fear fell upon my soul. The curtain of immateriality was withdrawn, and I stood in the visible presence of the mysterious dead, whose nature was not as my nature, and in whose feelings I had no sympathy. Perhaps they were the evil spirits of the former world, who, now that it had been changed into a charnel-house, were condemned still to flit along with it as it rolled its spectral and rejected form through the remotest regions of chaos. I was left in doubt, in ignorance, and I trembled. Shadow after shadow appeared in the distance, came rapidly through the dim air, and glided by me. All were of gigantic magnitude, and frequently a wild unnatural expression was on their unsubstantial countenances. Their numbers, too, seemed perpetually increasing, and the speed at which they went was becoming greater. It was a tremendous but magnificent pageant. Some were mounted upon visionary steeds, black as ebony; others moved on in chariots and triumphal cars, like Roman generals at a triumph; unreal ships came sailing through the abyss above me, with all their white sails set, and apparently full in the wind. Noiselessly they came, and noiselessly they again vanished afar off. They were followed by prodigious birds, larger a thousand times than the South American Condor, who soared in solitary pomp away into the dark

ness.

I wandered over the illimitable desert, and these

shapes and sights of awe grew familiar to me. Unexpectedly, like flakes in a snow-storm when its fury is well-nigh spent, they became less frequent and less confused. At length, I saw no more of them. A faint red light, as if diffused from a few glimmering lamps that hung far up in the black concave, spread a dim sepulchral glare around me. I looked, and found that I was on a boundless plain of ruins, stumbling over huge fragments hid among the rank and withered grass. Heaped together in strange overthrow, I recognized the fallen towers of Athens, of Tyre, of Balbec, the crumbling fanes of Jerusalem and of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, the sculptured obelisks, the mutilated sphinxes, and the jasper tombs of Palmyra, of Memphis, and of Thebes. They were all cast from their once immoveable bases, and like the statues and images of a sacked city they lay prostrate along the earth disfigured, broken, dishonoured, and neglected. It was a world's churchyard, and these were the monuments that were piled upon the grave I could see them all in the dim lurid

of men.

light.

Suddenly, a meteor broke forth, far away in the east, with a fierce and fiery glare. The solid earth heaved in convulsive throes. The pyramids were rent asunder, and the buried dead walked out. They were still dead, but their glazed eyes rolled horribly in mysterious meaning. Their cerements

fell spontaneously from them, and their livid carcases looked yet more horrible in the gloomy and dismal light. Their features were those of every nation and tribe that the sun had ever shone upon -the brown Arabian, the black African, the red Indian, and the white Frank. They formed themselves into a long, an interminable procession, and in the middle I could distinguish a bier covered with black. Upon it lay the body of one who had been alive for four thousand years—the wizard Time. He had witnessed the world's birth, and he had ceased to exist on that very hour in which it had been destroyed. They were carrying him to his tomb in eternity. They passed me, but I heard not the tread of their many feet; their lips moved, but the funeral chaunt came not to my ears. Perhaps it was the imperfection of my senses which cabined the powers of my soul. The meteor in the east moved on as if to meet them, flinging down at intervals a shower of dying stars. They journeyed away beyond the limits of sight, and all around me became again dim and uncertain.

I saw no more. It was evening;—a thunderstorm was gathering on the mountains, and I hastened homewards.

These wild fancies, they say, are often the prognostics of coming madness. If so-the decrees of destiny must be fulfilled.

in me.

But perish young like things of earth."

THE last ten years have made a strange alteration Could some of my early friends rise from the grave, and find me seated, a la Cowper, in my morning-gown, slippers, and night-cap, they would as soon take me for St. Augustine as for Harry Pemberton. But a metamorphosis as great as that which has happened to me has been occasioned by less efficient causes. 'They say the owl was a baker's daughter. Lord! Lord! we know what we are, but we know not what we may be." Sophocles was never more in the right than when he

wrote

μηδεν ολβίζειν, πριν αν

Τερμα του βιου περαση.

The sketch I am about to give of my past life will illustrate this; and as for my egotism-it is the fault of the times, and I make no apology for it.

I was born rich-richer than I can tell. Bonfires, feastings, and every species of noisy mirth, intimated to all whom it might concern, that I had commenced my existence. I was washed in silver basons, and fed out of golden dishes; my coral gumsticks were ornamented with precious stones, and my little unruly limbs were wrapped up in lace, silk, and all manner of fine textures. My father was an old Nabob recently returned from India, and my mother, was a young and handsome woman, who had it not in her nature to offer any decided resistance to the double inducements of twenty thousand a-year, and a liver complaint, which the doctors assured her could not outlive another lustrum. So she married, good soul, in the wellgrounded expectation of securing a second husband before many of her beauties had been effaced by the rude hand of time. My father, however, took the full benefit of his lustrum; and people were beginning to think that his liver was not half so bad as it should have been, when, suddenly changing from yellow to brown, and then from brown to black, he expired in the arms of his disconsolate wife, who, upon examining his will next day, found that he had left me, his only child, sole heir to all his property, burdened with a jointure of