HE sleep of the Egyptian had been unusually profound during the night, but as the dawn approached it was disturbed by strange and unquiet dreams which impressed him the more as they were colored by the peculiar philosophy he embraced. He thought that he was transported to the bowels of the

earth, and that he stood alone in a mighty cavern supported by enormous columns of rough and primeval rock, lost, as they ascended, in the vastness of a shadow athwart whose eternal darkness no beam of day had ever glanced. And in the space between these columns were huge wheels that whirled round and round unceasingly and with a rushing and roaring noise. Only to the right and left extremities of the cavern the space between the pillars was left bare, and the apertures stretched away into galleries not wholly dark, but dimly lighted by wandering and erratic fires, that, meteor-like, now crept (as the snake creeps) along the rugged and dank soil, and now leaped fiercely to and fro, darting across the vast gloom in wild gambols, suddenly disappearing, and as suddenly bursting into tenfold brilliancy and power. And while he gazed wonderingly upon the gallery to the left, thin mistlike, aerial shapes passed slowly up; and when they had gained the hall, they

seemed to rise aloft and to vanish, as the smoke vanishes, in the measureless ascent. He turned in fear toward the opposite extremity, and, behold! there came swiftly from the gloom above similar shadows, which swept hurriedly along the gallery to the right, as if borne involuntarily adown the tides of some invisible stream, and the faces of these spectres were more distinct than those that emerged from the opposite passage, and on some was joy, and on others sorrow; some were vivid with expectation and hope, some unutterably dejected by awe and horror. And so they passed swift and constantly on, till the eyes of the gazer grew dizzy and blinded with the whirl of an ever-varying succession of things impelled by a power apparently not their own.

Arbaces turned away, and in the recess of the hall he saw the mighty form of a giantess seated upon a pile of skulls, and her hands were busy upon a pale and shadowy woof; and he saw that the woof communicated with the numberless wheels, as if it guided the machinery of their movements. He thought his feet, by some secret agency, were impelled toward the female, and that he was borne onward till he stood before her, face to face. The countenance of the giantess was solemn and hushed and beautifully serene. It was as the face of some colossal sculpture of his own ancestral sphinx. No passion, passion, no human emotion, disturbed its brooding and unwrinkled brow; there was

66

'Who art thou, and what is thy task?"

"I am that which thou hast acknowledged," answered, without desisting from its work, the mighty phantom. "My name is Nature. These are the wheels of the world, and my hand guides them for the life of all things."

"And what," said the voice of Arbaces, "are these galleries that, strangely and fitfully illumined, stretch on either hand into the abyss of gloom?"

"That," answered the giant-mother," which thor beholdest to the left is the gallery of the unborn. The shadows that flit onward and upward into the world are the souls that pass from the long eternity of being to their destined pilgrimage on earth. That which thou

Arbaces felt himself tremble as he asked

again,

Wherefore am I here?"

"It is the forecast of thy soul, the prescience of thy rushing doom, the shadow of thy fate lengthening into eternity as it declines from earth.'

Ere he could answer Arbaces felt a rushing wind sweep down the cavern, as the wings of a giant god. Borne aloft from the ground and whirled on high as a leaf in the storms of autumn, he beheld himself in the midst of the spectres of the dead and hurrying with them along the length of gloom. As in vain and impotent despair he struggled against the impelling power, he thought the wind grew into something like a shape-a spectral outline of the wings and talons of an eagle, with limbs floating far and indistinctly along the air, and eyes that, alone clearly and vividly seen, glared stonily and remorselessly on his own.

"What art thou?" again said the voice of the Egyptian.

scending from above sweep on, equally unknown and dim, is the gallery of the dead." "And wherefore," said the voice of Arbaces, "yon wandering lights, that so wildly break the darkness, but only break, not reveal?" "Dark fool of the human sciences! dreamer of the stars and would-be decipherer of the heart and origin of things! those lights are but the glimmerings of such knowledge as is vouchsafed to Nature to work her way, to trace enough of the past and future to give providence to her designs. Judge, then, puppet as thou art, what lights are reserved for thee."

name is Necessity."

Thou hast sown crime: accuse not fate if thou reapest not the harvest of virtue."

The scene suddenly changed. Arbaces was in a place of human bones; and, lo! in the midst of them was a skull, and the skull, still retaining its fleshless hollows, assumed slowly and in the mysterious confusion of a dream the face of Apæcides, and forth from the grinning jaws there crept a small worm, and it crawled to the feet of Arbaces. He attempted to stamp on it and crush it, but it became longer and larger with that attempt. It swelled and bloated till it grew into a vast serpent; it coiled itself round the limbs of Arbaces; it crunched his bones; it raised its glaring eyes and poisonous jaws to his face. He writhed in vain; he withered; he gasped beneath the influence of the blighting breath; he felt himself blasted into death. And then a voice came from the reptile, which still bore the face of Apæcides, and rang in his reeling ear: Thy victim is thy judge! The worm thou wouldst crush becomes the serpent that devours thee."

IF

THE SUICIDE.

F death were nothing and naught after death,

If when men died at once they ceased to be, Returning to the barren womb of nothing, Whence first they sprung, then might the debauchee

Untrembling mouth the heavens; then might the drunkard

Reel over his full bowl, and when 'tis drained
Fill up another to the brim and laugh
At the poor bugbear Death; then might the
wretch

That's weary of the world and tired of life
At once give each inquietude the slip
By stealing out of being when he pleased,
And by what way, whether by hemp or
steel,

Death's thousand doors stand open. Who could force

The ill-pleased guest to sit out his full time
Or blame him if he goes? Sure he does well
That helps himself as timely as he can
When able. But if there's an Hereafter—
And that there is, conscience, uninfluenced
And suffered to speak out, tells every man-
Then must it be an awful thing to die,
More horrid yet to die by one's own hand.
Self-murder! Name it not.

Shall Nature, swerving from her earliest dictate,

Self-preservation, fall by her own act?
Forbid it, Heaven! Let not upon disgust
The shameless hand be foully crimsoned o'er
With blood of its own lord. Dreadful at-

tempt!

To rush into the presence of our Judge, As if we challenged him to do his worst, And mattered not his wrath !

Our time is fixed, and all our days are numbered

How long, how short, we know not; this we know:

Duty requires we calmly wait the summons, Nor dare to stir till Heaven shall give permission,

Like a voice from those who love us, Breathing fondly, "Fare thee well!"

When the waves are round me breaking

As I pace the deck alone, And my eye in vain is seeking Some green leaf to rest upon,

Where my old companions dwell?

ground,

And keep it to the last. To run away

Is but a coward's trick; to run away
From this world's ills, that at the very worst
Will soon blow o'er, thinking to mend our-
selves

By boldly venturing on a world unknown
And plunging headlong in the dark-'tis mad!
No frenzy half so desperate as this.

ROBERT BLAIR.

ISLE OF BEAUTY, FARE THEE WELL!

SHADES

HADES of ev'ning, close not o'er us;
Leave our lonely bark a while!

Morn, alas! will not restore us

Yonder dim and distant isle.

Still my fancy can discover

Sunny spots where friends may dwell; Darker shadows round us hover:

Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!

'Tis the hour when happy faces Smile around the taper's light: Who will fill our vacant places,

Who will sing our songs, to-night? Through the mist that floats above us Faintly sounds the vesper-bell

Isle of Beauty, fare thee well!

THOMAS HAYNES BAYLY.

THE POET'S EPITAPH.

ESCAPED the gloom of mortal life, a

Here leaves its mouldering tenement of clay

Safe where no cares their whelming billows roll,

No doubts bewilder and no hopes betray. Like thee I once have stemmed the sea of life,

Like thee have languished after empty joys,

Like thee have labored in the stormy strife," Been grieved for trifles and amused with

toys.

Yet for a while 'gainst Passion's threatful blast

Let steady Reason urge the struggling oar; Shot through the dreary gloom, the morn at last

Gives to thy longing eye the blissful shore. Forget my frailties: thou art also frail;

Forgive my lapses, for thyself mayst fall; Nor read unmoved my artless tender tale:

I was a friend, O man! to thee to all.

JAMES BEATTIE.