length, St. Germaine's sword was seen to fly from his exhausted grasp. It gleamed for a moment above the blue Garonne, then fell with a plash into its waters. But Conrad wished not for his enemy's life; he pointed to the prow, where St. Germaine threw himself down in gloomy silence. The conqueror took his station at the helm, and steered away with his prisoner towards his paternal domains, but first turned round and waved his heronplumed cap to the almost fainting Rosalie.' "What an exquisite first chapter! Ransack every circulating library in the kingdom, and show me one to compete with it! I think I may say, without vanity, that I am very nearly a universal genius. Can there be anything more different than these two openings? --and yet how matchless are both! But I could begin in a thousand other ways if I chose. There is the commencement familiar, as for example: -- Do you really imagine, Sir John,' said Lady Bevil, have you really the vanity to suppose, that I will listen for a moment to anything you can say upon the subject?'. 'Certainly not,' replied the meek and peaceable Massaio, I never presumed, Lady Bevil, to put my judgment upon a level with yours; but I thought that though the coachman did stay three minutes behind his time, you might try him once more before you dismissed him.'-' Fie! Sir John, you have no more brains than a tom-cat, and yet you are always meddling with things you don't understand. It is a lucky thing you have got a wife to take care of you, Sir John.'-Then there is the commencement circumstantial, as thus: Our hero was the son of poor but respectable parents, who resided in the city of Bristol. His grandfather,' &c. &c. Again, there is the commencement historical; for instance, At the beginning of the fourteenth century Scotland may be considered as still a barbarous nation. The feudal system,' &c. &c. Or, there is the commencement descriptive "Heavens! they are ringing the dinner-bell and I am as yet only at the threshold! When, O when! shall I see my monumentum exactum, my kingdom conquered, my crown of glory won?" THE LIVING MUMMY, AND THE LEY DEN PROFESSOR.* "Statue of flesh! immortal of the dead! Imperishable type of evanescence! Posthumous man, who quitt'st thy narrow bed, Of all the quiet towns reposing in the brightness of a Dutch sun, Leyden is the fairest, and the quietest. Seldom is the stillness of her broad and poplar-planted streets disturbed by sound more startling than the music of a wandering barrelorganist, or the measured tread of some stately dignitary of the University, passing from one classroom to another, and heavy with a weight of learning. She is an alma mater, worthy of the gravity of Holland, and the genius loci is distinctly visible throughout. The very canals look more unconscious of motion, and more impressed with the * I believe there is a German story somewhat similar to this, with a general abstract of which I was favoured by a friend, but I have never seen the original. propriety of silence than anywhere else. On the poorest house, the fact of " Lodgings to be let," is indicated by the classical phrase "Cubicola locanda ;" and the old lady who conducts you through the apartments, has an air about her, as if she were well versed in Herodotus, and not unacquainted with the doctrines of Pythagoras. Even the man who sells roasted chesnuts at the corner of the street looks as if he were a decayed scholar; and, such is the influence of that learned atmosphere, you cannot help addressing him with considerable trepidation, lest a subdued smile should rise to his lips at your ignorance of philology betrayed during the transaction of purchasing from him a few stivres' worth of his fruit. Calm, and stately, and solemn are the students; and yet more calm, more stately, and more solemn are the professors. To them the rest of the living and busy world is a nonentity, or a vague and faroff dream. It is with the past alone that they are conversant; - the languages, the modes of thinking, the habits, and the events of the past. Of the present they know nothing, or only enough to teach them to despise it. Wrapped up in the mantle of antique lore, they are like re-animations of the long-buried dead, moving about in the sunshine of the actual world, but with memories brooding over departed ages, and a total apathy towards the things with which they are now sur rounded. The business of my story makes it necessary for me to bring my reader into more immediate contact with one of these strange individuals as he existed in the town of which I speak, about a century ago. Elevated on a small platform, and comfortably set down in an old fashioned, high-backed, venerable-looking elbow-chair, sat Tobanus Eleazar Von Broeck at one end of the theatrum anatomicum, or hall of anatomy, in the University of Leyden. He was in the act of holding forth, in very Ciceronian and full-mouthed latinity, to some thirty, or fiveand-thirty grave and Dutch-built alumni. Professor Tobanus Eleazar Von Broeck was a man who was generally believed to have more knowledge in his little finger, than the Bodleian library has on all its shelves. He was probably about five-and-fifty years of age, of the middle height, and the obesity of his person, though not remarkable for a Dutchman, was such as in any other country would have been thought considerable. He wore a full bushy brown wig; but what principally distinguished him from his brother professors, was a pair of green spectacles, which he almost never laid aside. Doctor Tobanus Eleazar Von Broeck had never been farther than five miles from Leyden in his life. The theatrum anatomicum was his home and country. The preparations and curiosities it contained were his felicity by day, |