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and old, grim tales are invariably most coveted at the very time when one might suppose they would be least desired,—namely, at night; and especially winter nights. A ghost-story, or any other dismal narrative, is considered totally flat and worthless at noon-day. There is no ghastly sensation to be derived from it; no curdling of the blood, no beatings of the heart; none of those glorious tastes of fear which give such a relish to human company and human accessories. But collect a company of all ages, all classes, and all tastes; bring them together after dark-say about midnight; just give a vague hint of some terrible adventure,-and if there is not an universal desire to know more, why the world is altering very much. Of course there are exceptions; but this, I say, is the rule. And so it was on the occasion of which I am now writing. The "grim story" was carried by one simultaneous and deafening shout.

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Well, then," resumed our host, "when I was travelling in Holland and the Netherlands, I met with a night adventure which, for ghastliness, surpasses any thing of the kind I ever heard or read of." [Here what the newspapers call a "sensation" ran through the whole assembly.] "I was on my way from Rotterdam to the Hague at the time, in company with a friend; but as Delft lay directly in our road, half-way between the two cities first mentioned, we thought we might as well stay a few hours there, particularly as it had the honour of giving birth to the learned Grotius. Accordingly, just about nine o'clock on a fine, clear autumn evening, we rode into the principal street, and looked about us for quarters for the night. We had been riding all day, and it was too late, and we were too tired, to think of any thing but supper and bed.

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Well, we rode along for some time, but not an inn could we light upon that wasn't full to the very garrets. At last we turned down a narrow, straggling thoroughfare, quite dark and shadowy (though by this time a full moon was up) with the overhanging tops of the houses, which almost met overhead; and as silent and deserted as a Russian steppe in the winter, to boot; for the Mynheers are rare fellows for going to bed early, and I don't believe you could have found above two or three score of people awake in the whole city at the time of which I am speaking. However, there was an inn in this street, with a few people stirring about it; and entering it, we learnt, to our immense gratification, that we might have as many rooms as we liked. And in good truth I think we might; for, even from the small portion of the building I saw, I should imagine it was capable of containing-and comfortably, too-every man, woman, and child in the whole town-ay, even including the four burgomasters, who are about equivalent in rotundity of person to our aldermen. In short, it was one of those strange, old, straggling, rambling, sleepy-looking houses, full of odd corners and passages, apparently built for no earthly purpose, which you only meet with in Holland, and which only a Dutchman can devise.

"When I and my friend had supped, (which we did pretty quickly, for, as I have said before, we were desperately tired,) a fat, oily man, who seemed always debating with himself whether he should go to sleep or not while he was walking about, and to have a great inclination towards favouring the somnolent side of the question, showed us up to our bedThe chamber into which I was conducted, was just the kind of

rooms.

apartment you might expect to find in such a house as I have described large, gloomy, and lofty; with heavy-looking wainscoting half up the walls, a cracked and time-blackened ceiling, and a tremendously wide fire-place, surmounted by a massive carved oak mantel-piece, and paved with blue and white glazed tiles bearing rude pictures of every incident in the Bible.

"I am not a superstitious man; far from it: but, despite all my efforts to the contrary, I could not help thinking, directly I had taken a survey of my chamber, that I should never quit it without going through a strange adventure. There was something in its immense size, heaviness, and gloom that seemed to annihilate at one blow all my resolute scepticism as regards supernatural visitations. It appeared to me totally impossible to go into that room and disbelieve in ghosts. The fact is, I had incautiously partaken at supper of that favourite Dutch dish, sour-krout; and I suppose it had disagreed with me, and put strange fancies into my head. Be this as it may, I only know that, after parting with my friend for the night, I gradually worked myself up to such a state of fidgetiness that at last I wasn't sure whether I hadn't become a ghost myself. The old cumbrous hangings of the bed appeared to my diseased mind to be swelled out as with a whole army of goblins: indeed, I almost thought I saw them move of their own accord; and the carved figures upon the mantel-piece seemed to have entered into some devilish compact on purpose to plague me. Every thing, in short, had a suspicious look; and my nervousness was increased when, upon turning to the door to fasten it, I found neither bolt nor lock.

"This discovery raised a host of new fears in my brain; and a thousand recollections of midnight robbers shot through my mind. Supposing,' ruminated I, 'supposing the landlord himself should be a practised robber, and should have taken the lock and bolt from off this door for the purpose of entering here in the dead of night, abstracting all my property, and perhaps murdering me! I thought the dog had a very cut-throat air about him.' Now I had never had any such idea until that moment; for my host was a fat, (all Dutchmen are fat,) stupid-looking fellow, who I don't believe had sense enough to understand what a robbery or murder meant. But, somehow or other, whenever we have any thing really to annoy us, (and it certainly was not pleasant to go to bed in a strange place without being able to fasten one's door,) we are sure to aggravate it by myriads of chimeras of our own brain. So, on the present occasion, in the midst of a thousand disagreeable reveries, some of the most wild absurdity, I jumped very gloomily into bed, having first put out my candle, (for total darkness was far preferable to its flickering, ghostly light, which transformed rather than revealed objects,) and soon fell asleep, perfectly tired out with my day's riding.

"How long I lay asleep, I don't know; but I suddenly awoke from a disagreeable dream of cut-throats, ghosts, and long, winding passages in a haunted inn. An indescribable feeling, such as I never before experienced, hung upon me. It seemed as if every nerve in my body had a hundred spirits tickling it; and this was accompanied by so great a heat that, inwardly cursing mine host's sour-krout, and wondering how the Dutchmen could endure such poison, I was forced to sit up in bed to cool myself.

"The whole of the room was profoundly dark, excepting at one place where the moonlight, falling through a crevice in the shutters, threw a straight line, of about an inch or so thick, upon the floorclear, sharp, and intensely brilliant against the darkness. I leave you to conceive my horror when, upon looking at this said line of light, I saw there a naked human toe! Nothing more.

"For the first instant I thought the vision must be some effect of moonlight; then that I was only half awake, and could not see distinctly. So I rubbed my eyes two or three times, and looked again. Still there was the accursed thing, plain, distinct, immoveable : marble-like in its fixedness and rigidity, but in every thing else horribly human.

"I am not an easily frightened man: no one who has travelled so much, and seen so much, and been exposed to so many dangers as I, can be but there was something so mysterious and unusual in the appearance of this single toe, that for a short time I could not think what to be at; so I did nothing but stare at it in a state of utter bewilderment. At length, however, as the toe did not vanish under my steady gaze, I thought I might as well change my tactics; and remembering that all midnight intruders, be they thieves, ghosts, or devils, dislike nothing so much as a good noise, I shouted out in a loud voice, Who's there? The toe immediately disappeared into the darkness.

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"Almost simultaneously with my words I leapt out of bed and rushed towards the place where I had beheld the strange appearance. The next instant I ran against something, and felt an iron grip round my body.

"After this, I have no distinct recollection of what occurred, excepting that a fearful struggle ensued between me and my unseen opponent; that every now and then we were violently hurled to the floor, from which, however, we always rose again in an instant, locked in a deadly embrace; that we tugged and strained, and pulled and pushed,-I in the convulsive and frantic energy of a fight for life,-he (for by this time I had discovered that the intruder was a human being) actuated by some savage passion of which I was ignorant; that we whirled round and round and round, cheek to cheek and arm to arm, in fierce contest, until the room appeared to whiz round with us; and that at last a dozen people, (my fellow-traveller among them,) roused, I suppose, by our repeated falls, came pouring into the room with lights, and showed me struggling with a man having nothing on but a shirt, whose long tangled hair, and wild, unsettled eyes, told me he was insane. And then for the first time I became aware that I had received in the conflict several gashes from a knife which my opponent still held in his hand.

"To conclude my story in a few words, (for I dare say by this time all of you are getting tired,) it turned out that my midnight visitor was a madman who was being conveyed to a lunatic asylum at the Hague; and that he and his keeper had been obliged to stop at Delft on their way. The poor fellow had contrived during the night to escape from his keeper, (who had carelessly forgotten to lock the door of his chamber,) and with that irresistible desire for shedding blood peculiar to many insane people, had possessed himself of a pocket-knife belonging to the man who had charge of him, entered my room, (which was most likely the only one in the house unfastened,) and was probably medi

tating the fatal stroke, when I saw his toe in the line of moonlight; the rest of his body being hidden in shade. After this terrible freak of his, he was watched with much greater strictness; but I ought to observe, as some excuse for the keeper's negligence, that this was the first act of violence he had ever attempted.

"My wounds, thank heaven, were of so little importance, though they presented an alarming appearance at first, that I was able to resume my journey the next day but one; but ever since that night I have had an unconquerable objection to old rambling inns; and I never behold a line of moonlight on the floor without undergoing a very unpleasant sensation."

Thus the old traveller finished his story, to the immense gratification of the gentlemen and terror of the ladies, who declared that "they shouldn't sleep comfortably for months to come." And although I am not a lady, I confess that I was haunted for some weeks after hearing my friend's recital with dreams of toes and madmen; and I took care to have a crevice that happened to be in the shutters of my own room carefully stopped up.

THE CONVENT.

BY A. G.

How oft hath beauty in that holy pile
In silence mourn'd, and youth forgot its smile;
Turn'd to the narrow grate with sickly gaze,
And look'd, and sigh'd, and wept for other days!
Thought, though 'twere sin to think, of scenes that dwell
Deep in the mind, and friends beloved so well!
The gallant form half-seen at twilight hour,
The step oft welcomed to her father's bower,
The morning stroll, the midnight serenade,
The winning whisper in the myrtle's shade,
And his the vow, with subtle accent spoke,
Too fondly cherish'd and too falsely broke!
And is there none to pity here, or feel
A pang for all her bitter sobs reveal?
Will none by gentle word or look impart
The balm of comfort to her bleeding heart,
And draw that love to earthly objects given
By soft persuasive argument to heaven?
Alas! poor victim! o'er thy living tomb
Drear silence hangs, and ever-thickening gloom;
Cloisters inscribed with records of the dead;
Walls that re-echo not the noiseless tread;
And souls long lost to earth are offering there
Penance, and fast, and meditative pray'r!
Dream not of sympathy-can bosoms know
Thy grief that never felt affection's glow?

Snatch'd from the world, and taught its power to shun,
Pride swells the feelings of the meek-eyed nun,

And Pity rarely haunts, unworthy guest,

The frozen chamber of her virgin breast!

EHRENSTEIN.

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

CHAPTER VII.

THE Count of Ehrenstein tossed uneasily on his bed, in that state between sleeping and waking, when the mind neither enjoys quiet repose, nor yet lives as an active being dissevered from the body, in continuous and regular dreams-when scattered and disjointed fragments of visions cross the imagination when voices call, and suddenly sink away from the ear-when figures appear for an instant, and are lost before we can accurately see what they are. Often his bosom heaved and panted, as if oppressed with some terrible load, Often murmured words and smothered cries broke low and indistinctly from his lips. Often the eyeballs would roll under their filmy curtain, as if some sight of horror presented itself to fancy.

At length the grey light of day streamed through the narrow window, and fell upon the sleeping man's countenance; and after turning for a moment from side to side, he started up, and gazed towards the casement with a bewildered look, as if he knew not where he was. After leaning his head upon his hand, and apparently thinking deeply for several minutes, he rose, and dressed himself without aid. Then walking to the little dark ante-room, in which two of his attendants, or knechts, were sleeping, he drew back the bolt of the door-for his was not a heart without suspicion-and stirred one of the men with his foot, as he slept upon the ground, bidding him go and tell Ferdinand of Altenburg to come down upon the eastern rampart immediately. Having given these orders, he himself issued forth, and walked slowly up and down, now casting his eyes upon the stones beneath his feet, now gazing at the rising sun. But few minutes had elapsed, however, ere Ferdinand was at his side; and the count turned towards him, saying, "What! up so early? You should have no dreams, young man, to break your rest.

"Nay, my lord," replied Ferdinand, "every one dreams, I suppose. Have you been disturbed?"

"That have I," answered the count. "I have seldom passed a more troublesome night, and yet I was weary, too, when I went to rest."

"Were they good or evil visions, my lord?" asked the young man. "Mine were all bright."

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"But they

"Would that mine had been so!" answered the count. were wild and whirling things, and-'tis no matter:-and yet these undigested thoughts," he continued, after a short pause, these fanciful nothings of the dreaming brain, trouble us as much as fierce realitiesnay, perhaps more. I have suffered more bitterly at times in some dark visions of the night-yes, even in my corporeal frame, than even choking death itself could inflict. I cannot but think that there is a land to which the spirits of the sleeping travel for a time, and undergo a strange and wayward fate, till they are called back again. I've often fancied there must be such a place; a kingdom of dreams, as it were, to which all the strange actions and thoughts are sent as soon as done,

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