cavern here expanded. It was a vast and noble apartment. The lofty ceiling swelled almost into a perfect dome, save where a ragged aperture at the top admitted the noonday sun, whose rays as they fell through the vines and wild-flowers that embowered the orifice, were glinted back from a thousand sparry points and pillars around. The walls indeed were completely fretted with stalactites. In some places small and apparently freshly formed, they hung in fringed rows from the ceiling; in others they drooped so heavily as to knit the glistening roof to the marble floor beneath it, or rose in slender pyramids from the roof itself until they appeared to sustain the vault above. The motion of the air created by the cascade gave a delightful coolness to this apartment, while the murmur of the falling water was echoed back from the vibrating columns with tones as rich and melodious as those which sweep from an Eolian harp. Never methought had I seen a spot so alluring. And yet when I surveyed each charm of the grotto, I knew not whether I could be contented in any one part of it. Nothing indeed could be more inviting to tranquil enjoy. ment than the place where I then stood; but the clustering columns, with their interlacing screen work of woven spar, allured my eye into a hundred romantic aisles which I longed to explore; while the pendant wild flowers which luxuriated in the sunlight around the opening above, prompted me to scale the dangerous height, and try what pinnacle of the mountain I might gain by emerging from the cavern through the lofty aperture. These reflections were abruptly terminated by an impatient gesture from my guide, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of her countenance as she glided by a deep pool in which it was reflected. That glance had a singular, almost a preternatural effect upon me ; the features were different from those I had expected to behold. They were not those of the new acquaintance whom I thought I was following, but the expression they wore was one so familiar to me in bygone years, that I started as if I had seen an apparition. It was the look of one who had been long since dead,-of one around whose name, when life was new, the whole tissue of my hopes and fears was woven, for whom all my aspirations after worldly honours had been breathed,—in whom all my dreams of earthly happiness had been wound up. She had mingled in purer hours with all the fond and home-loving fancies of boyhood; she had been the queen of each romantic vision of my youth; and amid tbe worldly cares and selfish struggles of maturer life, the thought of her had lived separate and apart in my bosom, with no companion in its hallowed chamber save the religion learned at a mother's knee, save that hope of better things which once implanted by a mother's love survives amid the storms and conflicts of the world, a beacon to warn us more often, alas! how far we have wandered from her teachings than to guide us to the haven whither they were meant to lead. I had loved her and I had lost her: how, it matters not. Perchance disease had reft her from me by some sudden blow at the moment when possession made her dearest. Perchance I saw her fade in the arms of another, while I was banned and barred from ministering to a spirit that stole away to the grave with all I prized on earth. It boots not how I lost her; but he who has centred every thought and feeling in one only subject, whose morning hopes have for years gone forth to the same goal, whose evening reflections have for years come back to the same bourne, whose waking visions and whose midnight dreams have for years been haunted by the same image, whose schemes of toil and advancement have all tended to the same end, he knows what it is to have the pivot upon which every wheel of his heart hath turned wrenched from its centre,—to have the sun round which revolved every joy that lighted his bosom plucked from its system. Well, it was her face. As I live, it was the soul-breathing features of Linda that now beamed before me, fresh as when in dawning woman. hood they first caught my youthful fancy,-resistless as when in their noontide blaze of beauty I poured out my whole adoring soul before them. There was that same appealing look of the large lustrous eyes, the same sunny and soul-melting smile which, playing over a countenance thoughtful even to sadness, touched it with a beauty so radiant, that the charm seemed borrowed from heaven itself. I could no. but think it strange that such an image should be presented to my view in such a place; and yet if I now rightly recollect my emotions, surprise was the least active among them. I cared not why or whence the apparition came; I thought not whether it were reality or mocking semblance, the phantasy of my own brain, or the shadowy creation of some supernatural power around me. I knew only that it was there; I knew only that the eyes in whose perilous light my soul had bathed herself to madness beamed anew before me; that the lips whose lightest smile had often wrapt me in elysium; that the brow whose holy light-But why should I thus attempt to paint what pencil never yet hath reached?-why essay a portrait whose colours I have nowhere found, save in the heart where they are laid so deeply that death alone can dim them. Enough that the only human being to whom my spirit ever bowed in inferiority-enough that the idol to which it had knelt in adoration now stood palpably before it. An hour agone, and I would have crossed the threshold of the grave itself to stand one moment in that presence,-to gaze if but for an instant upon those features. What recked I now then, how or whence they were conjured up? Had The FIEND himself stood nigh, I would have pressed nearer and gazed and followed as I did. The figure beckoned, and I went on. The vaulted pathway was at first smooth and easily followed; but after passing through several of the cavernous chambers into which it ever and anon expanded, the route became more and more difficult; loose masses of rock, encumbering the floor or drooping in pendant crags from the roof, rendered the defiles between them both toilsome and hazardous. The light which fell through the opening behind us soon disappeared entirely, and it gave me a singular sinking of the spirits, as we passed into deeper and deeper gloom, to hear the mu sical sounds which I have already noted in the grotto from which we first passed, dying_away in the distance, and leaving the place at last in total silence. Long indeed after they had ceased to reach my ear with any distinctness, they would seem at times to swell along the winding vault, and break anew upon me at some turn in our devious route. So strangely too do the innumerable subtle echoes metamorphose each noise in these caverns, that I continually found myself mistaking the muttered reverberations for the sounds of a human voice. At one moment it seemed in gay tones to be calling me back to the sparry grotto and bright sunshine behind me, while the very next it appeared with sudden and harsh intonation to warn me against proceeding further. Anon it would die away with a mournful cadence, a melancholy wailing, like the requiem of one who was beyond the reach of all earthly counsel or assistance. Again and again did I pause in my career to listen to this wild chanting, while my feelings would for the moment take their hue and complexion from the sources which thus bewildered my senses. I thought of my early dreams of fame and honour, of the singing hopes that lured me on my path, when one fatal image stepped between my soul and all its high endeavour. I thought of that buoyancy of spirit, once so irrepressible in its elasticity that it seemed proof alike against time and sorrow, now sapped, wasted, and destroyed by the frenzied pursuit of one object. I thought of the home which had so much to embellish and endear it, and which yet with all its heart-cheering joys had been neglected and left, like the sunlit grotto, to follow a shifting phantom through a heartless world. I thought of the reproachful voices around me, and the ceaseless upbraider in my own bosom, which told of time and talents wasted, of opportunities thrown away, of mental energies squandered, of heart, brain and soul consumed in a devotion deeper and more absorbing than Heaven itself exacts from its votaries. I thought, and I looked at the object for which I had lavished them all. I thought that my life must have been some hideous dream, some dread vision in which my fated soul was bound by imaginary ties to a being doomed to be its bane upon earth, and shut it out at last from heaven; and I laughed in scornful glee as I twisted my bodily frame in the hope that at length I might wake from that longenduring sleep. I caught a smile from the lips; I saw a beckon from the hand of the phantom, and I wished still to dream, and to follow for I plunged into the abyss of darkness to which it pointed; and reckless of everything I might leave behind followed wheresoever it might marshal me. ever. A damp and chilling atmosphere now pervaded the place, and the clammy moisture stood thick upon my brow as I groped my way through a labyrinth of winding galleries which intersected each other so often, both obliquely and transversely, that the whole mountain seemed honeycombed. At one moment the steep and broken pathway led up acclivi. ties almost impossible to scale; at another the black edge of a precipice indicated our hazardous route along the brink of some unfathomed gulf; while again a savage torrent, roaring through the sinuous vault, left scarcely room enough for a foot-hold between the base of the wall and its furious tide. And still my guide kept on and still I followed. Returning indeed, had the thought occurred to me, was now impossible; for the pale light which seemed to hang around her person, emanating as it were from her white raiment, was all that guided me through these shadowy realms. But not for a moment did I now think of retracing my steps, or pausing in that wild pursuit. Onward and still onward it led, while my spirit once set upon its purpose seemed to gather sterner determination from every difficulty it encountered, and to kindle once more with that indomitable buoyancy which was once the chief attribute of my nature. At length the chase seemed ended, as we approached one of those abrupt and startling turns common in these caverns, where the passage, suddenly veering to the right or left, leads you, as if by design, to the sheer edge of some gulf that is impassable. My strange companion seemed pausing for a moment upon the brink of the abyss. It was a moment to me of delirious joy, mingled with more than mortal agony; the object of my wild pursuit seemed at length within my grasp. A single bound, and my outstretched arms would have encircled her person; a single bound-nay, the least movement towards her-might only have precipitated the destruction upon whose brink she hovered. Her form seemed to flutter upon the very edge of that horrid precipice, as gazing like one fascinated over it, she stretched her hand backward toward me. It was like inviting me to perdition. And yet, forgive me Heaven! to perish with her was my proudest hope, as I sprang to grasp it. But, oh God! what held I in that withering clasp? The ice of death seemed curdling in my veins as I touched those clammy and pulseless fingers. A strange and unhallowed light shot upward from the black abyss; and the features from which I could not take my eyes away were changed to those of a DEMON in that hideous glare. And now the hand that I had so longed to clasp closed with remorseless pressure round my own, and drew me toward the yawning gulf, it tightened in its grasp, and I hovered still nearer to my horrid doom,-it clenched yet more closely, and the frenzied shriek I gave— AWOKE ME. A soft palm was gently pressed against my own; a pair of laughing blue eyes were bent archly upon me; and the fair locks which floated over her blooming cheeks revealed the joyous and romping damsel who had promised to act as my guide through the cavern. She had been prevented by some household cares from keeping her appointment until the approach of evening made it too late, and she had taken it for granted that I had then returned to my lodgings at the inn. My absence from the breakfast table in the morning, however, had awakened some concern in the family, and induced her to seek me where we then met. The pressure of her hand in trying to awaken me will partially account for the latter part of my hideous dream; the general tenor of it is easily traceable to the impression made upon my mind by the prevalent superstition connected with the cavern; but no metaphysical ingenuity of which I am master can explain how one whose daily thoughts flow in so careless, if not gay a current as mine, even in a dream could have conjured up such a train of wild and bitter fancies; much less how the fearful tissue should have been so interwoven with the memory of an idle caprice of boyhood as to give new shape and reality to a phanto long-long since faded. And I could not but think that had a vision so strange and vivid swept athwart my brain at an earlier period of life, I should have regarded it as something more than an unmeaning phantasy! That mystical romance which is the religion of life's spring time would have interpreted my dream as a dark foreboding of the future, prophetic of hopes misplaced, of opportunities misapplied, of a joy. less and barren youth, and a manhood whose best endeavour would be only a restless effort to lose in action the memory of the dreary past. If half be true however that is told concerning them, still more extravagant sallies of the imagination overtake persons of quite as easy and indolent a disposition as my own, when venturing to pass a night upon the Enchanted Mountains. |