* Partly in this recess, and partly on the leaden floor of the area, were placed the various portions of an immense galvanic apparatus; the plates, I am sure, were above a foot square each, and two or three hundred in number. On the table was a small box of a dark polished wood, mounted in silver, and containing dissecting instruments. There was yet no one in the open space, but the whole seated part was crowded up to the very ceiling, though none were admitted but gentleman who had received cards of invitation.

As we entered at the top, all eyes were turned to us, and immediately the hollow seats resounded with a burst of applause. Johns, in whose honor, I need hardly say, this was done, pressed my arm. I looked at him there was on his pale intellectual face a flush of pride and enthusiasm, while his deep blue eye seemed to burn. We found our way down to a side-seat, the first from the area, which had been kept for us, and sat down to await the coming scene. As I sat, I could not help admiring the magnitude as well as elegance of the apparatus, as it stocd before me. I think it was the largest that has ever been constructed; indeed, when it was set in action, several gentlemen afterwards declared they had felt its influence on their bodies, though seated at a considerable distance, and altogether unconnected with it.

After a while several elderly gentlemen entered by one of the doors into the area, one of them enveloped completely in a gown of blackglazed leather: this was Dr. Z-, the demonstrator of anatomy. Dr. who was among them, came over to Mr. Johns, and entered into

conversation.

About ten minutes elapsed when a young man came in suddenly, and whispered to Dr. Z. They were all immediately on the alert; the acid was poured on, the apparatus put in action, and ere we were aware, one of the gentleman was thrown to the floor by a violent shock from the wires having accidentally got entangled about his person. Things were put to rights, and, in another minute, several men hurried into the room, bearing a body, with a sheet thrown loosely around it. Thereupon arose a loud murmur throughout the crowded hall, and every one sprang to his feet, shifting about, and pushing aside his neighbors' heads and shoulders to get a good view. The men who had borne in the body placed it, face downwards, on the long table, with the feet towards us, and the head towards the other side of the hall. They then removed the sheet and withdrew; and there lay before me Severn, the housebreaker, highwayman, and murderer.

I have never seen a more muscular frame than he presented. Every fibre was in a state of rigid tension, displaying the strength and elegance of his form to most striking advantage. The hair of the head was of an iron-gray colour, in some places almost white.

Dr. Z took out his scalpels, and Dr. Q- crossing to Johns, told him that the neck appeared not to have sustained any perceptible injury, owing perhaps to the strength of its muscles. Johns was de lighted. He took hold of Q- -'s hand between his own, and looked at him with features full of anxious hope, lighted up every now and then with the wild unearthly expression so peculiar to them.

Dr. Q-then went forward and addressed the assemblage, telling them that the body had been suspended by the neck for one hour, and had now been nearly half that time cut down, and was of course quite dead. He spoke in a hurried, excited manner. He would now, he said, proceed to try upon it the powers of his battery, in the hope of restoring to it pulsation, respiration, and motion.

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Yes, LIFE!" said Johns to me. Vitality-intelligence-mind! Yes, that corpse, which for this hour has been dead and cold, as a clod of the valley, shall, in ten minutes, walk forth from this hall a LIVING SOUL! I shall be the power that shall have put the breath of life into his nostrils. I shall be proclaimed before this meeting-before London, England, the world, as the first being that has ever- -." I shall not go on-it was a sentence of most hideous blasphemy.

As he spoke his eyes gleamed with an enthusiasm almost maniacal. It was the last flash of his wayward but magnificent intellect; the last irradiation of a spirit that gave all but sensible indication of its presence. Dr. Z now proceeded to make incisions down upon important nerves in various parts of the body. The wires were then applied. The body slowly drew up its lower limb-I saw the muscles clubbed up in knots under the skin. The next moment it was thrown out with fearful violence, and fell back motionless upon the table. Thereupon arose from every part of that great hall a thunder of applause.

The excitement was now most intense; for my own part, I could not take my eyes from the table. I had forgotten there was such a being as Johns at my side, so engrossed was I with the scene before me.

The wires were now applied to different parts of the body, violent convulsive motions of various kinds being produced. They were applied to the nerves of the head and face. The head was immediately drawn spasmodically back, the face looking right up from the table upon the benches opposite to me. I could not of course see it, but of the gentlemen who did see it, several rose abruptly, and fled up the stairs, and out of the theatre; one vomited, and another fainted away, and was immediately removed through the area to the rooms adjoining. The galvanic fluid was then brought to bear upon the phrenic or nerve of respiration; breathing immediately began, at first low, then natural, then hurried, laboring, at last gasping.

The wire from the one pole of the apparatus was now affixed to the large nerve that runs down the thigh behind; that from the other, to the one that comes out upon the bone over the orbit. The effect was terrific. The corpse suddenly turned completely round, with its face upward, and rose upon its haunches, every muscle being fixed in rigid spasm. Heaven keep me from ever beholding such a sight again! Its neck was thrust forward, its long gray hair stood on end, its brow was contorted into innumerable wrinkles, the eyelids were drawn forcibly back, the eyeballs, with their dead glazed pupils, protruding in a hideous stare, its nostrils were widely dilated, while a horrible greenish foam oozed out at the corners of its working lips. I could not remove my eyes from it for one fraction of a second. Never, before or since, has my whole soul been absorbed by such a feeling of unutterable horror!

A moment, and it suddenly raised its right arm, and pointed convulsively with its forefinger to Johns, who sat beside me; whilst its ghastly lifeless eyes glared in the same direction, and every fibre of its face was twitched with a most diabolic, gibbering grin.

I felt sick and faint; the theatre swam around me; but at that instant my ears were cut to the quick by a cry. With the sights and sounds of the operation-room I have been familiar, but never has my heart quailed at such a scream. I had at first the idea that it rose from the corpse on the table, but the next instant a heavy body fell against my shoulder. A dreadful idea shot across my mind! that cry came from Johns, and in its prolonged, splitting yell, my ear could trace the articulate words

"MY FATHER !"

In the utterance of it he had sprung up clean into the air, as the stag is said to do when the bullet enters its heart. It was his body that fell against my shoulder, and he was now lying at my feet.

Yes; it was his father! Severn, the robber, and Johns, the flower and bird fancier, were one and the same. The man who had first avoided me; who had seized my bridle at midnight and on the highway; whose guest I had been for three happy weeks; whose daughter was the subject of my reveries by day, and of my dreams by night; the kind, doting father of my gifted friend; the ruined merchant, the highwayman, the burglar, the murderer, all were one man, and his insensate body now lay before me, the writhing subject of hideous experiments. I knew the features well; but the gray hair! could the black have been but an artificial disguise? or was this the effect of the agony of sleepless nights in the condemned cell?

But alas for thee, vain and presumptuous mortal! where is now thy proud and blasphemous spirit, thy mighty genius that could dare attempt by spells of earthly science to call back to its mangled tenement of clay the guilty soul already trembling before the throne of its Judge? How fearfully has thy deep sin been visited upon thee, poor frail child of clay! Has not thy very crime been, by the finger that works unseen,turned into the instrument of thy dreadful chastisement? Where canst thou hide thee now, poor stricken worm? Where are thy theories now, thy scoffs and arguings that led away many a weak spirit into eternal ruin?

No ear but mine appeared to have understood that cry. It was the belief of all that he had fainted away, as had the other gentlemen, from fright or agitation. I took him up in my arms, and bore his light, slender form from the theatre.

The gentlemen went on with their experiments, with what success I know not; of course their object, viz., restoration of life to the body, (for, whatever Dr. Q- or others may have recorded, that I know was their object,) was not attained; neither do I know what became of the body afterwards.

I sent the porter of the rooms for a hackney-coach, in which, with his assistance, I placed my senseless friend, and then getting in, desired the coachman to drive to his apartments. They were situated in a quict

street down in Westminster, A widow'lady, from whom he held them, occupied, with her servant-girl, the ground-floor and kitchen below: all above was his. I left him in the carriage, and running up to the door, opened it with a key I had received from him long before. I went rapidly along the passage, to seek the landlady's assistance, when, on opening the door, who should I see sitting in the centre of the room, all pale and dishevelled, but his gentle sister, my own Katherine! I started back in new amazement. She rose slowly to her feet, and addressed me slowly, and with difficulty, while I could see the sweat, in drops like pin-points, starting out all over her beautiful face.

"Don't speak to me, Mr. " she said. "I have found out what I am;-whose-child I-am. Where is my brother?" She continued to move her lips, though uttering no sound; the globus hystericus had risen in her throat, and was choking her; her eyes swam in their sockets, she reeled and fell backwards, and it was with the greatest difficulty I prevented her from falling with her head upon the fire.

Never was I in a state of such painful perplexity. I knew not what to do; imprinting a hurried kiss on her cold, damp cheek, I put her under charge of the landlady, and ran out to attend to her brother. With the help of the coachman, I had him conveyed up stairs to bed. Oh, with what bitterness did I now look upon the piles of books and apparatus that impeded our steps at every turn !—the very bed had to be cleared of them, ere we could put him into it. Having dismissed the man, I endeavored to ascertain the precise nature of the symptoms.

His pulse I found to be very slow and calm, more so by much than natural, as likewise was his breathing; his skin was very cool, but not cold; his limbs were slightly stiff; if I lifted his arm, it would remain up for a moment, and then slowly sink again to the level position upon the bed. I found his pupils not to be effected by the sudden approach of light, and from his nostrils were distilling a few drops of blood, which last symptom might, however, have been occasioned by his fall.

Having satisfied myself that he was in a fit of catalepsy, or some anomalous nervous affection, I went down stairs to see what had become of her. I found her in a deep sleep on the sofa, with the good landlady sitting on a chair beside her, who motioned me not to come in. I went into her bedroom, where she immediately joined me. She told me that the poor young lady had been raving dreadfully, and must have escaped from her keepers the night before, as she said she had walked that morning more than a dozen miles to London. It was the worthy woman's firm persuasion that the gentle girl was deranged; she had consequently kept her in talk, as she said, with considerable doubt about her own safety, expecting that Mr. Johns would come home, and take her under his own charge, and have her put under her former restraint.

I do not think I ever passed a day in all my life pregnant with events of such a harrowing nature. I fervently pray Heaven I may never have to pass such another. I sat by the bedside all that night, watching my friend's pale, moveless, expressionless face, and thinking over the startling events I have narrated. I did this till a strange supertitious feeling crept over me; I was certain the glaring face of the galvanized corpse

was behind my head, while an irresistible desire, and yet mortal dread, to look round possessed me; this feeling increased to torture; I could bear it no longer, but rushing from the apartment and out of the house, I walked up and down the street in front, till day, and then re-entered. I ascended to his bedroom; I found Katherine sitting beside his head. She rose up as I came in, and, I assure you, I trembled as I greeted her. She stood up quiet and calm before me. Her features had acquired a cold, stony-hard look; a Siddons-sort of expression, only real, not acted, that told me the bitterness of grief-of death itself-was already past. I knew that now, though I were to thrust a knife into her flesh, she would shed no tear, utter no cry. My eyes sought the floor before her passionless gaze. I felt for her that peculiar feeling of reverence and awe which the old Greek tragedians so well describe as hanging about the presence of Orestes, Edipus, and others, whom the gods had visited with extreme affliction. My clothes felt cold and rough upon my skin as I heard her. She addressed me in the style of ordinary conversation, but slowly, and with effort.

I see, Mr. -, you know all. He has turned out to be a most atrocious felon whom I regarded as a father. I never knew it till two days ago. My mother told me with her latest breath; she is dead now; she had known it all along. But my brother,—my poor, dear, noble Elias,— thought him a deity. Yes, we have been reared upon the wages of crime! It came upon me like lightning; I ran out of the house as I was, and found my way on foot to London. When I arrived, I was borne away by crowds of people till I came to the place. Yes, Mr. with my own eyes I saw it-I saw the great dark prison, the black beams of the gibbet-I saw HIM! I heard the shouts and execrations that rose, an audible cloud, from the great sea of human beings that rolled hither and thither beneath. I heard him speak-I heard the rumbling crash of the hideous engine, and the one universal groan that burst from the vast multitude at the offering up of the horrible sacrifice! I heard and saw it all; and my God! I did not die !"

Here she bent her head upon her senseless brother's bosom, and continued in that attitude. I paced the room slowly in a state of mental agony, second only to her own.

After a time she rose. Her eyes were quite dry, her features unchanged. She intended to stay and be her brother's nurse, and desired I would not injure my prospects by neglect of my studies on his or her account, or bring disgrace upon myself, or wound my own feelings, by keeping company with such characters as I had found them to be.

I left her for a time, and went and addressed myself to my medical pursuits, endeavoring to attend to the usual routine, though I thought for several days I felt my reason giving way under the trials to which it had been subjected.

I came continually twice or thrice a day to the house, and often sat alone reading by the brother's bedside at night, to let her get a few hours rest.

He had now lain in the state I have described for many days, when one night I sat beside him copying out some short-hand notes. It was