doubts of liberty has never loved it in his ed more ridiculous to him, in the Koran, heart. It distresses me to hear a public than the aerial voyage of the Prophet. Acfunctionary profess such opinions. How cording to the Koran, Mahomet, being in can you justify them, citizen?"

"That is not so difficult," said Stryk. "Athens, once free, became accustomed first to Pericles-then to a king of Macedonia. Rome had first the Triumvirs-then Cæsar and at last, Nero. England, who beheaded her king, endured Cromwell, and returned under the dominion of kings."

"What do you mean with your Romans, and Athenians, and English? I hope you do not compare them to the French. But I pardon you your mistakes; you have not the honor of being a Frenchman."

bed one morning, was suddenly transported by the angel Gabriel through paradise, the seven heavens, and hell: he saw and observed all their wonders, and held with the Deity ninety thousand conversations; and all in so short a space of time, that when the angel laid him down again in his bed, it was still warm; and the water of a ewer, which he had accidentally overturned in setting out, had not yet ceased to flow. The sultan was one day ridiculing this narrative in the presence of a dervish, who had the reputation of working miracles. The latter promised to cure the sultan of his incredulity, if he would but do as he should desire him. The sultan took the dervish at his word; and the Commander of the FaithSome years after, Bonaparte became first ful was conducted to a tub which was filled consul; then consul for ten years; consul with water to the brim. All the court were for life; and at last, emperor and king. present, and surrounded the tub with curiStryk was immediately restored to his em-osity. The dervish enjoined the monarch ployments, because he was well known to to plunge his head into the water, and withbelong to the moderate party. He enjoyed draw it again instantly. But scarcely had more credit and consideration than ever; his prediction had again been accomplished; and he passed for a consummate politician.

The pardon was not complete, for Stryk lost his place. He even had to undergo some degree of persecution for his suspected language.

CHAPTER IV.

THE IMMOVEABLES.

the prince put his head under the water, than he found himself at the foot of a mountain on the sea-shore. Just imagine his surprise! He cursed the dervish, and swore be would never forgive him. But it was absolutely necessary that he should conform to his destiny. Fortunately, he espied some men in the wood: their directions enabled him to reach a neighboring village. He found he was far away from Egypt, on the borders of the Caspian Sea. Nobody Napoleon changed the face of the world, knew him; he durst not say who he was. and gave away crowns. Stryk became the After many an adventure, he contrived to servant of one of these crowns, and obtain-please a rich man, and married his daughed honors. There was no longer a repub-ter. He had fourteen children by her. At lican left; every one worshipped the new last, his wife died; and, after several years master. No one was even willing to be of misfortune, he sunk into the depths of thought to have shared in the republican wretchedness. He was forced to beg his mania; and each pretended to have singly resisted the torrent. It was considered disgraceful not to have always belonged to the partisans of royalty.

bread in the streets. He often shed bitter tears, on comparing his miserable condition with the sumptuous life which he had formerly led in his palace; and he regarded "I see no disgrace in that," said Stryk; his sufferings as the punishment of his infi"the epidemic prevailed, and you were af-delity. At length, he determined on doing fected with it; let it once more appear, and penance, and to perform a pilgrimage to you will feel the effects of it again. It is possible."

"What do you take us for weak men, ready to change incessantly?" said they.

He

Mecca, begging his bread on the way. completed his pilgrimage; but, before he approached the holy mosque, he resolved to purify himself by a general ablution. He "I always remember," answered Stryk, repaired to a stream, pulled off his clothes, "that sultan of Egypt who is described by and plunged into the water. But, lo! as Addison. This sultan was very desirous of he rose out of it, he found himself, not by passing for a free-thinker. Nothing seem-a river, but standing before the tub into

which the dervish had told him to plunge shoulders, according to custom, and replied, his head. He was still standing in the" It is possible." This answer was not formidst of his courtiers. He could not re-gotten, and his name disappeared from the frain from expressing his resentment at the list of counsellors of state. When the aldervish who had caused him so much misery; lied powers penetrated into France, and the but his astonishment knew no bounds, when creations of Napoleon tottered on all sides, he was assured by his whole court, that he people began to cry, "Stryk is a prophet!" had not quitted the spot where they stood, He has shared the fate of all the sages. and that all these events had taken place in His disgrace under the government of the the instant of time which was required to usurper, as the fallen emperor was now plunge his head into the water, and to draw called, secured him the favor of the new it out again. and legitimate sovereign. But it was not 66 Gentlemen," " continued the old coun-long before his maxim drew down a new sellor of state, 66 you are in the condition storm on his head. The Prince hinted to of the sultan of Egypt. If any one had him, one day, in council, that his attachtold you, before the revolution, what you ment to so many successive governments would do in the course of it, you would rendered his words a little liable to suspinever have believed it. And now that you cion. "I have always endeavored to be a have withdrawn your heads from the tub, good subject," said the old counsellor, you cannot remember anything that you "by always serving the country, whoever thought, did, or experienced, during the might be its master. The state has a right season of miracles. If the Bourbons and to the services of its citizens; and to serve the emigrants should ever return into France, it faithfully, under all circumstances, is to they would look upon history, from the year do one's duty." 1789, as having had no reality; and would "The state," said the prince, "is the see themselves like the sultan of Egypt by sovereign. How can you think of separatthe side of the tub, and consider their years ing his person from the state?" of adversity as a deceitful dream."

His audience laughed. "Well," said some of them, "the counsellor is not so far wrong, after all. But can it be supposed that the poor Bourbons will ever be restored That, indeed, would belong to the history of miracles."

"Hem! It is possible," said Stryk. And, in fact, it was not long before he saw it accomplished, and the ancient political order resume its place.

CHAPTER V.

IT IS POSSIBLE.

This change brought with it no danger to a man of the counsellor's principles, especially as he had fallen into disgrace towards the end of the imperial domination. It is said that Napoleon, having heard of his political foresight, had sent one of his staff to ask his opinion of this expedition. The old counsellor, much surprised at such a question, would rather not have answered it. The general thought there was something singular in this reserve. "I hope," said he, "that we shall celebrate the new year at St. Petersburg; but you seem to apprehend unfavorable results from thi The old counsellor shrugged his

war?"

At these words he cast a stern look on the counsellor, and signed to him to retire. It was his last disgrace; and whenever he was asked whether there would still be political changes, he answered-" It is possible."

ROYAL LITERARY FUND.-The annual dinner was thumberland in the chair. The Archbishop of Dublately held at Freemasons'-hall the Duke of Norlin, Lord Campbell, Mr. Baron Parke, and a number of eminent literary gentlemen were present. The report stated that thirty families of educated men had been relieved by the society during the last year, involving an outlay of £1,230. The chief toasts of the evening were "Lord Campbell and the biographers;"Mr. Thackeray and the novelists;" "Mr. Lovell and the dramatists;" "Mr. Les er and the literary and scientific men of foreign countries; Ebrington and the stewards." The great fact of the "Mr. St. John and the travellers;" "Viscount evening was the announcement of subscriptions to the amount of £700, including donations of £100 from her Majesty, and £100 from the Duke of Northumberland. One of the daily papers notices it as remarkable that no allusion was made to the press, though the toasts were sixteen in number.— Britannia.

seized a younger companion, and in a joke bound DEATH FROM FRIGHT.-TWO Edinburgh youths him with cords and took him towards the Police-office on a pretended charge of stealing some trifle from his aunt. The poor boy became so agitated went home, was put to bed, and in a few days died of that a passenger interfered and set him at liberty: he the fright.

From the New Monthly Magazine.

TIME-TABLE OF A RICH SEPTUAGENARY.

God will not take this for a good bill of reckoning- ful and funereal in the tone: it seems to
Item-Spent upon my pleasures forty years.
BISHOP HALL.

strike upon my heart and chill it: I could almost fancy that I am listening to my own passing knell. How the clock lingers, as if the hammer were afraid to strike the bell. Twelve at last. Thank Heaven that is the final blow. Midnight has come and gone, and I am seventy years old.

with all their myriad hopes, fears, and changes. Strange! that we can thus compress an entire lengthened existence into a passing thought; nay, not only our own individual history, but that of the whole human race. In a moment the mind's eye runs over six thousand years, yet we cannot

minute. What power over the past, what impotence as to the future; what illimitatable retrospective vision, how absolute our prospective blindness!

TEN minutes to midnight! In that short space of time, for I have been told that I was born as the clock was striking, I shall exactly have completed my seventieth year; I shall have lived the threescore years and ten,which, according to the Psalmist, are the Incontestable as is the fact, I can hardly days of man's age, so soon passeth it away realise it to my mind, so easy is it with a and we are gone. "Even when ensconsed in single backward glance, and in half a second this safe and sheltered study, a midnight of time, to recall the whole of my long life storm has ever oppressed me with a feeling of infancy, childhood, manhood, old age, awe, not unmingled with a sense of indefinite danger. That invisible giant the wind, howling as if in triumph for the shipwrecks and ruin he has occasioned, and shaking the earth with his footsteps as he rushes on to spread wider terror and destruction; the lightning flash; the deafening peal of thunder; the violent plashings of the storm-look forward even for a day, an hour, a driven rain; and the fury of the elements fighting together in the dark, can seldom be heard, even by the bravest, without a deep and anxious emotion. To me, however, sitting as I now am, in the very centre of England's mighty metropolis, infinitely more affecting, more soul-subduing is the intense silence which at present reigns around me. A million and a half of human beings simultaneously enjoying peace, fellowship, and oblivion, by the single touch of Nature that "makes the whole world kin;" old and young, rich and poor, the beggar and the peer, the sleeper upon straw and upon eider down, the happy and the wretched, all brought to an absolute equality when once they have " steeped their senses in forgetfulness," forms a consoling fact, which may well reconcile us to the apparent inequalities of human condition. During one third of their lives, for such is the average portion of our sleep, the whole of mankind are on a perfect level.

Hist! hark! the parish clock is striking. How slowly and with what a thrilling solemnity does the sound vibrate through the still night air, as if every pulsation were conscious that many a human pulse was simultaneously and finally ceasing to beat. Yes, so it is. With the throb of every new second scores of human hearts are throbbing for the last time. Dong! dong! dong! Surely there is something unusually mourn

This utter stillness, the midnight stillness of a vast metropolis, the living death, as it were, of its countless inhabitants, is more than solemn, it is awful. It is not so much the total absence of sound as the actual presence of a silence so deep that it is felt I had almost said is heard by the thrilling heart. Ha! was that a cricket's chirping? No, nothing so cheerful. 'Tis the expiring fire clicking its own deathwatch. See! a fresh coal flares up for a a moment, casting spectral gleams that flutter about the books as if they were the spirits of authors, hovering around the volumes in which they are entombed. A library is a cemetery of intellects, and if disembodied ghosts may haunt our churchyards, why may not this burial-ground of minds be visited by similar apparitions. Now they flit away; they melt into the gloom; but methinks I am still surrounded by spiritual emanations.

A man's seventieth birth day is seldom a very cheerful one, and upon mine, at the present moment, everything conspires to cast a gloom not less depressing than if my last hour were come. It cannot be far off. I have passed life's customary limit, and am now a trespasser on the domain of death,

whose steel-traps and spring-guns are lying was neither more nor less than the dark in wait for every foot-fall. Nor are these shade of my own body thrown down by the his only weapons. He may be flying to- suspended lamp. I despised myself for wards me on the wings of invisible mias- having paused and shuddered, still more for mata; he may be secreted in my veins; an having been deceived, for most men had raapoplexy may smite me in this arm-chair, ther be frightened out of their wits, than and so the anniversary of my birthday may outwitted by a fancied cause of terror. be my day of death. How can I resist the contagion of such fears when I look around me?

I turned round, the imaginary grave had disappeared, the shadows being now behind me, and I could not help exclaiming,

The dim and waning lamp seems to inti- "What a poor, nervous simpleton have mate that its last hour is at hand; that, I been! I am not usually superstitious, like myself, it has nearly reached its allot- never was a believer in omens, have alted bourne. There is a mournful significance ways felt a contempt for those who credit in the warning, and lo! behold! I see two the existence of apparitions, goblins, spectral gigantic numerals darkly shadowed on the manifestations, and all the raw-head and opposite side of my study; they are the bloody bo es of the nursery. Ridiculous figures 70! Well, I know that I am three- trash! fit only for brain-sick old women of score and ten; I have just been recording either sex, and chicken-hearted girls." it; there needs no ghost to tell me this. Scarcely had these words escaped my Why, then, is it shouted to mine eyes with lips when with an involuntary cry, and a such Stentorian rudeness? And what por-shuddering start, I stood transfixed and tends this preternatural handwriting on aghast, my eyes distended, my teeth, chatthe wall? Perchance to apprise me that tering, the perspiration oozing from my the empire of my life is about to pass away: brow. Another living being stood in the but, why am I to be bewildered and ap room, or rather beyond the room, and yet palled by so miaculous a notification distinctly visible, for it seemed to be starPshaw! how the doubtful light has befool-ing at me out of the dim vacuity beyond ed mine eyes! I now see that the imagin the walls of my study. I rubbed my eyes, ed numerals are only the shadows of the to assure myself that I was not dreaming, chains that sustain the lamp. What a re- and leaned forwards, fixing my looks pierclief to discover the real nature of these ingly upon the phenomenon before me. phantom figures, for their aspect was start- The apparition moved, it appeared to be ling and fearful: and yet, what weakness, advancing towards me, and as my boasted what cowardice, to be thus overcome! disbelief in spectres began to be converted To shake off such idle and unmanly ap- into a vague but intense terror, I will prehensions, I arose from my arm-chair, and frankly confess that I felt strongly tempted walked away from the table by which I had to make an immediate escape from the been sitting; but at the very first step, the room. Deciding, after a moment's further disturbance and alarm of my mind were deliberation, upon instant flight, I moved confi med, instead of being allayed, for, as I looked downwards, methought I stood upon the edge of my own dark grave, at the bottom of which I could discern the faint gleam of a coffin plate. So palpable did the yawning aperture appear, that I cautiously put forward one of my feet, to assur myself of its existence; but, feeling the soft carpet beneath me, I slowly ventured to take three successive steps, the grave appearing to recede as I advanced. At the third movement, my foot thrust away the supposed coffin-plate; it did not. give forth a metallic sound, and as it caught the light, I perceived that it was a gilded envelope-case, which had, doubtless, fallen on the ground when I moved the table. Emboldened by this discovery to seek the cause of the receding grave, I found that it

towards the door at the opposite extremity of the room; but as the figure did the same, with the manifest intention of intercepting me, I suddenly drew up and stood still, utterly paralysed by conflicting emotions, and my spectral antagonist made no further approaches. My retreat cut off, and my suspense becoming intolerable, İ exclaimed, in a faltering voice,

"Who are you? Why do you thus haunt me? Avaunt begone unreal mockery, hence!"

The lips of the vision moved, but I could hear nothing except the faint echo of my own words. It has spoken, thought I to myself, but as a spirit, I presume its revelations are not audible "to ears of flesh and blood."

To be made desperate is to be frightened out of fear, and such being my plight, I de

the enjoyments and luxuries of life nearly 150,000l. Even as a child I was petted and spoiled, so that it is almost impossible to estimate what the world has done for me since my birth, in the multiform and incessant tribute that it pays to the individual demands of wealth and civilization. Hardly would it be an exaggeration were I to exclaim,

termined to meet my supernatural visitant | Heaven a vigorous and healthy frame, and face to face, and solve the mystery of its more than an average share of mental nature, whatever might be the result. For faculties, however I may have neglected to this purpose, I summoned all my courage, cultivate and improve them. At the age of and took three steps forward. The spectre twenty-one, my father having died when I did the same, eyeing me all the time with was a minor, I succeeded to a landed esa keen and startled scrutiny, as if it were tate of 30007. a-year, and as I always lived scarcely less bewildered than myself. Three up to my income, I have actually spent upon steps more; we were within an arm's length of each other, I panted with agitation, so did the phantom, this was somewhat encouraging; I slowly put forth my hand, mentally ejaculating now shall I know what thou art." My trembling hand encountered a cold gleaming substance, the very touch of which revealed its nature, and I recovered the self-possession which had so strangely deserted me when I beheld before Creation's heir, the world, the world is mine! me a large cheval-glass, which had been placed in my study a few hours before, pre- for it has offered up sacrifices to me as if I paratory to its being removed into one of were its absolute lord and master. In South the bedrooms. In the excited and dis America, miners have been digging the ore ordered state of my mind, and in the dim- for my gold and silver plate, and for the ness of the room that rendered everything minor magic coin that supplies almost every indistinct, I had actually been haunted by want; in North America, innumerable lathe reflection of my own figure! borers have been producing rice and other Relieved from the oppression of this self-edibles, and cotton and tobacco for my food, created nightmare, my heart leaped up, I raiment, and cigars: African nations have breathed more freely, and would fain have made war upon each other that slaves, smiled at my own folly, but I felt both in- transported to the West Indies, might supdignant and ashamed, and petulantly turning round the glass with its face to the wall so that it could not again delude me, I threw myself back into my arm chair.

ply sugar and coffee for my delectation: in Asia, millions have toiled, during their whole lives, that I might never have a moment's want of tea, silk, spices, and other But my mind could not recover its se- products: while Europe has lavished upon renity, nor could I altogether, even when me all the luxuries which her arts, her my eyes were shut, shake off the impression science, and her manufactures have enabled that a figure from the world of spirits was her to pour forth with such unbounded still standing before me. Nay, as I gazed, or prodigality and in such inimitable perfecseemed to gaze at it through my closed lids, tion. Upon every sea, and upon every methought that its lips again moved, and road, and with every wind, by night and by that a deep and solemn voice distinctly ar- day, have the purveyors to my pleasures ticulated the following words,

"Man of seventy! what have Heaven and the world done for thee? What hast thou done for Heaven and the world Render unto thyself an account of thy stewardship!"

been hurrying towards me with their offerings. My victuallers are ubiquitous. The cattle on a hundred hills are mine; so are the corn, milk, and honey of our English valleys; so are the grapes that empurple the sunny slopes of France and Germany. Although the silence and the reflection of Air yields me up its tenants; so does the a few minutes convinced me that this ocean, from the turtle of the Western Isles, imagined mandate was the mere illusion of to the humble herring of our British coasts. my own excited senses, it weighed heavily How many droves and flocks of cattle, upon my mind, and my self-accusing medi- how many flights of birds, how many shoals tations assumed the form of the following of fish, bave been entombed in this omnireply to the injunction In answer to the vorous body, 'twere vain to calculate; but first question, this is my deposition. reckoning my consumption of claret at only Born at a lucky and interesting period, a bottle per diem, commencing with my enin the freest, happiest, and most civilized trance at college, where I first learnt to be country of the worl I received from a tippler, I find that I must have swallowed