point out briefly the chief positive objects, to the attainment of which, according to my judgment, all our efforts should be directed in this country.

"And, firstly, without universal suffrage, without a parliament elected by the people, it seems to me that all progress is impossible, unless out-door agitation be adopted as a permanent system, and intimidation be substituted for reason, as an element of government. What have we seen of late years? A reign of terror! Pale Fear, enthroned as king—an obtuse and selfish pack of legislators, frightened, literally frightened, into one measure after another, by the determined menaces of external politicians.

"Witness the Reform Bill, and the pitiful Whigs, ready even to join in a rebellion projected by the stronger spirits who inspired them. Witness the triumph of the Anti-Corn-Law League!

"It is useless to reason with the corrupt and loquacious band, who, under the banners of Whiggery or Protection, waste the life and resources of the country in their paltry struggles for place, patronage, and power. The suffrage we must conquer from their fears, not sue for from their intelligence. The serfs of Robert the Devil, or Lord John Twaddle, must be swept away, to 'make way for honester men,' The great doctrine of equal political rights must be philosophically and morally inculcated by every means in our power, more especially amid the educated classes, who have been so accustomed to hear the truth vilified and travestied in Timeservers, Slaughterly Reviews, and other repositories of hireling calumny, that they have quite lost sight of the real bearings of the question.

"I leave it to you, my friends, to point out, in turn, the arguments most effectual in support of this supreme and vital object to all legislative reform.

"It is the only road to the realisation of the great ideas which every philosophic lover of his race must cherish and contend for.

"National Education, universal, gratuitous, and liberal, absolutely free from all sectarian influence.

"National Life Assurance, by which the government guarantees to every honest man, willing to labour, the opportunity of working, or support without degradation, with provision for the orphan and the aged, to the amplest extent of human necessities and comforts.

"National Justice, free of all charge, and therefore accessible to the poor, as easily as the rich.

"A National Currency adequate to the wants of expanding commerce, and destructive of all monopoly of the circulating medium.

"A National System of Taxation, levied solely on property and income according to just estimates of value, and not on the present plan of indiscriminate plunder.

"A National Army consisting of every adult in the commonwealth, open as a profession to all classes, on the Prussian or French system—by examinations for promotion, and entirely without purchase of commissions. The standing army to be employed in public works.

"A National Emigration System, offering every reasonable encouragement to colonists in the shape of passages, free, or on credit, grants of land, with every practicable information and assistance.

"My friends, there is nothing visionary or Utopian in these great and inevitable demands of the age. It is a fine thing for men who never yet could devise a plan, worthy if even capable of execution, to denounce the poet or philosopher who assumes the statesman, as a dreamer and an impostor. I see before me the authors of books and editors of journals, in which the noblest principles and most subtle difficulties of policy, legislative and administrative, have been handled with consummate talent. It makes me smile to hear such minds compared—yes, compared disadvantageously as candidates for the exercise of national trust and power, with country gentlemen of sporting renown—dandies of May Fair, and denizens of 'tape and sealing-wax' offices. Literary men, unless at the same time landholders or millionaires (which removes all objections at once), are sneered at by the toadies of the Aristocrats or Plutocrats. But what could ordinary statesmen, with their barren inventions, ignorant confidence in their limited experience, and cautious timidities, have done during the late revolutions in Paris, in Rome, in Hungary? We know what they did—they ran away like their masters. Intrigue, brute, force, and gold, have restored them for the moment to power. Yet even in these triumphs they are forced to cringe to the giant they have chained. Without the venal slaves and reckless renegades of the press, they would vainly seek for Mamelukes to carry out their designs. Let us not be daunted by the hollow semblance of strength which they present. Within, all is rottenness. Sooner or later human reason must reject such miserable abortions as Thiers and Lord John Twaddle, whose dwarfish, insignificant forms, marvellously typify the pettiness of their undeveloped intellects.

"My friends, we are the miners of thought—true ideas are the diamonds we seek to discover. Let us display such jewels as we may find, to the eyes of our fellow-men, that they may recognise their beauty, and have faith in their reality. Let us speak our convictions boldly, in the simplest and most intelligible form. Let us proclaim our designs in the most fearless tones. Let us show the people that our hearts, our intellects, and our lives, are devoted to their liberation; and if the tyrants rejoice over our graves, let us leave our memories and our words to a posterity that must avenge us by its admiration, whilst our immortal spirits yet bravely continue to scale the ladder of everlasting perfectibility!"

The speech of the Grand Master was followed by enthusiastic acclamations. One after the other, all the Illuminati present rose to give in their adherence to the principles and measures which Viridor had advocated. With regard to the practical suggestions of his address, the most valuable developments and the most lucid arrangements were proposed, and demonstrated to be capable of easy execution, The stale cobweb objections of apathy and ignorance were swept away, till not a vestige remained to harass the mind of the assembly.

The most philosophical mode of primary education, and the best system for national universities, open to all classes and sects; the annihilation of pauperism by a universal benefit association supplying the place of a degrading poor-law; the extinction of mendicancy and professional thievery, by labour guarantees and emigration; the communion of employers and employed, by national and corresponding labour-registries in every town, for gratuitous advertisements and information; a new plan for model-dwellings; the reduction of the national debt, by rejection of the gold standard as the base of currency-laws, and its gradual conversion into circulating medium; the vast economy in cost, and increase in utility, of the military organisation; the taxation of the dead as the most rational of all impositions: the facilities of buying and selling land without expense; the suppression of adulteration and overcharges by shopkeepers; the utter abolition of arrest for debt, except as fraud; the facilities of credit, and impossibility of money scarcity, with an adequate currency; the advantages accruing to literature, education, and commerce, by the abolishing of all taxes on knowledge; the economy in collecting the revenue, by the consolidation of assessed taxation, and dispensing with custom-houses; the effects of sanitary reform nobly carried out; public libraries and amusements for the people; and many other vitally-interesting topics were touched upon and discussed with clearness, brevity, and enthusiasm. Then followed some profoundly important statements as to the condition of the various states of Europe, and the prospects of true democracy; analyses of the various social and communist theories prevalent in France and Germany, and resolutions as to their hostility to all real liberty.

Much I regret that neither space nor time permits me to record speeches, of which single paragraphs were often more suggestive than whole sheets of Hansard. But at present I must content myself with relating the extraordinary proposition which terminated the proceedings of the night.

All had spoken but Darian. He rose, at length, and said, with impressive gravity,—

"You are aware, my friends, to what mad lengths barefaced venality and selfishness have gone in this city, and thence in every capital in Europe. The human soul is now bought and sold in the market-place, like cattle or vegetables. To say your soul is your own, is no longer regarded as a sign of courage, but of wealth. Soul-dealing has become a raging speculation. Everybody dabbles in it who takes any active part in the world. But we are no participators in the commerce; the souls we gain for our cause, are not to be gained by purchase. Yet these priceless spirits are made to suffer exquisite torments, by the corrupt mob which surrounds them. The soul-dealers are carried away by chimerical estimates. They are induced to persevere in their abominable traffic, by the gross ignorance of the speculative public.

"Brothers of the light, I have devised a scheme which may succeed in awakening the deluded multitude from their hallucinations.

"I propose to establish, with the least possible delay, a Grand Exposition of the Souls of All Nations!"

"It is a grand idea!" exclaimed Viridor, and all the Illuminati, in admiring wonder.

But how is such an exposition possible? you will perhaps exclaim, O reader, as, indeed, the Illuminati themselves did not fail to demand.

All things are possible to genius like Darian's. Read on, and learn. There is something to be learned in the next chapter for those whose spirits are awakened.

IT was not long before Darian, backed by Viridor and the secret council of the Illuminati, made public the adventurous proposition with which our last chapter concluded.

Darian, availing himself of the opportunities which his rank and vast wealth afforded, soon found a committee of distinguished names with which to appeal to the "flunkeyism" of the public. The committee was ultimately constituted, in about equal proportions, of all the three great ethico-political parties.

Nevertheless Darian, as President, with Viridor and other Illuminati as allies, possessed a decided preponderance in the committee. This was partly owing to their perfect union of will, partly to a leaning, more or less decided, towards liberalism, not to say Fire-worship, on the part of their aristocratic and Mosaic coadjutors.

The dark Ignatius, who had still a lingering notion of forming an advantageous political alliance with Darian, and of availing himself of the literary genius of Viridor, was a most influential supporter of all their propositions. By his supreme command (which, as his wealth and importance increased daily, owing to the prodigious amount of business transacted at the Soul-Agency offices), a series of articles and reports appeared in the Timeserver, extolling to the skies the Duke of St. George's mysterious and original enterprise.

This caused the Daily Nous to "smell a rat"—which, indeed, was but natural, as Sir James Rattam, of letter-violating repute, was one of the committee. So the Daily Nous shook its head, and suspended its judgment. A young and lively contributor begged very hard to get a slashing satirical leader inserted. But the Editor told him, confidentially, to go and be hanged. So the Daily Nous suspended its wit, as well as its judgment.

The lively contributor did hang himself—from a gymnastic pole—and went through a course of fencing, pistol-shooting, and billiard playing, to dissipate by perspiration the gall of his disappointment.

The Morning Ghost, however, took up the proposed "Exposition" very kindly, and gave divers accounts of the dinners of the committee, which were worthy of the Arabian Nights and the poetry of fashion.

I rather like the Ghost for one thing. It is not so ill-natured as many of its contemporaries. I attacked the Ghost once with unnecessary ferocity. What was the result? A review, upon the whole, favourable, in many respects far more so than I deserved, unjust, it is true, in estimating the moral of my book,* but more than just as to its artistic merits.

[*The "Impostor, or, Born Without a Conscience" (phrenologically illustrated by the Author). This is another of the labours I shall always remember with a certain regret. In picturing the character of a subtle and consummate villain, I now see the danger of rendering vice attractive whilst exposing its mysteries. The work was, after all, but a wild, reckless sketch, which it were waste of time for any reasonable being to peruse, unless reduced to desperation by ennui, and on the verge of a "fashionable novel," from which mournful affliction, Heaven defend all friends! Curiously enough, at the moment, I, a mere novice, was dashing off the history of Mesmer de Biron's unparalleled crimes and follies, a master in the art, to wit, Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, was devising the horrors of his "Lucretia, or, The Children of the Night." "Children of the Night," indeed, both books! Books founded upon the same idea, as evidenced by a hundred curious coincidences in their pages. To have written "The Impostor" at twenty, was a blunder; to have published "Lucretia" at forty, something worse than an error. He who would paint Hells should paint also Heaven. Poison for tens and antidotes for units, are no good elements for works of popular circulation.]

The Assinœum—edited, if my memory of Paul Clifford be not deceptive, by the celebrated and versatile Mac Grawler—was extremely verbose in its recommendations as to the conduct of the proposed exposition. Whether any hope of "surreptitiously accumulating bustle" influenced their conduct, I cannot tell, any more than what was paid by Mr. ——, to exclude the advertisements of my work from their columns.

The Morning Cobbler, the Humbug, and the Globule, were also favorable to the Grand Exposition of Souls.

But the Evening Gun took the opportunity of attacking, with great spirit, the whole system of soul-dealing. The Exponent and Spectator were also beginning to rise boldly in defence of a more daring liberalism than had been yet popular with established journals. Neither was the sharp thunder of the Diapason silent. The gibes of the Hunchback were full of dubious bitterness, but the leviathan Timeserver belched defiance of all opposition. The greater number of the weekly press seemed prepared to stem the torrent of demoralisation which threatened the age; and several of the provincial papers especially, made noble, though for the time ineffectual, exertions.

Meanwhile, Darian and Viridor bore the wondering distrust of their friends with secret confidence in their approaching triumph. Subscriptions were collected, prize masks modelled and cast, and a vast building prepared for the coming display of the earth's spiritual resources.

At length the day for opening the exhibition was announced, and the following prospectus issued to the astonished public:—

"GRAND EXPOSITION

"OF THE

"SOULS OF ALL NATIONS.

——

"Before resorting to this extreme measure (of human veracity), the committee were recommended to consider the ancient saying, 'in vino veritas—in wine, truth'—but though convinced to a great extent of the truth of the saying itself (which probably was originated by Bacchus in the act of rolling under the Olympian mahogany), the committee were dismayed by the prospect of the difficulty and expense of maintaining so large a number of persons as their catalogue contains, exhibited in a permanent state of veracious intoxication. They also dreaded, in thus throwing open the portals of the souls, lest the bodies which they inhabited should suffer by the draught, and the Exposition ultimately become dead drunk—in a sense far more shocking than that ordinarily implied by the phrase.

"The Exposition, therefore, will consist of a choice collection of souls of every class, order, and species, which, unable to vibrate steadily between reason and imagination, have had the misfortune to lose their balance in favour of the latter function. These spirits out of their equilibrium, commonly known as lunatics, from a certain tendency to abandon this miserable earth for its snug little satellite, the moon (supposed to contain less water to damp the spirits than its primary); these eccentric individualities, whose natal stars are comets and other celestial monsters, will offer to intelligent soul-dealers the most admirable opportunities for investigating the value of the invisible merchandise.

"Prizes will be given for the most extraordinary political, social, and scientific madman, in the shape of brazen masks, expressly designed and fabricated for the occasion.

The eve of the exhibition arrived; and Darian, with Basiline upon his arm, accompanied by Viridor, Ignatius, all the committee, and an immense number of their personal friends, commenced a tour of inspection, preparatory to the admission of the general public on the following day.

A temporary building of vast extent had been erected, in front of the Duke of Supperland's palace, in St. James's Park. The building was, in form, a huge rotunda, surrounded by wooden columns, which, together with the wails, were so adroitly painted as to represent, even to deception, stone long exposed to the action of the elements. From the simple capitals of these pillars arose a vast dome, surmounted by a colossal bust of Ignatius Loyola Grey, which Darian and Viridor had insisted upon, despite the modest objections of that worthy gentleman, who too soon, in the jealous hatred of his aristocratic and plutocratic allies, reaped the reward of his weakness.

In the interior, there were, circle within circle, rows of square cages, some twenty feet in length by twelve in breadth. Each of these was divided into two compartments—a bedroom, lighted only from above, and a sitting-room open on one side—which was protected by ornamental ironwork, as a wild-beast den by its bars. Each of these cages in the rotunda contained one or more lunatics, of the most varied descriptions. Above each cage was affixed a brief account of its inmate or inmates, and the cages were so arranged, side by side and back to front, that none of their occupants could see or communicate with one another—nor, indeed, had they any suspicion that they formed part of a Grand Exposition; having been brought blindfold to their present abodes, and being quite unconscious of one another's proximity. The walls facing the cages, which were, in fact, the backs of other similar dwellings, were splendidly tapestried, and the passages between covered by magnificent carpets. The dwellings of the lunatics were variously furnished, from the height of extravagant luxury to the depth of most abject simplicity. Each lived in a world of his own, an unconscious transcendentalist of the extreme party. Another cage, another world. Let us contemplate a few of these extravagant microcosms of the age.

EACH of the visitors had in his hand a printed catalogue of the souls exhibited. Brilliant jets of gas illumined the broad passages and successive cages, which rather resembled the stages of a long line of diminutive theatres, than anything else I can think of.

The interior resembled an apartment of a fashionable hotel in the utmost disorder and confusion. A tall and ghastly figure, in a torn shooting coat, with long, wiry, red whiskers and beard, strode irregularly up and down the apartment.

He appeared utterly unconscious of the presence of strangers, and continued to mutter half audible soliloquies, in a tone that vibrated between the most savage rage and the most overwhelming sentiment of remorse.

"It must be had—must!" he murmured, "at all costs, at all hazards. I must write to my agent. Ha! what does he mean by this delay? Their rents are in in arrear! Their crops have failed! The old story. I know better. It is their infernal laziness! They boil their potatoes, smoke their pipes, and care for nobody but themselves. What a hell is suspense! What shall I do? let me see, shall I dine at the club? The Hock was bad yesterday. It is better at the Reform. I'd give a thousand pounds to horsewhip Baxter. It was he that black-balled me, I am sure of it; I recollect his saying once—Ha! what is that?"—and the madman stared in an insane agony of fear at the faces of the visitors, which to him were spectres from the abyss. "What! all—all dead—dead by cold, hunger—starved, murdered! Why do you fix those stony eyes upon me? It was not I that ordered your cottages to be levelled with the ground! I knew nothing of your poverty and blighted fields—at least I did not believe it—I thought it was a trick to frighten me. I wanted money, money, money! I had debts, there were writs—writs out against me, and the minister, curse him! he promised to make me governor of Madagascar! O thou villain, heartless, cold-blooded villain of an agent! to drive them out—in winter, too— the young children—found frozen to death—I refused the means of emigration? O devil of torment, is it not a debt of honour? does not my very existence depend upon its arrival—still no remittance, and I dare not die? Ha! ha! I am still the O'Dhoon, the great O'Dhoon, and my ancestors were kings, ha! ha! Let us once get repeal, and the fiend take the sheriff and his blackguards."

With a shudder of disgust the party passed on to the next number in the catalogue.

Was the superscription which Viridor, to whom that department had been almost exclusively abandoned, had chosen for its tenant.

A beautiful woman, about seven-and-twenty, with long black hair that streamed unconfined over her shoulders, crouched pitiably in the corner of a sofa, surrounded by the usual paraphernalia of a lady's boudoir.

Catching the eye of Viridor, who, with Darian and Basiline, was foremost in the crowd, she appealed to him in a tone of anguish that went home to the hearts of all hearers. Even the dark Ignatius contracted his brow slightly with an air of painful interest.

"My dear brother!" she exclaimed, feebly raising her head, and fixing her unnaturally lustrous eyes upon the noble countenance of the poet, "you have returned from India at last—after so many years! Oh! what I have suffered in your absence! Oh! what I have suffered by your loss! O, Henry, Henry, I am so wretched, so very wretched!"

And the poor lady buried her face in her arms, and sobbed convulsively for some minutes.

Basiline wept silently on the shoulder of Darian. There was scarcely a person present not deeply affected by the scene. Viridor and Darian exchanged one rapid glance of intelligence, and the former said in a whisper to the poet, "We are not come out of season, Viridor. It is not for proletarians alone that emancipation is needed."

"Married at the age of nineteen, to a man worth seven thousand a-year, aged sixty-five, of a jealous temperament. Ran away at the end of two years with Captain of Infantry. Deserted by Captain, who was involved in debt, and unable to support her. Received into the ——— Asylum on the 14th day of March, 18—."

"Es ist eine alte Geschichte
Doch bleibt es ewig neu.
'Tis an oft repeated story,
And yet for ever new,"

murmured Basiline, as they quitted the distressing spectacle, to gaze upon another victim.

All, save Darian, Viridor, and Ignatius, started, as they read the title of the succeeding compartment—

They beheld an old man with his hair white as the fleecy clouds of summer. His wrinkled visage revealed a dismal history of craft and toilsome cares. He appeared to enjoy a lucid interval—to enjoy, did I say? Alas! the wildest ravings of distracted oblivion were preferable to that old man's dread intervals of consciousness. He regarded the visitors with a sombre gaze of despair, whilst thus addressing them with a forced and hideous calmness—

"Look at me, children of earth, whoever you may be, and learn to profit by my deserved misfortunes! I was a king! I reigned by the choice of a nation, after years of exile and suffering, which did not teach me wisdom! I forgot that every magistrate is the servant of the people,—I forgot the crimes and punishments of my race,—I forgot my debt to the people, my master. I committed treason against my sovereigns,—I became their corrupter and tyrant, who should have been their benefactor and liberator; and I madly dreamed of opposing the laws of mental progress, and denying the authors of my existence as a monarch; until one day I heard the voice of my creator, like Adam after eating the forbidden fruit, and I fled in terror before the face of the master I had robbed and outraged."

Full of solemn reflections on the sins and penalty of this ancient man, the visitors continued their way to discover that the fourth cage enclosed—

This room wore an official aspect. There were papers tied with red tape, and files of reports and newspapers, and chairs of impenetrable horsehair, strong in the legs, and suited to bear the writhings of disappointment and aggrieved mortality.

A small man, with pinched-up, insignificant features, sat, with one leg crossed over the other, in an arm-chair before a writing-table. His countenance yet preserved an idiotic expression of finesse, as he muttered, with a hollow chuckle, "To delay—to say nothing, with an air of profundity—to sustain hopes, and trust to what may turn up—to steal the ideas and purchase the labour of men of talent, behold the art of statesmanship summed up in a paragraph. Egad! I must make some plausible reply to those confounded questions about Ireland this evening, but as for the measure of Old Bendigo, it must be suppressed at once. Only let us push off business to the close of the session, and we shall have the run of the house, like the younger brother at his seniors."

A man with coarse black hair, and a rubicund visage sprang upon his legs at the appearance of our party, and burst extempore into a flood of oratory.

In a ferocious exordium he denounced everybody, and every party, as monsters of iniquity and far-seeing cruelty. He attributed to the ministry and aristocracy, designs of the most marvellous complication, which none but a madman could have conceived. He denounced the more calm and philosophical democrats, as lukewarm traitors, or "visionary theorists" (the old hackneyed phrase of fools of all parties). He preached the pike, the musket, and the sabre, and immediate insurrection, in spite of all odds against him and his supporters. He asked what they meant by giving the Queen a million a year to spend in sugar-plums? and the Prince Consort another fifty thousand for cigars? "As for the national debt, why should the children pay what the fathers borrowed? why should they be taxed and ground to the dust, for the villanies of a man called Pitt, who, luckily for England, was dead and buried long ago. Take a sponge—make a clean wipe of it—and the thing was done. What they wanted was the Charter—no, there were six points—three cheers for every point—Hurrah!"

This man had been imprisoned for sedition, treated as a common felon, and eventually had been driven mad by poverty, and a wild consciousness of his own and the people's wrongs.

Little did he think that in the next apartment was the man to whom he was indebted for all his sufferings.

A low-browed, mean-looking creature, was rolling himself in a heap of straw on the floor of his cage. He gnashed his teeth with impotent fury, till the blood-stained foam dropped from the corners of his lips.

"A six months' voyage between me and England—here in the bush—in an Australian desert—with nothing stronger than tea to drink, and oxen for companions! Is this the fine position his pigmy lordship promised? Is this what I have sold myself to Hell for?—made myself a perjured, infamous, scouted wretch, at whose touch even murderers and burglars recoil! How well I recollect the day!—I was an informer before; but at least I had the law on my side. The peeler in plain clothes—he looked more of a gentleman, by G—, than Twaddle himself—took me to a house—I forget the street—we went in a cab. How polite the little Satan was! It was, 'Take a seat, Gruel,'—'don't be alarmed, Gruel,'—'a glass of wine, Gruel?' And how he lured me on, and twisted my thoughts inside out, and half made me believe that to be a lying, traitorous, heartless scoundrel, was next door to serving one's country, and getting statues on arches, like the Duke of Wellington! Oh, how his slippery gammon sickens me to think of, and to remember how I went among the poor, discontented fools, who waste their time in grumbling, instead of shooting down their rich, cold-blooded tyrants, and firing their d——d houses! how I swore brotherhood with them, and encouraged them to talk treason over their beer, and to trust me with their papers, and——and all to get up in a box to swear black was white, to get them locked up and transported, killed off on the sly, for anything I know. I recollect how my head spun round, and my knees knocked together, as a prisoner came up, as quiet and easy as if he had been the judge himself, and looked at me. O God! shall I ever forget those looks of cold contempt and wondering pity. They didn't care, they believed, at any rate, that they were right at bottom, and their friends called them martyrs. But I—I am branded, like Cain, with everlasting infamy. Go where I will, I dread recognition. And they have not even kept faith with me. They have sent me here, with a miserable hundred pounds in my pocket, and left me to get on as I can. How can I live in this quiet, country solitude? I, who have the memories of so many villanous lies, ingratitudes, and cowardly treacheries upon my conscience? I wish I had that little lordship by the throat—thus, thus—" and the poor wretch twisted a whisp of straw with furious excitement. "Die, die, dog of a lord," he yelled, "die, and let your knavish judges, who have no ears for the poor man, condemn me—ha! ha!—on my own oath—ha! ha! I have sworn to stronger things—die! die!" and the voice of the miserable ci-devant informer lapsed into inarticulate howlings, and threats of diabolical vengeance.

"He strangles the poor minister twenty times a day," said Viridor, "it would be an evil hour for the latter, if his cast-away tool were to break loose and encounter him alone!"

"It would perhaps be of more consequence to Twaddle, than to the rest of the world," said Darian, with unusual bitterness. "A slippery, prevaricating, faithless chameleon of a Whig, is an object of far greater abhorrence to a Fire-worshipper, than the most obstinate Tory, or even the most rabid ecclesiastical bigot."

Self love and vanity, excited to a fearful degree of sensitive suspicion, had turned his brain. He still amused himself with his toilette, and strutted, peacock-like, about his cage, despising mankind, as of old, without suspecting for an instant that two-thirds of them, in all probability, returned the compliment.

Both driven mad by the confusion of their ideas, and their unprincipled mode of using them. The one had written, and the other had pleaded, half his life-time, in diametrical opposition to his real convictions, which, during the other moiety of his career, he had defended with consummate talent. At length they had both lost their hold on truth and moral certainty, and from many-headed monsters, degenerated into chaotic mysteries.

Who had robbed mankind without scruple—a sort of ex-king in miniature, who had become melancholy mad, from the utter want of social enjoyment, after being cut by all the world, on the detection of his frauds.

Whose soul was haunted by a phantom, which the poor idiot mistook for a God, and whose occupation, in the maniac's belief, was to make the creatures he had created utterly miserable on earth, and burn them after death to all eternity, if they did not thank him for their misery.

The greatness of whose ideas necessitated canvasses fifteen feet by twelve, and figures eight feet high. He could not be persuaded that high art could exist without gigantic paintings. Moreover, he had a passion for painting very muscular men, and voluptuous-looking females, in a costume not recognised as presentable, save in the South Sea Islands. The greatness of his pictures, if not of his ideas, was the cause of his ruin. English architecture did not produce rooms large enough for his productions, and the state did not provide a national gallery for modern art. Thus he came to be exhibited in the Grand Exposition of All Nations, and drew charcoal cartoons upon the walls of his apartment.

Who had so long flattered the whims of others, and sacrificed his own opinions to his patrons', that he had gone out of his mind altogether, and lost all consciousness of individual identity.

Who had become non compos mentis from the number of patients he had dismissed to the shades in a long course of experiments upon the mysteries of man's bodily organisation. The dread of having poisoned an old lady by an extra dose of hydrocianic acid, and a coroner's inquest, destroyed what little sanity he had ever possessed.

Who had accustomed himself to drown his thoughts in wine so effectually, that no humane society could now recover them.

Who had begun by adoring Tennyson, and ended by writing insane poems in an unknown tongue, formed of all the obsolete words in the dictionary, and complicated by so sublime a system of involution, that no mortal intellect but his own could unravel their mysteries. The world did not understand him. He did not awake and find himself famous, though he impoverished a poor and devoted mother to print his dismal lucubrations, whose utter failure brought him to his present climax. He amused himself by abusing the world in verse, for which he had abundant leisure.

These were a few of the vast gallery of souls, which had destroyed the fine balance of their nervous organs, by the violence of their passions or conceptions. At what vast expense and trouble they had been collected, it is of little import to narrate. Enough, that no phase of moral or intellectual aberration was without its representative in that marvellous and unexampled exhibition.

As for the virtuous and lofty intelligences, I must refer the reader to the catalogue, which may be seen at the British Museum, as soon as a certain other catalogue be printed for the information of the public.

It was long past midnight, as Viridor descended from a cab at the gate of the Temple, and, thoroughly exhausted by the fatigues of the day and the excitement of the evening, hastened, on entering his chambers, to undress himself and prepare for repose.

Suddenly the appearance of his table struck him as changed from the condition in which he had left it. A quarto Viridor had been reading before leaving his chambers was open at a different page from that he had consulted. Although this circumstance might have arisen from his accidentally turning over a few pages, or even a draught of air in opening the door, it was sufficient to arouse all his old suspicions as to intrusion, during his absence, into his apartments.

Now, so far as Viridor knew, there was but one key to the door of his castle—for a man's chambers, if not his house, are his castle in England—and that key, Viridor had, as usual, carried with him in his pocket.

"I am afraid that old woman is a hypocrite after all," muttered the poet, "and yet I cannot help having faith in her round, honest, good-tempered face. Pshaw! when once a man gets a fixed idea into his head—now I could have sworn that I left that cupboard closed when I went out. No matter, I will try an experiment to-morrow, which will decide the question. I have not missed anything as yet. There is my purse, which I forgot to take with me, safe and untouched. No, it must be a mere fancy that haunts me. Last night, I thought I heard a noise, as of some animal breathing. It is very strange, and reminds me of some of the anecdotes of Burns' Anatomy of Sleep."

Thus meditating, Viridor entered his bed-room, placed the candle and lucifers, according to his custom, on a small table at his bed-side, and having completed his toilette for the night, betook himself to immediate repose.

Lying upon his right side, with his head supported on his hand, the young poet for some moments reflected on the strange Exposition which was to-morrow to be thrown open to the eagerly expectant metropolis—crowded, in consequence, with strangers from every state of the continent, the American republics, and even Egypt, Syria, and Persia.

During these reflections he pictured, with that involuntary play of fancy peculiar to excited nervous organisations, a variety of grotesque designs on the panels of the apartment—which latter was large, bare, and old-fashioned in its decorations. At length, extinguishing the candle, he turned round and endeavoured to compose himself to sleep.

Some considerable time elapsed, and distant clocks struck quarters, and halves, and three-quarters, and still Viridor lay awake, and planned, and turned, and combined, and changed his position, until, in the utter silence of the night, or rather of the morning, which began to break through the window-blinds faintly, as a beauty's smile upon a rival's triumph, Viridor distinctly heard the breathing which he had alluded to in his soliloquy, and which apparently proceeded from some place in the immediate vicinity.

Viridor rose, lighted the candle, and drawing part of the bed-clothes after him in his haste, by way of a robe, hastily examined every corner of both sitting-room and bed-room, first looking beneath the bed, which, indeed, was not a very probable locality, as, however deceptive sound may be, he could hardly have failed to detect so near a disturbance.

No place now remained unsearched but a large lumber-closet in the bed-room, which Viridor had not at first thought of searching, as, owing to its dilapidated condition, it had been, and still appeared to be, nailed up outside in a way that rendered it impossible of entry, without removing the nails.

But on minute inspection, Viridor discovered that several of the nails were missing, and that the others did not necessarily bite the interior woodwork.

The breathing had ceased, but nevertheless Viridor felt convinced that he was on the verge of some strange discovery. Such presentiments rarely deceive. He tore open the door, which offered no resistance, as he had anticipated, and entering the closet, which was of considerable size, he held up the flickering light, and cast a searching glance into the darkness before him.

Scarcely had he done so, than an object, which at first sight he mistook for a bundle of old clothes on the floor, started up, and displayed to his astonished gaze the figure of a man, so ragged, so emaciated, and so wild in its aspect, that he half mistook it for a spectre of his own diseased imagination. Of a surety, no lunatic exhibited in the Grand Exposition he had that evening visited, could compete in horror with the wretch who now confronted his gaze.

Viridor started back in horror, as the blood-shot eyes of his unbidden guest glared upon him with a look which his then tone of mind naturally interpreted as insanity.

"Who and what are you?" said the poet, sternly motioning to the man to emerge from his place of concealment.

"The most unfortunate of men," replied the ragged stranger; "but I swear to you by my soul, that I came not here to rob or injure you. Let me depart in peace, my sufferings will soon be over."

For an instant Viridor, fatigued and irritated, was about to give way to the suspicions natural under such circumstances, and to rid himself of his unseemly visitor as speedily as might be, leaving the secret of his entry, whether by false key or unknown door, for after investigation.

But the sound of the stranger's voice, which was full of unutterable sadness,—the study of his features, which Viridor now observed to be of a singularly intellectual cast,—above all, his own gentle heart, almost girlish in its susceptibility, checked the unworthy impulse, and caused him to assume a less severe aspect, as he briefly demanded from the tenant of the closet an explanation of his unaccountable conduct.

"Sir," replied the stranger, "I know you too well to fear that you would seek to molest me for what I have done, however dishonest or criminal it may appear in the eyes of vulgar persons. It is not very long since I tenanted these very chambers, like yourself. Unexpected misfortunes plunged me into utter poverty. I had no friends or relations to assist me, for I was left an orphan in my youth, and have never cultivated the acquaintance of men or women.

"My furniture was seized for rent, I was absolutely without resources at fifty years of age, and without possessing a single talent or science, by which I could earn a living. I had no choice but between starvation and beggary, when it suddenly occurred to me, that I had the key of my old chambers in my pocket.

"Impelled by I know not what design, I hovered about the house until I discovered that you were the new tenant. I then watched you out, and having seen you enter an omnibus for Kensington, I returned, and once more entered my old habitation.

"At first I merely intended to take a farewell look at my old apartments, dear to me from the many years I had occupied them. But happening to see some pages of manuscript lying on your table, I could not resist the temptation of trying to learn what sort of a man had become my substitute. The first words I read were these—I have repeated them so often that I cannot be mistaken in their tenor—'Life is more sacred than property. If society deny a man bread, society commands him to be a robber, for the law forbids suicide, and to rob a man of his property is a less crime than to rob him of his life. Therefore let the law deal more justly with those debtors and robbers, who, by poverty alone, are driven to such desperate resources.'

"It appeared to be a translation from an old Latin author, and was followed by annotations of your own, which deeply impressed me with respect for the benevolence and uprightness of your character.

"Seeing a loaf of bread upon the side-table, I proceeded to carry out the principles of the manuscript, by cutting a small piece in such a manner as to leave the loaf in appearance little changed, and—pardon my shameless audacity—from that time, now many weeks ago, I have, day after day, repeated my visits; feeding on the remnants of your breakfast, or robbing you of small slices of bread, cut in the same cunning manner; and amusing myself with the study of your books and manuscript, which I always endeavoured to replace with the nicest exactness. Often you were absent for whole days from the chambers, and I was left without food, or scarcely daring to touch what remained, for fear of exciting suspicion.

"And now farewell! do not regret that the crumbs from your table have fed a victim of the world's ignorance. I have lived too long to dream of human actions coinciding with human words. Nevertheless, go on as you have begun, preach justice, and when you have the power, practice charity."

So saying, the old man, placing the key—which was the key to the whole adventure—in the hands of his involuntary host, passed through the door with abrupt rapidity, leaving Viridor speechless with emotion at the recital of misery so abject. He was aroused from his reverie by the noise of a window-sash thrown violently open. He placed the candle on the ground, rushed into the adjoining room, and was barely in time to grasp the arm of the stranger, who strove desperately to throw himself headlong upon the sharp stones of the court below.

But though encumbered with the blankets, which left him one hand only at liberty, Viridor's youthful vigour was not to be resisted by the enfeebled frame of the stranger.

"Promise me not to make any new attempt upon your life, and I promise you, on my part, all the assistance you require," said the Grand Master of the Illuminati, with assuring kindness. "Oh, man of little faith! did you, then, ransack the repositories of my most secret thoughts, and yet doubt the unity of my doctrine with my life? Why did you not come to me, and tell me frankly your wants and sufferings? Each can but remedy the immediate suffering he encounters. Whatever my other errors, I have never allowed any motive, save imperative duty, to interfere with my sense of justice to the poor. For know, my friend, that to a philosophic mind, the duties of property, however limited, or extended, are its noblest rights. Base, indeed, in my eyes, is the man who, possessing a solitary loaf, allows his brother man to hunger at his side! There will come a day when churches will be fewer, whilst school-houses are more abundant; when the cold charity of pseudo-Christians will be replaced by the living charity of their Master; when the heart will be thought worth educating as well as the head; and it will be no more to ask a passing stranger for a meal than for a direction to a, street. Meanwhile, consider yourself my welcome guest. Repose upon that sofa for the night. To-morrow, you can, if it please you, inform me of the causes that have led to misfortunes which, until the contrary appear, I shall continue to believe unmerited."

The stranger pressed Viridor's hand between both his own, with a half incredulous gaze of delighted gratitude.

"O, my generous friend!" he exclaimed, "why did I doubt your greatness? Life is indeed to me a burthen, yet I will live in the hope of proving to you my gratitude and my devotion."

It was already daylight, and the candle flickered with a pale and feeble light, as Viridor once more devoted himself to repose.

All slept in the great City of Jugglers, but it was the calm that foreboded the tempest.

A THINKING soul, owner of a leasehold property in an organic tenement of flesh, would as vainly strive to measure its relations to external entities, as to calculate the limit of a decimal repetend, or the varieties of combined forms and colors that may be produced by a kaleidoscope.

Every living spirit, like a celestial sun-god, emits in every direction, the radiating influence of its immeasurable power, and is finite only by comparison with a vaster Infinite.

This work,—this volcanic eruption of my soul, speech in the spiritual parliament of thought, sarcastic repartee to liars social, liars political, liars dialectic, analytic, and synthetic,—this mythical history, magnetic revelation, dream of poetic vanity, incomprehensible cartoon, or whatever else it turn out to be in the eyes of men or angels,—in a word, this volume, bound and illustrated, and to be had at circulating libraries, is now drawing to a rapid and inevitable conclusion.

My intercourse with you, my spirit-friends, must be interrupted. "I must pause for a reply;" and with so much unsaid, so little said, of the fiery-thought element which has swept me, as in a whirlwind, into publicity, I must await the cold judgment of the indifferent, the sharp invective of the hostile, and the rare praise of the sympathising reader. I must be patient—patient with the reflection that time, space, and I know not what other causes, have stood between me and the perfect realisation of my object. I have recorded the suggestions for measures which I was forbidden to develope in detail, though prepared and eager for the task; I have risked incurring the stigma of superficiality, for fear of being condemned as wearisome and pedantic, and in the dread of losing a season and an opportunity, for which I have so long sighed, I have written in a few weeks the history of spiritual combinations, which years of study have prepared, and at least as many months of artistic effort should have given form to.

Not that I demand indulgence from my political antagonists. Let them do their worst; I defy their enmity. It is from those only whose hearts beat in harmony with my own,—whose love for the people, and resolution to aid their progress from barbarism and misery, to civilisation and happiness, cause them to dread even an imperfect advocacy of their principles,—that I request consideration for having so rudely fulfilled a task which no other man has had the audacity to attempt.

Let the Viridors, and Darians, and Basilines of the age awake from their inactivity. I am but the sentinel of the night whose trumpet heralds the morning.

Yet, to resume the train of ideas with which this chapter began, how can the thinker, who once casts his treasures, real or fancied, into the gulph of print, that best telegraph of mind, how can he fix the circle of his readers, or say to what remote climes the commerce of the world may not bear his ghostly merchandize?

Who knows what Indian or Chinese philosopher, ambassador from Nepaul, or advanced Otaheitan speculator, may puzzle himself over this eccentric history?

I feel it truly difficult to convey to such remote intelligences, any adequate notion of the pitch to which Soul-dealing, and other similar speculations, had arrived in this metropolis, par excellence of jugglers!

Not only were Soul-agency offices multiplied, and soul-lists published, as described in the money articles of the daily press, but the most singular schemes were started cotemporaneously, with a view to taking advantage of the public cacoethes of gambling.

One set of ingenious rascals had started an office as agents to all kings in Europe for the sale of titles. Patents of nobility were growing as common, and about as valuable, as protested bills in the market. Pedigrees were to be had with them, if required; and men sold their ancestors, and proclaimed themselves bastards, with the same coolness shewn in saddling their children with debt, to relieve themselves from taxation.

Even reputations were sold, and realised by advertisement. Blockheads, who never had an idea in their life, became known as poets of celebrity. Misers, who never gave anything but their names to a charity, were lauded, in all corners of the land, as noble-hearted philanthropists. Statesmen, whose rental or family connections had alone given them a chance of power, were credited with bon mots and sayings, which the seven wise Greeks might have envied.

But it was all a branch of the great soul-dealing system, and Ignatius Loyola Grey was unquestionably, at the moment, the man of his age. Unfortunately for him the age was on its last legs—and those were uncommonly black ones.

There was one good effect resulting from the soul-dealing mania, which has been already hinted at. It led people to think a little about their own spiritual natures. Psychology became a fashionable study, and Metaphysics and Ontology were consequently much more generally patronised than of old. The sneerers at "philosophic mysticism, and all that sort of thing," disappeared daily. Academic retreats were founded. Neo-platonists had their lectures and meetings at one hall—Epicureans at another. The Pythagoreans, the Brahmins, the Confucians, were well-known philosophical debating clubs. Strange to say, Scepticism absolute was quite at a discount. The general rage was for knowledge, and what could be known by men who denied the existence of knowledge? In short, the general tendency of the age was decidedly towards intellectual development, at the moment that moral principle was at the lowest ebb in the country.

The cheap literature of the hour was marvellously changed, since Mysteries of London, and similar ultra-romantic productions, were the order of the day. An edition of Berkeley, in penny numbers, Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," Hegel's "Logic" for the Million, and a cheap volume of Spinoza, had a prodigious sale. Swedenborg's visions were published in the "Parlour Library of Instruction," and a new system of Anthropology was continued through infinite numbers of the Familiar Herald, by the Editor, who was strongly suspected of some connection with the Illuminati.

Darian, Viridor, and their united band of democrats, watched every movement of the popular mind with intense interest. They knew that a terrible explosion was at hand, and prepared to ride upon the wave, which could not fail to overwhelm their blinded and unteachable antagonists.

Hollow murmurs of discontent already rolled sullenly over the surface of the country. With the exception of the great capitalists and landlords (a small band of huge harpies, who sit at all England's feasts, and taint, by their touch, the little remnants of the viands which they leave us), every class of society was involved in the most pitiful difficulty. There was no lack of enterprise or labour, and an actual plethora of capital, and yet everybody was embarrassed for money to meet his liabilities. The truth was that a set of ministers, utterly unequal to their solemn duties, had, from incapacity to understand, and want of energy to investigate, the nature of commerce, entirely neglected to make any provision for an adequate circulating medium; without which, a trading country cannot advance one step on the road of improvement.

To understand the currency question, requires a certain mathematical and philosophical genius. To discuss it radically, in the present work, is impossible. I shall therefore merely offer a few remarks, intelligible to a child, and perhaps, therefore, to a Lord John Twaddle and his followers.

In the first place, the inconvenience of everybody being in debt to everybody, and the trouble and complication introduced into trade by the utter impossibility of any approximation to a direct system of exchange on a cash basis, is too obvious to be disputed.

Secondly, nobody can for an instant deny the convenience of an abundant paper currency, representing solid capital; or that the only objection to its adoption, is the danger of depreciation in value.

Thirdly, it is well known that the example of the French assignats (of which I have a dozen in my portfolio) is the great historical argument against paper money.

Fourthly, it is perfectly clear that that objection is utterly futile, applied to a country possessing institutions and credit such as those of England, where no anarchical or violent revolution is at all to be apprehended, unless the monopolists of political power become much madder than they are, which is an almost inconceivable prospect.

Fifthly, it is palpable that notes issued on the security of land, and payable as taxes, government salaries, &c., cannot sensibly depreciate, so long as the State itself do not become bankrupt.

I leave these suggestions to the consideration of political economists, bankers, merchants, and others, who ought to understand the matter, and revert to the thread of my narrative, with an apology for obtruding so dry a subject on my lady readers.

The discontent of the working classes arose partly from the difficulty of obtaining employment, owing greatly to the above embarrassment of their employers; partly to a strong sense of long-inflicted injustice in depriving them of all voice in their own government, oppressing them with a most unequal share of taxes, and apathetically neglecting in legislation so many means of ameliorating and elevating their condition. These, they themselves began to discuss with a clearness, that proved them well worthy of the franchise, they at length demanded, in a voice, not to be stifled by gagging bills, suspended habeas corpus acts, or artificial temptations to riot and treason, constables' staves, soldiers' bayonets, or any other contemptible trickery of their rulers.

"Universal suffrage!" was their cry. "Mind before matter! Reason above property! The rights of nature above the usurped privileges of class! Let the same justice annihilate the baron and the serf! Let us have no hereditary sages or idiots—no more cant about a stake in the country, when every man, with a soul to suffer and enjoy, is equally interested in the prosperity of his Fatherland! We are all peers before God! Let us abolish all Indo-Egyptian tradition of caste! Let every man count as a man, and let the best man be the man to govern us!"

Such was the cry of the people, which caused the House of Lords to tremble to its basis, and all Downing Street to turn pale with terror.

The Grand Exposition of the Souls of all Nations had been opened. Thousands had visited it,—thousands had pondered in awe upon the irresistible conclusions it suggested. A great moral shock was given to the conscience of the age. Souls fell in the share-market, and a circumstance which just then occurred tended yet more strongly to arouse and stimulate the general popular excitement.

Entering the House of Peers in his ducal robes, with his coronet upon his head, Arthur Bolingbroke Darian, called Duke of St. George, deliberately proclaimed his resolution of renouncing for ever his title, his peerage, and all its privileges. Amid the dismayed looks of his colleagues, he cast his coronet to the ground, trampled upon it with contempt, and quitted the hall of legislators, amid a silence more ominous than the most stormy disapprobation.

The pale nobles looked at one another, like mariners expectant of shipwreck; and cold drops of perspiration oozed from beneath the wig of the chancellor. The bishops were the first to recover themselves, and their anathemas were truly episcopal in their ferocity.

The people literally roared with exultation at this heroic initiation of their triumph; and the book of Viridor, which appeared on the following day, conspired to render the agitation yet more formidable to the aristocratic and plutocratic councils.

Viridor's book? what was it?—I will tell you. It was, to this present volume, what the sun is to a common gas lamp. It said all that I have vainly striven to say; its sale was measured by tens of thousands, and its effects by—The Future.

At the same time the whole Soul-Exchange was revolutionised by a placard posted on the base of Lord John Twaddle's brazen statue in the centre—

IT is rather tantalising, at the close of an entertainment, to be introduced to a lovely girl one would wish to see a great deal of. Nevertheless, reader, I shall stand on no ceremony in introducing you, at this late chapter of my story, to Genevra Darian, the beautiful sister of the ex-ducal republican.

The day after Darian's resignation of his peerage, and Viridor's publication of his book, this charming lady issued invitations to about five hundred people for a grand democratic fête, for which preparations of unusual splendour were hinted at.

The eyes of all England, I might say Europe, were fixed upon the leaders of the Fire-worshippers, whose names were in everybody's mouth, and whose intentions were the subject of almost universal discussion.

It is not, therefore, to be wondered at, that the announcement of Genevra's fête caused intense excitement in every circle of the capital.

When the evening arrived the guests arrived also, with a punctuality which curiosity alone could have effected. Never before in ducal palace were assembled so heterogeneous a company. It is true that, at first glance, black coats, white linen, and shining boots, and varied dresses of silk, satin, and muslin were visible, much after the usual fashion. But on arriving at the grand suite of drawing-rooms, a transparency above the portal caused every guest to pause for an instant in admiration at the Dantesque inscription which its flaming characters presented:—

It was, indeed, necessary to do so; for whether your next neighbour might be a marquis or a grocer, a man of letters or a mechanic, it was impossible to guess. Immense exertions had been made by Viridor, Darian, and their friends, to collect worthy representatives of every class, profession, trade, and calling in the metropolis.

Two or three brainless puppies of the "snob" genus, guardsmen, barristers, and clerical prigs, having posted themselves in a corner, amused their emptinesses by quizzically guessing at the position of their neighbours. Overhearing a venerable-looking old gentleman in spectacles discoursing on electricity, with a young man of remarkably graceful bearing, they set him down at once as the Secretary of the Royal Society, when, in fact, he was a respectable watchmaker from the city. The young man they determined to be a "counter-jumper." He proved to be the son of one of the oldest baronets in the kingdom.

A young lady whose air they considered as proof conclusive of high birth and breeding, turned out to be the daughter of a tailor, and an old woman they condemned as a vulgar cheesemonger's wife, proved a dowager marchioness before the evening was over.

A youth, with long hair, who was unmistakeably a painter, was found to be a medical student, and a prim-looking man, with a rather severe countenance, whom they stigmatised as an attorney's clerk, was, in reality an artist of considerable celebrity.

Nevertheless, everywhere reigned politeness and hilarity. The guests, whatever their station in life, felt bound to do their best to be agreeable. All conversed freely without introduction, and on every side were gay and animated groups. Nor did the daughters of the people, in their simple white muslin dresses, and flowers or ribbons tastefully arranged, yield in beauty to the proud ladies of the exclusive world, in their rustling satins and gaudy jewellery. With few exceptions, the members of less refined circles restrain their natural freedom to accord with the manners of their so-called superiors; whilst the latter adopted much of the unsophisticated ease which soon ceased to displease them in their new associates.

If the fashionable girls were amused by the timid admiration and exaggerated civility of their plebeian partners, the fair daughters of the trader and the mechanic were not the less disposed to smile at the nonchalant affectation of the sublime dandies.

As for the older men, it was wonderful how pleasantly they entered into conversation, with the most perfect ignorance of whom they were talking to.

Basiline, who had discarded her masculine attire, assisted Genevra to receive her motley guests, clad in a plain white robe of studied simplicity. A single white rose in her dark lustrous hair was her only ornament.

Genevra bore a great resemblance to Darian; also, in some degree, to Basiline; but her hair was of a deep chesnut colour, and her eyes much darker than even her brother's, or the Magyar's. Her form was perhaps a shade too slender for classic outline, but her look and smile were such as few could have resisted.

A little before supper, Viridor approached these two flowers of beauty, who, surrounded by a circle of admirers, were seated together on an ottoman in the farthest salon, and presented to them an old gentleman of deeply-interesting aspect. His brow was one of singular expanse, and an appearance of severe ill-health added greatly to the interest of his appearance.

"Who is he?" said Basiline, rising, and taking Viridor's arm, whilst the old gentleman remained amid the crowd in conversation with Genevra. "I am sure that there is something strange in the history of your friend, by his looks and manner; pray gratify my woman's curiosity?"

"I am glad you condescend to own yourself a woman, for the sake of my friend Darian," replied Viridor, gaily. "As for the old man you have seen, his story is soon told. Having been left an orphan at an early age, with a small fortune, he devoted himself to the profoundest study of the natural sciences, with a view solely to making discoveries and inventions, calculated to benefit mankind. He has spent his whole substance in experiments and models; and has really contrived some extraordinary machines for lessening human labour, and performing operations hitherto tedious and expensive, in the simplest and most economical manner. His great idea is, that the world is to be regenerated by mechanical contrivances, and chemical and electric agencies. For more than twenty years of gross neglect, and too often grosser injustice, on the part of those, whose assistance he claimed, he has struggled nobly to carry out, and perfect his inventions. His unpublished treatises are of a most valuable character, especially one entitled 'The Philosophy of Motion,' which I have placed already in the hands of a printer on my own hazard. Some of his sanitary contrivances are especially suited for practical adoption. Taken altogether, he is a man of genius, and a representative spirit of his age. He may yet live to achieve the most brilliant reputation."

It was the strange guest of Viridor's chambers, whose history he thus briefly indicated. The misfortunes of the stranger are not without parallels in the memory of many of my readers.

At this moment there was a general move towards the supper-room, which had been constructed temporarily in the garden, to accommodate the whole company in the most luxurious manner.

"I shall grow jealous if you have so many tête-a-têtes," said Darian, smiling, as he suddenly appeared before Viridor and Basiline, and drew the arm of the latter through his own, whilst he pressed her hand with lover-like intelligence.

"I will soon relieve you of your doubts," rejoined Viridor, with a mysterious significance, and disappearing in the crowd, he returned in a few minutes with a young creature, of such dream-like beauty, on his arm, that both Darian and Basiline started in amazement. They had, strangely enough for people of their penetrating minds, given Viridor credit for utter absorption in his political aims, and indifference to all the sweets of sexual sympathy. They little dreamed that love was the only passion to which Viridor was capable of sacrificing—even—well, it must be written, for I scorn to overrate the virtues of my dearest friends—even his country.

THE sun rose on the morrow of the Lady Genevra Darian's party; it pursued its Westerly course,—it paused in the zenith, and the whole City of Jugglers appeared yet to sleep, so great was their amazement.

Had the world reached its final moment? Was the trumpet of the resurrection about to sound?

The juggler citizens were seized by sudden qualms of conscience. They deserted their places of business,—haunts of pleasure,—or late breakfast tables, and hovered anxiously about the offices of the absent journals. All was dismay and confusion in those centres of intelligence. To all its inquiries, the public received vague and unsatisfactory replies, and looks of consternation equal to their own. The life of the great city appeared to stagnate,—its blood to cease flowing—its heart to pulsate feebly, as a dying man's. What could this awful silence mean? Where were the stinging, the indignant, the thundering leaders?—where were the last night's debates?—where were the "foreign correspondent's articles," the "state of Europe," the "latest news from France, by electric telegraph?" where even the account of the Lady Genevra's party, which everybody was eager to read?

All was silent. The Timeserver, the Morning Ghost, the Cobbler, the Humbug, the Staggerer, even the Daily Nous gave no signs of vitality.

The streets near their offices were crowded with wondering citizens. With a dire presentiment of some hideous catastrophe, they gazed in one another's pale faces, and suggested that, after all, a journal, despite its regal assumption of the we, and sustained semblance of personal identity, was neither an animal, nor a machine. They reflected that it must be printed by printers, and edited by editors; that reporters must report, and translators translate; and in fine, many real, living, two-legged mammals, of the order bimana, genus homo, be employed in its production.

Where, then, were these workmen of the hand and head, and why was not their work done that day?

The compositors were there, and the pressmen, and the printers' devils; but the writers, where were they? Echo answered "where?"

At last the truth became known, and oozed out to the public. The journalists of all grades, editors, subeditors, compilers, financiers, reporters, and even penny-a-liners, had broken out into open rebellion against their tyrants.

The capitalists, proprietors of the journals, were in a state of fury and despair. Literature had asserted its dignity. No literary man would be the puppet of a stupider man than himself any longer. Either they would sign their names to all they wrote, and write their real convictions in all they signed, or—no more "copy" from them for organs soon to become organs of public opinion, as they had hitherto been expressions of private interests.

In vain the despairing capitalists offered increased salaries, diminished labour, luxurious accommodations, alternate relief from night-work, and whatever other temptations they could devise—the journalists gave but one answer;—

"Our names to our articles, the position in society to which our respective talents entitle us, the political independence and influence which our reputation must secure us. Keep your gold, squeeze more from our brains, if it please you, but leave us our dignity as men. We will be vague phantoms and blind instruments no longer. We are sick of the masks we have worn so long, we are sick of falling into old age and decrepitude unknown and unhonoured. We are weary of seeing our inferiors in the lighter walks of literature gain fame and money by a few trifling efforts; whilst we, who grapple daily with the toughest questions of the age, may at any moment be cast aside like worn-out gloves, by our masters; and in case of distress have not even a claim upon that last of all resources to literary desperation."*

[*The Literary Fund assists only the authors of books. To avoid all misconstruction, I here take the liberty of stating, that deeply as I sympathise with and honour journalism as the great lever of progress, I never yet had any connection whatever with any newspaper. Profoundly reflecting for many years on the nature of journalism, I am now firmly persuaded that the anonymous system is utterly unworthy of an age of enlightenment and honesty. What weight has anonymous writing with any sensible person? None. It protects falsehood, cowardice, and ignoble ideas; as for its protecting the journalist, as a man, against personal attacks, if he write truth, he requires no such protection. When, even as a boy, I wrote my burlesque of the Young England folly, I gave my publisher strict orders to give my name and address to all enquirers; and at the house of Mr. M—— Gr——n, the member for M——r, I caused myself to be pointed out to the Young England leader, that he might have every opportunity of demanding satisfaction of any kind he pleased. I look upon a blow as a barbarism, and a duel as insanity; but of all vices cowardice is the meanest and most contemptible I can imagine. Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton; in his "England and the English," long ago denounced the anonymous system. I will never cease to denounce it, whilst I can find a publisher, or pay a printer, to give my thoughts to the public.]

It may readily be imagined that Darian and Viridor were at the bottom of this glorious conspiracy of talent against capital. It was at Genevra's party that the plot had been thoroughly developed. Not a little had the eloquent look of their hostess, and Basiline, and even Grace, who had learned to impassion herself for all Viridor's aims, contributed to decide the future representatives of the people, in favour of the bold course they adopted. Viridor proved to them how glorious would be their position, if once they would assert their individual dignity as thinkers; and Darian entreated them to lay aside all pecuniary apprehensions; as he was prepared to advance any sums, to start journals of their own upon the new system, which might be requisite.

The soldiers of the press, seeing suddenly opened before them, a vista of honourable ambition, which led to the highest offices in the state, parted in high spirits from their entertainers, at an early hour, in a large number of vehicles, expressly provided, for Richmond. There, giving themselves up to festivity, they awaited, in passive strength, the submission of their quondam masters.

The Timeserver alone, by its immensely extended resources, contrived to replace the whole of its staff, in time to appear on the morning following the catastrophe.

All the other journals were revolutionized, and, what was most extraordinary, turned out to be all advocates of the liberal interest, so soon as the writers, by appending their signatures, became impressed with the solemn responsibility of their duties to their fellow men.

But it was not long before Viridor and Darian started, themselves, a new journal, to which almost every author of talent and celebrity contributed, and before which even the sale of the leviathan Timeserver began gradually to diminish.

It was evident now, that the great political battle was to be fought between the House of Commons and the Press; it was also a matter of easy prophecy, that the Press would soon be the victor in the struggle. For the Press was the voice and parliament of the whole people, and the House of Commons was but the complot of a fractional part of the community, to retain all power in their own hands.

The Press, too, was becoming daily more united, whilst the Commons became hourly more divided—and a house divided against itself cannot stand; neither can Satan; and what is the peerage but a satanic delusion, soon to be dissipated by the breath of liberty and reason?

Lord John Twaddle now shuddered at the very names of Darian and Viridor; the sight of Cordian, Viziers, or Might, the free-traders, and the manly tone of their voices, made his heart turn sick with despair. Robert the Devil had withdrawn into retirement and inactivity. Ben Sidonia rose only to give a semblance of existence to his disheartened and expiring party. At length, Twaddle, overwhelmed by the terror and embarrassment of an agitation, which he could neither crush by brute force, nor restrain by any devices of his intellect, fell suddenly sick, even to political death, and to the astonishment of the country, resigned office, and accepted the Chiltern Hundreds, although actually in possession of a clear majority of seven!!

A Whig resign office with a majority! it was enough to revive the popular faith in miracles, and sink Hume's essay to perdition!

King John having abdicated, who was to succeed him? There was a stormy interregnum of a whole month, during which time everything went on as usual, and a fresh election for the City of Jugglers took place.

Viridor was the democratic candidate. He was opposed by uncounted gold, and some human pretence to senatorial honors, whose name has escaped me. The struggle was hot and close. Every voice was raised in favour of Viridor; but, thanks to our Landocracy's repudiation of the ballot, for all purposes but their own club elections, every five-pound note was in favour of the Plutocrat. Nevertheless, there was a spirit walking the streets of the great city which whispered to the hearts and consciences of men as it passed, that the days of soul-dealing were passing away; and that Truth and Justice were, after all, the interest of rich as well as poor. Viridor was elected—elected by a majority of nine, the number of the muses.

Not a single bribe had been given by his friends, on any pretence, or under any disguise. All he had done was to print an address, which was distributed to every elector.

"My countrymen! I thank you for the trust you place in my charge. I hope few months will elapse before I shall again appeal to your support, when no limited constituency, no household extension of suffrage, no pitiful half measure of justice, in any way, will prevent any one of the thousands I now see before me from exercising his natural rights as a man, a thinker, and a citizen! Your election makes me the representative of a class, my own principles make me a representative of the whole people!"

Then burst from the panting crowd, upon whose hearts the words of Viridor descended like drops of liquid fire, one mighty, heartspoken shout for equal rights as men, which swelled and swelled upon the air, until even at Westminster, its magnetic shock caused trees to wave, and the souls of oligarchs to tremble.

The people asked for justice. Woe to the foolish crew that yet delayed their answer! Will history teach nothing to such men? It taught no wisdom to Louis Philippe, none to Guizot. Are the Twaddles, and the Chicory* Woodenheads, and the Grubs, and their adherents, more obstinate than Louis, more ignorant than Guizot?

[*A Chancellor of the Exchequer, who advocates the fraudulent adulteration of coffee with a vile and noxious root called chicory.]

LIKE thoughts of vengeance upon the soul of an exiled patriot, night descended upon the great City of Jugglers. A sea of men rushed, and surged, and recoiled, in the principal thoroughfares of the capital. Hoarse cries, sombre rumblings, and murmurings of the agitated crowd fell with dreadful distinctness upon the assembled senators at St. Stephen's. It was known that the military were all under arms, but the moral sentiment was wanting to the hearts of the fragmentary, and, as it were, provisional ministry. Their courage was at zero, their energies were paralysed, and all their words and counsels indicated deplorable weakness and indecision.

"The Franchise for ever!" shouted the mob, and the greater number of the middle classes joined, either openly or secretly, in the cry. It seemed as if all London had descended into the streets. Every effort of the police was utterly ineffectual. It was no Kennington-common meeting, but a unanimous rising of the working classes—a demonstration of their strength, and an assertion of their rights. All the youth of the metropolis joined enthusiastically in the cry—every voteless lodger, whatever his station in life, involuntarily sympathised in the movement.

It was proposed to order the military to charge the populace; many members of the House of Commons, which had become, in the extremity of the supposed danger, the centre of executive as well as administrative power, supported the proposition.

Viridor rose from the seat he had just taken amid the few Fire-worshippers in the assembly. "If you shed blood—only one drop of blood—this night," he said solemnly, "your lives are not worth three hours' purchase. The people are in earnest. It is no partial rising. A single musket fired is the signal of a terrific conflict, of a civil war from one end of the country to the other. Rather let us mount horse ourselves, and sally forth to harangue the people. I will give notice of a bill for extension of suffrage to all adults tomorrow; to-night we must give the people hope—or await the crisis of their despair."

At such moments the strongest mind invariably takes the lead. The hated Viridor's advice was immediately acted upon. That a word from him or Darian would decide the conduct of the people, no one for an instant doubted. In reality, the two theoretical Republicans had as little control over the outbreak and its leaders as any of their colleagues; but their names were all-powerful at the moment.

Accordingly Viridor and Darian, who was in the gallery of the House at the time, mounted two horses, which they procured with difficulty, and alternately addressing the crowd, by degrees made their way down Parliament Street, and along the Strand, until a vivid brightness, reflected on the eastern sky, announced that some building had been fired by the rioters.

"I fear so," replied Darian, "But see, what is that? They are dragging a man along with some ferocious intent—"

"Away with the rascally Soul Agent," cried the surrounding mob, and Viridor, dashing forwards, beheld, by the gleam of a lamp, the livid features of Ignatius, who, with torn garments, and a rope about his neck, was, doubtless, on the verge of expiating his moral iniquities by a summary condemnation and execution at the hands of the people he had despised and degraded.

Viridor seized the Soul Agent by the arm, and, by an almost superhuman exertion of strength, released him from the hands of the two men who held him. Then Darian, having dismounted from his horse, half dragged, half carried the exhausted and terrified Ignatius through the crowd, to an adjoining tavern. His gigantic stature and great bodily vigour enabled him to effect this object by a prodigious effort, whilst Viridor appealed to all the better feelings of the people, and entreated them to communicate to their friends the immediate prospect of a legal recognition of their rights, and, at length, by a happy and audacious suggestion, was the means of restoring, tranquillity, and averting the threatening tempest.

"Let us form ourselves," he cried, "into a human telegraph, and immediately transmit the good news to the whole body of the patriots. My name is Bernard Viridor, my friend is Arthur Darian; we pledge ourselves that justice shall be done you if you will refrain from all brutal violence, unworthy of your sacred cause."

The people hailed the suggestion with acclamations; and as their immediate objects were indefinite, and their leaders undecided, soon began to disperse, and seek their homes and suppers. A shower of rain accelerated this movement, and thus the danger of an insurrection was, for the moment, removed.

But Robert Russel Brown, the stout partner of the dark speculator, who stood in the shadow of the Duke's statue in our first chapter (like many things as mean that flourish in the shadow of military power), had the misfortune to be hanged from a lamp-post on Blackfriars Bridge, where he was found in the morning by the police, who cut him down, and carried him to the nearest station-house.

We must now pass rapidly over the few events yet to be recorded in these pages. The day arrived for the third reading of Viridor's bill. It was carried in defiance of the most violent opposition. It had fifty thousand supporters outside, whose choral eloquence did much for its success.

The franchise was extended to every male in the kingdom having attained the age of twenty-one years. A dissolution of parliament was expected. The people were in ecstacies of triumph. Viridor was sent for by the Queen. He declined office. Malignant rumour said that he was too stern a republican to serve a monarch—in his eyes an extravagant superfluity.

Meanwhile, the panic in the Soul Market had reached its climax. The devil himself would not have bought souls at so grievous a discount. The Soul Exchange was shut up, and the beadle was its only tenant. The Exeter Arcade was not more desolate.

Ignatius had migrated to America, with a view to slave-dealing. He could not make up his mind to relinquish his old trade. The tribe of Nut—to quote Hindostanee from the "Wanderings of a Pilgrim," a recent work on India, by a lady of remarkable talent—the race of high-caste jugglers had lost the brightest star of their benighted firmament. Peace be to his victims!

"We have won the prize!" said Darian; "we have a right to happiness,—let us have not one, but twelve honeymoons, and then——"

"There is an Austrian empire to destroy!" said the beautiful Hungarian, sudden fire lighting up the languishing eyes, with which she gazed upon her husband, as their carriage, drawn by snorting steeds of iron, was borne swiftly away from the great City of Jugglers.

The same night, Viridor returned home to his chambers, after sharing the festivities at Darian's palace. He had no dread of intruders now; for he had had a new patent lock put upon his door, in case his second self-installed guest should chance to be of a less eligible character than the first. And yet, strange and unaccountable spectacle! the first thing he beheld on entering his sitting-room was Grace Morton, seated in his arm-chair, her head thrown back, her fair face pale as a marble portrait, her lips slightly parted, her arms pendant at her sides, her bosom heaving occasionally with deep sighs, as in a dream of passionate sorrow. She slept. Viridor approached her, and moved the candle which was burning upon the table, in such a manner as to relieve her eyelids from its glare. A sense of remorse came over him. For three days he had not seen Grace; he had forgotten her existence, or postponed all thoughts of love, to the overwhelming pressure of political activity. How many audiences had he given—how many visits had he received—how many letters had he written—what stirring articles had he composed, in that brief interval!

But what cared Grace for politics! Like an exquisite flower, she had taken root on one spot, and that spot was Viridor's heart. Not hearing from him, she had called again and again at his chambers, without finding him at home. At length, that evening she found the door open. Viridor had failed to turn the key, going out hastily that morning.

There she had waited, hour after hour, a prey to the bitterest anxiety. At length, utterly exhausted by the tumult of her feelings, she had fallen asleep, as described, in the great arm-chair, with the candle, which she had found means to light, burning on the table.

Never had she appeared so beautiful to Viridor, as at that moment. He felt quite a criminal, for causing her so much pain, as he now well divined. He took her hand and pressed it in his own. She woke, and gazed upon him, at first, as in a dream. Then suddenly becoming conscious of his presence, she murmured in a tone of gentle reproach, that brought tears in the eyes of the repentant poet—

"My own dearest girl! my sweet, beautiful Grace! Never, by all my eternal hopes I swear it, never did I truly love woman until I saw you! Oh! let us part no more in life, my adored, my eternal bride!"

And Viridor, kneeling by the side of Grace, kissed the taper fingers of her small white hands.

This is the beginning of the history I have hoped would find some few kindred souls to sympathise with its mysteries. The beginning, did I say? Yes, the beginning, indeed; however contradictory may seem the conventional necessity which compels me, at the same moment, to acknowledge with regret that it is

The City of the Jugglers

and Other Stories

William North

Sources:

CONTENTS.

The City of the Jugglers

THE USURER'S GIFT.

THE OLD BOY.

NATIONAL HUMOR.

MY GHOST.

THE LIVING CORPSE.

THE MASTER OF THE WORLD.

THE PHANTOM WORLD.

THE GRAND STYLE.

THE MAGNETIC PORTRAITS.

CITY OF THE JUGGLERS;

FREE-TRADE IN SOULS.

A Romance of the "Golden" Age

By W. NORTH,

This Leaf,

PROLOGUE.

CITY OF THE JUGGLERS;

THE GRAND EXHIBITION

PANIC IN THE SOUL MARKET.