cable seen from the deck, coiled up in a dark hole; but no language can express his sensation of astonishment and terror, when he saw a serpent actually rear his head over an immense length of body, coiled in volumes on the ground, and working itself into exertion by a sort of sluggish motion. "What I felt," he continues, " on seeing two fellow-creatures exposed by my orders to this fiend, I must leave to the reader's imagination." To his inexpressible joy they were drawn up unhurt, but almost lifeless with fear. Hay was then thrown down upon the lighted torches which they had dropped.When the flames had expired, a large snake was found scorched and dead, but no money. Mr. Forbes supposes that the owner had carried away the treasure with him, but forgotten to liberate the snake which he had placed there as its keeper. Whether the snake were venomous or not, he has omitted to mention, or perhaps to observe; if he were not, it would be no defence for the treasure; and if it were, it seems to have become too torpid with inanition, confinement, and darkness, to exercise its powers of destruction. Where the popular belief prevails that snakes are the guardians of hidden treasure, and where the art of charming serpents is commonly practised, there is no difficulty in supposing that they who conceal a treasure (as is frequently done under the oppressive government of the East) would sometimes place it under such protection.

THE VICTIM OF PASSION.

Sullivan was an Irishman, hurried, by impetuosity and resentment, into a bold and unwarrantable enterprise. He did not, like his American namesake, help to convert successful rebellion into a glorious revolution, but fell an ignominious victim to the passions, those arbitrary tyrants, which so few of us are able to resist.

Having formed an attachment to an amiable young woman, of polished and engaging manners, he was admitted as her lover; but, from some trifling disagreement, in which his constitutional ardour somewhat overleaped the bounds of discretion and decorum, his visits had, for a short time, been forbidden. Stung with keen desire, and wearied by tedious expectation, he, broke into her mother's house at the dead of night, seized her in his arms, and, in spite of outcries, tears, and resistance, conveyed her to a lonely sequestered spot in the county of Limerick.

After securing the avenues of his retreat, which was an ancient castle, and considering himself as safe from the danger of immediate pursuit, he conducted the trembling fair one into a retired chamber, and addressed her in the following words :

"You have tortured me so long on the tenderhooks of suspense, and in the agonies of delayed hope, that it is not possible to flatter myself with enjoying the least share of your affections :-but it is now too late to struggle against an infatuation which has wound itself round the fibres of my heart; it shall not," (continued Sullivan, his eyes flashing at once with vengeance and fierce desire) "it shall not remain for an insulting rival, to riot on those beauties, which, to contemplate, has been, for many a day, the only solace of my life.”

Deaf to her most earnest entreaties, inattentive to remonstrances and tears, he grasped her in his arms, with the rude energy of savage appetite, and was as happy as the struggles of reluctant beauty, and raptures, not mutual, could make him.

So flagrant a violation of the laws alarmed the country; and a detachment

of soldiers, headed by the sheriff, in a few days rescued the lady, and conducted Sullivan to prison. He was tried and convicted; but, before sentence of death was passed, the court permitted him to put the following question : “Madam, matters have been carried against me with a high hand, and they are now come to an extremity, which it is only in your power to palliate; if you will marry me, the court will perhaps consider my case in another light, and save my life?" "If I loved you,' (instantly replied the violated and indignant female, erect, with just pride and resentment)" if I loved you to distraction, I would not stir a step to save your life; though the punishment you are about to undergo will not restore my blasted honour, it may hereafter protect innocence from violence and villany."

This impetuous and misguided pupil of impulse soon after suffered an ignominious death.

EXTRAORDINARY SUICIDE.

In the beginning of the year 1792, the most uncommon instance of suicide ever heard of took place: an act of despair so frequent among the English, that, in other countries, it is objected to them as a national reproach, though it may be generally termed the effect of lunacy, proceeding from natural causes operating on the human body; in some few instances, among which is the present, it seems to have been the result of cool deliberation.

Richard Smith, a book-binder, and prisoner for debt within the liberties of the King's-Bench, persuaded his wife to follow his example in making away with herself, after they had murdered their little infant. The wretched pair were, in the month of April, found hanging in their bed-chamber at about a yard's distance from each other; and, in a separate apartment, the child lay dead in a cradle. They left two papers, enclosed in a short letter, to their landlord, whose kindness they implored in favor of their dog and cat. They even left money to pay the porter who should carry the enclosed papers to the person. to whom they were addressed. In one of these the husband thanked that person for the marks of friendship he had received at his hands; and complained of the ill offices he had undergone from a different quarter. The other paper, subscribed by the husband and wife, contained the reasons which induced them to act such a tragedy on themselves and their offspring. This letter was altogether surprising, for the calm resolution, the good humour, and the propriety with which it was written. They declared, that they withdrew themselves from poverty and rags; evils that, through a train of unlucky accidents, were become inevitable. They appealed to their neighbours for the industry with which they had endeavoured to earn a livelihood; they justified the murder of their child, by saying, it was less cruelty to take her with them, than to leave her friendless in the world, exposed to ignorance and misery. They professed their belief and confidence in an Almighty God, the Fountain of Goodness and Beneficence, who could not possible take delight in the misery of his creatures; they, therefore, resigned up their lives to him without any terrible apprehensions; submitting themselves to those ways which, in his goodness, he should appoint after death.

These unfortunate suicides had been always industrious and frugal, invincibly honest, and remarkable for conjugal affection.

THE UNCONSCIOUS INCEST.

A young woman of Glasgow having the misfortune to become a mother before she was a wife, and at so early an age as fourteen years, for the better concealment of her unlucky situation, retired to Edinburgh to lie in, where she was delivered of a boy. The lad, at the age of twelve years, either from a disposition incapable of submitting to the control of his guardians, or the severity of his preceptor, ran away from school, nor could any tidings of him be afterwards obtained. The mother, in the meantime, set up a house in Glasgow, for the reception of boarders, to which the better sort of sailors in the merchants' service generally resorted. A young man of about twenty-two years of age, master of a West-India vessel, happened to take up his abode with her, and in a short time, by his attractions and assiduity, awakened a flame in the breast of his landlady; a mutual attachment ensued, which was cemented by matrimony. The happy couple lived together for three years, without interruption to their domestic felicity, each year producing them a child, as the reward of their conjugal fidelity; when one morning, the husband putting on his shirt in the presence of his wife, she discovered a mark on his shoulder, by which she knew him to be her long lost son. She instantly became frantic, and seizing him by the hair, tore him to the ground; her madness supplying her with strength, she would probably have destroyed him, had not his cries procured him the assistance of some of the family. She afterwards, however, recovered reason sufficient, to give an almost unintelligible account of the melancholy circumstance that bereft her of her senses, and then relapsed into an incurable delirium. The consequences of an eclaircissement were equally fatal to the unhappy son and husband, whose reason was entirely overturned.

REMARKABLE PRESERVATION OF THREE WOMEN.

In 1755, they had in Turin a great fall of rain; and as it generally snows in the mountains, when it only rains in the plain, it cannot appear surprising, that during this interval, there fell vast quantities of snow on the mountains, which of course formed several valancas. The bad weather which prevailed in so many other places, prevailed likewise at Bergemoletto, a little hamlet, seated in that part of the Alps which separates the valley of Stura and Piedmont from Dauphine and the country of Nice.

On March 19th, many of the inhabitants of this hamlet began to apprehend that the weight of the snow which was already fallen, and still continued to fall, might crush their houses, built with stones peculiar to the country, cemented by nothing but mud, and a very small portion of lime, and covered with thatch laid on the roof of shingles, and large thin stones, supported by thick beams. They therefore got upon their roofs, to lighten them of the snow.

At a little distance from the church, stood the house of Joseph Roccia; a man of about fifty, who, with his son James, a lad of fifteen, had, like his neighbours, got upon the roof of his house, in order to lessen the weight of it, and thereby prevent its destruction.

In the meantime, the clergyman, who lived in the neighbourhood, and was about leaving home, in order to repair to the church, and gather the people together to hear prayers, perceiving a noise towards the top of the mountains, descried two valancas driving headlong towards the village; wherefore, raising

his voice, he gave Joseph notice instantly to come down from the roof, to avoid the impending danger; and then immediately retreated himself into his own house.

Joseph Roccia immediately came off the roof at the priest's notice, and with his son fled as hard as he could towards the church. He had scarce advanced forty steps, when hearing his son fall just at his heels, he turned about to assist him, and taking him up, saw the spot on which his house, his stable, and those of some of his neighbours stood, converted into a huge heap of snow, without the least sign of either walls or roofs.

Such was his agony at this sight, and at the thoughts of having lost, in an instant, his wife, his sister, his family, and all the little he had saved, that he lost his senses, swooned away, and tumbled upon the snow. His son now helped him, and, coming to himself a little, he made a shift to get to a friend's house at the distance of a hundred feet from the spot where he fell.

Mary-Anne, his wife, who was standing with her sister-in-law Anne, her daughter Margaret, and her son Anthony, a little boy two years old, at the door of the stable, looking at the people throwing the snow from off the houses, and waiting for the ringing of the bell, that was to call them to prayers, was about taking a turn to the house, in order to light a fire, and air a shirt for her husband, who could not but want that refreshment after his hard labour: but before she could set out, she heard the priest cry out to them to come down quickly; and raising her trembling eyes, saw the aforesaid valancas set off, and roll down the side of the mountain; and at the same instant she heard a terrible report from another quarter, which made her retreat back quickly with her family, and shut the door of the stable. Happy it was for her that she had time to do so: this noise being occasioned by another immense valanca, the sole cause of all the misery and distress she had to suffer for so long a time; so that in a very short time the snow was lodged about forty-two feet in height, two hundred and seventy in length, and about sixty in breadth.

The inhabitants of Bergemoletto, whom it pleased God to preserve from this disaster, being gathered together, in order to sum up their misfortunes, first counted thirty houses overwhelmed; and then every one calling over those he knew, twenty-two souls were missing, of which number was their parish priest, who had lived among them forty years.

The news of this terrible disaster soon spread itself over the neighbourhood; and all the friends and relations of the sufferers, with many others, to the amount of three hundred, flocked of their own accord from the adjacent villages, to give their assistance on this melancholly occasion.

Joseph Roccia, notwithstanding his great love for his wife and family, and desire to recover part of what he had lost, was in no condition to assist them for five days. In the meantime the rest were trying, by driving iron rods through the hardened snow, if they could discover any roofs: but they tried in vain: the great solidity and compactness of the valanca, the vast extent of it in length, breadth, and height, together with the snow that still continued to fall in great quantities, eluded all their efforts: so that, after some days' labour, they were obliged to desist till the valley should begin to assume its pristine form, by the melting of the snow and ice, from the setting in of the warm winds, which continued to blow from the end of March till about April 20th. On the 18th of that month they began to resume their interrupted labours. All the persons that were missing, except those of Joseph Roccia's family, were found dead. Assisted by the two brothers-in-law, and son, he at length penetrated to his house, but found no dead bodies in it.

Knowing that the stable did not lie 100 feet from the house, they immediately directed their search towards it, and having got a long pole through a hole, they heard a hoarse and languid voice issuing from it, which seemed to say, Help, my dear husband! help, my dear brother! help."

The husband and brother thunderstruck and at the same time encouraged by these words, fell to their work with redoubled ardour, on the place whence the voice came, which grew more and more distinct as the work advanced.

It was not long before they made a pretty large opening, through which the brother descended, as into a dark pit, asking who it was that could be alive in such a place? Mary-Anne knew him by his voice, and answered with a trembling and broken accent, intermixed with tears of joy, " "Tis I, my dear brother, who am still alive in company with my daughter and my sister-in-law, who are at my elbow. God, in whom I have always trusted, still hoping that he would inspire you with the thoughts of coming to our relief, has been graciously pleased to keep us alive."

The passage being enlarged, they were taken out with all convenient speed; and being brought to a friend's house, were there fed on a thin diet, and in small quantities at a time, as suiting their state of inanition: when their strength was a little recruited, they gave an account that they subsisted all that time on the milk of two goats, which had been shut up with them, and about a dozen chesnuts, that lay in the manger, where they found some hay with which they fed the goats; that one of the goats becoming dry, the other, fortunately with kid, dropped it, which having killed, this goat yielded them about a pint of milk each day, till their deliverance: that the little boy of two years old died in a short time after they were confined in the stable, as did an ass, and some hens that then happened to be in the same place; and that they suffered extremely from cold and wet, the snow continually dripping upon them as they lay in the manger.

These poor sufferers were relieved by the munificence of the king of Sardinia, their sovereign, and the several donations they received, which enabled them to rebuild their house, and set their other affairs to rights.

In April of the year 1757, they all enjoyed perfect health, except MaryAnne, who suffered a dimness of her sight, by being too hastily exposed to the light. The others returned to their usual field labour, and ever after continued to live the same life they did before their misfortunes.

EXPLOSION OF TWO VESSELS AT SEA.

This dreadful event happened on board a French vessel during an engagement with an English ship off Port Cabinda, in September, 1695. The latter had attempted to board the former; but their grappling irons missing their stern, the advantage was in favor of the Frenchman. The circumstance is contained in a narrative written by the captain of the French vessel. "I already," he says, "rejoiced within myself in capturing so considerable a prize, and the more so, as, after having taken her, which was the guard-ship of the coast, and the largest belonging to the English in these seas, I should be in a condition to attack any man-of-war that I should meet, and make prizes still greater. My crew were no less satisfied than myself, and were executing their work with much alacrity. But the enemy's powder suddenly taking fire, from a match purposely left burning by the captain, who hoped to escape in his two boats, both the vessels blew up with a most dreadful explosion.