friends, and abandoned to the mercy of a thousand demons. All the ideal terrors I had cherished from my childhood, exalted to temporary madness by the sense and certainty of the horrid objects that surrounded me, rushed at once upon my soul; and in an agony of impatient consternation, I screamed and shouted loud and long for assistance. Not an answer was returned but the dreary echoes of this dreadful tomb. I saw that my cries for succour were hopeless and in vain, and my voice failed me for very fear-my jaws were fixed and open, my palate dry-a cold sweat distilled from every pore, and my limbs were chill and powerless as death. Their vigour at length revived, and I rushed in a delirium through the passages, struggling through their various windings to retrace my path, and plunged at every step in more inextricable error, till, running with the speed of lightning along one of the longest corridors, I came with violence in full loathsome contact with the skeleton relics at the end. The shock was like fire to my brain-I wept tears of rage and despair; and thrusting my fingers into the sockets of the empty sculls to wrench them from the wall, I clutched their bony edges till the blood sprung from my lacerated hand. In short, I cannot paint to you the extravagancies I acted, or the wild alternations of my feelings that endured for many hours. Sometimes excited to frenzy, I imagined I know not what of horrid and appalling, and saw with preternatural acuteness through the darkness as clear as noon, while grisly visages seemed glaring on me near, and a red and bloody haze enveloped the more fearful distance. Then, when reason was on the point of going, an interval of terrible collection would succeed. I felt in my very soul how I was left alone-perhaps not to be discovered at any rate for what appeared to me an endless period, in which I should perhaps expire of terror, and I longed for deep, deep sleep, or to be as cold and insensate as the things around me. I tried to recollect the courage that only on one point had ever failed me; but judgment missed her stays, and the whispers of the subterraneous wind, or the stealthy noises I seemed to hear in concert with the audible beatings of my heart, overcame me irresistibly. Sometimes I thought I could feel silence palpable like a soft mantle on my ear-I figured dreadful hands within a hairbreadth of my body, ready to tear me if I stirred, and in desperation flung myself upon the ground. Then would I creep close to the mouldering fragments at the bottom of the wall, and try to dig with my nails from the hard rock something to cover me. Oh! how I longed for a cloak to wrap and hide me, though it had been my mother's winding sheet or grave flannel animate with worms. I buried my head in the skirts of my coat, and prayed for slumber; but a fearful train of images forced me again to rise and stumble on, shivering in frame with unearthly cold, and yet internally fevered with a train of agonizing thoughts. Any one must have suffered somewhat in such a situation; but no one's sufferings could resemble mine, unless he carried to the scene a mind so hideously prepared. Part of these awful excavations are said to have been once haunted by banditti; but I had no fears of them, and should have swooned with transport to have come upon their fires at one of the turnings in the rock, though my appearance had been the instant signal for their daggers. In my wanderings I recovered for a moment the path taken by the guides, and found myself in a sort of cell within the rock, where particular specimens of mortality` were preserved. My arm rested on the table, where two or three loosened skulls and a thigh-bone of extravagant dimensions were lying, and a new species of madness seized me. My heart beat with redoubled violence while I brandished the enormous bone, and hoarsely called for its original possessor to come in all the terrors of the grave, and there would I wrestle with him for the relic of his own miserable carcass. I struck repeatedly, and hard, the hollow sounding sides of the cell, shouting my defiance; then throwing myself with violence towards the opening, I missed my balance, and, snatching at the wall round the corner to save myself, VOL. IV. I jammed my hands in an aperture among the bones, and fancied the grisly adversary I had invoked had grasped my arm in answer to my challenge. My shrieks of agony rang through the caverns, and, staggering back into the cell, I fell upon my face, hardly daring to respire, and expecting unimagined horrors or speedy dissolution. How my feelings varied for a space of time I know not; but sleep insensibly fell upon me. In my dream I did not seem to change the scene, but still reclining in the cell, I fancied the skulls upon the wall the same in number, but magnified to a terrific size, with black jetty eyes imbedded in their naked sockets, and riveted with malicious earnestness on me. A dim recess seemed opened beyond one side of the cell, and each spectral eye turning with a sidelong glance towards it, drew mine in the same direction by an uncontrollable fascination. Still appearing to gaze determinedly upon them, I had power, as I dreamed, to obey this impulse simultaneously, and to perceive a dreadful figure, black, bony, and skullheaded, with similar terrific eyes, whom they seemed to hail as their minister of cruelty, while with slow and silent paces it drew near to clasp me in its hideous arms. Closer and closer it advanced,-but, thanks and praise to the all-gracious Power that stills the tempests of the soul!-the limit of suffering was reached, and the force of terror was exhausted. My nerves, so long weak, and prone to agitation, were recovered by the over violence of their momentum; and instead of losing reason by the shock, or waking in the extremity of fear, the vision was suddenly changed,-the scenery of horror melted into light, and a calm and joyful serenity took possession of my bosom. My animal powers must have been nearly worn out, for long-long I slept in this delightful tranquillity, and when I wakened, it was, for the first time of my life, in a peaceful and healthy state of mind, unfettered, and released for ever from all that had enfeebled and debased my nature. I had passed in that celestial sleep from death to life, and from the dreams of weakness and lapses of insanity to the full use and animation of my faculties,and I felt as if a cemented load had broken and crumbled off my soul, and left me fearless and serene. I was never happy, I was never worthy the style of man till then; and, as I lay, I faltered out my thanks in ecstasy to Heaven for all that had befallen me. My limbs were numbed by the cold and damp of the floor on which I had been lying; but rising from it a new being in all that is essential to existence, I entered the passage, and walked up and down to recover the play and vigour of my frame. I found the thigh-bone on the ground where I had dropped it, and no longer tortured by the fears that were gone for ever, replaced it quietly in its former situation. I kept near the entrance of the cell, that the first guide who descended might not miss me; and it could not be more than two hours before Jerome, whose hair stood on end when he heard where I had passed the night, came down with an early party of visitors, and freed me from my dungeon. -There was no straggling among the company for that day. You well know, my dear friend, what have been my habits and employments since that night, and I could summon you with confidence to give your testimony that few persons are now less slaves of superstitious terror than myself. By a strange and singular anomaly of circumstances, the wild fancies I had imbibed in the free air of my native hills, and among the cheerful scenes of romantic nature, I unlearned in the dreary catacombs of Paris. If I still am fanciful, you will not charge me with extravagance; and if I still have sensibility, I trust it does not verge on weakness,—and, as I have proved my personal courage on more than a single trial, I may be allowed to smile when I hear in future some boisterous relater of my narrative condemn me for a coward. E-Blackwood's Magazine. THE DEATH-BELL. Lo! from yon hoary, time-worn fane, Hail, solemn bell, thy accents drear Such are the gloomy sounds I love, Be still, my soul: even now some breast Weep on, ye mourners, wet the bier I cannot weep, for ah! to me My cruel fate denies : No more pure sympathy's clear tide |