XCVI

Suddenly the firelight brightened,
And a quick and flashing beam
Fell like star-light on her bosom,
Followed by a crimson stream.

XCVII

And a sigh was all she uttered;
Thus the Ladie Clara died,
In her young and girlish beauty-
In her bitter grief and pride.

XCVIII

In that calm, cold, moonless midnight
When the Castle clock stood still,
And a sound of moaning woodlands
Echoed from the distant hill;

XCIX

Then it was that life grew feeble
In the Baron's burning veins,

And a magic storm uprising

Beat against the lattice-panes.

C

And the fire-light now expiring
Lit once more those features white,
And those staring eyes that sparkled
With a wild unearthly light.

CI

And that frigid form dilating
Seemed to waver to and fro,

And the gasping Baron staggered
With a sense of numbing woe.

CII

And those pallid lips unclosing,

While his blood in shudders ran,

Motioned these cold words-but senseless Was the heart of Ratter Van.

[To be concluded.]

"Whims, fancies, semi-intuitions, embryo-conceptions." CHARLES LAMB.

I

"CHARACTER," somebody has said, "is every thing," and if this

be meant as a simile, it is doubtless true.

It is this thing and that

thing, one thing and another, and so on, you might go through the whole category of things that are, and might be, and however strange, however diverse, you would find for every one a match in character. Character is the weather-vane that is turned hither and thither by the wind, and character is the wind that blows upon it and turns it at its will. Character is the mover, and character is the thing moved. Character is seen in all the ups and downs of this varying world; in the tide of life that flows on so evenly and smoothly, that you would scarce discern that it flowed at all;-in the surge that dashes so wildly upon the shore, and in the waves that lift themselves up in the midst of life's ocean and meet in mad havoc as they are dashed and broken together. Every man has a character, and the character of every man differs from that of every one beside. So that to study character, would be to study an almost endless book, and the treatise which should develope all its phases, would be de omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. The character of the Jotter, inquiring Reader, is to be learned from what he writes. You may find it whimsical ;-perhaps fanciful and strange, or may perchance be led to call it as Alfred Tennyson did his " Princess"- -a medley. Be this as it may, the Jotter is sui-generis and nothing else. He has a character which belongs to himself and if anybody else can claim its counterpart, he presumes that nobody else will. 'Tis his own character and, as he generally speaks what he thinks, and writes his own mind, you will have no great difficulty in estimating it.

II

Life is a gay bubble, and most men are like children playing with it as a toy. Its rich colors and varying hues delight the eye for a mo

ment, and we chase after it and find not out that 'tis a bubble till it bursts and all is gone. The prince and the peasant are alike the victims of delusion here. The proud statesman who holds the destinies of nations in his grasp; the conqueror, whose battle-fields make the earth tremble; the ambitious man aiming at a station of honor or power are all striving for a bright bubble that sparkles on the crest of old Time's wave for a moment, till it subsides and is Time's wave no longer. This is the world, and college is a miniature world and shows its exact counterpart here. Students can sport with bubbles as well as children of an older growth, and they do. "Twould be tedious to enumerate them here, but the ambitious Freshman, the mischiefmaking Sophomore, the proud Junior, and the grave Senior, meet in this respect on the same footing and furnish no exception to the general rule. We meet in college,-jostle together during our four years intercourse, and then start away at a mad gallop over the race course of life till it is finished and we are gone. We call this living and our time spent, life, but how strange it is to measure life by years He has lived most, we say, who has lived longest,-who has spent most years-perhaps in doing nothing. Why should not actions be the true score by which to reckon life? Why should we not call the longest life, that wherein was most done, whether the years spent be many or few? Action is life, and he who fills his few days with busy workings and then lays down his weapons in the grave, lives, truly lives while he whose years are spent in rothing done, has never lived. He has lived, and not in vain, who only wakens others up to life. Yesterday, a pale and slender youth mingled for the first time in our sorrows and our joys: to-day would you meet him again, you must ask grim Death for his victim. Was it in vain that we saw him for an hour and then had him snatched away from our sight for ever? No, for he taught us a lesson and would we learn it, we should be truly wise. Who has not felt, when he has seen a bright intellect thus going down into the grave in the midst of fond hopes and expectations, that it must be true that this

"Is but the bud of being, the dim dawn,
The twilight of our day, the vestibule;
Life's theatre as yet is shut, and Death,
Strong Death, alone can heave the massy bar,

This gross impediment of clay remove,

And make us embryos of existence free."

III

Have you ever read Zanoni? If not, get it, even at this late hour, and though it is Bulwer's,-though it is strange, dreamy, fantastic, read it nevertheless, for you can spend an hour profitably over its pages. We were attracted to it not so much by our propensity for novel reading, as to gratify a boyish curiosity excited in us years ago, by the perusal of that mystery of mysteries* which Bulwer long since wrote and published, and which he afterwards embodied and carried out in this his latter work. We recollect the strange fancies with which that strange fragment filled us and our longings to get at the bottom of the mystery of Zicci were never gratified till we found it laid open and carried out to a full developement in the pages of Zanoni. Yet it was not simply on this account that the book interested us. It was a day dream of our own, and we presume of every other one's imagination, that Bulwer has here brought out. Who has not felt his soul throb at this same Rosicrucian fancy, conjured up by his own mind! The idea of perpetual youth and beauty,—of such power over the elements as they were said to possess, is a picture which the free fancy paints spontaneously for itself, and which not only childhood, but youth and manhood have decked in living colors. Hence we wonder not that the old fable of the Rosy Cross found so many to believe it. It was well calculated to meet with admiration and receive homage from the minds of men. Mystery was thrown around it so as to call forth curiosity, and secrecy enveloped it so as to baffle the efforts of the inquiring world. Its principles were embodied in a society whose members none knew but themselves, yet whose existence was everywhere believed and felt, and whose principles though little known, were supposed to confer upon its members a strange and wonder working power. Rut the tales of Troubadours and the legends of the monks had for ages been filled with the same fables as those on which Rosenkruez now based his society, and in the new form they now assumed, the minds of men and women were all ready for their belief. As we said before, we do not wonder at this. Stranger things have happened in our own day. Credulity admits of no barriers. Nothing is too strange to be believed and however wonderful may be the homage which men pay so frequently to every form of error, each day surpasses the preceding both in the folly of its fancies and the number of their believers. As we grow wiser we grow weaker. A tenden

*Signor Zieci.

cy to superstition seems a natural element in the human mind, and for its luxuriant growth we need not search the hot-beds of past ages of ignorance. Here in our own midst ;--here where the light of science shines;-here where men boast their intellectual greatness, do credulity and superstition grow and thrive to a degree unknown in former days. Witness Matthias and his impostures, now an almost forgotten chapter it is true, but which a few short years ago held a conspicuous place in the minds and the belief of many, Look at the Millerite and Mormon schemes which the flight of Time is so fast rendering oblivious, look at Fourierism, Clairvoyance, Buchananism and other delusions which the present hour is fostering and then look not to other times for Credulity and Superstition in a greater display than you can find them here.