THE NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE AND HUMORIS T. CONTENTS FOR NOVEMBER. POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF MYSELF. BY HORACE SMITH, ESQ. A DRIFT-LOG ON THE MISSISSIPPI. BY ZEBEDEE HICKORY THE SPIRIT OF CHANGE IN SOUTHERN EUROPE. BY JAMES ON AN OLD RAILWAY ENGINE. BY J. P. ANTHONY PAGE . 259 . 274 . 288 € 303 305 . 317 318 . 337 . 345 A FORTNIGHT ON THE LOIRE. BY DUDLEY COSTELLO LITERATURE.-The Ogilvies. A Novel. The Caxtons; a Family Picture. By Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, Bart.-Ernest Vane. By Alexander Baillie Cochrane, M.P.-The Lord of the Manor; or, Lights and Shades of Country Life. By John Thomas Hall, Esq.-Selections from the Poems and Letters of Bernard Barton. Edited by his Daughter.-French and English Dictionary. By Professor A. Spiers, Ph.D.-The Romance of the Peerage; or, Curiosities of Family History. By George Lillie Craik. Vol. III.-Ruins of Many Lands. A descriptive Poem. By Nicholas Michell 378 to 384 TO CORRESPONDENTS. Mr. AINSWORTH begs it to be distinctly understood that no Contributions whatever sent him, either for the NEW MONTHLY or AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINES, will be returned. All articles are sent at the risk of the writers, who should invariably keep copies. NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE. POSTHUMOUS MEMOIR OF MYSELF. BY HORACE SMITH, ESQ. CHAPTER IX. QUICKLY, too quickly, however, did my thoughts, recurring to my miserable plight, begin to speculate upon the nature of the horrors in which it must inevitably terminate. Should I, recovering my muscular powers and my voice, make desperate and frantic efforts to force up the lid of the coffin; and, failing in that struggle, madly scream and shout for assistance? Faint and forlorn must be such a hope, for the church was an isolated building, and there were neither houses nor footpaths in its immediate vicinity. Even if I succeeded in escaping from the coffin, I should still be a prisoner in the vault, to stumble over the mouldering remains of my forefathers, finally to perish slowly and wretchedly of madness and starvation. One alternative remained. My apparent death might gradually be changed into a real one; life might faint away from me, and I might slide into another world without suffering, and almost without consciousness-an euthanasia for which I put up fresh prayers to the Fountain of Mercy. A new turn was given to my reflections by the striking of the church clock, whose echoes reverberated through the empty edifice with a peculiar solemnity; and I occupied myself in mentally reckoning the minutes till the sound was repeated, to which I listened with a mingled feeling of dismay and consolation. True, it warned me that I was an hour nearer to death, but it proved also that I was not yet completely cut off from the upper world; nay, it seemed to restore me to the living scenes I had quitted, for my mind floating upwards on every fresh vibration, dwelt among all the objects and occupations appropriate to that peculiar time. Who can wonder that I should find a melancholy pleasure in the delusion of this waking dream? It was dispelled by a very different sound,-by the chirping and twittering of birds, some of them singing from the adjacent yew-tree, and others hopping about, as I conjectured, close to the steps of my vault. Sadness there was in their merriment, for it made my own miserable plight more bitter, and I could not help mentally ejaculating, "Oh, blessed birds! ye have the bright sun and the balmy air for your recreation; ye have wings to convey ye over the whole beautiful expanse of nature; ye have voices to give expression to your delight, and to convert happiness into music; while I-" The contrast was too horrible, and I wrenched my thoughts away from its contemplation. Evening had arrived, and all was silence, when suddenly the churchorgan poured forth its rich, swelling, and sonorous volume of sound, followed by the melodious voices of children singing a hymn, and blending into a harmony ineffably sweet and solemn. For a moment I was Nov.-VOL. LXXXVII. NO. CCCXLVII. U bewildered, and I should have believed myself under the influence of another dream, had I not recollected that it was Friday evening, when the clerk and organist invariably summoned the charity children to the church, that they might rehearse the singing for the coming Sabbath. Oh! how I yearned to join in their devotions! Oh! with what complacency of soul did I listen to them! Oh! how my heart sank within me when the performance was over, and the church-doors were again locked, and the last lingering footstep was heard to quit the burialground! Still, however, did those sacred symphonies vibrate in my ear, enchanting and exciting my fancy, until it conjured up an ideal presentment of surpassing grandeur and glory. Methought I saw the last sun that earth was destined to behold slowly sinking down into the shuddering sea; and a ghastly frown spread itself over the face of nature; and a sable curtain was lowered upon the world; and all was night, and deep darkness, and death-when lo! in an opposite direction, the veil of heaven was lifted up; the aurora of a new and transcendently beautiful creation was revealed, its sun shining with a radiant and yet undazzling splendour; and the air was scented with aromatic odours; and fairhaired angels, hovering on roseate wings, struck their golden harps, attuning their dulcet and melodious voices to a choral anthem, as they majestically floated around a central throne, upon whose ineffable glories no human eye could bear to gaze. How long my faculties were absorbed in the contemplation of this vision I know not, but some hours must thus have slipped away, for when it was dispelled by the noise of a storm rushing across the churchyard, the clock was striking twelve. Heavily did its iron clang vibrate through the building, and send its sullen echoes far and near upon the pinions of the sweeping tempest. Midnight! Superstitious as it may be, an undefined fear and awe ever hang about it like a shroud; but how immeasurably more impressive must have been the influence of the hour, with all its ghostly and ghastly associations, to me, inhumed and yet alive! surrounded by the mouldering remains of countless generations, and in actual contact with the corpses or the skeletons of my own forefathers! As if for the purpose of accumulating horrors upon horrors, the war of the elements became momentarily more loud and furious. The wind, which had previously moaned and groaned, now burst into a fierce howl; the yew-tree creaked and rustled as its boughs were lashed by the gust; the rain was driven in rattling plashes against the door of the vault, the steps that led down to it not having yet been covered over; and a splitting peal of thunder that might almost have awakened the dead, seemed to shake the solid earth beneath me. In this terrific outburst the storm had spent its fury, for a lull succeeded, during which a faint sound fell upon mine ear that almost maddened me with excitement. "Gracious heaven !" I exclaimed, in thought, "do my senses deceive me? can that be the tramp of feet? It is-it is! They come nearernearer nearer they descend the steps-hist! hark!-the key rattles in the lock-it turns-the door is opened the door is opened the door is opened!! Miraculous is the lightning speed with which, in a crisis like this, thoughts rush through the mind. In less than a second mine had solved the whole mystery, and I could account for my deliverance from the grave even before it had been accomplished. Dr. Linnel had returned sooner than was expected; his previous suspicions had been confirmed by the indecent haste of my burial; he had instantly despatched people to disinter me; his skill would quickly discover that I was only in a trance; he would restore me to life; I should be enabled to reward my dutiful and affectionate daughter, to punish my unnatural son, to enjoy, perhaps, several years of an existence made happy by the consciousness that it was free from reproach in the sight of Heaven, and not unbeneficial to my fellow-creatures. Never, no, never, were I to live for a hundred years, shall I forget the flash of ecstacy that electrified my bosom at this moment! Hope, methought, leaped upon my throbbing heart, and clapped her hands, and shouted aloud in a transport of joy-"Saved! saved! saved!" CHAPTER X. THE parties who entered the vault, as I quickly discovered by their voices, were the sexton, and Hodges, the foreman, who had superintended all the arrangements of my coffin. "What a precious wild night, Master Griffith!" said the latter, "but not more wild and out of the way than the whole of this here day's work. Only to think of Mr. George, when his father's hardly cold, as a man may say, instead of riding home decent, after the funeral, giving a regular blow-out to all our fellows at the 'Jolly Cricketers,' making some on 'em as drunk as fiddlers, and then setting them to play at leapfrog; and he and Sir Freeman Dashwood laughing fit to split when they tumbled over one another." "Well, I call that downright scandalous, and disgraceful to all parties, 'specially as he never axed me," replied the sexton. The burning indignation with which I listened to this wicked and wanton insult upon my memory, this outrage upon all decency, was in some degree allayed by the recollection that my quick deliverance and anticipated revival would enable me to show my sense of such unnatural conduct. "We sha'n't have much trouble with the coffin," resumed Hodges; "the lid baint half fastened, and I ha'n't screwed it down close, you see, not by a good eighth of an inch." This explained the distinctness with which I had heard everything that passed around me, while the air admitted through the crevice may have assisted to preserve my life, for I presume some sort of imperceptible respiration must have been going on. "You see, Griffith," continued the foreman, "if you have but the least opening in the world, it do help to keep the stiff-un so uncommon fresh. Ah! we don't often get such a prize as this; only three or four days dead; sweet as a vilet; almost as good as if he were alive. I can tell Tall Holloway one thing-he shall pay me double for this here corpse afore ever he do stick a knife in him." From the pinnacle of ineffable transport and ecstacy upon which my soul had perched, in the conviction of my reprieval and restoration to life, these withering words hurled me instantly down,-down to an abyss of unutterable loathing and horror and despair, that made all my previous sufferings appear a heaven. Tall Holloway was the familiar name of a professor in the neighbouring town who gave lectures on anatomy, always illustrated by the dissection of human subjects; and it was manifest that the intruders |
