FRAGMENT.

GILBERT EARLE.

A FEW years before I left India, a young man had brought me some very strong letters of recommendation from some of my connexions in England, whom I was most happy and desirous to oblige. He had, in

ring which period, his fine disposition and talents, his amiable heart, and his winning fascination of manner, had created between us a friendship very unlike anything which usually exists between men of such different ages as we were. He was above twenty years my junior, and yet our liaison was more like that of contemporaries than of separate generations, This may be considered the more strange on account of the habits and temperament which I have described as mine, from so very early a period of my life and I first thought so myself. But I found that the boyant animation and liveliness of my young friend were of the greatest benefit to me; and, while they gave relief to the usual gloomy condition of my spirits and demeanor, they concurrently diminished its unpleasantness to himself. On the other hand I made a point of exerting myself to render my house agreeable to him at first, and afterwards, he equally strove to prevent my relapsing into my usual state, To effect this, he so modified his youthful feelings and manners, as to enliven without shocking the mind of a melancholy man. he had been less delicate, considerate, and (intuitively) skillful, he probably would have produced diametrically the contrary effect from that which it was his endeavour to work. But, as it was, during the time he was with me, I certainly was better at ease than I had been for years; and when we parted, it was as I have mentioned with sentiments of friendship very unusual to arise betwen two men in every point so dissimilar. The very difference, however, of our ages was, I suspect, rather of advantage than detriment to the feelings with which L-▬ regarded me. I had more and better influence over him than a man of his own standing ever could have acquired—while there was none of the constraint and awkwardness which young people usually experience in any very constant intercourse with companions more advanced in life.

If

It certainly would not be imagined, from what I have said, that this young man could have any connexion with the disappointments and pain which attended my return to England-but so it was. About a year and a half before I quitted India, he was about to be mar. ried to a young and charming person, to whom he was attached with all the characteristic ardour of his disposition-and from, the little I saw of her, appeared equally to deserve and repay his affection. I was to have been present at their marriage; but, alas! a few days before that on which it wast to take place, the poor girl was carried off by one of those rapid and violent diseases, which are, in that country so common. In tropical climates, too, decomposition follows death. so speedily, that interment is necessarily almost immediate. She was accordingly to be buried the morning after her decease; and I went to assist and support Lduring the ceremony, at which, in despite of all I could urge, he insisted on being present.

He was

I found him in the room with the corpse. sitting beside it when I entered; but the moment he be

held me, he ran towards me, fell upon my neck, and wept for the first time since the catastrophe had happened. He wept very long: but at last he seemed, in some degree, relieved; and raising himself, he took me by the hand, and led me to the coffin.

The freshness of life had passed away, but even now she was surpassingly beautiful. Cold, marble-pale, and rigid, she looked like one of the beautiful sculptures which are placed upon old tombs, in effigy of those who sleep below. The face alone was uncovered; long grave clothes closely enveloped the whole frame to the neck, and a napkin was over her brow, So smooth and softly white was the flesh, that it could scarcely be distinguished where the one ended, and the other began. From beneath this, however, one long tress of hair escaped, which, passing across the cheek, rested upon the shroud. This struck me more than all, for this gave the contrast of life with the perfect deadliness of all else, So still in the stillness of peace-so calm in the calmness of purity-was this corpse of loveliness and virtue, that one scarce could think that the King of Terrors had claimed it for his own, It looked, as I have said, more like the figure on a pale sarcophagusor, perhaps, more like one in a deep, a very deep sleep -than the soulless wreck of passed humanity. But this one tress of bright hair, shining on the white skin, like a fling of golden sun-light upon snow, recalled the terrible truth at once. The hair is the latest portion of the human frame to betray the consequence of death. While the eyes become glazed, and the nerves fixed. and the flesh grows colourless and icy cold-the hair is the same that it was when it added so much beauty to beautiful life-when it waved in the wind, or gleamed in the sun, as the quick motion of youth might influence.

Yes, she was, indeed, lovely!—and what was this loveliness now ?---almost already touched by that decay, from which, though we know it to be invariable, our nature causes us to shrink so sickeningly! Sad, indeed, is it, to gaze upon a face we love, beaming in all the brightness of beautiful youth, and to reflect that that flesh moulder, and finally become dust-that those eyes will cease to be, and nothing remain but an hideous and revolting bone undistinguishable from that which formed the head of the coarsest or most brutal, What, then, must it be to look upon a countenance thus beautiful and thus loved, when this terrible and disgusting process has nearly begun ?-but this is a part of the subject too horrid to be dwelled upon.

There is, however, another idea, which has always arisen within me, with a revolted feeling, when I have gazed on one thus about to be placed in the grave. I mean all the preparation (I might almost say decoration) which the senseless clay has undergone, to be laid in its fellow earth. Why that livery of death-that uniform of the grave, in which all are equally wrapped? The ruling passion even of Narcissa is not strong after death; we then surely need no adornment. The dress in which we chanced to be habited when the spirit passed, might, one would think, suffice to decorate the physical body which is left behind. But this coffin, into which I looked, was, besides all this, quilted throughout with satin; and a pillow of the same material supported the head, as if the fair cheek could now taste its softness! Alas! alas! how paltry do those mockeries appear to us at such a moment.

I had ample time to gaze my fill, and to think of all those things, and many more; for L- placed himself at the head of the coffin, and remained there, with his head bowed in his hands upon its edge. Low deep groans struggled from him at intervals-and the cold sweat was clammy on his brow. At length they came to fasten down the coffin. I wanted him to go with me from the room; but the paroxysms of his despair were so terrible, when I strove to draw him towards the door, that I thought it better to desist. He flung himself upon the body, and fastened his lips upon hers -now so damp and rigid, There he lay, as if he would have lain for ever; at last I gently raised him, and signed to the men to replace the lid. They did so at L—— gazed at them as if he had been changed to a stone but when he heard the grinding sound of the first seerw, as it was driven down into the wood, he uttered a loud and terrible shriek, and fell senseless into my arms.

once.

BALLAD.

"O Go not forth to-night, my child, O go not forth to-night;

The rain beats down, the wind is wild, And not a star has light."

"The rain it will but wash my plume, The wind but wave it dry;

And for such quest as mine, mirk gloom
Is welcome in the sky.

And little will the warder know,
What step is gliding near;

One only eye will watch below,
One only ear will hear.

A hundred men keep watch and ward,
But what is that to me?

And when hath ever Love been barred
From where he wills to be?

Go, mother, with thy maiden band,

And make the chamber bright,

The lovliest lady in the land

Will be my guest to-night."

He flung him on his raven steed

He spurr'd it o'er the plain;

The bird, the arrow, have such speed :— His mother called in vain.

"His sword is sharp, his steed is fleet,

St. Marie, be his guide;

And I'H go make a welcome meet
For his young stranger bride."

And soon the waxen tapers threw
Their fragrance on the air,
And flowers of every morning hue
Yielded their sweet lives there.
Around the walls an eastern loom
Had hung its purple fold-
A hundred lamps lit up the room,
And every lamp was gold.

A horn is heard, the drawbridge falls— "Oh. welcome! 'tis my son!"

A cry of joy ran through the halls-
"And his fair bride is won."

But that fair face is very pale,
Too pale to suit a bride :
Ah, blood is on her silvery veil-
The blood flows from her side.

Upon the silken couch he laid

The maiden's drooping head;
The flowers, before the bride to fade,
Were scattered o'er the dead.

He knelt by her the live long night,
And only once spoke he-
"Oh, when the shaft was on its flight,
Why did it not pierce me?"

He built a chapel where she slept,
For prayer and holy strain:
One midnight by the grave he wept-
He never saw again.

Without a name, withont a crest,
He sought the Holy Land:
St. Marie, give his soul good rest-
He died there sword in hand.

COFFEE.

L.E.L.

THE ignorance which prevails among all ranks and classes of society, in this country, upon the subject of coffee, has been to us the source of a deep and abiding melancholy. How many times have we sat, like Rachel, in the drawing-rooms of the rich and noble, and felt the big tears chasing each other down our manly cheeks, as we saw and tasted the tepid and muddy decoction, which the urbanity of our manners forced us to filter in tea-spoonfuls through our throats, notwithstanding the nausea and slight convulsive tendency which each succeeding spoonful contributed to increase! We have met with ladies too, false deceitful syrens, who prided themselves on their proficiency in the art of making coffee, who assured us that good coffee was almost never to be got, that they could drink it no where except in their own houses, and that they were hapy to have found at last one able to appreciate the value of so delicious a beverage. Animated by such sympathetic and beautiful observations, the cloud has for a moment passed off our brow, the sunshine of hope again sparkled in our expressive eye, and we almost believed, with a bounding heart, that we had at length discovered the darling object of our unceasing anxiety-a female capable, as Sir Henry Steuart would say, "of giving immediate effect to coffee." If she was unmarried, we determined to throw ourself and fortune at her feet: if she was a wife, we eagerly ruminated on the contingencies which might put a speedy termination to the existence of her husband. Alas! it was a dream that had a stormy wakening! Soon, too soon, were we recalled to reality! The servant brought us a cup of coffee, “weak as water, and cool as a zephyr," distinguished only by a slight bitterness of flavour, indicating that the berry had been roasted to a cinder, and then pulverized at a single beat, and that boiling water was an article of which the household lived in the profoundest ignorance. Nothing could have increased our des pair but the appaling fear, which flashed upon us like lightning, that the poisonous liquid we had been induced to drink might have owed its existence to an infusion of that most disgraceful of all human inventions -Hunt's roasted corn!

Since the year 1652, coffee has been drank in this country, and since the year 1652, the art of making it has remained stationery. It is far otherwise in France. There are at this moment three thousand coffee-houses in Paris, and the presiding goddess of each coffee-house

devotes her life and her abilities to the making of coffee. No wonder that the Emperor Alexander fell in love with one of these fascinating beings, and "looked and sipped, and sipped and looked, and sipped again." If there is any one talent which we admire in the Parisians more than all therest, it is that of making coffee. Bernier, the traveller, when at Grand Cairo, was asured that there were only two persons iu that large city, who were able to prepare the beverage in that high perfection to which he had been accustomed at Paris. Can imagination cnojure up to itself any picture more perfectly epicurean and delightful, than a company of French ladies and gentlemen, who have retired to the saloon or drawing-room, after a splendid dinner, and are there luxuriating over this ambrosial liquor, whether the café noir, pure as amber and strong as brandy, be preferred, or the café à lait, hot from the percolater coffee-pot, and enriched with a glorious infusion of boiling cream

!

To us the recollection of the coffee we have drunk at Paris, constitutes the chief enjoyment we experience in the exercise of memory. There is a softened melan

choly in the reminiscence, that seems to shed a benigner influence over the weak tea, which it is now our destiny to swallow. In the minds of all men, indeed, coffee ought to be associated with every thing that is classical and dignified. Without coffee Schiller would never have written "Wallenstein;" it was to him the very fountain of inspiration, Without coffee Buonaparte would never have been Emperor of France, and let it be recorded to his honour, that the conqueror of Europe has left behind him a receipt for making coffee, "Coffee," says Dr. Kitchener," as used on the continent, serves the double purpose of an agreeable tonic, and an exhilarating beverage." "Coffee," says an old writer, "fortifies the soul within, quickens the spirits, and makes the heart lightsome."

MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A MADHOUSE.

BY THE AUTHOR OF PELHAM."

I AM the eldest son of a numerous family, noble in birth, and eminent for wealth, My brothers are a vigorous and comely race: my sisters are more beautiful than dreams. By what fatality was it then that I alone was thrust into this glorious world distorted, and dwarflike, and hideous; my limbs a mockery, my countenance a horror, myself a blackness on the surface of the creation-a discord in the harmony of nature, a living misery, an animated curse? I am shut out from the aims and objects of my race; with the deepest sources of affection in my heart, I am doomed to find no living thing on which to pour them. Love-out upon the word-I am its very loathing and abhorrence; friendship turns from me in disgust; pity beholds me, and withers to aversion. Wheresoever I wander, I am encompassed with hatred as with an atmosphere. Whatever I attempt, I am in the impassable circle of dreadful and accursed doom. Ambition, pleasure, philanthrophy, fame, the common blessings of social intercourse, are all as other circles, which mine can touch but in one point, and that point is torture. I have knowledge, to which the wisdom of ordinary sages is as dust to gold. 1 have energies to which relaxation is

pain. I have benevolence, which sheds itself in charity and love over a worm! For what-merciful God-for what are these blessings of nature or of learning? The instant I employ them I must enter among men; the moment I enter among men, my being blackens into agony. Laughter grins upon me, terror dogs my steps, I exist upon poisons, and my nourishment is scorn.

At my birth the nurse refused me suck; my mother saw me and became delirious; my father ordered that I should be stifled as a monster. The physicians saved my life; accursed be they for the act! One woman, she was old and childish, took compassion upon me; she reared and fed me. I grew up I asked for something to love; I loved every thing; the common earth; the fresh grass; the living insect; the household brute; from the dead stone 1 trod on, to the sublime countenance of man, made to behold the stars and scorn me ; from the noblest thing to the prettiest; the fairest to the foulest; I loved them all. I knelt to my mother, and besought her to love me; she shuddered. I fled to my father, and he spurned me! The lowest minion of the human race that had its limbs shapen and its countenance formed, refused to consort with me; the very dog (I only dared to seek out one that seemed more rugged than its fellows), the very dog dreaded me and slunk away.

I grew up lonely and wretched; I was like the reptile whose prison is the stone's heart; immured in the eternal penthouse of a solitude to which the breath of fellowship never came; girded with a wall of barrenness, and flint, and doomed to vegetate and batten on my own suffocating and poisoned meditations. But while this was my heart's dungeon, they could not take from the external senses the sweet face of the universal nature; they could not bar me from commune with the mighty dead. Earth opened to me her marvels, and the volumes of the wise their stores. I read, I mused, I examined, I descended into the deep wells of truth, and mirrored in my soul the holiness of her divine beauty. The past lay before me like a scroll; the mysteries of this breathing world rose from the present like clouds; even of the dark future, experience shadowed forth something of a token and a sign; and over the wonders of the world, I hung the intoxicating and mingled spells of poesy and of knowledge, But I could not without a struggle live in a world of love, and be the only thing doomed to hatred: "I will travel," said I, "to other quarters of the globe, All earth's tribes have not the proud stamp of angels and of gods, and amongst its infinite variety, I may find a being who will not sicken at myself."

I took leave of the only one who had not loathed me -the woman who had given me food, and reared me up to life. She had now become imbecile, and doting, and blind, so she did not disdain to lay her hand upon my distorted head, and to bless me. "But better," said she, even as she blessed me, and in despite of her doAnd tage, better that you had perished in the womb. I laughed with a loud laugh when I heard her, and rushed from the house.

6.

One evening, in my wanderings, as I issued from a wood, I came abruptly upon the house of a village priest. Around it, from a thick and lofty fence of shrubs, which the twilight of summer bathed in dew, the honeysuckle, and the sweetbrier, and the wild rose, sent forth those gifts of fragrance and delight which

were not denied even unto me. As I walked slowly behind the hedge, I heard voices on the opposite side; they were the voices of women, and I paused to listen. They spoke of love, and of the qualities which should create it. "No," said one, and the words, couched in a tone of music, thrilled to my heart, "no, it is not beauty which I require in a lover: it is the mind which can command others, and the passion which would bow that mind unto me, I ask for genius and affection; I ask for nothing else."

'But,” said the other voice, “ you could not love a monster in person, even if he were a miracle of intellect and of love!"

"I could," answered the first speaker fervently; "if I know my own heart, I could. You remember the fable of a girl whom a monster loved! I could have loved that monster!"

And with these words they passed from my hearing; but I stole round, and through a small crevice in the fence, beheld the face and form of the speaker, whose words had opened, as it were, a glimpse of heaven to my heart. Her eyes were soft and deep-her hair parting from her girlish and smooth brow, was of the hue of gold-her aspect was pensive and melancholy-and over the delicate and transparent paleness of her cheek hung the wanness, but also the eloquence of thought. To other eyes she might not have been beautiful-to mine, her face was an angel's Oh! lovelier far than the visions of the Carian, or the shapes that floated before the eyes of the daughters of Delos, is the countenance of one that bringeth to the dark breast the first glimmering of hope!

From that hour my resolution was taken; I concealed myself in the wood that bordered her house; I made my home with the wild fox in the cavern, and the shade; the day-light passed in dreams and passionate delirium, and at evening I wandered forth, to watch afar off her footsteps; or creep through the copse, unseen, to listen to her voice; or through the long and lone night to lie beneath the shadow of the house, and fix my soul, watchful as a star, upon the window of the chamber where she slept. I strewed her walks with the leaves of poetry, and at midnight I made the air audible with the breath of music. In my writings and songs, whatever in the smooth accents of praise, or the burning language of passion, or the liquid melodies of verse, could awaken her fancy or excite her interest, I attempted; curses on the attempt! May the hand wither! May the brain burn! May the heart shrivel, and parch like a leaf that the flame devours, from which the cravings of my ghastly and unnatural love found a channel, or an aid! I told her in my verses, in my letters, that I had overheard her confession. I told her that I was more. hideous than the demons which the imagination of a northern savage had ever bodied forth; I told her that I was a thing which the daylight loathed to look upon; but I told her also, that I adored her. and I breathed both my story and my love in the numbers of song, aud sung them to the silver chords of my lute, with a voice which belied my form, and was not out of harmony with nature. She answered me, and her answer filled the air, which had hitherto been to me a breathing torture, with enchantment and rapture. She repeated that beauty was as nothing in her estimation; that to her all loveliness was in the soul. She told me that one who wrote as I wrote, who felt as I felt, could

not be loathsome in her eyes. She told me that she could love me, be my form even more monstrous than I had pourtrayed it. Fool, miserable fool that I was to believe her. So then, shrouded among the trees, and wrapped from head to foot in a mantle, and safe in the oath by which I had bound her not to seek to penetrate my secret, or to behold my form before the hour I myself should appoint, arrived. I held commune with her in the deep nights of summer, and beneath the unconscious stars; and while I unrolled to her earnest spirit the marvels of the mystic world, and the glories of wisdom, I mingled with my instruction the pathos and the passion of love! "Go," said she, one night as we conferred together, and through the matted trees Isa saw ---though she beheld me not---that her cheek flushed as she spoke; "Go, and win from others the wonder that you have won from me. Go, pour out your knowledge to the crowd; go, gain the glory of fame, the glory which makes man immortal, and then come back and claim me---I will be yours.

"Swear it," cried I.

"I swear!" she said; and as she spoke the moonlight streamed upon her face, flushed as it was with the ardour of the moment and the strangeness of the scene; her eye burnt with a steady and deep fire-her lip was firm-and her figure, round which the light fell like the glory of a halo, seemed instinct and swelling, as it were, with the determinate energy of the soul. I gazedand my heart leapt within me; I answered not-but I stole silently away; for months she heard of the no

more.

I fled to a lonely and far spot-I surrounded myself once more with books. I explored once more the arcana of science; I ransacked once more the starry regions of poetry; and then upon the mute page I poured the thoughts and treasures which I had stored within me! I sent the product, without a name, upon th world the world received it; approved it; and it became fame. Philosophers bowed in wonder before my discoveries; the pale student in cell and cloister, pored over the mines of learning which I had dragged into day; the maidens in their bowers blushed and sighed, as they drank in the burning pathos of my verse. old and young-all sects and all countries-united in applause and enthusiasm for the unknown being who held, as they averred, the Genii of wisdom and the Spirit of verse in mighty and wizard spells, which few had ever won, and none had ever blended before.

The

I returned to her I sought a meeting under the same mystery and conditions of old-I proved myself that unknown whose fame filled all ears, and occupied all tongues. Her heart had foreboded it already! I claimed my reward! And in the depth and deadness of night, when not a star crept through the curtain of cloud and gloom-when not a gleam struggled against the blackness-not a breath stirred the heavy torpor around us that reward was yielded,

The dense woods and the eternal hills were the sole witnesses of our bridals; and girt with darkness as with a robe, she bent upon my bosom, and shuddered not at the place of her repose!

Thus only we met; but for months we did meet, and I was blessed. At last, the fruit of our ominous love It became necessary,

could no longer be concealed.

either that I should fly with her,

or wed her with the