and laying them before the Pagan image, which, not smiling, seems to delight in their smiles. The workman looks dissatisfied, though rejoicing as a bridegroom who has won his bride, but mourns that he cannot offer to her more precious gifts than all his substance. Elsewhere, I see living figures glancing among the trees. To the quay which borders the shore, some barks with deep blue sails are hastening; and one even now touches the porphyry wall, and pours out gold and spices-by Allah! I smell the sweetness of Yamen-on the smooth stones. Nay, as the sun goes down, I hear the faint song of the mariners, and the music of stringed instruments tinkling in reply from the distant mountain side.'

"Is there nought more than this?" "Yea, high upon the mountain I see a mosque of another fashion than ours, surrounded by a place of tombs, with many graves and cypresses. High above them all rises a shape, silvery as the flashing of a scymitar, or of water, gigantic, kingly, with a mantled head, and long folds covering his whole form. But he stretches his great moving hands over the palaces and bay, and flakes of pale fire fall from them, and kindle every window and capital of a pillar, and flash from every face, and shoot again upwards, and beam as stars in the dark sky. The mantled genie looks not like any

one of the spirits of the past, but as if they were all combined in him."

"Look once more, O Caliph!" "Juggler there is but a grain of sand."

"Thine eyes are weary of looking, not the visions of displaying themselves. Thou canst see no more this day. But if all this be visible in a grain of sand by the open and fresh eye of man, what sights beyond this thinkest thou that there must be in a man himself? Of these sights, a por-tion are in every book recorded."

"Slave!" said the Caliph-" tell me not of books, but of hidden treasures, or I will have thee impaled ere an hour is past."

"I have told thee of far more than thou thoughtest. The treasures of the Pharaohs would show thee little of what thou hast seen in that grain of sand. Farewell, O Caliph! I have been ordained but to live till I had seen and known thee, and then to depart. In that world where the hearts of men shall be more open to each other than their books are here, it will be read in mine that I hold thee ignorant and headstrong, but still a man, and, therefore, capable of good. Farewell! I am but a grain of sand; hide my corpse under those of the desert before me."

The hermit sank on the rocky floor of the cave, at Omar's feet, quite dead.

THAT series of terrific events by which our quiet city and university in the north-eastern quarter of Germany were convulsed during the year 1816, has in itself, and considered merely as a blind movement of human tigerpassion ranging unchained amongst men, something too memorable to be forgotten or left without its own separate record; but the moral lesson, impressed by these events, is yet more memorable, and deserves the deep attention of coming generations in their struggle after human improvement, not merely in its own limited field of interest directly awakened, but in all analogous fields of interest; as in fact already, and more than once, in connexion with these very events, this lesson has obtained the effectual attention of Christian kings and Princes assembled in Congress. No tragedy, indeed, amongst all the sad ones by which the charities of the human heart or of the fire-side, have ever been outraged, can better merit a separate chapter in the private history of German manners or social life than this unparalleled case. And, on the other hand, no one can put in a better claim to be the historian than myself.

I was at the time, and still am, a Professor in that city and university which had the melancholy distinction of being its theatre. I knew familiarly all the parties who were concerned in it-either as sufferers or as agents. I was present from first to last, and watched the whole course of the mysterious storm which fell upon our devoted city in a strength like that of a West Indian hurricane, and which did seriously threaten at one time to depopulate our university, through the dark suspicions which settled upon its members, and the natural reaction of generous indignation in repelling them

whilst the city in its more stationary and native classes would very soon have manifested their awful sense of things, of the hideous insecurity for life, and of the unfathomable dangers which had undermined their hearths below their very feet, by sacrificing, whenever circumstances allowed them, their houses and beautiful gardens in

exchange for days uncursed by panic, and nights unpolluted by blood. Nothing, I can take upon myself to assert, was left undone of all that human foresight could suggest, or human ingenuity could accomplish. But observe the melancholy result; the more certain did these arrangements strike people as remedies for the evil, so much the more effectually did they aid the terror, but above all, the awe-the sense of mystery, when ten cases of total extermination, applied to separate households, had occurred, in every one of which these precautionary aids had failed to yield the slightest assistance. The horror, the perfect frenzy of fear, which seized upon the town after that experience, baffles all attempt at description. Had these various contrivances failed merely in some human and intelligible way, as by bringing the aid too tardily-still in such cases, though the danger would no less have been evidently deepened, nobody would have felt any further mystery than what, from the very first, rested upon the persons and the motives of the murderers. But, as it was, when in ten separate cases of exterminating carnage, the astounded police, after an examination the most searching, pursued from day to day, and almost exhausting the patience by the minuteness of the investigation, had finally pronounced that no attempt apparently had been made to benefit by any of the signals preconcerted, that no footstep apparently had moved in that direction-then, and after that result, a blind misery of fear fell upon the population, so much the worse than any anguish of a beleaguered city that is awaiting the storming fury of a victorious enemy, by how much the shadowy-the uncertain--the infinite is at all times more potent in mastering the mind than a danger that is known measurable-palpable-and human. The very police, instead of offering protection or encouragement, were seized with terror for themselves. And the general feeling, as it was described to me by a grave citizen whom I met in a morning walk (for the overmastering sense of a public

calamity broke down every barrier of reserve, and all men talked freely to all men in the streets, as they would have done during the rockings of an earthquake), was, even amongst the boldest, like that which sometimes takes possession of the mind in dreams -when one feels oneself sleeping alone, utterly divided from all call or hearing of friends, doors open that should be shut, or unlocked that should be triply secured, the very walls gone, barriers swallowed up by unknown abysses, nothing around one but frail curtains, and a world of illimitable night, whisperings at a distance, correspondence going on between darkness and darkness, like one deep call. ing to another, and the dreamer's own heart the centre from which the whole net-work of this unimaginable chaos radiates, by means of which the blank privations of silence and darkness become powers the most positive and awful.

Agencies of fear, as of any other passion, and above all, of passion felt in communion with thousands, and in which the heart beats in conscious sympathy with an entire city, through all its regions of high and low, young and old, strong and weak, such agencies avail to raise and transfigure the natures of men; mean minds become elevated; dull men become eloquent; and when matters came to this crisis, the public feeling, as made known by voice, gesture, manner, or words, was such that no stranger could represent it to his fancy. In that respect, therefore, I had an advantage, being upon the spot through the whole course of the affair, for giving a faithful narrative; as I had still more eminently, from the sort of central station which I occupied, with respect to all the movements of the case. I may add, that I had another advantage, not possessed, or not in the same degree, by any other inhabitant of the town. I was person. ally acquainted with every family of the slightest account, belonging to the resident population; whether amongst the old local gentry, or the new settlers whom the late wars had driven to take refuge within our walls.

It was in September, 1815, that I received a letter from the Chief Secretary to the Prince of M-, a nobleman connected with the diplomacy of Russia, from which I quote an extract :"I wish, in short, to recommend to

your attentions, and in terms stronger than I know how to devise, a young man on whose behalf the Czar himself is privately known to have expressed the very strongest interest. He was at the battle of Waterloo as an aide-decamp to a Dutch general officer, and is decorated with distinctions won upon that awful day. However, though serving in that instance under English orders, and although an Englishman of rank, he does not belong to the English military service. He has served, young as he is, under various banners, and under ours, in particular, in the cavalry of our Imperial Guard. He is English by birth, nephew to the Earl of E., and heir presumptive to his immense estates. There is a wild story current-that his mother was a gipsy of transcendent beauty, which may account for his somewhat Moorish complexion, though, after all, that is not of a deeper tinge than I have seen amongst many an Englishman. He is himself one of the noblest looking of God's creatures. Both father and mother, however, are now dead; since then, he has become the favourite of his uncle, who detained him in England after the Emperor had departed-and, as this uncle is now in the last stage of infirmity, Mr Wyndham's succession to the vast family estates is inevitable, and probably near at hand. Mean-time, he is anxious for some assistance in his studies. Intellectually he stands in the very first rank of men, as I am sure you will not be slow to discover; but his long military service, and the unparalleled tumult of our European history since 1805, have interfered (as you may suppose) with the cultivation of his mind; for he entered the cavalry service of a German power when a mere boy, and shifted about from service to service as the hurricane of war blew from this point or from that. During the French anabasis to Moscow he entered our service, made himself a prodigious favourite with the whole Imperial family, and even now is only in his twenty-second year. As to his accomplishments, they will speak for themselves; they are infinite, and applicable to every situation of life. Greek is what he wants from you; never ask about terms. He will acknowledge any trouble he may give you, as he acknowledges all trouble, en prince. And ten years hence you

will look back with pride upon having contributed your part to the formation of one whom all here at St Petersburg, not soldiers only, but we diplomates, look upon as certain to prove a great man, and a leader amongst the intellects of Christendom."

Two or three other letters followed; and at length it was arranged that Mr Maximilian Wyndham should take up his residence at my monastic abode for one year. He was to keep a table, and an establishment of servants, at his own cost; was to have an apartment of some dozen or so of rooms; the unrestricted use of the library; with some other public privileges willingly conceded by the magistracy of the town; in return for all which he was to pay me a thousand guineas: and already beforehand, by way of acknow ledgment for the public civilities of the town, he sent, through my hands, a contribution of three hundred guineas to the various local institutions for education of the poor, or for charity.

The Russian Secretary had latterly corresponded with me from a little German town not more than ninety miles distant: and, as he had special couriers at his service, the negotiation advanced so rapidly, that all was closed before the end of September. And, when once that consummation was attained, I, that previously had breathed no syllable of what was stirring, now gave a loose to the interesting tidings, and suffered them to spread through the whole compass of the town. It will be easily imagined that such a story, already romantic enough in its first outline, would lose nothing in the telling. An Englishman to begin with, which name of itself, and at all times, is a passport into German favour, but much more since the late memorable wars that, but for Englishmen, would have drooped into disconnected efforts -next, an Englishman of rank and of the haute noblesse, then a soldier covered with brilliant distinctions, and in the most brilliant arm of the service; young, moreover, and yet a veteran by his experience, fresh from the most awful battle of this planet since the day of Pharsalia, radiant with the favour of courts and of Imperial ladies, finally (which alone would have given him an interest in all female hearts), an Antinous of faultless beauty, a Grecian statue, as it were, into which the breath of life

had been breathed by some modern Pygmalion,—such a pomp of gifts and endowments settling upon one man's head, should not have required for its effect the vulgar consummation (and yet to many it was the consummation and crest of the whole) that he was reputed to be rich beyond the dreams of romance or the necessities of a fairy tale. Unparalleled was the impression made upon our stagnant society; every tongue was busy in discussing the marvellous young Englishman from morning to night; every female fancy was busy in depicting the personal appearance of this gay apparition.

On his arrival at my house, I became sensible of a truth which I had observed some years before. The commonplace maxim is that it is dangerous to raise expectations too high. This, which is thus generally expressed, and without limitation, is true only conditionally; it is true then and there only where there is but little merit to sustain and justify the expectation. But in any case where the merit is transcendent of its kind, it is always useful to rack the expectation up to the highest point; in any thing which partakes of the infinite, the most unlimited expectations will find ample room for gratification; whilst it is certain that ordinary observers, possessing little sensibility, unless where they have been warned to expect, will often fail to see what exists in the most conspicuous splendour. In this instance it certainly did no harm to the subject of expectation, that I had been warned to look for so much. The warning, at any rate, put me on the look-out for whatever eminence there might be of grandeur in his personal appearance; whilst, on the other hand, this existed in such excess, so far transcending any thing I had ever met with in my experience, that no expectation which it is in words to raise could have been disappointed.

These thoughts travelled with the rapidity of light through my brain as at one glance my eye took in the supremacy of beauty and power which seemed to have alighted from the clouds before me. Power, and the contemplation of power, in any absolute incarnation of grandeur or excess, necessarily have the instantaneous effect of quelling all perturbation. My composure was restored in a moment. I looked steadily at him. We

both bowed. And, at the moment when he raised his head from that inclination, I caught the glance of his eye; an eye such as might have been looked for in a face of such noble lineaments

"Blending the nature of the star

With that of summer skies;" and, therefore, meant by nature for the residence and organ of serene and gentle emotions; but it surprised, and at the same time filled me more almost with consternation than with pity, to observe, that in those eyes a light of sadness had settled more profound than seemed possible for youth, or almost commensurate to a human sorrow; a sadness that might have become a Jewish prophet, when laden with inspirations of wo.

Two months had now passed away since the arrival of Mr Wyndham. He had been universally introduced to the superior society of the place; and, as I need hardly say, universally received with favour and distinction. In reality, his wealth and importance, his military honours, and the dignity of his character as expressed in his manners and deportment, were too eminent to allow of his being treated with less than the highest attention in any society whatever. But the effect of these various advantages, enforced and recommended as they were by a personal beauty so rare, was somewhat too potent for the comfort and self-possession of ordinary people; and really exceeded in a painful degree the standard of pretensions under which such people could feel themselves at their ease. He was not naturally of a reserved turn; far from it. His disposition had been open, frank, and confiding originally; and his roving, adventurous life, of which considerably more than one-half had been passed in camps, had communicated to his manners a more than military frankness. But the profound melancholy which possessed him, from whatever cause it arose, necessarily chilled the native freedom of his demeanour, unless when it was revived by strength of friendship or of love. The effect was awkward and embarrassing to all parties. Every voice paused or faltered when he entered a room-dead silence ensued-not an eye but was directed upon him, or else, sunk in timidity, settled upon the floor;

and young ladies seriously lost the power, for a time, of doing more than murmuring a few confused, half-inarticulate syllables, or half-inarticulate sounds. The solemnity, in fact, of a first presentation, and the utter impossibility of soon recovering a free unembarrassed movement of conversation, made such scenes really distressing to all who participated in them, either as actors or spectators. Certainly this result was not a pure effect of manly beauty, however heroic, and in whatever excess; it arose in part from the many and extraordinary endowments which had centered in his person, not less from fortune than from nature; in part also, as I have said, from the profound sadness and freezing gravity of Mr Wyndham's manner; but still more from the perplexing mystery which surrounded that sadness.

Were there, then, no exceptions to this condition of awe-struck admiration? Yes: One at least there was in whose bosom the spell of all-conquering passion soon thawed every trace of icy reserve. Whilst the rest of the world retained a dim sentiment of awe towards Mr Wyndham, Margaret Liebenheim only heard of such a feeling to wonder that it could exist towards him. Never was there so victorious a conquest interchanged between two youthful hearts-never before such a rapture of instantaneous sympathy. I did not witness the first meeting of this mysterious Maximilian and this magnificent Margaret, and do not know whether Margaret manifested that trepidation and embarrassment which distressed so many of her youthful co-rivals; but if she did, it must have fled before the first glance of the young man's eye, which would interpret, past all misunderstanding, the homage of his soul and the surrender of his heart. Their third meeting I did see; and there all shadow of embarrassment had vanished, except, indeed, of that delicate embarrassment which clings to impassioned admiration. On the part of Margaret, it seemed as if a new world had dawned upon her that she had not so much as suspected amongst the capacities of human experience. Like some bird she seemed, with powers unexercised for soaring and flying, not understood even as yet, and that never until now had found an element