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THE SKULL.

A TALE OF A FEW YEARS SINCE.

It seems still but as yesterday (so vividly are the feelings I then experienced even now present to my mind), though it is in reality several years since I made my first appearance in that miniature model of the world at large, a Public School. I happened to be the first who arrived; and it was with a gaze of anxious curiosity that I scrutinized the countenances of my future schoolfellows, as they dropped in, one by one, unwilling exiles from the mirth and merriment of a Christmas family circle. Many were the kind ones I then marked, whom I have now the honour and the happiness to number among my friends; many the tyrants, whom I can scarcely, even at this interval, remember without an involuntary sense of terror; many the cold ones, against whom in the walks of life I not unfrequently jostle, and return them back a stare as stiff and as proud as that with which they condescend to recognise my insignificance. Some too there were the pride of whose opening manhood has since been quelled by the icy hand of death; happy, perchance, that they have not been reserved to drain the dregs of that goblet whose first draught is so exquisitely fascinating.

To relate in these pages the details of my passage through the various gradations of which a public school life is made up, would be, to most of those who peruse them, wearisome and superfluous; suffice it to say, that it was shortly after my admission, and while I was yet one of those unhappy little urchins denominated "Fags," that the incidents occurred, which a few leisure hours have induced me to throw into the following tale.

I

It is perhaps necessary to inform my readers (if any such there be) who are not intimately acquainted with the history and localities of the Charterhouse, that during the progress of the plague, that most awful visitation with which it has ever seemed good to the inscrutable purposes of Providence to afflict our fatherland, vast numbers of its victims were promiscuously interred in an immense pit, extending over a great portion of that space of ground known to Carthusians of the present day by the rural appellation of "the Green." then, as I have before stated, in the early part of my time, that circumstances connected with the drainage of the place rendered it necessary that a considerable extent of this storehouse of mortality should once more be laid open to the day.

It was

It may well be supposed that there was not one, either labourer or schoolboy, who did not keep an anxious watch for any relic of the olden time which might be turned up by the mattock; but of these there were but few, and of little worth; nor were there so many bones discovered as we had been led to expect, but their scarcity served only to increase their value. It might have formed a subject for curious contemplation to an uninterested spectator, if any such there had been, to observe the eagerness with which the slightest relic of a human form was contested by the surrounding crowd of juveniles: the exultation of any one who was lucky enough to appropriate a skull, and the disappointment of the unfortunate, whose tempting offer of five legbones, and three arm ditto, with perhaps a shoulderblade to boot, was unable to induce the happy owner to effect an exchange. For myself, inferior as I was both in size and strength to the majority of those around me, there did not exist a hope of obtaining so rich a prize;

my delight may consequently be imagined, when at the risk of coming into school a full ten minutes later than all the rest, and with the expenditure of almost the only shilling which remained out of my last "tip," I succeeded in acquiring from one of the workmen (oh, how kind I thought him!) that utmost aim and object of my desires, a large and perfect skull.

Damp and dirty as it was, to hide it under my jacket, to rush, rather than run, up the break-neck stairs which led to my bed-room, to deposit it in the inmost recesses of my box, took then almost less time to perform than it has now taken to write. To return, as soon as schoolhours were over, was of course my first thought; and I was fortunate enough to do so without being observed. Over and over again did I rub the cherished treasure, till, fully satisfied that there was not a flaw to be discovered, I placed it upon a table before me, and gazed upon it earnestly and long, in all the luxury of undisturbed possession.

It is impossible to look, alone, for any length of time upon anything which reminds us so strongly of death, without feeling a seriousness, amounting almost to melancholy, insensibly steal over the mind; and thus it was with me. The careless jests at which but an hour before I had laughed with the loudest, were either entirely forgotten, or if remembered, seemed all at once to have lost their mirth-inspiring influence. I sat entranced before my prize, till by degrees I fell into a reverie, in which I conjured up before my mind's eye the days in which he who formerly owned it must have existed, the rank he might have held, the passion which might have flashed from the once brilliant eye, the genius which might have flowed from the lips long since silent in the grave, the deep thought which might have had its

dwelling beneath that broad and lofty brow. What would I not have given at that moment to know who and what had been its possessor? Was it fancy, or did I indeed hear a voice reply to my unuttered thoughts? It must have been so! Gradually those brown cheekbones became clothed with the warm hues of life, and those empty sockets were once more tenanted! It could be no deception! There was even the perfect figure before me, habited in the picturesque dress of his time, and his hand motioning me to silence and attention, with a gesture that plainly told it was wont to be obeyed.

How it was that I neither started nor uttered any exclamation of astonishment, I am to this moment utterly unable to explain; I can only presume that the intensity of my surprise was such that it left me without the power either of speech or motion. Not a syllable, however, did I lose of the disclosure which followed, so intent was I upon every word which fell from the lips of that beautiful, that fearfully beautiful vision; for although it had never fallen to my lot to behold a more noble countenance, yet never did I see one on which unrestrained passion had left more strongly marked evidences of its influence than on that of him who stood before me. Thus ran his narration.

"You have sought to know my history. Little did I deem that lip of mine would ever relate its horrors to mortal ear; still less that it should be at a time when the grave had closed for ages over the remains of those whose fate was so closely interwoven with my own; at a time when the story I am about to disclose will, I doubt not, be deemed too horrible and too improbable to have ever occurred.

“My name,—but it matters not now what name I bore, enough that you learn that it was among the no

blest of the land; that the form which the greedy earthworm hath long since deserted was faultless as that of the triumphant day-god of the Greek; that the heart which it inclosed was now clear as yon azure sky, now black as the storm-cloud that sweeps across its surface; the slave of every impulse and every passion by which man works his own pleasure and his own destruction.

"I was the younger of two brothers, but at the death of my father was left independent of my elder, excepting that I still preserved towards him that affection, mingled with deference, which I had been from our earliest childhood accustomed to entertain. But to this harmony there was but too soon to succeed a discord that lasted, with but a slight interval on one side, until. But why do I anticipate? you wished for my whole story, and you shall be gratified, however painful the narration may prove.

"Among the most intimate and valued friends whom we possessed were an old gentleman, the companion of my father's youthful days, and his only daughter, a being whom to behold but once was to adore for ever. Need I say that she became an object almost of idolatry to a heart glowing with feelings as yet unchilled by the cold and deadening experiences of the world? I had every reason to believe that my affection was returned with an ardour equal to its own; but, fool that I was, I might have known that the bliss, the ecstacy of that belief was too great to be permanent. I might have foreseen that it could not long endure; but the wildest phantasy could never for an instant have suspected the cause which was to sever us at once for ever!

"But I must not dwell upon this part of my tale. Owing to a dangerous illness by which my brother was attacked, some family affairs demanded my presence for

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