bed, Manfred remained in the court, gazing on the ominous casque, and regardless of the crowd which the strangeness of the event had now assembled around him. The few words he articulated tended solely to inquiries whether any man knew from whence it could have come. Nobody could give him the least information. However, as it seemed to be the sole object of his curiosity, it soon became so to the rest of the spectators, whose conjectures were as absurd and improbable as the catastrophe itself was unprecedented. In the midst of their senseless guesses, a young peasant, whom rumor had drawn thither from a neighboring village, observed that the miraculous helmet was exactly like that on the figure in black marble of Alfonso the Good, one of their former princes, in the church of St. Nicholas.

"Villain! what sayest thou?" cried Manfred, starting from his trance in a tempest of rage, and seizing the young man by the collar. "How darest thou utter such treason? Thy life shall pay for it."

The spectators, who as little comprehended the cause of the Prince's fury as all the rest they had seen, were at a loss to unravel this new circumstance. The young peasant himself was still more astonished, not conceiving how he had offended the Prince. Yet recollecting himself, with a mixture of grace and humility, he disengaged himself from Manfred's grip, and then, with an obeisance which discovered more jealousy of innocence than dismay, he asked with respect of what he was guilty? Manfred, more enraged at the vigor, however decently exerted, with which the young man had shaken off his hold, than appeased by his submission, ordered his attendants to seize him, and, if he had not been withheld by his friends whom he had invited to the nuptials, would have poignarded the peasant in their arms.

During this altercation, some of the vulgar spectators had run to the great church, which stood near the Castle, and came back open-mouthed, declaring that the helmet was missing from Alfonso's statue.

[On the same evening Manfred declares to Isabella, who was to have been the bride of his son, his intention to divorce his wife Hippolita, and to wed her instead.]

. . . At those words he seized the cold hand of Isabella, who was half dead with fright and horror. She shrieked, and started

from him. Manfred rose to pursue her, when the moon, which was now up, and gleamed in at the opposite casement, presented to his sight the plumes of the fatal helmet, which rose to the height of the windows, waving backwards and forwards in a tempestuous manner, and accompanied with a hollow and rustling sound. Isabella, who gathered courage from her situation, and who dreaded nothing so much as Manfred's pursuit of his declaration, cried:

"Look, my lord! See, Heaven itself declares against your impious intentions!"

"Heaven nor hell shall impede my designs," said Manfred, advancing again to seize the princess.

At that instant the portrait of his grandfather, which hung over the bench where they had been sitting, uttered a deep sigh, and heaved its breast. Isabella, whose back was turned to the picture, saw not the motion, nor knew whence the sound came, but started, and said, "Hark, my lord! What sound was that?" and at the same time made towards the door.

Manfred, distracted between the flight of Isabella, who had now reached the stairs, and yet unable to keep his eyes from the picture, which began to move, had, however, advanced some steps after her, still looking backwards on the portrait, when he saw it quit its panel, and descend on the floor with a grave and melancholy air.

"Do I dream?" cried Manfred, returning. "Or are the devils themselves in league against me? Speak, infernal spectre! Or, if thou art my grandsire, why dost thou too conspire against thy wretched descendant, who too dearly pays for" Ere he could finish the sentence, the vision sighed again, and made a sign to Manfred to follow him.

"Lead on!" cried Manfred. "I will follow thee to the gulf of perdition."

The spectre marched sedately, but dejected, to the end of the gallery, and turned into a chamber on the right hand. Manfred accompanied him at a little distance, full of anxiety and horror, but resolved. As he would have entered the chamber, the door was clapped to with violence by an invisible hand.

LAURENCE STERNE

THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN

1759-67

[The first two volumes of this unique piece of fiction were published in 1759, and at once made the author's reputation; others followed at intervals, the ninth and last in 1767. (See Walpole's comment on the work, page 472, above.) The extracts here printed are intended to represent both Sterne's type of humor, to which he gave the name "Shandyism," and the characteristic vein of sentiment which gives him a place in the so-called "sentimental movement." They are from Book III, chapter XII; Book VI, chapters XVIII and XIX; Book VII, chapters XXXI-XXXV; Book IX, chapter XXIV.]

[THE CRITIC]

I'LL undertake this moment to prove it to any man in the world, except to a connoisseur:- though I declare I object only to a connoisseur in swearing, — as I would do to a connoisseur in painting, etc., etc., the whole set of 'em are so hung round and befetished with the bobs and trinkets of criticism, or, to drop my metaphor, which by the by is a pity, for I have fetched it as far as from the coast of Guinea; - their heads, sir, are stuck so full of rules and compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply them upon all occasions, that a work of genius had better go to the devil at once, than stand to be pricked and tortured to death by 'em.

"And how did Garrick speak the soliloquy last night?" "Oh, against all rule, my lord, most ungrammatically! Betwixt the substantive and the adjective, which should agree together in number, case, and gender, he made a breach thus,stopping, as if the point wanted settling; and betwixt the nominative case, which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, three seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my lord, each time." "Admirable grammarian! But in suspending his voicewas the sense suspended likewise? Did no expression of atti

tude or countenance fill up the chasm? Was the eye silent?

Did you narrowly look?"

"I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord."

"Excellent observer!"

"And what of this new book the whole world makes such a rout about?"

"Oh, 't is out of all plumb, my lord, quite an irregular thing! Not one of the angles at the four corners was a right angle. I had my rule and compasses, etc., my lord, in my pocket."

"Excellent critic!"

"And for the epic poem your lordship bid me look at, upon taking the length, breadth, height, and depth of it, and trying them at home upon an exact scale of Bossu's, 't is out, my lord, in every one of its dimensions."

"Admirable connoisseur!"

"And did you step in, to take a look at the grand picture in your way back?"

"'T is a melancholy daub, my lord! Not one principle of the pyramid in any one group! And what a price! - for there is nothing of the coloring of Titian - the expression of Rubens the grace of Raphael the purity of Domenichino — the corregiescity of Correggio - the learning of Poussin - the airs of Guido the taste of the Carrachis or the grand contour of Angelo!"

Grant me patience, just heaven! Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world, though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose generous heart will give up the reins of his imagination into his author's hands, be pleased he knows not why, and cares not wherefore..

[THE BREECHING OF TRISTRAM]

"We should begin," said my father, turning himself half round in bed, and shifting his pillow a little towards my mother's, as he opened the debate, -"We should begin to think, Mrs. Shandy, of putting this boy into breeches."

"We should so," said my mother.

“We defer it, my dear," quoth my father, "shamefully."

"I think we do, Mr. Shandy," said my mother.

"Not but the child looks extremely well," said my father, "in his vests and tunics."

"He does look very well in them," replied my mother.

"And for that reason it would be almost a sin," added my father, "to take him out of 'em."

"It would so," said my mother.

"But indeed he is growing a very tall lad," rejoined my father. "He is very tall for his age, indeed," said my mother.

"I can not [making two syllables of it] imagine," quoth my father, "who the deuce he takes after."

"I cannot conceive, for my life," said my mother. "Humph!" said my father.

The dialogue ceased for a moment.

"I am very short myself," continued my father gravely. "You are very short, Mr. Shandy," said my mother.

"Humph!" quoth my father to himself, a second time; in muttering which, he plucked his pillow a little further from my mother's, and turning about again, there was an end of the debate for three minutes and a half.

"When he gets these breeches made," cried my father in a higher tone, "he'll look like a beast in 'em."

"He will be very awkward in them at first," replied my mother. . . .

"I am resolved, however," quoth my father, breaking silence the fourth time, "he shall have no pockets in them." "There is no occasion for any," said my mother. "I mean in his coat and waistcoat," cried my father. "I mean so too," replied my mother.

"Though if he gets a gig or top-poor souls! it is a crown and a sceptre to them- they should have where to secure it."

Order it as you please, Mr. Shandy," replied my mother. "But don't you think it right?" added my father, pressing the point home to her.

"Perfectly," said my mother, "if it pleases you, Mr. Shandy." "There's for you!" cried my father, losing temper. "Pleases me! You never will distinguish, Mrs. Shandy, nor shall I ever teach you to do it, betwixt a point of pleasure and point of convenience."