condition of the foil, doubtless; and I had a fever, which kept me tossing for three weeks. I suffered immense pain from my arm, and I thought my pulses were two steam-engines, so full of fever was my frame. Still, in spite of all, I do not regret that illness. Perhaps it was the luckiest event of my life.

VIII. THE END OF MY FROLIC.

I have thus told of some of the incidents which were a part of our Christmas at "The Pines;" and as no more remains to be said upon that subject, I might pause, and leave my narrative as it is.

But perhaps it may interest you to know the meaning of that last mysterious sentence.

from Aunt Dulsy that Henrietta had discarded Mr. Wilsonby. The good lady seemed to regard the matter with much equanimity, for Mr. Wilsonby had never been a favorite with her; and, indeed, her face wore a decided smile as she plied her knitting and talked on. Mr. Wilsonby, she said, had expressed extreme surprise at the result, and even grown angry and complained of Henrietta's deportment toward him, "such as any gentleman, madam, might construe into encouragement." To which indignant and haughty words, it seemed, Miss Henrietta had replied with equal hauteur, that she was not responsible for Mr. Wilsonby's various constructions of her demeanor toward him; if he had discovered more than ordinary courtesy in her manner, when he came as a guest to "The Pines," she regretted it, assuring him that she had been wholly misunderstood. Mr. Wilsonby had grown angry upon this, made a speech of chilling ceremony, and begged leave to take his departure.

Well, the explanation is not excessively difficult. I was nursed in a great measure by a young lady named Henrietta. This young lady would bring her work, and sit by my bedside for hours; would read to me interminable romances, in the sweetest and most musical voice; and when, often, I would fall asleep in So had ended the hopes of this gentleman. the midst of some thrilling adventure, it seem- I think Henrietta liked him up to the evening ed to me that gentle hands smoothed my coun- of Christmas; but he had displayed such want terpane, a beautiful face bent over me, and a of sympathy for my suffering-indeed, showed pair of soft eyes gazed upon my feverish counte- so plainly that I was utterly indifferent to him nance through a mist of pity and compassion.that the young lady's generous nature had reAt such times I did not stir or open my eyes. I volted from him, and outlawed him from her feared to drive away the happy dream. I lay friendship even. Was it to hazard a briefer quietly breathing, filled with happiness. thought from love to me? I think not. Up One day Henrietta came into my room, and to that Christmas evening I don't think HenriI observed a merry light in her eyes, a mis- etta cared more for me than our relationship chievous smile upon her lips, and when she made natural. But afterward things changed spoke her voice indicated a decided tendency the heart of a woman was touched by the suftoward laughter. The origin of all this merri-fering of a youth. There-I wander from my ment soon came to be discovered. On that morning Captain Bombshell had requested Miss Araminta to promenade with him in the portico; there he had assured her of his everlasting devotion, and the impossibility of living without her. In a word, the amiable warrior had "popped the question" to Miss Araminta, and that lady had not been cruel. On the next day Captain Bombshell came with a radiant countenance to bid me farewell, and having confidentially informed me that he was as gay as a lark, by Jove, Sir! and soon would be a married Benedick, Sir! the inoffensive warrior wrung my hand with ardor, twirled his great mustache, and disappeared, humming a martial song. Good Bombshell! He is my best neighbor now.

An excellent farmer; fat, and in possession of a double chin and nine children.

sketch of Christmas frolicking, and become the historian of my own life.

Why not? Is it not an appropriate picture for the curtain of the drama to descend upon-the beautiful Countess ministering at the bedside of her brave defender-and as she gazes on his thin pale face, passing from affection to pitying tenderness, and from tenderness to love? Nor is it a bad termination to a Christmas frolic-a happy marriage—at least I think so.

Mine has been happy. I do not tell my wife so, for she knows it. Her name is Henrietta, and for me she glows with imperishable youth.

The roses have faded, it may be, from the cheeks, but to my eyes they bloom there as in other years; the snows of age have fallen on her hair, but she is quite as beautiful as on that Christmas evening when she covered her sunny curls with snowy powder-when the queen of my heart descended from her throne, and walk

Three days after Bombshell's departure, Henrietta came in to pay me her habitual morning visit; and again I observed a singular expres-ed before us as "The Countess." sion in her countenance. It was now no longer merry and mischievous. The expression was agitated, and I thought, a little stately and indignant. She looked more than ever like a Countess, and I informed her of the fact; still

PROFESSOR HENNEBERG.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."-Hamlet. CHAPTER I.

I could not induce her to explain her emotion, "THER
and her visit to my apartment was quickly
terminated.

It was not until the next day that I heard

HERE are remembrances for which no philosophy will account-sensations for which experience can discover no parallel. Few persons will hesitate to confess to you that they

have beheld scenes and faces which were new and yet familiar, of which they seemed to have dreamed in time gone by, and which, without any apparent cause, produced a painfully intimate impression upon their minds. I myself have dreamed of a place, and again forgotten that dream. Years have passed away, and the dream has returned to me, unaltered in the minutest particular. I have at last come suddenly upon the scene in some wild land which I had never visited before, and have recognized it, tree for tree, field for field, as I had beheld it in my dream. Then the dream and the scene became one in my mind, and by that union I learned to wrest from Nature a portion of one of her obscurest secrets. What are these phenomena? whence these fragmentary recollections which seem to establish a mysterious link between death and sleep? What is death? What is sleep? It is a law of the philosophy of mind that we can think of nothing which we have not perceived. The induction is that we have perceived these things; but not, perhaps, in our present state of being."

"You believe, then, in the doctrine of preexistence!" I exclaimed, pushing back my chair, and looking my guest earnestly in the face.

pher, 'is reminiscence all.' At the bottom of every religious theory, however wild and savage, lies a perception, dim, perhaps, and distorted, but still a perception of God and immortality." "And you think that we have all lived before, and all shall live again?"

"My

"I know it," replied the Professor. life has been a succession of these revelations ; and I am persuaded that if we would compel the mind to a severe contemplation of itself— if we would resolutely study the phenomena of psychology as developed within the limits of our own consciousness, we might all arrive at the recognition of this mystery of pre-existence. The caverns of the mind' are obscure, but not impenetrable; and all who have courage may follow their labyrinthine windings to the light of truth beyond."

Two days after this conversation I left Leipzig for Frankfort, on my way to Switzerland. Just as I was taking my seat in the diligence, a man, wearing the livery of a college-messenger, made his appearance at the window. was breathless with running, and held a small parcel in his hand. "What is this?" I asked, as he handed it to me.

tering over the rough pavement of the town.

He

There were but two passengers in the interior beside myself. One was a priest, who did nothing but sleep and read his breviary, and who was perfumed, morcover, with a strong scent of garlic. The other was a young German student, who sat with his head hanging outside the window, smoking cigars.

"From Professor Henneberg,' he replied; "I believe in the immortality of the soul," and was proceeding to say more, but the dilireplied the Professor, with unmoved solemnity. gence gave a lurch and rolled heavily forward; "I feel that I am, and that I have been. Eter- the messenger sprang back, the postillions cracknity is a circle-you would reduce it to a cres-ed their whips, and in a moment we were clatcent by denying the previous half of its immensity. For the soul there is, properly speaking, neither past nor future. It is now and eternal. You profess to believe in the immortality of the soul, and in the same breath advance an opinion which, if submitted to a due investigation, would establish a totally adverse system. If this soul of yours be immortal, it must have existed from all time. If not, what guarantee have you that it will continue to be during all time to come? That which shall have no end can have had no beginning. It is a part of God, and partakes of his nature. To be born is the same as to die -both are transitionary, not creative or final. Life is but a vesture of the Soul, and as often as we die we but change one vesture for another."

"But this is the theory of the metempsychosis!" I said, smiling. "You have studied the philosophy of Oriental literature till you have yourself become a believer in the religion of Bramah !"

"All tradition," said the Professor, "is a type of spiritual truth. The superstitions of the East, and the mythologies of the North-the beautiful Fables of old Greece, and the bold investigations of modern science-all tend to elucidate the same principles; all take their root in those promptings and questionings which are innate in the brain and heart of man. Plato believed that the soul was immortal, and born frequently; that it knew all things; and that what we call learning is but the effort which it makes to recall the wisdom of the Past. 'For to search and to learn,' saith the poet-philoso

As I did not find either of my companions particularly prepossessing, and as I had forgotten to furnish my pockets with any literature more entertaining than "Murray's Hand-Book of Switzerland," I was agreeably surprised, on opening the packet, to discover a considerable number of pages in my learned friend's very peculiar handwriting, neatly tied together at the corners, and accompanied by a note, in which he gave me to understand that the MSS contained a brief sketch of some passages in his life which he thought might interest me, and which were, moreover, illustrative of that doctrine of pre-existence respecting which we had been conversing a few evenings before.

These papers I have taken the liberty of styling

THE RECOLLECTIONS OF PROFESSOR HENNEBERG.

My parents resided in Dresden, where I was born on the evening of the fourth of May, 1790

My mother died before I was many hours in being, and I was sent out to nurse at a farmhouse in the immediate neighborhood of the city. I can not say that I have any distinct remembrances of the first few years that ushered in this present life with which I am endued. I was kindly treated. I grew in the fields and

However, I was at this time too young to enter minutely upon so difficult an investigation as that of the operations of the mind, and my To a proud nature, such as mine, this state thoughts were already charged with undertakof degradation was intolerable. Though some-ings almost beyond their powers. I was theretimes almost overborne by shame and anguish, fore content to accept my good fortune without I made superhuman efforts to regain the time questioning its sources too curiously. which had been lost. I was speedily rewarded Five years elapsed. During that time I had for my exertions. My progress was astonishing; passed from the lowest bench to the rank of and, although still far behind the rest, the rapid-senior scholar at the academy; I had mastered ity with which I mastered all that was given me to learn, and, indeed, the manner in which I frequently anticipated the instructions of the tutors, became the marvel of the school.

Frank Ormesby was the last male descendant of an old aristocratic family in the West of England. His ancestors had suffered extensive losses during the period of the Commonwealth, and had regained but a small portion of their property at the hands of the graceless and prof- Never before had I traveled beyond the limligate Charles. Two or three farms, with the its of my native Saxony, and so far from feeling old manor-house and park, alone remained to any of the anticipative delight of youth, I that family whose loyal cavaliers had not hes- shrank from the journey with the nervous timiditated to arm their tenantry and melt their hered-ity of a recluse. Frank rallied me upon my apitary plate in the service of the Stuarts. Small as it was, the estate was rendered still less valuable through the extravagance of some later Ormesbys, and, when Frank succeeded to it, was so encumbered as scarcely to yield him the few annual hundreds which were necessary to supply the expenses of a gentleman.

In this remote and melancholy manor, shut in by dark old trees, and attended only by a governess and one or two servants, my friend's younger sister lived in the deepest seclusion.acter of your handwriting is distorted into a The pair were orphans, and they were all in all to each other. Frank had not a thought in which the happiness of Grace was not considered. Grace looked up to Frank as to a mirror of truth and talent.

the great organ, with its front of shining pipes, was quite dumb and breathless, like a dead giant. Some little flaring tapers were burning on a votive stand beside the door, and an old beggar-woman, with her crutches lying beside her on the ground, was devoutly kneeling before the rails of the altar. Leaving these, we hurried through the dirty, narrow streets of the town, and sat under the shadow of some leafy walnuts on one of the hills looking over the Rhine. Here we watched the women spinning at their doors, and my friend recited Schiller's wondrous ballad, "The Cranes of Ibycus."

occurred, which, to my mind, was deeply sig-| flickered in patches of gold and purple on the nificant. It wanted more than two hours of marble pavement, and cast long lines of light noon; the carriage was ascending a precipitous through the dim, ruined cloisters beyond. The hill, and we were walking some fifty yards in ad-sacristan was putting fresh flowers on the altar; vance. The air was deliciously cool and fragrant, and we paused every now and then to look upon the fair level prospect of wood and vineyard which we were leaving behind. The birds were singing in the green shade of the lindens beside the road. An old man and a young girl, leading a mule, passed us, with a pleasant word of greeting, and we heard the voices of the vintagers down in the valley. Frank was in high spirits, and sprang forward as if he dared the toilsome hill to weary him. "See," he cried, "we shall soon reach the summit, and then I predict that we shall be rewarded by the sight of a divine landscape. Mayence must be close at hand, and we shall see the broad, bright, rushing Rhine below." And he began singing, in a loud, clear voice, that song beloved of Ger-blank-eyed towers; islands, with trees dipping man students, "To the Rhine-to the Rhine!"

Thus the morning passed away, and in a few hours more we were gliding along the broad current, between vineyards and rocks, and ruined,

down to the water; quaint old towns, with Gothic spires and sloping forests of the oak and pine. But there is no need that I should describe the Rhine to you, O my friend, for whom I write these brief pages of troubled memories. Since those days of my youth, you, too, have traversed the scenes of which I speak; you, too, have felt the influence of their beauty sink like dew upon the arid sands of your thirsty heart, as they fell there upon mine. If I say that we went on and on, past Coblentz, and Andernach,

I smiled at his fresh-hearted enthusiasm, and followed him somewhat more slowly. It was, indeed, as he had said; and on a sudden we beheld, close under our feet, the streets, the cathedral, the University of Mayence, the wide, rapid river, the long boat - bridge, the lordly façade of the Palace of Biberich, the banks clothed with plants and autumn flowers; the hurrying steamers, with their canvas awnings and their clouds of fleecy smoke; and then, far away, the shadowy hills, the vineyards, the riv-and Bonn; that we staid for a day at Cologne; er-side villages, and the winding Rhine flashing that we there hired a vehicle to transport us to along for miles and miles through all the scene. Clêves, and that from thence we proceeded along It was a glorious prospect, and my friend was the smooth roads of Holland, you will recall sufbreathless with delight. But the effect which ficient of your own experience to follow in our it produced upon me was fearful and unexpect-track, and to imagine the feelings with which I, ed. I stood quite still and pale; then, uttering a hermit-student, must have contemplated such a wild cry, I clasped my hands over my eyes varied and remarkable scenery. and cast myself upon the ground. I distinctly remembered to have seen that very prospect those spires and towers, that bridge, that redhued palace, that far landscape-in some past stage of being, vague, dark, forgotten as a dream. When they came to lift me from the spot where I had fallen, they found me in a state of insensibility; and when I recovered my consciousness, it was in a bed-chamber of the Konigliche Hof, a little road-side tavern just outside the city. The shock had been so great that for sev-in the neighborhood of St. Paul's Cathedral. eral days I was unable to travel. I did not dare to tell Frank the real cause of my illness, and I alleged a sudden giddiness as the reason of my cry when falling. He fancied that it might have been a slight sun-stroke, and I allowed him to think so. On the third day I had sufficiently recovered to resume the journey. We now proposed to take a Rhine steamer to Cologne; but as the boat would not start before the afternoon, I yielded to my friend's persuasions, and ventured out with him to visit the Cathedral of Mayence.

From Rotterdam we took the steamer for England, and in rather more than a fortnight from the date of our departure, we found ourselves, one sultry evening, amidst that confusion of sounds and sights which makes up the sum of the great Babel called London.

"Shall we stay here for a few days, that I may show you some of the wonders of our great city?" asked Frank, as we sat at supper in a dismal sitting-room at the back of a great gloomy inn

But I was still weak, and I felt stunned by the roar and hurry of the streets through which we had just passed. "Ah! no," I said; "I am not fit for this place. So much life oppresses me. Let us go quickly to your old quiet home. I shall be better when loitering amidst the dim alleys of your park, or dreaming over the books in your library. I need peace-peace and rest.”

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It was already evening when we reached the gates of Ormesby Park. They were very rusty old gates, and creaked mournfully upon their All here was so cool and still, that I felt my hinges as we rolled through them. A whitetroubled heart grow calmer. The sunlight com-headed man crept out of the little dilapidated ing in through the stained windows, hovered and lodge to admit us, and stood looking after the