"His mangled form must have dashed from point to point of the rocks in his descent. I heard one piercing yell of agony, which echoed through the immeasurable abyss, from which at last only a hollow moaning arose, which soon also died away.

"Struck with unutterable horror, I stood silent and motionless. At last, by a momentary impulse, seized the hat, the sword, the portefeuille, and wished to withdraw myself as quickly as possible from the fatal spot."

knife, or dagger, in the hand, was stretched up towards me. Struck with the utmost horror, I recoiled from the sight. Then the stammering voice spoke from below- Broth-er -broth-er Med-ar-dus is there-is there!-Take-take!— Break-break! To the wood!-To the wood!'

"Instantly all fear and apprehension were lost. I repeated to myself, Take-take!-Break-break!' for I thought only of the assistance thus offered me, and of flight! Accordingly I seized the weapon, which the hand the mortar and rubbish from the opening that had been made. "The spectral prisoner below laboured also with might and main, till we had dislodged four or five large stones from the vault, and laid them aside. I had been occupied in this latter purpose, that is, in placing the large stones in a corner of my room, that they might not interrupt my work; when, on turning round, I perceived that my horrible assistant had raised his naked body as far as the glare of the lamp fell on his pale features, which were no middle, through the aperture that we had made. The full longer obscured as formerly, by long matted locks, or the overgrown grizzly beard, for these had been closely shaven. It could no longer be said that I was in vigorous health, while he was emaciated, for in that respect we were now alike. He glared on me with the grin, the ghastly laughter, of madness on his visage. At the first glance I RECOGNIZED MYSELF, and losing all consciousness and self-possession, fell in a deadly swoon on the pavement.”

Instantly he becomes transformed into the person willingly resigned to me, and began zealously to clear away whose death he had thus unwittingly caused, and so changed he visits the castle of a Thuringian baron, where he meets with the living person of the female whose image had haunted him in the convent. He leads a strange and terrible life in this castle-which ends by his attempting to violate the young lady, and the actual murder of her aunt and her brother. Flying in despair from the castle, he arrives at a town, where his adventures are equally diabolical, and his companions appear to be impersonations of the infernal spirits. In a forest hut he meets with a monk, whose story is the counterpart of his own, and to whom rumour has even ascribed his own name. Thence he proceeds under a feigned title to the residence of a prince, where he plays the part of an adventurer with some success. He is made the confidant of a dark and

fearful story, which illustrates his own mysterious birth. After a short career of triumphant dissipation, Aurelia (the female whose virtue he had attempted) arrives at Court, and shocked at his appearance, proclaims him as the friar Medardus, the murderer of her brother and her aunt. He is thrown into prison, where his solitude is disturbed by the most fearful supernatural

visitations:

"The prison-clock had struck twelve, when I again heard softly, and as if from a distance, the knocking which, on the preceding day, so much disturbed me. I had resolved that I would pay no attention to this noise; but it approached nearer, and became louder. There were again, at measured interval, the same divertisements of knocking, laughing, and groaning. I struck my hand with great vehemence on the table-Be quiet!' cried I-Silence below there!' Thus I thought that I should banish my persecutor, and recover my composure, but in vain! On the contrary, there arose instantly a sound of shrill discordant laughter, and once more the same detestable voice-Brud-er-lein! Brud-er-lein! Up to thee! Open the door! Open the "Then right under me commenced a vehement rasping and scratching in the floor, accompanied by continuous groans and cachinnation. In vain did I try to write, and persuading myself that these were but illusions of the arch enemy, determined to hold them in contempt. The noise always became more intolerable, and was diversified occasionally by ponderous blows. so that I momentarily expected the gaolers to enter in alarm.

door!'

"I had risen up, and was walking with the lamp in my hand, when suddenly I felt the floor shake beneath my tread. I stepped aside, and then saw, on the spot whereon I had stood, a stone lift itself out of the pavement, and sink again. The phenomenon was repeated, but at the second time I seized hold of the stone, and easily removed it from the flooring.

"The aperture beneath was but narrow, and little or no light rose from the gulf. Suddenly, however, as I was gazing on it, a naked arm, emaciated, but muscular, with a

He undergoes several harsh examinations, but is finally liberated in consequence of the discovery of his double from the forest, who is considerered by the judge to be the guilty person. This otherself is condemned to death-whilst he is to marry Aurelia. Then comes a most powerfully written part of the story. The bridal and judicial processions encounter in the street,-and the two monks salute each other with frightful exclamations. The real monk stabs Aurelia-and by some inconceivable exertion escapes into the forest, where he again meets his double.

He loses his senses, and when he recovers them finds himself in a hospital for maniacs, in Italy, where he had been brought some months before by a stranger, and entered as the friar Medardus. He wanders forth into the world once more. At Rome he confesses all his crimes, and becomes a penitent. His residence there is full of strange adventures, and to save his lie from the fury of the Dominicans he secretly leaves the city. His wanderings bring him at last to the convent where he was brought up in early life, and there he learns that his double is the Count Victorin, his natural brother, who having also drank of the Devil's Elixir, was subjected to its diabolical influence. Aurelia he finds still living, and about to take the veil, but at the moment of the ceremony his double rushes in, and stabs her to the heart. She dies. He sets about writing the awful story of his life, and then he dies.

One such romance is quite enough, and we hope that the translator will not attempt to introduce another into our literature. His part is extremely well done, and evinces a close acquaintance with the German language.

people live on nothing but rhubarb, for you recollect the and is that the reason they all look so yellow, and that man in Cheapside who sells it by way of cakes to Jew-folks, their wives look so."-"Blue, I suppose you would say," I roared out; cease your confounded prating, and if one of us must go to a boxing-match, for heaven's sake do you go as my proxy.' "Me, Sir!" she exclaimed, as she quitted the room-her words died off as she retired, and

FLIGHTS OF FANCY, OR MUSINGS AT COLN- their murmurs were replaced by the hissing labours of the

BROOKE.

brush, cleaning if not tearing my coat in pieces; and the operation being finished, I was cleared out like a ship from port, and soon after was on the top of a Bath coach, to be dropped on the field of fame.

THE quiet of my morning meal was completely inter- "What is your fare, coachee ?" "Six shillings." rupted by the incessant din of carriages and the clatter of "Something less, if you please; that is not the regular horses passing my windows, with a noise and eagerness fare." "Very true; but is this a common day?" Admiwhich left no reason to doubt that something was on foot, in rable logician! I was by this time wedged into my place; the phrase of the turnpike-keeper," down the road." it was very disagreeable to yield the point, but still more Even my servant, while she attended on the table to uncomfortable to descend; neither of which alternatives supply the demands of the tea-pot, would raise herself on escaped him. I looked down, and he looked up: my argutiptoe every now and then, to catch a look of the passers- ments were not mighty enough, but were lost in thin air, by, unmindful of the steaming kettle, which I dreaded as before they reached him; but his being of that species much when she raised it over my head, as if it had been called by mathematicians ascendantal, were of course conthe sword of Damocles. It may do very well to write vincing as every thing belonging to that science should be. sketches by fits and starts, as leisure or as occasion furnish If a stage-coach top is not Parnassus' mount itself, it has at the means or the materials; but to eat your roll in comfort, least the property of other high places, and gives a good the operation should be undisturbed and continuous.-Its look out, if it should be deficient in the inspiration which relish, like the pathos of a tale, depends very much on its would improve it. Such a scene now presented itself:-condensation within a short space: Le Fevre would draw the road was literally covered with carriages of all descripno tears if read peicemeal for a fortnight; and a dejeune tions, and of no description. Barouches and dog's-meat harassed and disquieted by as many interruptions as carts, the once neat chariot, and the lumbering waggon; mouthfuls, till its final termination threatened to hide its the tilbury and the parcel cart, laden with live baggage head within the hour of luncheon, would be a sort of pseudo the broken down gig, and the jingling hackney coach, all regale, hanging like Mahomet's coffin, midway between bustling, stumbling, and rumbling towards Colnbrooke the morning and the afternoon, leaving the uncomfortable-hurrying au feu, as a French author would call it, who doubt on its close, whether we should not begin the pro- seemed to think a house on fire was the most likely thing to cess over again. My roll was intersected by interjections, collect a crowd, not knowing the effect of a Boxing Match, all of which being in the vocative case, according to the which may be called the greatest attractive power in nature, rules of grammar, and chiefly addressed to me, it need not now that Sir Richard Phillips has discovered that gravitabe matter of surprise, if, on that ill-fated morning, I hesi- tion is no power at all. tate to speak decidedly, whether I have any obligations to acknowledge to Bohea or my baker, for my usual refresh-quisite was two pair of legs, there was a beautiful variety: ment.-"Now do look what a piece of trumpery these fellows have got into," was the exclamation from one side, when a poor lame brute, a triped rather than a quadruped, stumbled along, laden with a dozen greasy looking rogues, hallooing and shouting, as if exulting in the ingenuity, which made three legs do the office of four. 66 Mercy on us," said my attendant, Hebe, prime minister to the teapot, "I believe there is a hanging match, down the way, perhaps at Windsor, to amuse the king; for see if there isn't a man with a gig full of ropes and stakes; I would so like to see it." "Hot water to boil my eggs." "Hot did you say, Sir;"-" Why, yes; what the devil does your head run upon;" but she was again" deaf as a post;" and on looking out to ascertain the cause of such absorption, I discovered nearly a cart-load of tawdry females, and caught the close of her remarks, which finished with "Idle husseys!" and left the preceding to be guessed: her look was spiteful as wormwood; and her meditative bump was still running on the hanging divertisement, as if she would fain that her body could travel as nimbly as her wishes. In vain I turned to Court Calendars, and Sporting Calendars, and Perennial Calendars, and all kinds of Calendars; even the Saint's Calendar, had it enriched my library, to ascertain the cause of this tumult. The turnpike-keeper unravelled the whole mystery. Betsey was sent "explorare viam," and returned bounding like an antelope:"Lord, Sir, if it an't a fight at Colnbroke; shall I fetch your boots; you may eat your roll to-morrow, and I shall brush your coat in the meantime;-for one of them is a Jew, and perhaps will have a beard; and I should so like to see a Christian tousel it for him;-and do ye think these

In riding cattle, as the only thing that was thought re-racers, and sorely basted jack asses; chargers and spavined hacks; with a filling up of faultering ponies, scouring along with as much speed, and more wind than they were masters of asthmatic horses, and overburthened donkies rent the air, with short consumptive coughs, and most expressive brayings,-here and there, the eye reposed on a few fat sleek animals, that seemed to enjoy a superabundance of internal air, which they occasionally, vented in loud explosions at their zenith and nadir, and indifferently, and were prodigiously relieved by each successive 'exportation of these turbulent gases. The diversity among the riders, was as various as the quality of their steeds-every variety of seat had its representation-the erect military, the lounging jockey, and the unpractised compound of both;-others again possessed a seat exclusively their own, but originality was its only merit, and as they swung fearfully in their saddles, we watched them with a wistful curiosity, least next moment we might be gathering them from among our wheels. When the eye was a little sated with such discordant attractions, we had leisure for some sober discussion on the coach, if such could have found a place, where every object around spoke of dire conflict." Our subjects might be said to be at our fingers ends, for they begun and closed with the Glories of the Fist.

One gentleman said it was a pity for Ireland that Langan had been defeated, for his success would have brought the art pugilistic into fashion, and have done as much to civilize that mercurial people as all the vapouring about emancipation, or the extirpation of these Leviathans of the Emerald isle, the odious middle men. "There may be something in that," said an affected looking person, who sat

opposite him, and it might for the same reason tend to
encrease their domestic happiness, by introducing better
treatment of their wives, whom it is very common to beat;
and no wonder, for I have heard an Irishman say tri-
umphantly, "And do ye think I would allow a man to
thrash me, and much less take the gabsnash of a woman?"
upon which logical conclusion he instantly proceeded to
try the syllogism on the first female that fell under his
hands.
Alas! for poor Ireland, where every quack in politics
thinks himself at liberty to prescribe for her miseries; and
this nostrum being quite new, may be tried along with
some of Mr. Owen's plans by way of episode, and probably
with as much hope of success. Nearly two centuries since,
it was thought that "Tom Coryat's" celebrated book of
Travels, would bring long journies into fashion, as we beat
a drum to allure bees,-and in one of the addresses to this
redoubted tourist, it is his chief praise that he would assist
in expatriating or thinning the Emeralders.

He jumped into a quickset edge, a quickset edge, a quickset edge,

He jumped into a quickset edge, and scratched out both his eyes."

But the good king had help at hand, for the ballad relates that he vaulted into another hedge, and scratched his optics back again, which I fear was better luck than awaited our obumbated Transatlantic attornies, for the result was and the dispersion of our party, into as many different for ever lost to me by the arrival of the coach at Colnbrooke, ways, and amid as great a confusion of tongues, as arose in But what shall I say of a battle where there was no quarrel, Babel on the breaking up of that building speculation. and describe a ring, which might as correctly be called a square circle. I could dilate on the near prospect of the millennium, when the Jews shall be gathered in, when they are seen fighting with their ancient foes the Christians out of pure love-I could essay to paint the smiles of the Hebrew Barney Aaron, who, the more he was buffeted, "For such an itch of travel is begotten, only smiled the more coaxingly on Little Arthur, who from (To the state's good and thy praise be it spoken,) his prowess on that day, showed himself worthy of a seat Thy booke shall vent the kingdome, better far, at the round table of his great namesake. I could paint Than erst the Irish or the Low countrie war." the shouts. (but I forgot in my enthusiasm that this smells Having settled the Irish question, and being all agreed the long faces and thin noses when the money went out, a little Irish,) that rose as one fell, and another stood still; about the importance of an efficient system of boxing in and the round grin when the shiners came in,-and the tranquillizing that part of the United Kingdom, conjoined various little fistycuff matches, short but pithy, which ocwith a recommendation to the country gentlemen to discon-casionally relieved the attention from the grand affair, and tinue the planting of oak trees, and grub up those already fixed it on these well chosen digressions, to give something growing, that the supply of oaken cudgels might be stopped, of the epic character to the action of the piece. But why we treated in a cursory but philosophical way, the various modes of natural offence and defence in different regions, in the journals of the great city; for who does not know tell of these things, seeing they have been recorded already always beginning with our own, as the best of all possible that in the cosmogony of a newspaper, due attention is bad fashions. An Oxonian favoured us with a little of the to a selection of various materials for its skilful manageancient gymnastics, which I half suspected had been the ment. There be politicians to speculate, and soothsayers subject of his last exercises, but it was so coldly received, to predict; gallants to invent crim. con., and poets who from being rather out of our line of studies, that by common consent, it was settled that the Greeks and the Romans they ought to stand; and if among this various array, even make verses without knowing the poetical feet on which knew nothing about the mysteries of training; and next to the Devil is not forgotten among the necessary auxiliaries them in point of ignorance, were ranked that moral people of a printer's establishment, need we wonder that they the Scotch, in whose pugilistics, it was esteemed "of good have fighting men, skilled in writing and scolding, who practice, "to keep an antagonist down when he was down; attend on battles, with an inkhorn at their button, rather as if it was the height of folly to throw away an advantage than a quiver on their back; who exult in the strife, that which had cost so much toil to win, and which next moment shall fill a column, as the ravens hover over the field; or to might be returned with interest on yourself. This was smooth off my description, like the attendant scanachies of admitted to be very wrong headed, among a people who a Highland Chieftain's board. The battle has been better were rebuilding Athens, but the case was not thought told than I could do, and the proverb, 66 agore actum" hopeless, as they were said to be a studious race, and might rings in my ear, and warns me against bootless labour. one day show off in the ring. Then we gave a groan over the wide breeched, cold blooded Hollander, who uses his snigger, to gut his haddocks, and vindicate his wrongs.We glanced over the stilletto, (for it was a piercing subject.) and produced some keen remarks, that were too pithy to be repeated, and we summed up cleverly, in spite of wry faces, with American gouging, that genuine Yankee process by which an eye is scooped out, with the dexterity that a cook shapes turnips to grace the frontiers of a dish of stewed mutton. This subject we handled rather in the dark, for every one almost instinctively shut his eye as if to preserve it, so that for some time our party was monoculous, and Polyphemous might have mistaken us for some of his own family. There was sad wincing and winking while a travelled man told of this gouging-how two lawyers fought in court, (here there was a laugh,) how they pummelled each other with unscientific thumps; (continued smiles) how they tumbled, now up and now down; (ditto|| smiles repeated) and finally, to wind up the story handsomely, with the sting in the tail of it, with an epigram, "how they scooped out each others eyes," (here we all shut our own, as if it was bed time.)

"There was a king of Sicily, of Sicily, of Sicily,
There was a king of Sicily, and he was wondrous wise;

L.

stand this: "legat, qui nunquam legit; qui semel legit, legat." Read Spurzheim, and study phrenology, if you do not under

DRAMA.

King's Theatre.-At length the conflicting pretensions of the rival heroines have been arranged, and Mademoiselles Pasta and De Begnis have once more performed in the same Opera. We are utterly ignorant of the nature and extent of their differences, and our gallantry will not let us credit the half of what we have heard. At any rate we are quite content with the natural blackness of the bright eyes of these two rival queens without wishing to behold them with that artificial deepening of tint which report has ascribed to them. Romeo and Julietta, with the sweet music of Zingarelli, has been performed twice: the parts of Romeo and Julietta by the above-named ladies. Romeo is generally regarded as Pasta's best performance. It strikes us that she is superior in it to any other we have yet witnessed. The style of the music is better adapted to her voice, and