AN EPISODE OF VATHEK.

[In the year 1822, the world went mad about Fonthill. Salisbury Plain became populous, with May Fair and Cheapside travelling to see Mr. Beckford's wonders. No profane eyes had ever looked upon his towers and pinnacles-his domes and galleries. There was mystery, then, to combine with what was really worth seeing at Fonthill. Its exhibition and its auction produced as much excitement as a Crystal Palace upon a small scale. The towers of Fonthill are in the dust, with its magnificent builder. They might have fallen, without a revival of my old recollections, had I not considered that the public curiosity to see their works of art was an anticipation of the feeling of a better period. The people saw nothing of Art in those days, but the dingy Angerstein Gallery in Pall Mall; and the state-rooms of Hampton Court and Windsor, at a shilling a head for the showman. The nobility kept their pictures locked up; and Poets' Corner was inaccessible except to sixpences. Other days have come. Fonthill belongs to the Past.]

THE taste for tower-building, and for other architectural absurdities, of which Vathek had set the example, became infectious in the country about Samarah. This monarch was at first indignant that his subjects should presume to copy his extravagances; but his vanity was stronger than his pride, and he left them in the quiet possession of their follies. His most ambitious rival was the merchant Bekfudi. The riches of this superb person were enormous. His caravans every year brought him silks and jewels that would have rivalled a princess's dowry, and the slaves that cultivated his groves of cinnamon might have formed the rear-guard of a sultan's army. He became dizzy with his wealth, and fancied that he was descended from the Assyrian kings; though his grandfather had carried a basket in the streets of Bagdad.

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Bekfudi had a handsome palace and extensive grounds; the hills and the valleys of a little province were his; a

broad lake lingered in his groves of citrons and palms; and the apricots of his garden almost rivalled those which Vathek so prized from the isle of Kirmith. The ladies of his seraglio were as numerous and as beautiful as the harem of the grand vizier, and the other furniture of his palace was equally rare and costly. But Bekfudi began to be satiated with the pleasures and the magnificence of ordinary mortals in an evil hour he pulled down his palace and sold his women. He built an impenetrable wall round his extensive gardens, and vowed to raise, upon the highest hill which this barrier enclosed, a palace upon a new fashion. Bekfudi had no violent reverence for the religion of his country; and he therefore considered it a sinless profanation to make his dwelling-place like a mosque, and his tower resembling a minaret, though he modestly proposed it to be only ten times higher than the minarets of Bagdad. It was the extravagance of his ambition which prompted him to shut out all the world till he should have finished his mosque; and when his tower rose above the highest pines of the neighbouring hills, he solaced himself with the hope that the peasants who gazed at an awful distance would believe that within its walls dwelt one of the sons of men, as powerful as the Genii, and as mysterious as the Dives.

Bekfudi possessed abundance of taste. His command of wealth enabled him to engross the rare productions of art which were sometimes too costly even for emirs to acquire; and he lavished his gold upon those who could best apply their talents to the excitement of his self-admiration. All the ornaments of his palace had reference to his ancestors; but though the artists, who recorded in fit emblems the mighty deeds of his progenitors, had an especial regard to truth, they sedulously avoided all allusion to the basketbearer. In a word, the mosque was a very magnificent place. It was the handsomest monument that taste ever reared to pride; and though Bekfudi in his arrogance had tried to make his tower rival the dome of the great mosque at Damascus, and had only been stopped in his pre

sumptuous aspirings by the equally insolent hurricane, which twice blew it down,-and though in his profaneness he had built his dormitories like the cells of the most pious santons, and had constructed studies and refectories after the models of sanctuaries and shrines,-still the palace was gorgeous and elegant, and such as no subject ever before raised in the dominions of the Commander of the Faithful.

Bekfudi went on for many moons building and embellishing his mosque,-heaping stones upon his tower till the uncivil blasts gave him hints where to stop, and hanging up new draperies of Persian silks till the limited art of the dyer forbade any further change. The superb merchant lived away in a round of selfish enjoyment; his slaves racked their inventions to prepare him viands of the most costly materials; and as his health would not allow him always to drink the red wine of Shiraz, he took care, under the fatal necessity of resorting to so common à beverage as water, to render it palatable by sending caravans and escorts to bring it from a fountain at a hundred leagues' distance.

The great Mahomet, who had commissioned the Genii to mature and then pull down the presumptuous darings of the caliph Vathek, also resolved to crush the ambition of the merchant Bekfudi. But as the pride and power of the mosque-builder were bounded by natural limits, it was unnecessary to work any miracles for his instruction. He lived on in his round of luxuries; and as his caravans came duly over the desert, and his ships were seldom lost upon the sea, he thought that the spices and the fruits of his fertile isles would last for ever. But there was a sudden change in the fashions of Samarah. The cooks began to make their comfits without cinnamon, and the green dates of their native plains came into request, to the exclusion of the dried fruits of our wealthy merchant. His spices and his figs lay rotting in his warehouses, and, for the first time in his life, he began to think that his mine of wealth was not inexhaustible.

Thirty moons had passed before Bekfudi ceased to pull down and build up the apartments of his mosque, or to send a hundred leagues for his water. The pastry-cooks were inexorable, and his own household even could not endure the flavour of cinnamon. He at length discharged his masons and his carpenters, and, as a great effort of economy, abridged his table of one of the fifty-two dishes with which it was daily covered. But all these privations were unavailing; Bekfudi was in debt, and his creditors would not wait for a change in the taste for spices. He resolved to invite all Samarah to see his mosque, and to purchase his curiosities. For three moons all Samarah went mad. Away ran the idle and the busy, to scramble up Bekfudi's tower, to wander about his long galleries upon carpets from Cairo,-to touch his gold censers, or to pore upon his curious pictures. As to his books, Bekfudi carefully locked them up. He was a great commentator, and his relish for theological speculations led him to fear that his performances might introduce him to too close an acquaintance with the mufti and the cadi.

Amongst the mob who had been to see Bekfudi's tower, was a clever little Persian Jew, who had the reputation of being one of the most discreet dealers in Samarah. Did a courtier require a thousand piastres to bribe a judge, our little Jew would raise the sum in a moment, upon the pledge of the courtier's carbuncle; or did a lady of the seraglio desire a pound of gold dust to fee an eunuch, our little Jew would furnish it upon the most moderate interest. His warehouses were full of the moveable treasures of all the great men of the palace, from the grand vizier to the principal mute: and everybody vowed that he was the honestest Jew in the world, and it was a great pity so useful and so clever a trader should be a dog of an infidel.

Bekfudi had a hatred of all Jews; but, nevertheless, our little factor contrived to approach him. 'He had come to proffer his services to the great merchant; he humbly proposed to purchase his matchless curiosities, and his

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magnificent furniture.' What! he, the giaour from Persia? he presume to offer a price for rarities that monarchs might covet?" Yes and moreover, he would purchase his books and his paintings, his vessels of gold and of silver, his wine, his -The merchant was in a rage, and drove the Jew from his presence; but he quickly recalled him. Slave,' cried Bekfudi, 'I will hold a moment's parley with thee. How much wilt thou give for my topaz cup, and my goblet set with emeralds ?' 'I will not purchase these alone,' said the Jew, but I will purchase thy lands, and thy mosque, and thy silken draperies, and thy woven carpets, and thy golden vessels, and thy jewels, and thy books, and thy pictures, and all that thy palace contains; and here, without, I have twenty dromedaries laden with four hundred thousand sequins, which shall be thine.' Bekfudi was in a rage, but the eloquence of the dromedaries prevailed; and that night the little Jew locked up the mosque with the airs of a master.

The mob from Samarah was soon dispersed; and Bekfudi prepared with many a sigh to leave a palace of which he had so long been the uncontrolled lord. The little Jew haunted him from gallery to gallery, and from the gloom of the sanctuary to the sunlight of the great lantern. With the most provoking malice he dwelt upon the beautiful proportions of this pavilion, and the magnificent furniture of that saloon; and swore that none of the monarchs of the world could rival the great merchant in taste and splendour. And what will you do with this unequalled palace?' said Bekfudi. I have bought it for a dealer in sulphur,' replied the Jew. The pride of Bekfudi was ground into the dust; but he was curious to see the rival of his wealth and the inheritor of his possessions. It was agreed that they should meet at dinner.

The hour came, and Bekfudi appeared in the grand saloon, attired in a splendid vest; the aigrette of his turban was composed of the largest diamonds, and the plume that it bore was from the wing of a bird of paradise.