 CHAPTER IX. Sithrup grew every day more reserved, mysterious, and distraught, and gradually lengthened the duration of his diurnal seclusions in his tower. Veda thought she perceived in all this very manifest symptoms of a warm love cooling. It was seldom that she found herself alone with him in the morning, and, on these occasions, if she was silent in the hope of his speaking first, not a syllable would he utter. If she spoke to him indirectly, he assented monosyllobically. If she questioned him his answers were brief, constrained, and evasive. Still, though her spirits were depressed, her playfulness had not so totally forsaken her, but that it illuminated at intervals the gloom of nightmare Abbey. And if, on any occasion, she observed in Sithrup tokens of unextinguished or returning passion, her love of tormenting her lover immediately got the better both of her grief and her sympathy, though not of her curiosity, which Sithrup seemed determined not to satisfy. This playfulness, however, was in a great measure artificial, and usually vanished with the irritable Streffen to whose annoyance it had been exerted. The genius loci, the tutela of Nightmare Abbey, the spirit of Black Melancholy, began to set his seal on her palescent countenance. Sithrup perceived the change, found his tender sympathies awakened, and did his utmost to comfort the afflicted damsel, assuring her that his seeming inattention had only proceeded from his being involved in a profound meditation on a very hopeful scheme for the regeneration of human society. Marianetta called him ungrateful, cruel, cold-hearted, and accompanied her reproaches with many sobs and tears. Poor Sithrup, growing every moment more soft and submissive, till at length he threw himself at her feet, and declared that no competition of beauty, however dazzling, genius, however transcendent, talents, however cultivated, or philosophy, however enlightened, should ever make him renounce his divine Marianetta. Competition! thought Marianetta, and suddenly with an air of the most freezing indifference she said, You are perfectly at liberty, sir, to do as you please. I beg you will follow your own plans without any reference to me. Sithrup was confounded. What was become of all her passion and her tears? Still kneeling, he kissed her hand with rueful timidity, and said in most pathetic accents, Do you not love me, Marianetta? No, said Marianetta, with a look of cold composure. No! Sithrup still looked up incredulously. No, I tell you. Oh, very well, madam, said Sithrup, rising. If that is the case, there are those in the world. To be sure there are, sir, and do you suppose I do not see through your designs you ungenerous monster? My designs? Marianetta. Yes, your designs, Sithrup. You have come here to cast me off, and artfully contrive that it should appear to be my doing and not yours, thinking to quiet your tender conscience with this pitiful stratagem. But do not suppose that you are of so much consequence to me. Do not suppose it. You are of no consequence to me at all. None at all. Therefore, leave me. I renounce you. Leave me. Why do you not leave me? Sithrup endeavored to remonstrate, but without success. She reiterated her injunctions to him to leave her, till, in the simplicity of his spirit, he was preparing to comply. When he had nearly reached the door, Marianetta said, Farewell! Sithrup looked back. Farewell, Sithrup! she repeated. You will never see me again. Never see you again, Marianetta? I shall go from hence to-morrow, perhaps to-day, and before we meet again one of us will be married, and we might as well be dead, you know, Sithrup! The sudden change of her voice in the last few words, and the burst of tears that accompanied them, acted like electricity on the tender-hearted youth, and, in another instant, a complete reconciliation was accomplished without the intervention of words. There are indeed some learned causists, who maintain that love has no language, and that all the misunderstandings and dissensions of lovers arise from the fatal habit of employing words on a subject to which words are inapplicable. That love, beginning with looks, that is to say, with the physiognomical expression of congenial mental dispositions, tends through a regular gradation of signs and symbols of affection to that consummation which is most devoutly to be wished, and that it neither is necessary that there should be, nor probable that there would be, a single word spoken from first to last between two sympathetic spirits, were it not that the arbitrary institutions of society have raised, at every step of this very simple process, so many complicated impediments and barriers in the shape of settlements and ceremonies, parents and guardians, lawyers, Jewbrokers and Parsons, that many and adventurous knight, who, in order to obtain the conquest of the Hesperian fruit, is obliged to fight his way through all these monsters, is either repulsed at the onset or vanquished before the achievement of his enterprise, and such a quantity of unnatural talking is rendered inevitably necessary through all the stages of the progression, that the tender and volatile spirit of love often takes flight on the pinions of some of the winged words which are pressed into his service in spite of himself. At this conjuncture Mr. Glowery entered, and sitting down near them said, I see how it is, and as we are all sure to be miserable, do what we may, there is no need of taking pains to make one another more so. Therefore, with God's blessing in mind, there, joining their hands as he spoke, Sithrup was not exactly prepared for this decisive step, but he could only stammer out, really, sir, you are too good! And Mr. Glowery departed to bring Mr. Hillary to ratify the act. Now whatever truth there may be in the theory of love and language, of which we have so recently spoken, certain it is, that during Mr. Glowery's absence, which lasted half an hour, not a single word was said by either Sithrup or Marionetta. Mr. Glowery returned with Mr. Hillary, who was delighted at the prospect of so advantageous an establishment for his orphan niece, of whom he considered himself in some manner the guardian, and nothing remained, as Mr. Glowery observed, but to fix the day. Marionetta blushed and was silent. Sithrup was also silent for a time, and at length hesitatingly said, My dear sir, your goodness overpowers me, but really you are so precipitate! Now this remark, if the young lady had made it, would, whether she thought it or not, for sincerity is a thing of no account on these occasions, nor indeed on any other, according to Mr. Floskey. This remark, if the young lady had made it, would have been perfectly calm ill-faux, but being made by the young gentleman, it was tout autre chose, and was indeed, in the eyes of his mistress, a most heinous and irremissible offence. Marionetta was angry, very angry, but she concealed her anger, and said, calmly and coldly, Certainly you are much too precipitate, Mr. Glowery! I assure you, sir, I have by no means made up my mind, and indeed, as far as I know it, it inclines the other way, but it will be quite time enough to think of these matters seven years hence. Before surprise, permitted reply, the young lady had locked herself up in her own apartment. Why, Sithrup, said Mr. Glowery, elongating his face exceedingly, The devil is come among us, sure enough, as Mr. too bad observes. I thought you and Marionetta were both of a mind. So we are, I believe, sir, said Sithrup gloomily, and stalked away to his tower. Mr. Glowery, said Mr. Hillary, I do not very well understand all this. Whims, brother Hillary, said Mr. Glowery, some little foolish love quarrel, nothing more. Whims, freaks, April showers, they will be blown over by to-morrow. If not, said Mr. Hillary, these April showers have made us April fools. Ah, said Mr. Glowery, you are a happy man, and in all your afflictions you can console yourself with a joke. Let it be ever so bad provided you crack it yourself. I should be very happy to laugh with you if it would give you any satisfaction. But really, at present, my heart is so sad that I find it impossible to levy a contribution all my muscles. Divided into the visual sign of his interior cognition of a mermaid, Sithrup, retiring to his tower, found his study preoccupied. A stranger, muffled in a cloak, was sitting at his table. Sithrup paused in surprise. The stranger rose at his entrance, and looked at him intently a few minutes in silence. The eyes of the stranger alone were visible. All the rest of the figure was muffled and mantled in the folds of a black cloak which was raised by the right hand to the level of the eyes. This scrutiny being completed, the stranger dropping the cloak said, I see by your physiognomy that you may be trusted. And revealed to the astonished Sithrup a female form and countenance of dazzling grace and beauty, with long flowing hair of raven blackness and large black eyes of almost oppressive brilliancy, which strikingly contrasted with the complexion of snowy whiteness. Her dress was extremely elegant, but had an appearance of a foreign fashion, as if both the lady and her mantua-maker were of a far country. I guessed was frightful there to see a lady so richly clad as she, beautiful exceedingly. For if it be terrible to one young lady to find another under a tree at midnight, it must, a fortiori, be much more terrible to a young gentleman to find a young lady in his study at that hour. If the logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be not manifest to my readers, I am sorry for their dullness, and must refer them for more ample elucidation, to a treatise which Mr. Floskey intends to write, on the categories of relation which comprehend substance and accident, cause and effect, action and reaction. Sithrup therefore either was or ought to have been frightened. At all events he was astonished and astonishment, though not in itself fear, is nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is indeed, as it were, the half-way house between respect and terror according to Mr. Burke's graduated scale of the sublime. Mr. Burke's graduated scale of the sublime. There must be some mistake in this, for the whole honourable band of gentlemen pensioners has resolved unanimously that Mr. Burke was a very sublime person, particularly after he had prostituted his own soul and betrayed his country and mankind for twelve hundred pounds a year. Yet he does not appear to have been a very terrible personage, and certainly went off with a very small portion of human respect, though he contrived to excite, in a great degree, the astonishment of all honest men. Our immaculate laureate, who gives us to understand that, if he had not been purified by holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a virgin, is another sublime gentleman of the same genus. He very much astonished some persons when he sold his birthright for a pot of sack. But not even his sosia has a grain of respect for him, though doubtless, he thinks his name very terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his Critico-Poetical-Political tomahawk, and sets up his indian yell for the blood of his old friends. But, at best, he is a mere political scarecrow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know of what materials he has made, and to none more so than to those who have stuffed him and set him up as the Priapus of the Garden of the Golden Apples of Corruption. End of footnote. You are surprised, said the lady. Yet why should you be surprised? If you had met me in a drawing-room, and I had been introduced to you by an old woman, it would have been a matter of course. Can the division of two or three walls, and the absence of an unimportant personage, make the same object essentially different in the perception of a philosopher? Certainly not, said Sithrip. But when any class of objects has habitually presented itself to our perceptions in invariable conjunction with particular relations, then on the sudden appearance of one object of the class divested of those accompaniments, the essential difference of the relation is, by an involuntary process, transferred to the object itself, which thus offers itself to our perceptions with all the strangeness of novelty. You are a philosopher, said the lady, and a lover of liberty. You are the author of a treatise called Philosophical Gas, or a project for a general illumination of the human mind. I am, said Sithrip, delighted at this first blossom of his renown. I am a stranger in this country, said the lady. I have been but a few days in it, yet I find myself immediately under the necessity of seeking refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no friend to whom I could apply, and, in the midst of my difficulties, accident threw your pamphlet in my way. I saw that I had at least one kindred mind in this nation, and determined to apply to you. And what would you have me do? said Sithrip, more and more amazed, and not a little perplexed. I would have you, said the young lady, assist me in finding some place of retreat, where I can remain concealed from the indefatigable search that is being made for me. I have been so nearly caught once or twice already, that I cannot confide any longer in my own ingenuity. I doubtless, thought Sithrip, this is one of my golden candlesticks. I have constructed, said he, in this tower, an entrance to a small suite of unknown apartments in the main building, which I defy any creature living to detect. If you would like to remain there a day or two, till I can find you a more suitable concealment, you may rely on the honour of a transcendental eluthararch. I rely on myself, said the lady. I act as I please, go where I please, and let the world say what it will. I am rich enough to set it at defiance. It is the tyrant of the poor and the feeble, but the slave of those who are above the reach of its injury. Sithrip ventured to inquire the name of his fair protégé. What is a name? said the lady. Any name will serve the purpose of distinction. Call me Stella. I see by your looks, she added, that you think all this very strange. When you know me better, your surprise will cease. I submit not to be an accomplice in my sexes' slavery. I am, like yourself, a lover of freedom, and I carry my theory into practice. They alone are subject to blind authority who have no reliance on their own strength. Stella took possession of the recondite apartments. Sithrip intended to find her another asylum, but from day to day he postponed his intention and, by degrees, forgot it. The young lady reminded him of it from day to day, till she also forgot it. Sithrip was anxious to learn her history, but she would add nothing to what she had already communicated, that she was shunning and atrocious persecution. Sithrip thought of Lord See and the Alien Act and said, As you will not tell your name, I suppose it is in the green bag. Stella, not understanding what he meant, was silent, and Sithrip translating silence into acquiescence, concluded that he was sheltering any luminae whom Lord S. suspected of an intention to take the tower and set fire to the bank, exploits at least as likely to be accomplished by the hands and eyes of a young beauty as by a drunken cobbler and doctor armed with a pamphlet and an old stocking. Stella, in her conversations with Sithrip, displayed a highly cultivated and energetic mind full of impassioned schemes of liberty and impatience of masculine usurpation. She had a lively sense of all the oppressions that are done under the sun, and the vivid pictures which her imagination presented to her of the numberless scenes of injustice and misery which are being acted at every moment in every part of the inhabited world, gave an habitual seriousness to her physiognomy that made it seem as if a smile had never once hovered on her lips. She was intimately conversant with the German language and literature, and Sithrip listened with delight to her repetitions of her favorite passages from Schiller and Goethe, and to her encomians on the sublime Spartacus Wayshopt, the immortal founder of the sect of the Illuminati. Sithrip found that his soul had a greater capacity of love than the image of Marianetta had filled. The form of Stella took possession of every vacant corner of the cavity, and by degrees displaced that of Marianetta from many of the outworks of the citadel, though the latter still held possession of the keep. He judged from his new friend calling herself Stella that if it were not her real name she was an admirer of the principles of the German play from which she had taken it, and took an opportunity of leading the conversation to that subject. But to his great surprise the lady spoke very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of love, and declared that the reign of affection was one and indivisible, that it might be transferred but could not be participated. If I ever love, said she, I shall do so without limit or restriction. I shall hold all difficulties light, all sacrifices cheap, all obstacles gossamer. But for love so total I shall claim a return as absolute. I will have no rival. Whether more or less favored will be of little moment. I will be neither first nor second. I will be alone. The heart which I shall possess I will possess entirely, or entirely, renounce. Sithrip did not dare to mention the name of Marianetta. He trembled lest some unlucky accident should reveal it to Stella, though he scarcely knew what result to wish or anticipate, and lived in the double fever of a perpetual dilemma. He could not disemble to himself that he was in love, at the same time with two damsels of minds and habits as remote as the antipodes. The scale of predilection always inclined to the fair one who happened to be present, but the absent was never effectually outweighed. Though the degrees of exaltation and depression varied according to accidental variations in the outward and visible signs of the inward and spiritual graces of his respective charmers. Passing and repassing several times a day from the company of the one to that of the other, he was like a shuttlecock between two battle-doors, changing its direction as rapidly as the oscillations of a pendulum, receiving many a hard knock on the cork of a sensitive heart, and flying from point to point on the feathers of a super-sublimated head. This was an awful state of things. He had now as much mystery about him as any romantic transcendentalist or transcendental romance or could desire. He had his esoterical and his exoterical love. He could not endure the thought of losing either of them, but he trembled when he imagined the possibility that some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. The old proverb concerning two strings to a bow gave him some gleams of comfort, but that concerning two stools occurred to him more frequently, and covered his forehead with a cold perspiration. With Stella he could indulge freely in all his romantic and philosophical visions. He could build castles in the air, and she would pile towers and turrets on the imaginary edifices. With Marionetta it was otherwise. She knew nothing of the world and society beyond the sphere of her own experience. Her life was all music and sunshine, and she wondered what any one could see to complain of in such a pleasant state of things. She loved Sithrip. She hardly knew why. Indeed, she was not always sure that she loved him at all. She felt her fondness increase or diminish in an inverse ratio to his. When she had maneuvered him into a fever of passionate love, she often felt and always assumed indifference. If she found that her coldness was contagious, and that Sithrip either was, or pretended to be, as indifferent as herself, she would become doubly kind and raise him again to that elevation from which she had previously thrown him down. Thus, when his love was flowing, hers was ebbing. When his was ebbing, hers was flowing. Now and then there were moments of level tide, when reciprocal affection seemed to promise imperturbable harmony. But Sithrip could scarcely resign his spirit to the pleasing illusion before the penance of the lover's affections was caught in some eddy of the lady's caprice, and he was whirled away from the shore of his hopes, without rudder or compass, into an ocean of mists and storms. It resulted, from this system of conduct, that all that passed between Sithrip and Marianetta consisted in making and unmaking love. He had no opportunity to take measure of her understanding by conversations on general subjects, and on his favorite designs. And being left in this respect to the exercise of indefinite conjecture, he took it for granted, as most lovers would do in similar circumstances, that she had great natural talents which she wasted at present on trifles, but coquetry would end with marriage and leave room for philosophy to exert its influence on her mind. Sithrip had no coquetry, no disguise, she was an enthusiast in subjects of general interest, and her conduct to Sithrip was always uniform, or rather showed a regular progression of partiality which seemed fast ripening into love. CHAPTER 11 OF NIGHTMARE ABBY Sithrip, attending one day the summons to dinner, found in the drawing room his friend Mr. Cyprus, the poet whom he had known at college, and who was a great favorite of Mr. Glowry. Mr. Cyprus said he was on the point of leaving England, but could not think of doing so without a farewell look at Nightmare Abbey and his respected friends, the moody Mr. Glowry and the mysterious Mr. Sithrip, the sublime Mr. Floskey and the pathetic Mr. Listless, to all of whom, and the morbid hospitality of the melancholy dwelling in which they were then assembled, he assured them he should always look back with as much affection as his lacerated spirit could feel for anything. The sympathetic condolence of their respective replies was cut short by Raven's announcement of Dinner on Table. The conversation that took place when the wine was in circulation, and the ladies were withdrawn, we shall report with our usual scrupulous fidelity. MR. GLOWRY You are leaving England, Mr. Cyprus. There is a delightful melancholy in saying farewell to an old acquaintance when the chances are twenty to one against ever meeting again, a smiling bumper to a sad parting, and let us all be unhappy together. Mr. Cyprus, filling a bumper. MR. GLOWRY This is the only social habit that the disappointed spirit never unlearns. The revered Mr. Laricks, filling. It is the only piece of academical learning that the finished educator retains. MR. GLOWRY Mr. Floskey, filling. It is the only objective fact which the skeptic can realize. MR. GLOWRY Cythrop, filling. It is the only sceptic for a bleeding heart. The Honourable Mr. Listless, filling. MR. Listless It is the only trouble that is very well worth taking. MR. LASTERIOUS FILLING It is the only key of conversational truth. MR. TOO BAD FILLING It is the only antidote to the great wrath of the devil. MR. HILLARY FILLING It is the only symbol of perfect life. The inscription Hicknum Bibiture will suit nothing but a tombstone. MR. GLOWRY see many fine old ruins, Mr. Cyprus, crumbling pillars and mossy walls, many a one-legged Venus and headless Minerva, many a Neptune buried in sand, many a Jupiter turned topsy-turvy, many a perforated Bacchus doing duty as a water-pipe, many reminiscences of the ancient world which I hope was better worth living in than the modern, though, for myself, I care not a straw more for one than the other, and would not go twenty miles to see anything that either could show. Mr. Cyprus, it is something to seek, Mr. Glowery. The mind is restless and must persist in seeking, though to find is to be disappointed. Do you feel no aspirations towards the country of Socrates and Cicero? No wish to wander among the venerable remains of the greatness that has passed for ever? Mr. Glowery, not a grain. Cypher. It is indeed much the same as if a lover should dig up the buried form of his mistress, and gaze upon relics which are anything but herself, to wander among a few moldy ruins that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature, a degenerate race of stupid and shriveled slaves groveling in the lowest depths of servility and superstition. The Honourable Mr. Listless. It is the fashion to go abroad. I have thought of it myself, but am hardly equal to the exhaustion. To be sure, a little eccentricity and originality are allowable in some cases, and the most eccentric and original of all characters is an Englishman who stays at home. Cypher. I should have no pleasure in visiting countries that are past all hope of regeneration. There is great hope of our own, and it seems to me that an Englishman, who either by his station in society, or by his genius, or, as in your instance, Mr. Cypher's, by both, has the power of essentially serving his country in its arduous struggle with its domestic enemies, yet forsakes his country, which is still so rich in hope, to dwell on others which are only fertile in the ruin of memory, does what none of those ancients, whose fragmentary memorials you venerate, would have done in similar circumstances. Mr. Cypher's. Sir, I have quarreled with my wife, and a man who has quarreled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country. I have written an ode to tell people as much, and they may take it as they list. Cypher. Do you suppose, if Brutus had quarrelled with his wife, he would have given it as a reason to Cassius for having nothing to do with his enterprise, or would Cassius have been satisfied with such an excuse? Mr. Floskey. Brutus was a senator, so is our dear friend, but the cases are different. Brutus had some hope of political good. Mr. Cypher's has none. How should he, after what we have seen in France? Cypher. A Frenchman is born in harness, ready saddled, bitted and bridled, for any tyrant to ride. He will fawn under his rider one moment, and throw him and kick him to death the next. But another adventurer springs on his back, and by dint of whip and spur on he goes as before. We may, without much vanity, hope better of ourselves. Mr. Cypher's. I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is of false nature. It is not in the harmony of things. It is an all-blasting upas, whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which reign their poison-dues upon mankind. We wither from our youth, we grasp with unslake thirst for unattainable good, lured from the first to the last by phantoms, love, fame, ambition, avarice, all idle and all ill, one meteor of many names that vanishes in the smoke of death. Mr. Floskey. A most delightful speech, Mr. Cyprus. A most amiable and instructive philosophy. You have only to impress its truth on the minds of all living men, and life will then indeed be the desert and the solitude. And I must do you, myself, and our mutual friends, the justice to observe, that let society only give fair play at one in the same time, as I flatter myself it is inclined to do, to your system of morals, and my system of metaphysics, and Cythrop's system of politics, and Mr. Lislas's system of manners, and Mr. Tubad's system of religion, and the result will be as fine a mental chaos as even the immortal Kant himself could ever have hoped to see, in the prospect of which I rejoice. Certainly, agent, it is not a thing to rejoice at. I am one of those who cannot see the good that is to result from all this mystifying and blue-develing of society. The contrast it presents to the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity is too forcible not to strike any one who has the least knowledge of classical literature. To represent vice and misery as the necessary accompaniments of genius is as mischievous as it is false, and the feeling is as unclassical as the language in which it is usually expressed. Mr. Tubad, it is our calamity, the devil has come among us, and has begun by taking possession of all the cleverest fellows. Yet forsooth this is the enlightened age. Mary, how did our ancestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine? Where is the manifestation of our light? By what symptoms do you recognize it? What are its signs, its tokens, its symptoms, its symbols, its categories, its conditions? What is it and why? How, where, when is it to be seen, felt, and understood? What do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and which at the same time is worth seeing? We see a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We see five hundred transported, where they saw one. We see five thousand in the workhouse, where they saw one. We see scores of Bible societies, where they saw none. We see paper, where they saw gold. We see men in stays, where they saw men in armor. We see painted faces, where they saw healthy ones. We see children perishing in manufactures, where they saw them flourishing in the fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We see masters, where they saw representatives. In short, they saw true men, where we see false knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr. Sackbutt. Mr. Floskey. The false knave, sir, is my honest friend. Therefore I beseech you, let him be countenanced. God forbid but a knave should have some countenance at his friend's request. Mr. Tubad. Good men in true was their common term, like the calos chagathos of the Athenians. It is so long since men have been either good or true, that it is to be questioned which is most obsolete, the fact or the phraseology. Mr. Cyprus. There is no worth nor beauty but in the mind's idea. Love sows the wind and reaps the whirlwind. Confusion, thrice confounded, is the portion of him who rest even for an instant on that most brittle of reeds, the affection of a human being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict or to endure. Mr. Hillary. Rather to bear and forebear, Mr. Cyprus, a maxim which you perhaps despise. Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation, it is real beauty, refined and purified in the mind's alembic, from the alloy which always more or less accompanies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To expect too much is a disease in the expectant for which human nature is not responsible, and in the common name of humanity I protest against these false and mischievous ravings, to rail against humanity for not being abstract perfection and against human love for not realizing all the splendid visions of the poets of chivalry is to rail at the summer for not being all sunshine and at the rose for not being always in bloom. Mr. Cyprus. Human love. Love is not an inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the Athenians did their unknown god, but broken hearts are the martyrs of his faith, and the eye shall never see the form which fantasy paints, and which passion pursues through paths of delusive beauty, among flowers whose odors are agonies, and trees whose gums are poison. Mr. Hillary. You talk like a rose accrucian who will love nothing but a silph, who does not believe in the existence of a silph, and who yet quarrels with the whole universe for not containing a silph. Mr. Cyprus. The mind is diseased of its own beauty and fevers into false creation. The forms which the sculptor's soul has seized exist only in himself. Mr. Floskey. Permit me to decept. They are the mediums of common forms, combined and arranged into a common standard. The ideal beauty of the Helen of Xerxes was the combined medium of the real beauty of the virgins of Crotona. Mr. Hillary. But to make ideal beauty the shadow in the water, and like the dog in the fable, to throw away the substance in catching at the shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom whatever it may be of genius. To reconcile man as he is to the world as it is, to preserve and improve all that is good, and destroy or alleviate all that is evil, in physical and moral nature have been the hope and aim of the greatest teachers and ornaments of our species. I will say, too, that the highest wisdom and the highest genius have been invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We have sufficient proofs on record that Shakespeare and Socrates were the most festive of companions, but now the little wisdom and genius we have seem to be entering into a conspiracy against cheerfulness. Mr. Too Bad. How can we be cheerful with the devil among us? The Honorable Mr. Listless. How can we be cheerful when our nerves are shattered? Mr. Floskey. How can we be cheerful when we are surrounded by a reading public that is growing too wise for its betters? Asythrop. How can we be cheerful when our great general designs are crossed every moment by our little particular passions? Mr. Cyprus. How can we be cheerful in the midst of disappointment and despair? Mr. Glowry. Let us all be unhappy together. Mr. Hillary. Let us sing a catch. Mr. Glowry. Know a nice tragical ballad, the Norfolk tragedy to the tune of the hundredth psalm. Mr. Hillary. I say a catch. Mr. Glowry. I say no. A song from Mr. Cyprus. All. A song from Mr. Cyprus. The Mr. Cyprus Sang. There is a fever of the spirit, the brand of cane's unresting doom, which in the dull dark souls that Barrett glows like the lamp in Tullio's tomb. Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire burns, blasts, consumes itself, the heart, till, one by one, hope, joy, desire, like dreams of shadowy smoke, depart. And hope, love, life itself are only dust, spectral memories, dead and cold. The unfed fire burns bright and lonely, like that undying lamp of old. And by that dear illumination, till time its clay-built home has rent, thought broods on feelings desolation, the soul is its own monument. Mr. Glowry. Admirable, let us all be unhappy together. Mr. Hillary. Now I say again, a catch. The Reverend Mr. Larix. I am for you. Mr. Hillary. Seaman III. The Reverend Mr. Larix. Agreed. I'll be Harry Gill with a voice of three. Begin. Mr. Hillary and the Reverend Mr. Larix. Reverend III. I would men be ye. Gotham's three wise men we be. Wither in your bowl so free to rake the moon from out the sea. The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine, and our ballast is old wine, and your ballast is old wine. Who art thou so fast adrift? I am he they called old care. Here on board we will thee lift. No, I may not enter there. Wherefore so, to jove's decree, in a bowl care may not be. In a bowl care may not be. Peer ye not the waves that roll? No, in charming bowl we swim. What the charm that floats the bowl? Water may not pass the brim. The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine, and our ballast is old wine, and your ballast is old wine. This catch was so well executed by the spirit and science of Mr. Hillary, and the deep triune voice of the Reverend gentlemen, that the whole party in spite of themselves caught the contagion and joined in chorus at the conclusion, each raising a bumper to his lips. The bowl goes trim, the moon doth shine, and our ballast is old wine. Mr. Cyprus, having his ballast on board, stepped the same evening into his bowl, or travelling chariot, and departed to rake seas and rivers, lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty. CHAPTER XII It was the custom of the Honourable Mr. Listless, on adjourning from the bottle to the ladies, to retire for a few moments to make a second toilette, that he might present himself in becoming taste. Fatou, attending as usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, and informed his master that he had just ascertained that the abbey was haunted. Mrs. Hillary's gentlewoman, for whom Fatou had lately conceived a tangresse, had been, as she expressed it, fritted out of her seventeen senses the preceding night, as she was retiring to her bed-chamber, by a ghastly figure which she had met stalking along one of the galleries, wrapped in a white shroud with a bloody turban on its head. She had fainted away with fear, and, when she recovered, she found herself in the dark, and the figure was gone. Sacré-croche en bleu! exclaimed Fatou, giving very deliberate emphasis to every portion of his terrible oath. I would not meet the revenant, the ghost, non, not for all the bolder punch in the world. Fatou, said the Honourable Mr. Listless, did I ever see a ghost? Jamais, monsieur, never! But I hope I never shall, for, in the present shattered state of my nerves, I am afraid it would be too much for me. There, loosen the lace of my stays a little, for really, this plebe in practice of eating, not too loose, consider my shape. That will do. And I desire that you bring me no more stories of ghosts, for though I do not believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in the night, one is apt, if one thinks of them, to have fancies that give one a kind of a chill, particularly if one opens one's eyes suddenly on one's dressing gown hanging in the moonlight between the bed and the window. The Honourable Mr. Listless, though he had prohibited Fatou from bringing him any more stories of ghosts, could not help thinking of that which Fatou had already brought, and, as it was uppermost in his mind, when he descended to the tea and coffee cups and the rest of the company and the library, he almost involuntarily asked Mr. Floskey, whom he looked up to as the most oraculous personage, whether any story of any ghost that had ever appeared to any one was entitled to any degree of belief. Mr. Floskey, by far the greater number, to a very great degree. The Honourable Mr. Listless, Really, that is very alarming! Mr. Floskey, Sont Gaminot Somni Porto. There are two gates through which ghosts find their way to the upper air, fraud and self-delusion. In the latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visus, an ocular spectrum, an idea with a force of a sensation. I have seen many ghosts myself. I daresay there are few in this company who have not seen a ghost. The Honourable Mr. Listless. I am happy to say I never have, for what? The Rev. Mr. Lurricks. We have such high authority for ghosts that it is ranked skepticism to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost which came for the express purpose of asking a question and did not wait for an answer. The Honourable Mr. Listless. Because Job was too frightened to give one. The Rev. Mr. Lurricks. Specters appeared to the Egyptians during the darkness with which Moses covered Egypt. The Witch of Endor raised the ghost of Samuel. Moses and Elias appeared on Mount Tabor. An evil spirit was sent to the army of Sinatraib and exterminated it in a single night. Mr. Tubad. Saying the devil is come among you, having great wrath. Mr. Floskey. Saint Macarius interrogated a skull which was found in the desert and made it relate, in presence of several witnesses, what was going forward in hell. Saint Martin of Tours, being jealous of a pretended martyr, who was the rival saint of his neighborhood, called up his ghost and made him confess that he was damned. Saint Germain, being on his travels, turned out of an inn a large party of ghosts, who had every night taken possession of the Tabledote and consumed a copious supper. Mr. Hillary. Jolly ghosts and no doubt all friars! A similar party took possession of the cellar of Messier-Sweebach, the painter in Paris, drank his wine and threw the empty bottles at his head. The Rev. Mr. Lurricks. An atrocious act! Mr. Floskey. While Sanias relates that the naing of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard every night on the field of Marathon, that those who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered severely for their curiosity, but those who heard them by accident passed with impunity. The Rev. Mr. Lurricks. I once saw a ghost myself, in my study, which is the last place where anyone but a ghost would look for me. I had not been into it for three months, and was going to consult to Lutzen when, on opening the door, I saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing-gown, sitting in my arm-chair and reading my Jeremy Taylor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I, and what it was or what it wanted I have never been able to ascertain. Mr. Floskey. It was an idea with a force of a sensation. It is seldom that ghosts appeal to two senses at once, but when I was in Devonshire the following story was well attested to me. A young woman, whose lover was at sea, returning one evening over some solitary fields, saw her lover sitting on a stile over which she was to pass. Her first emotions were surprise and joy, but there was a paleness and seriousness in his face that made them give place to alarm. She advanced towards him, and he said to her in a solemn voice, The eye that hath seen me shall see me no more. Thine eye is upon me, but I am not. And with these words he vanished, and on that very day an hour, as it afterwards appeared, he had perished by shipwreck. The whole party now drew round in a circle, and each related some ghostly anecdote, heedless of the flight of time, till in a pause of the conversation they heard the hollow tongue of midnight sounding twelve. Mr. Hillary. All these anecdotes admit a solution on psychological principles. It is more easy for a soldier, a philosopher, or even a saint, to be frightened at his own shadow than for a dead man to come out of his grave. Medical writers cite a thousand singular examples of the force of imagination. Persons of feeble, nervous, melancholy temperament, exhausted by fever, by labor, or by spared diet, will readily conjure up, in the magic ring of their own fantasy, spectres, gorgons, chimeras, and all the objects of their hatred and their love. We are most of us like Don Quixote, to whom a windmill was a giant, and dosenaya a magnificent princess, all more or less the dupes of our own imagination, though we do not all go so far as to see ghosts, or to fancy ourselves pipkins and teapots. Mr. Floskey. I can safely say I have seen too many ghosts myself to believe in their external existence. I have seen all kinds of ghosts, black spirits and white, red spirits and gray, some in the shapes of venerable old men, who have met me in my rambles at noon, some of beautiful young women who have peeped through my curtains at midnight. The Honourable Mr. Listless. And have proved, I doubt not, palpable to feeling as to sight. Mr. Floskey. By no means, sir. You reflect upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly my friend Mr. Sackbut, are famous for our purity. No, sir, genuine untangible ghosts. I live in a world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment. Mr. Floskey fixed his eye on a door at the farther end of the library. The company looked in the same direction. The door silently opened, and a ghastly figure shrouded in white drapery, with a semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered in stock slowly up the apartment. Mr. Floskey, familiar as he was with ghosts, was not prepared for this apparition, and made the best of his way out at the opposite door. Mrs. Hillary and Mary Annetta followed, screaming. The Honourable Mr. Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first off the sofa and then under it. The revered Mr. Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipitation that he overturned the table on the foot of Mr. Glowery. Mr. Glowery roared with pain in the ear of Mr. Tubad. Mr. Tubad's alarm so bewildered his senses that, missing the door, he threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. Mr. Asterius and his son, who were on the watch for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, threw a net over him, and dragged him to land. Sithrip and Mr. Hillary, meanwhile, had hastened to his assistance, and on arriving at the edge of the moat, followed by several servants with ropes and torches, found Mr. Asterius and Aquarius, busy in endeavouring to extricate Mr. Tubad from the net, who was entangled in the meshes, and floundering with rage. Sithrip was lost in amazement, but Mr. Hillary saw, at one view, all the circumstances of the adventure, and burst into an immoderate fit of laughter, unrecovering from which he said to Mr. Asterius, You have caught an unfish indeed! Mr. Tubad was highly exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry, but Mr. Hillary softened his anger by producing a knife and cutting the gordian knot of his reticular envelopment. You see, said Mr. Tubad, you see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person, proof upon proof of the present dominion of the devil in the affairs of this world. And I have no doubt, but that the apparition of this night was a polyon himself in disguise, sent for the express purpose of terrifying me into this complication of misadventures. The devil is come among you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. CHAPTER XIII Mr. Glowery was much surprised, on occasionally visiting Sithrup's tower, to find the door always locked, and to be kept sometimes waiting many minutes for admission, during which he invariably heard a heavy rolling sound, like that of a ponderous mangle, or of a wagon on a weighing-bridge, or of theatrical thunder. He took little notice of this for some time. At length his curiosity was excited, and one day, instead of knocking at the door, as usual, the instant he reached it he applied his ear to the keyhole, and like bottom in the Midsummer Night's dream, spied a voice, which he guessed to be of the feminine gender, and knew to be not Sithrup's, whose deeper tones he distinguished at intervals. Having attempted in vain to catch a syllable of the discourse, he knocked violently at the door, and roared for immediate admission. The voices ceased. The accustomed rolling sound was heard. The door opened, and Sithrup was discovered alone. Mr. Glowery looked round to every corner of the apartment, and then said, Where is the lady? The lady, sir, said Sithrup. Yes, sir, the lady. Sir, I do not understand you. You don't, sir. No, indeed, sir, there is no lady here. But, sir, this is not the only apartment in the tower, and I make no doubt there is a lady upstairs. You are welcome to search, sir. Yes, and while I am searching, she will slip out from some lurking place and make her escape. You may lock this door, sir, and take the key with you. But there is the terrace door. She has escaped by the terrace. The terrace, sir, has no other outlet, and the walls are too high for a lady to jump down. Well, sir, give me the key. Mr. Glowery took the key, searched every nook of the tower, and returned. You are a fox, Sithrup. You are an exceedingly cunning fox, with that demure visage of yours. What was that lumbering sound I heard before you opened the door? Sound, sir? Yes, sir, sound. My dear sir, I am not aware of any sound except my great table, which I moved on rising to let you in. The table. Let me see that. No, sir. Not a tenth-part heavy enough. Not a tenth-part. But, sir, you do not consider the laws of acoustics. A whisper becomes a peel of thunder in the focus of reverberation. Allow me to explain this. Sound striking on concave surfaces are reflected from them, and, after reflection, converge to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed in one, so that it shall hear a sound better than when situated nearer to the point of the first impulse. Again, in the case of two concave surfaces, placed opposite to each other— Nonsense, sir. Don't tell me a foci. Pray, sir, will concave surfaces produce two voices when nobody speaks. I heard two voices, and one was feminine. Feminine, sir. What say you to that? Oh, sir, I perceive your mistake. I am writing a tragedy, and was acting over a scene to myself. To convince you I will give you a specimen, but you must first understand the plot. It is a tragedy on the German model. The great mogul is in exile and is taken lodgings at Kensington, with his only daughter, the princess Rancherina, who takes in needlework and keeps a day's school. The princess is discovered hemming a set of shirts for the parson of the parish. They are to be marked with a large R. Enter to her the great mogul, a pause, during which they look at each other expressively. The princess changes color several times. The mogul takes snuff and great agitation. Several grains are heard to fall on the stage. His heart is seen to beat through his upper Benjamin. The mogul, with a mournful look at his left shoe, My shoestring is broken! The princess, after an interval of melancholy reflection, I know it. The mogul My second shoestring! The first broke when I lost my empire, the second is broken to-day. When will my poor heart break? The princess Shoestring's hearts and empires? Mysterious sympathy! Nonsense, sir! interrupted Mr. Glowery. That is not at all like the voice I heard. But, sir, said Sithrup, a keyhole may be so constructed as to act like an acoustic tube, and an acoustic tube, sir, will modify sound in a very remarkable manner. Consider the construction of the ear, and the nature and causes of sound. The external part of the ear is a cartilaginous funnel. It won't do, Sithrup. There is a girl concealed in this tower, and the finder I will. There are such things as sliding panels and secret closets. He sounded round the room with his cane, but detected no hollowness. I have heard, sir, he continued, that during my absence two years ago you had a dumb carpenter closeted with you day after day. I did not dream that you were laying contrivances for carrying on secret intrigues. Young men will have their way. I had my way when I was a young man. But, sir, when your cousin Marionetta... Sithrup now saw that the affair was growing serious, to have clapped his hand upon his father's mouth, to have entreated him to be silent, would, in the first place, not have made him so, and, in the second, would have shown a dread of being overheard by somebody. His only resource, therefore, was to try to drown Mr. Glowery's voice, and having no other subject, he continued his description of the ear, raising his voice continually as Mr. Glowery raised his. When your cousin Marionetta... said Mr. Glowery... Whom you profess to love, whom you profess to love, sir... The internal canal of the ear, said Sithrup, is partly bony and partly cartilaginous. This internal canal is, is actually in the house, sir, and when you are so shortly to be, as I expect, closed at the further end by the Membreta timpani, joined together in holy matrimony, under which is carried a branch of the fifth pair of nerves. I say, sir, when you are so shortly to be married to your cousin Marionetta... The cavitas timpani! A loud noise was heard behind the bookcase, which, to the astonishment of Mr. Glowery, opened in the middle and the massy compartments with all their weight of books receding from each other in the manner of a theatrical scene with a heavy rolling sound, which Mr. Glowery immediately recognized to be the same which had excited his curiosity, disclosed an interior apartment in the entrance of which stood the beautiful Stella, who stepping forward exclaimed, Married! Is he going to be married? The proflicate! Really, madam, said Mr. Glowery, I do not know what he is going to do, or what I am going to do, or what any one is going to do. For all this is incomprehensible. I can explain it all, said Sithrup, in a most satisfactory manner, if you will but have the goodness to leave us alone. Pray, sir, to which act of the tragedy of the great mogul does this incident belong? I entreat you, my dear sir, leave us alone. Stella threw herself into a chair and burst into a tempest of tears. Sithrup sat down by her and took her hand. She snatched her hand away and turned her back upon him. He rose, sat down on the other side and took her other hand. She snatched it away and turned from him again. Sithrup continued in treating Mr. Glowery to leave them alone, but the old gentleman was obstinate and would not go. I suppose, after all, said Mr. Glowery maliciously, it is only a phenomenon in acoustics, and this young lady is a reflection of sound from concave surfaces. Someone tapped at the door. Mr. Glowery opened it and Mr. Hillary entered. He had been seeking Mr. Glowery and had traced him to Sithrup's tower. He stood a few moments in silent surprise, and then addressed himself to Mr. Glowery for an explanation. The explanation, said Mr. Glowery, is very satisfactory. The Great Mogul has taken lodgings at Kensington, and the external part of the ear is a cartilaginous funnel. Mr. Glowery, that is no explanation. Mr. Hillary, it is all I know about the matter. Sir, this pleasantry is very unseasonable. I perceive that my niece is sported with in a most unjustifiable manner, and I shall see if she will be more successful in obtaining an intelligible answer. And he departed in search of Marianetta. Sithrup was now in a hopeless predicament. Mr. Hillary made a hue and cry in the abbey, and summoned his wife and Marianetta to Sithrup's apartment. The ladies, not knowing what was the matter, hastened in great consternation. Mr. Tubad saw them sweeping along the corridor, and judging from their manner that the devil had manifested his wrath in some new shape, followed from pure curiosity. Sithrup, meanwhile, vainly endeavored to get rid of Mr. Glowery and to pacify Stella. The latter attempted to escape from the tower, declaring she would leave the abbey immediately, and he should never see her or hear of her more. Sithrup held her hand and detained her by force, till Mr. Hillary reappeared with Mrs. Hillary and Marianetta. Marianetta, seeing Sithrup gasping the hand of a strange beauty, fainted away in the arms of her aunt. Sithrup flew to her assistance, and Stella with redoubled anger sprang towards the door, but was intercepted in her intended flight by being caught in the arms of Mr. Tubad, who exclaimed, "'Celinda!' "'Papa!' said the young lady, disconsolately. "'The devil is come among you,' said Mr. Tubad. "'How came my daughter here?' "'Your daughter,' exclaimed Mr. Glowery. "'Your daughter!' exclaimed Sithrup, and Mr. and Mrs. Hillary. "'Yes,' said Mr. Tubad. "'My daughter, Celinda!' Marianetta opened her eyes and fixed them on Celinda. Celinda in return fixed hers on Marianetta. They were at remote points of the apartment. Sithrup was equidistant from both of them, sensual and motionless, like Mohammed's coffin. "'Mr. Glowery!' said Mr. Tubad. "'Can you tell by what means my daughter came here?' "'I know no more,' said Mr. Glowery. "'Then the great mogul.' "'Mr. Sithrup!' said Mr. Tubad. "'How came my daughter here?' "'I did not know, sir, that the lady was your daughter. "'But how came she here?' "'By spontaneous locomotion,' said Sithrup sullenly. "'Celinda!' said Mr. Tubad. "'What does all this mean?' "'I really do not know, sir.' "'This is most unaccountable. "'When I told you in London that I had chosen a husband for you, "'you thought proper to run away from him, "'and now, to all appearance, you have run away to him.' "'How, sir, was that your choice?' "'Precisely, and if he is yours, too, "'we shall be both of a mind, for the first time in our lives. "'He is not my choice, sir. "'This lady has a prior claim. "'I renounce him.' "'And I renounce him,' said Marionetta.' Sithrup knew not what to do. He could not attempt to conciliate the one without irreparably offending the other, and he was so fond of both that the idea of depriving himself forever of the society of either was intolerable to him. He therefore retreated into his stronghold, mystery, maintained an impenetrable silence, and contented himself with stealing occasionally a deprecating glance at each of the objects of his idolatry. Mr. Too Bad and Mr. Hillary, in the meantime, were each insisting on an explanation for Mr. Glowry, who they thought had been playing a double game on this occasion. Mr. Glowry was vainly endeavouring to persuade them of his innocence in the whole transaction. Mrs. Hillary was endeavouring to mediate between her husband and brother. The honourable Mr. Listless, the reverend Mr. Larynx, Mr. Floskey, Mr. Asterius, and Aquarius, were attracted by the tumult to the scene of action, and were appealed to, severally and conjointly, by the respective disputants. Multitudinous questions, and answers en masse, composed a charivare, to which the genius of Rossini alone could have given a suitable accompaniment, and which was only terminated by Mrs. Hillary and Mr. Too Bad, meeting with the captive damsels. The whole party followed, with the exception of Sithrup, who threw himself into his arm-chair, crossed his left foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his left hand on the interior angle of his left leg, rested his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, curved the forefinger along the upper part of his forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, and sat in this position like the immovable Theeceus, who, as is well known to many who have not been at college, and to some few who have, se dat, o turnumke se debit. We hope the admirers of the minutiae and poetry and romance will appreciate this accurate description of a pensive attitude. CHAPTER XIV Sithrup was still in this position when Raven entered to announce that dinner was on table. I cannot come, said Sithrup. Raven sighed. Something is the matter, said Raven, but man is born to trouble. Leave me, said Sithrup, go and croak elsewhere. Thus it is, said Raven, five and twenty years have I lived in nightmare abbey, and now all the reward of my affection is go and croak elsewhere. I have danced you on my knee, and fed you with marrow. Good Raven, said Sithrup, I entreat you to leave me. Shall I bring your dinner here? said Raven. A boiled fowl and a glass of madera are prescribed by the faculty in cases of low spirits. But you had better join the party. It is very much reduced already. Reduced how? The honourable Mr. Listless is gone. He declared that, what with family quarrels in the morning and ghosts at night, he could get neither sleep nor peace, and that the agitation was too much for his nerves, though Mr. Glauery assured him that the ghost was only poor crow walking in his sleep, and that the shroud in bloody turban were a sheet and a red night-cap. Well, sir. The reverent Mr. Larrings has been called off on duty to marry or bury, I don't know which, some unfortunate person or persons at clay-dike, but man is born to trouble. Is that all? No, Mr. Too Bad is gone too, and a strange lady with him. Gone! Gone! And Mr. and Mrs. Hillary, and Miss O'Carroll, they are all gone. There is nobody left but Mr. Asterius and his son, and they are going to-night. Then I have lost them both. Won't you come to dinner? No. Shall I bring your dinner here? Yes. What will you have? A pint of port, and a pistol. A pistol, and a pint of port. I will make my exit like Virter. Go. Stay. Did Miss O'Carroll say anything? No. Did Miss Too Bad say anything? The strange lady? No. Did either of them cry? No. What did they do? Nothing. What did Mr. Too Bad say? He said fifty times over the devil was come among us. And they are gone? Yes, and the dinner is getting cold. There is a time for everything under the sun. You may as well dine first and be miserable afterwards. True raven, there is something in that. I will take your advice. Therefore, bring me the port and the pistol. No. The boiled fowl and madera. Sithrup had dined and was sipping his madera alone, immersed in melancholy musing, when Mr. Glowry entered, followed by raven, who, having placed an additional glass and set a chair for Mr. Glowry, withdrew. Mr. Glowry sat down opposite Sithrup, after a pause, during which each filled and drank in silence. Mr. Glowry said, So, sir, you have played your cards well. I propose Mr. Too Bad to you. You refused her. Mr. Too Bad proposed you to her? She refused you. You fell in love with Marionetta, and were going to poison yourself, because, from pure fatherly regard to your temporal interests, I withheld my consent. When at length I offered you my consent, you told me I was too precipitate. And after all, I find you and Miss Too Bad living together in the same tower, and behaving in every respect like two plighted lovers. Now, sir, if there be any rational solution of all this absurdity, I shall be very much obliged to you for a small glimmering of information. The solution, sir, is of little moment. But I will leave it in writing for your satisfaction. The crisis of my fate is come. The world is a stage, and my direction is exit. Do not talk so, sir. Do not talk so, Sithrup. What would you have? I would have my love. Then pray, sir, who is your love? Selinda? Marionetta? Either. Both. Both. That may do very well in a German tragedy, and the great mogul might have found it very feasible in his lodging at Kensington, but it will not do in Lincolnshire. You have Miss Too Bad? Yes. And renounce, Marionetta? No, but you must renounce one. I cannot, and you cannot have both. What is to be done? I must shoot myself. Don't talk so, Sithrup. Be rational, my dear Sithrup. Consider and make a cool, calm choice, and I will exert myself in your behalf. Why should I choose, sir? Both have renounced to me. I have no hope of either. Tell me which you will have, and I will plead your cause irresistibly. Well, sir, I will have—no, sir. I cannot renounce either. I cannot choose either. I am doomed to be the victim of eternal disappointments, and I have no resource but a pistol. Sithrup, Sithrup, if one of them should come to you, what then? That, sir, might alter the case, but that cannot be. It can be, Sithrup. It will be. I promise you it will be. Have but a little patience, but a weak's patience, and it shall be. A weak, sir, is an age. But to oblige you, as a last act of filial duty, I will live another week. It is now Thursday evening, twenty-five minutes past seven. At this hour and minute, on Thursday next, love and fate shall smile on me, where I will drink my last pint of port in this world. Mr. Glowery ordered his travelling chariot, and departed from the Abbey. The day after Mr. Glowery's departure was one of incessant rain, and Sithrup repented of the promise he had given. The next day was one of bright sunshine. He sat on the terrace, read a tragedy of Sophocles, and was not sorry, when Raven announced dinner, to find himself alive. On the third evening the wind blew and the rain beat, and the owl flapped against his windows, and he put a new flint in his pistol. On the fourth day, the sun shone again, and he locked the pistol up in a drawer, where he left it undisturbed, till the morning of the eventful Thursday, when he ascended the turret with a telescope, and spied anxiously along the road that crossed the fence from Claydike. But nothing appeared on it. He watched in this manner from ten a.m. till Raven summoned him to dinner at five, when he stationed Crow at the telescope, and descended to his own funeral feast. He left open the communications between the tower and turret, and called aloud at intervals to Crow. Crow? Crow, is anything coming? Crow answered, The wind blows, and the wind mills turn, but I see nothing coming. And at every answer, Sithrup found the necessity of raising his spirits with a bumper. After dinner he gave Raven his watch to set by the abbey clock. Raven brought it. Sithrup placed it on the table, and Raven departed. Sithrup called again to Crow, and Crow, who had fallen asleep, answered mechanically, I see nothing coming. Sithrup laid his pistol between his watch and his bottle. The hour hand passed the seven. The minute hand moved on. It was within three minutes of the appointed time. Sithrup called again to Crow. Crow answered as before. Sithrup rang the bell. Raven appeared. Raven, said Sithrup, the clock is too fast. No, indeed, said Raven, who knew nothing of Sithrup's intentions. If anything, it is too slow. Villain, said Sithrup, pointing the pistol at him. It is too fast. Yes, yes, too fast, I meant, said Raven, in manifest fear. How much too fast, said Sithrup. As much as you please, said Raven. How much, I say, said Sithrup, pointing the pistol again. An hour, a full hour, sir, said the terrified butler. Put back my watch, said Sithrup. Raven, with trembling hand, was putting back the watch when the rattle of wheels was heard in the court, and Sithrup, springing down the stairs by three steps together, was at the door in sufficient time to have handed either of the young ladies from the carriage if she had happened to be in it. But Mr. Glowry was alone. I rejoice to see you, said Mr. Glowry. I was fearful of being too late, for I waited till the last moment in the hope of accomplishing my promise. But all my endeavours have been vain, as these letters will show. Sithrup impatiently broke the seals. The contents were these. Almost a stranger in England, I fled from parental tyranny, and the dread of an arbitrary marriage, to the protection of a stranger and a philosopher, whom I expected to find something better than, or at least something different from, the rest of his worthless species. Could I, after what has occurred, have expected nothing more from you than the commonplace impertinence of sending your father to treat with me and with mine for me? I should be a little moved in your favour, if I could believe you capable of carrying into effect the resolutions which your father says you have taken, in the event of my proving inflexible. Though I doubt not, you will execute them, as far as relates to the pint of wine, twice over, at least. I wish you much happiness with Miss O'Carroll. I shall always cherish a grateful recollection of nightmare Abbey, for having been the means of introducing me to a true transcendentalist, and though he is a little older than myself, which is all one in Germany, I shall very soon have the pleasure of subscribing myself. Selinda Flussky I hope, my dear cousin, that you will not be angry with me, but that you will always think of me as a sincere friend, who will always feel interested in your welfare. I am sure you love Miss Toobad much better than me, and I wish you much happiness with her. Mr. Lyslis assures me that people do not kill themselves for love nowadays, though it is still the fashion to talk about it. I shall, in a very short time, change my name and situation, and shall always be happy to see you in Berkeley Square, when, to the unalterable designation of your affectionate cousin, I shall subjoin the signature of Marionetta Lyslis. Scythrip tore both letters to Adams, and railed in good set terms against the fickleness of women. Calm yourself, my dear Scythrip, said Mr. Glowery. There are yet maidens in England. Very true, sir, said Scythrip. And the next time, said Mr. Glowery, have but one string to your bow. Very good advice, sir, said Scythrip. And besides, said Mr. Glowery, the fatal time is past, for it is now almost eight. Then that villain, Raven, said Scythrip, deceived me when he said that the clock was too fast. But as you observe very justly the time has gone by, and I have just reflected that these repeated crosses in love qualify me to take a very advanced degree in misanthropy, and there is therefore good hope that I may make a figure in the world. But I shall ring for the rascal Raven, and admonish him. Raven appeared. Scythrip looked at him very fiercely two or three minutes, and Raven still remembering the pistol stood quaking in mute apprehension, till Scythrip, pointing significantly toward the dining-room, said, ringing some madara. The end. This is the end of Nightmare Abbey. Thank you for listening.