old man washing his scythe in a pool of water. The prospect of appeasing his thirst was so delightful that he scarcely bestowed a second glance at the figure, who, having thrown his scythe over his shoulder, had now resumed his way across the wilderness. On reaching the brink of the pool Alfadhel dismounted, when he observed that the water was turbid and of a sanguine hue, and that his mare, after smelling to it for a second, turned away and refused to taste it. His own sufferings, however, would not allow him to be so squeamish; he threw himself upon the ground and quaffed eagerly; but no sooner was his immediate agony appeased than he hastily arose, filled with sickness and loathing at the indescribably nauseous taste of what he had been drinking. Still it had removed his more distressing sensations, he felt refreshed for the moment, and again mounting his mare, pursued his journey, confident that he should now be able to overtake the caravan, without needing any farther sustenance. His course being the same as that taken by the old man, he observed, as he drew nearer to him, that what had before seemed to be an enveloping cloak assumed the appearance of a shroud or winding sheet, and that the figure in its progress did not move its legs, but floated along the surface of the ground, like a vapour, or an apparition. Undaunted as he was by nature, an unaccountable awe took possession of Alfadhel's faculties, his blood thrilled and ran cold through his veins, and even the mare, sharing her rider's perturbation, shook violently as she started into a furious gallop, sidling away from the old man and passing him with every look of terror. As the wind blew aside from the figure part of its lower garments, Alfadhel beheld two skeleton legs, flitting steadily forward, but not moving as in the action of walking; and at the same moment the head being slowly turned towards him, the sharp lipless fangs, and the eyeless sockets of a skull grinned, and gnashed, and glared hideously upon him.

Almost withered at the sight, and filled with an unutterable dismay and horror, then first did he recollect to have heard that Death was in the habit of frequenting the pool in the wilderness to wash his polluted scythe after any great mortality, and that those who subsequently tasted the pestiferous water became infected with all the complicated diseases of his recent victims. The blood-stained hue-the empoisoned feculence the loathsome taste of the pool, were now all explained; he had been swallowing down the most revolting maladies at every mouthful; he had at that moment a hundred horrible deaths within him! As this conviction flashed upon his maddened mind, he shivered all over, his teeth chattered audibly in his head, his hair bristled up, his heart seemed to be frozen within him; and, immediately after the arrested blood again bursting into its channels, his veins swelled, he was covered with a profuse perspiration, clammy drops oozed from every pore, his eyes became distended and red. A dizziness and universal abandoment, or rather perversion of his senses, succeeded. Hollow murmurs rang in his ears, which, though they could no longer distinguish the noise of his horse's hoofs, were appalled with imaginary groans, and shrieks of anguish, and maniac yells, and all the various cries of agony, which, in the dismal purlieus of a Lazar-house, make the very echoes shudder. The taste of death was in his mouth, and the sepulchral smell of it within his nostrils, for the free air of the wilderness was converted into

the noisome stench of a charnel-house. But amid all the trials that he was fated to endure, his distorted vision proved to be his keenest curse. At first, as a thick film spread itself before his eyes and gradually shut out every external object, he was merely condemned to the misery of galloping along, he knew not whither, in total blindness; but shortly he discovered that, by some inexplicable process, his optics, although they no longer took cognizance of the world without, had acquired the fearful power of gazing inwards upon his own frame. He beheld revealed to his unwilling and revolted gaze all the mysterious functions and movements of his inner man; he could trace the previously inscrutable connexion between volition and muscular movement, he could penetrate the arcana of the nervous system, he could discern and develope all the hidden laws of our corporeal being. But that which filled him at once with terror and disgust was the observation that all the organs of his frame were withering, morbid, or deranged. The poisonous waters of the pool had been frightfully rapid in their operation. The languid heart panted slowly and with difficulty, the discoloured liver struggled in vain to perform its functions, thick and turbid the blood crawled sluggishly through the veins, livid spots bere and there indicated that disease had assumed a mortal character, it was manifest that the mysterious organization which constitutes life was about to be decomposed and resolved into its first elements. Alfadhel counted the pulsations of his own heart as he gazed upon it with a thrilling intentness, for he began to think that every throb of his bosom would be the last.

For a moment all was dark-he saw nothing, his faculties were suspended, and when their perverted power returned, it seemed as if his eye had revolved upon its axis, and that he was looking inwards upon his own brain. All the inscrutable mysteries of that exquisite membrane were laid bare to his piercing vision, which was enabled to separate the physical from the moral, to detect how mind and matter acted and re-acted upon each other, how thought, sense, and motion sprang from various combinations of medullary matter. The separate birthplaces of the judgment, the memory, and the imagination, and the process of their occasional fusion into one another, sometimes total and indistinguishable, sometimes allowing the predominance of one or other of the constituent elements, were visibly displayed before him. But that which amazed and interested him the most was to see the different passions of the human mind, each inhabiting a separate cell of the brain, and each personified and enlarged to his distempered eye, until it assumed the human size and form. Love sate at the entrance of his grotto painting every thing that he gazed upon in the brightest and most flattering colours, although when jealousy, who occupied the next recess, turned his green eyes towards him, they cast such a hideous hue upon his drawing, that he shook his wings, and more than once threatened to fly to the opposite cell, whence Hatred looked out with a scowling and malignant visage. Rage stood at the door of his dwelling raving like a maniac, and striking at random with his weapon, which fortunately did little injury, since, by his hasty and injudicious management of it, he had blinded himself at the outset. Revenge lurked amid the gloomier caverns gnawing his own heart, and looking wistfully at Despair, who was lifting a bowl of poison to her lips, although Pity

with tears and supplications implored her to desist, and Hope, pointing to the figure of Happiness in a distant cell, endeavoured to dazzle the eyes of the sufferer by continually turning towards her the bright side of a reflecting glass. Fear ran and hid herself at the appalling sight, Joy threw down his goblet and ceased his jocund roundelay, and all seemed to be affected by the spectacle except Religion, who, on her knees apart, with eyes fixed on heaven, and thoughts outpoured in prayer, appeared in her communion with the skies to find a solace for every touch of woe.

A period of blank oblivion succeeded to this mental phantasmagoria; on his recovery from which Alfadhel found himself stretched upon the ground, without knowing when or how he had fallen from his mare, which was no longer visible. Probably his insensibility had continued for some time, for the sun was now setting, and the diseases with which the waters of the pool had impregnated his whole system had made terrific progress in the interval. His agonies were of a contradictory nature, and became more acute from their sudden contrast and apparent incompatibility. From the sensation of a raging fever, burning in his very bones, and sending liquid fire through every vein, he would change to the torments of cold, acute rheumatism, while his whole frame shivered, and his teeth rattled in his head, as if his heart's blood were frozen. Cholic and acute inflammations of the most sensitive organs were instantly succeeded by the pangs of ague, dropsy, asthma, and palsy. Paralysis and apoplexy, torturing cramps, cancers, convulsions, aches and epilepsy, nausea and swoonings, inflicted their separate anguish just long enough to be individualised, when they were supplanted by some new and still more wringing torment; while nightmare, hypochondria, and all the ghostly and spectral abominations of delirium haunted his imagination, as if it were decreed that the sufferings of his mind should equal, if possible, those of his writhing body.

The wretched Alfadhel casting his eyes despairingly around him, beheld at a little distance a ruined building, towards which he crawled, in the hope of protecting himself from the wild beasts, at least until his death, which he now considered to be rapidly approaching. Not without difficulty, and many groans and screams of pain, did he succeed in ensconcing himself, with his drawn scymetar in his hand, behind a heap of rubbish in one corner of the dilapidated structure, where he had scarcely remained five minutes when, to his utter amazement and consternation, he saw two armed men enter the place, leading between them his son Yezid, blindfolded and pinioned. From their conversation he gathered that they formed part of a band of robbers, who, having attacked and overmastered the caravan, had spared the life of his son upon his promise of giving up to them the valuable jewels carefully concealed about his person, and had brought him to the ruin to disburthen him of his hidden treasures. One by one, as their prisoner told them where to search, did they make the most rare and costly gems emerge from the folds of his innermost garments, and deposit them in a small leathern bag, Alfadhel feeling all the while that, in addition to his other miseries, they were thus reducing him to a comparative state of poverty; although, even if his sore sickness had allowed him to interfere, his doing so would only have been the signal of death both to himself and Yezid.

Well convinced of this, he continued to watch their proceed

ings in a transfixed silence, until the robbers, having despoiled their prisoner of all that he possessed, retired to the back of the cave, and seating themselves on the pile of rubbish immediately before Alfadhel, began to converse in a low whisper. One suggested to the other, that as their prisoner, in spite of his solemn protestations, probably still retained about his person the most valuable of his gems, the only way to secure their prize was to murder him, leave his body in the ruin, and carry off his clothes, that they might rip them open at their leisure. To this atrocious proposition his companion yielding an immediate assent, they drew their daggers, and began to steal slowly towards the blindfolded Yezid. Danger, and even death itself, no longer possessed a particle of terror for the affectionate and agonized father; he tried to brandish his sword, to rush forward, to scream out, but, stiffened and transfixed, either with the horror of the scene, or from the effect of the waters of the pool, his faculties refused to act; his tongue clave to the roof of his mouth; not a muscle of his body would move. This paroxysm enchained him until he saw them raising their daggers, when his suspended energies returning to him in one concentrated rush, he uttered an unearthly shriek that echoed for miles around, and springing into the air like a tiger, descended with his naked scymetar in his hand between the assassins and his beloved son. The fiercest tiger would not have been half so terrible to them as this appalling apparition, at sight of which they burst out of the ruin with a shout of terror, leaving the bag of jewels behind them. Alfadhel had just strength enough left to cut his son's fetters with his weapon, and to murmur out "The mare! the mare! mount her, dearest Yezid, and fly!" when he fainted away. His son, who had instantly torn the bandage from his eyes, concluding from these words that the animal was at no great distance, blew a whistle that hung around his neck, and the mare, refreshed by pasture and repose, came presently, bounding and neighing, to the ruin. Yezid, having secured the bag of jewels in his bosom, contrived to place his father upon the mare's back, mounted behind him, and as he knew not where he was, and the night had moreover fallen dark around them, he let the reins fall upon the animal's back, trusting to her well-known sagacity to find the way to Damascus. His reliance was not misplaced; before the sun arose Alfadhel was in bed in his own mansion, attended by two of the most eminent physicians. Several weeks elapsed before he was completely restored to health, but the former weakness of his mind did not return with the renovated strength of his body. Alfadhel Alderamy was an altered man. Forswearing the mercantile anxieties and avarice which had hitherto saddened his life, he devoted himself to the embellishment of his delicious gardens, to the contemplation of the beauties of nature, to charitable practices, and the observance of a cheerful piety. "Let us never repine, my son," he exclaimed to Yezid, "at the dispensations of Providence, for the most menacing of our apparent afflictions will often prove to be concealed blessings. Behold! did I not impiously murmur at my inability to overtake the caravan,-at the calamities with which I was visited after having tasted the waters of the pool? Lo! they were the means by which both our lives were preserved, and even my treasure rescued from the grasp of the robbers. When the voice of the Lord is heard in thunder, when the frowning heavens are dark,

?

and lash the earth with rain, what is the result of their seeming anger Do they not shower down future flowers and verdure, does not every drop sow perfume and beauty in the ground? Blessed, even thus, is the storm of sorrow that falls upon our heads, if it serve to bring forth in our hearts the undeveloped fruits of resignation and virtue; and since we are too blind to distinguish good from evil, or to detect the hidden consequences of either, our ignorance may at least teach us this single knowledge-that whatever happens, it is equally vain and impious to repine at the will of Heaven." H.

SONG.

"Oh! cast thou not

Affection from thee! in this bitter world
Hold to thy heart that only treasure fast,
Watch-guard it-suffer not a breath to dim
The bright gem's purity!"

Ir thou hast crush'd a flower,
The root may not be blighted;
If thou hast quench'd a lamp,
Once more it may be lighted;
But on thy harp or on thy lute,

The string which thou hast broken,
Shall never in sweet sound again
Give to thy touch a token!

If thou hast loos'd a bird,

Whose voice of song could cheer thee,
Still, still he may be won

From the skies to warble near thee;

But if upon the troubled sea

Thou hast thrown a gem unheeded,

Hope not that wind or wave shall bring
The treasure back when needed.

If thou hast bruis'd a vine,

The Summer's breath is healing,

And its cluster yet may glow

Through the leaves their bloom revealing;

But if thou hast a cup o'erthrown

With a bright draught fill'd-oh! never
Shall Earth give back that lavish'd wealth
To cool thy parch'd lip's fever!

The heart is like that cup,

'If thou waste the love it bore thee,

And like that jewel gone,

Which the deep will not restore thee;

And like that string of harp or lute
Whence the sweet sound is scatter'd ;-
-Gently, oh! gently touch the chords
So soon for ever shatter'd!

F. H.