The Black Cat and Other Stories......................................................................................................................1

Edgar Allan Poe.......................................................................................................................................1

Illfated and mysterious man!bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own imagination, and fallen in the

flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before

me!notoh not as thou artin the cold valley and shadowbut as thou shouldst besquandering away

a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim visions, thine own Venicewhich is a starbeloved

Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and bitter

meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat itas thou shouldst be. There are surely other

worlds than thisother thoughts than the thoughts of the multitude other speculations than the

speculations of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame thee for thy visionary

hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting away of life, which were but the overflowing of thine

It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri, that I met for the third or

fourth time the person of whom I speak. It is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the

circumstances of that meeting. Yet I rememberah! how should I forget?the deep midnight, the Bridge of

Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that stalked up and down the narrow canal.

It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had sounded the fifth hour of the Italian

evening. The square of the Campanile lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal Palace were

dying fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand Canal. But as my gondola

arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the

night, in one wild, hysterical, and longcontinued shriek. Startled at the sound, I sprang upon my feet: while

the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we

were consequently left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into the smaller

channel. Like some huge and sablefeathered condor, we were slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of

Sighs, when a thousand flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal Palace,

A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an upper window of the lofty structure into

the deep and dim canal. The quiet waters had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own

gondola was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was seeking in vain upon the

surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas! only within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble

flagstones at the entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure which none who then

saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the Marchesa Aphroditethe adoration of all Venicethe gayest

of the gaythe most lovely where all were beautifulbut still the young wife of the old and intriguing

Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only one, who now deep beneath the murky water,

was thinking in bitterness of heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to call

in the black mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened for the night from its

ballroom array, clustered, amid a shower of diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like

those of the young hyacinth. A snowywhite and gauzelike drapery seemed to be nearly the sole covering to

her delicate form; but the midsummer and midnight air was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the

statuelike form itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment of very vapour which hung around it as the heavy

marble hangs around the Niobe. Yetstrange to say!her large lustrous eyes were not turned downwards

upon that grave wherein her brightest hope lay buried but riveted in a widely different direction! The

prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice but how could that lady gaze so

fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns right

opposite her chamber windowwhat, then, could there be in its shadowsin its architecturein its

ivywreathed and solemn cornicesthat the Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times

before? Nonsense! Who does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered mirror,

multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable faroff places the woe which is close at hand?

Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the watergate, stood, in full dress, the Satyrlike

figure of Mentoni himself. He was occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the

very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child. Stupefied and aghast, I had myself

no power to move from the upright position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have

presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and ominous appearance, as with pale countenance and

All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were relaxing their exertions, and

yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but little hope for the child (how much less than for the mother!);

but now, from the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming a part of the Old

Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak stepped out within

reach of the light, and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged headlong into the

canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the

marble flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became unfastened,

and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonderstricken spectators the graceful person of a very

young man, with the sound of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing.

No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her childshe will press it to her

heartshe will cling to its little form, and smother it with her caresses. Alas! another's arms have taken it

from the strangeranother's arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off, unnoticed, into the palace! And

the Marchesa! Her lipher beautiful lip trembles: tears are gathering in her eyesthose eyes which, like

Pliny's acanthus, are 'soft and almost liquid'. Yes! tears are gathering in those eyesand see! the entire

woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance,

the swelling of the marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly flushed over with a

tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli

Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no answerexcept that, having left, in the eager haste

neglected to enthrall her tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders

that drapery which is their due. What other possible reason could there have been for her so blushing?for

the glance of those wild appealing eyes? for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?for the convulsive

pressure of that trembling hand?that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned into the palace, accidentally, upon

the hand of the stranger. What reason could there have been for the lowthe singularly low tone of those

unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu? 'Thou hast conquered' she said,

or the murmurs of the water deceived me'thou hast conqueredone hour after sunrisewe shall meet

The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and the stranger, whom I now

recognized, stood alone upon the flags. He shook with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in

search of a gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of my own; and he accepted the civility.

Having obtained an oar at the watergate, we proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered

his selfpossession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great apparent cordiality.

There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The person of the strangerlet me call

him by this title, who to all the world was still a strangerthe person of the stranger is one of these subjects.

In height he might have been below rather than above the medium size: although there were moments of

intense passion when his frame actually expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender

symmetry of his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of

that Herculean strength which he has been known to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more

dangerous emergency. With the mouth and chin of a deity singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shadows

varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jetand a profusion of curling, black hair, from which a

forehead of unusual breadth gleamed forth at intervals all light and ivoryhis were features than which I

have seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his

countenance was, nevertheless, one of those which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have

never afterwards seen again. It had no peculiarit had no settled predominant expression to be fastened

upon the memory; a countenance seen and instantly forgottenbut forgotten with a vague and neverceasing

desire of recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw its own

distinct image upon the mirror of that facebut that the mirror, mirrorlike, retained no vestige of the

Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what I thought an urgent manner, to call

upon him very early the next morning. Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of

those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the waters of the Grand Canal in the

vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose

unparalleled splendour burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me blind and dizzy with

I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his possessions in terms which I had even

ventured to call terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring myself to believe

that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the princely magnificence which burned and

Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly lighted up. I judge from this

circumstance, as well as from an air of exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to

bed during the whole of the preceding night. In the architecture and embellishments of the chamber, the

evident design had been to dazzle and astound. Little attention had been paid to the decora of what is

technically called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from object to object, and

rested upon none neither the grotesques of the Greek painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days,

nor the huge carvings of untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the vibration

of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered. The senses were oppressed by mingled and

conflicting perfumes, reeking up from strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and

flickering tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen sun poured in upon the whole,

through windows formed each of a single pane of crimsontinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand

reflections, from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten silver, the beams of natural

glory mingled at length fitfully with the artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of

'Ha! ha! ha!ha! ha! ha!'laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I entered the room, and

throwing himself back at fulllength upon an ottoman. 'I see,' said he, perceiving that I could not immediately

reconcile myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome'I see you are astonished at my apartmentat

my statuesmy picturesmy originality of conception in architecture and upholsteryabsolutely drunk,

eh? with my magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir,' (here his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit of

cordiality) 'pardon me for my uncharitable laughter. You appeared so utterly astonished. Besides, some things

are so completely ludicrous that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing must be the most glorious of all

glorious deaths! Sir Thomas Morea very fine man was Sir Thomas MoreSire Thomas More died

laughing, you remember. Also in the Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who

came to the same magnificent end. Do you know, however,' continued he musingly, 'that at Sparta (which is

now Palaeochori)at Sparta, I say, to the west of the citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a

thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of Laughter should have survived all the

others! But in the present instance,' he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner, 'I have no

right to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe cannot produce anything so

fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other apartments are by no means of the same order; mere ultras of

fashionable insipidity. This is better than fashionis it not? Yet this has but to be seen to become the

ragethat is, with those who could afford it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however,

against any such profanation. With one exception you are the only human being besides myself and my valet,

who has been admitted within the mysteries of these imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened as

I bowed in acknowledgment; for the overpowering sense of splendour and perfume, and music, together with

the unexpected eccentricity of his address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my

'Here,' he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered around the apartment'here are paintings

from the Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little

deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for a chamber such as this. Here too,

are some chefs d'oeuvre of the unknown greatand here unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day,

whose very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me. What think you,' said he,

'It is Guido's own!' I said with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had been poring intently over its

surpassing loveliness. 'It is Guido's own!how could you have obtained it?she is undoubtedly in painting

'Ha!' said he thoughtfully, 'the Venusthe beautiful Venus?the Venus of the Medici?she of the

diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the left arm' (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with

difficulty), 'and all the right are restorations, and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think, the

quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too!is a copythere can be no doubt of

itblind fool that I am, who cannot behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot helppity

me!I cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the statuary found his statue in

the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was by no means original in his couplet

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true gentleman, we are always aware of a

difference from the bearing of the vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such

difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to the outward demeanour of my

acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and

character. Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him so essentially apart

from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his

most trivial actionsintruding upon his moments of dallianceand interweaving itself with his very flashes

of merrimentlike adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the

I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled tone of levity and solemnity with which

he rapidly descanted upon matters of little importance, a certain air of trepidationa degree of nervous

unction in action and in speech an unquiet excitability of manner which appeared to me at all times

unaccountable, and upon some occasions even filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of

a sentence whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be listening in the deepest

attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in

It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in turning over a page of the poet

and scholar Politian's beautiful tragedy of The Orfeo (the first native Italian tragedy) which lay near me upon

an ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage towards the end of the third acta

passage of the most heartstirring excitementa passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man

shall read without a thrill of novel emotionno woman without a sigh. The whole page was blotted with

fresh tears, and, upon the opposite interleaf, were the following English lines, written in a hand so very

different from the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in

That these lines were written in Englisha language with which I had not believed their author

acquaintedafforded me little matter for surprise. I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements,

and of the singular pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at any similar

discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me no little amazement. It had been originally

written London, and afterwards carefully overscorednot, however, so effectually as to conceal the word

from a scrutinizing eye. I say this occasioned me no little amazement; for I well remember that, in a former

conversation with my friend, I particularly inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di

Mentoni (who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city), when his answer, if I mistake

not, gave me to understand that he had never visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here

mention, that I have more than once heard (without of course giving credit to a report involving so many

improbabilities), that the person of whom I speak was not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.

'There is one painting,' said he, without being aware of my notice of the tragedy'there is still one painting

which you have not seen.' And throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a fulllength portrait of the Marchesa

superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the preceding night upon the steps of

the Ducal Palace, stood before me once again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming

all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy which will

ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With

her left she pointed downwards to a curiously fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot, alone visible, barely

touched the earthand, scarcely discernible in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and

enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance fell from the painting

to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois quivered instinctively upon

'Come!' he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled and massive silver, upon which were a

few goblets fantastically stained, together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary

model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I supposed to be Johannisberger. 'Come!'

he said abruptly, 'let us drink! It is earlybut let us drink. It is indeed early,' he continued, musingly, as a

cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with the first hour after sunrise'It is indeed

early, but what matters it? Let us drink! Let us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy

lamps and censers are so eager to subdue!' And, having made me pledge him in a bumper, he swallowed in

'To dream,' he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a

censer one of the magnificent vases'to dream has been the business of my life. I have therefore framed for

myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of Venice, could I have erected a better? You behold

around you, it is true, a medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended by

antediluvian devices, and the sphinxes of Egypt are outstretched upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is

incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify

mankind from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist: but that sublimation of

folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my

spirit is writhing in fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of that land of

real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing.' He here paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and

seemed to listen to a sound which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards and

In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at full length upon an ottoman. A

quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening

to anticipate a second disturbance, when a page of Mentoni's household burst into the room, and faltered out,

Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavoured to arouse the sleeper to a sense of the startling

intelligence. But his limbs were rigidhis lips were lividhis lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I

staggered back towards the tablemy hand fell upon a cracked and blackened gobletand a consciousness

During the fall of the year 1827, while residing near Charlottesville, Virginia, I casually made the

acquaintance of Mr Augustus Bedloe. This young gentleman was remarkable in every respect, and excited in

me a profound interest and curiosity. I found it impossible to comprehend him either in his moral or his

physical relations. Of his family I could obtain no satisfactory account. Whence he came, I never ascertained.

Even about his agealthough I call him a young gentlemanthere was something which perplexed me in

no little degree. He certainly seemed youngand he made a point of speaking about his youthyet there

were moments when I should have had little trouble in imagining him a hundred years of age. But in no

regard was he more peculiar than in his personal appearance. He was singularly tall and thin. He stooped

much. His limbs were exceedingly long and emaciated. His forehead was broad and low. His complexion was

absolutely bloodless. His mouth was large and flexible, and his teeth were more wildly uneven, although

sound, than I had ever before seen teeth in a human head. The expression of his smile, however, was by no

means unpleasing, as might be supposed: but it had no variation whatever. It was one of profound

melancholyof a phaseless and unceasing gloom. His eyes were abnormally large, and round like those of a

cat. The pupils, too, upon any accession or diminution of light, underwent contraction or dilation, just such as

is observed in the feline tribe. In moments of excitement the orbs grew bright to a degree almost

inconceivable; seeming to emit luminous rays, not of a reflected but of an intrinsic lustre, as does a candle or

the sun; yet their ordinary condition was to totally vapid, filmy, and dull, as to convey the idea of the eyes of

These peculiarities of person appeared to cause him much annoyance, and he was continually alluding to

them in a sort of half explanatory, half apologetic strain, which, when I first heard it, impressed me very

painfully. I soon, however, grew accustomed to it, and my uneasiness wore off. It seemed to be his design

rather to insinuate than directly to assert that, physically, he had not always been what he wasthat a long

series of neuralgic attacks had reduced him from a condition of more than usual personal beauty, to that

which I saw. For many years past he had been attended by a physician, named Templeton an old

gentleman, perhaps seventy years of agewhom he had first encountered at Saratoga, and from whose

attention, while there, he either received, or fancied that he received, great benefit. The result was that

Bedloe, who was wealthy, had made an arrangement with Dr Templeton, by which the latter, in consideration

of a liberal annual allowance, had consented to devote his time and medical experience exclusively to the

Doctor Templeton had been a traveller in his younger days, and at Paris had become a convert, in great

measure, to the doctrine of Mesmer. It was altogether by means of magnetic remedies that he had succeeded

in alleviating the acute pains of his patient; and this success had very naturally inspired the latter with a

certain degree of confidence in the opinions from which the remedies had been educed. The doctor, however,

like all enthusiasts, had struggled hard to make a thorough convert of his pupil, and finally so far gained his

point as to induce the sufferer to submit to numerous experiments. By a frequent repetition of these, a result

had arisen, which of late days has become so common as to attract little or no attention, but which, at the

period of which I write, had very rarely been known in America. I mean to say, that between Dr Templeton

and Bedloe there had grown up, little by little, a very distinct and stronglymarked rapport, or magnetic

relation. I am not prepared to assert, however, that this rapport extended beyond the limits of the simple

sleepproducing power; but this power itself had attained great intensity. At the first attempt to induce the

magnetic somnolency, the mesmerist entirely failed. In the fifth or sixth he succeeded very partially, and after

longcontinued effort. Only at the twelfth was the triumph complete. After this the will of the patient

succumbed rapidly to that of the physician, so that, when I first became acquainted with the two, sleep was

brought about almost instantaneously by the mere volition of the operator, even when the invalid was

unaware of his presence. It is only now, in the year 1845, when similar miracles are witnessed daily by

thousands, that I dare venture to record this apparent impossibility as a matter of serious fact.

The temperature of Bedloe was in the highest degree sensitive, excitable, enthusiastic. His imagination was

singularly vigorous and creative; and no doubt it derived additional force from the habitual use of morphine,

which he swallowed in great quantity, and without which he would have found it impossible to exist. It was

his practice to take a very large dose of it immediately after breakfast each morning,or, rather, immediately

after a cup of strong coffee, for he ate nothing in the forenoon,and then set forth alone, or attended only by

a dog, upon a long ramble among the chain of wild and dreary hills that lie westward and southward of

Upon a dim, warm, misty day, toward the close of November, and during the strange interregnum of the

seasons which in America is termed the Indian summer, Mr Bedloe departed as usual for the hills. The day

About eight o'clock at night, having become seriously alarmed at his protracted absence, we were about

setting out in search of him, when he unexpectedly made his appearance, in health no worse than usual, and

in rather more than ordinary spirits. The account which he gave of his expedition, and of the events which

'You will remember,' said he, 'that it was about nine in the morning when I left Charlottesville. I bent my

steps immediately to the mountains, and, about ten, entered a gorge which was entirely new to me. I followed

the windings of this pass with much interest. The scenery which presented itself on all sides, although

scarcely entitled to be called grand, had about it an indescribable and to me a delicious aspect of dreary

desolation. The solitude seemed absolutely virgin. I could not help believing that the green sods and the grey

rocks upon which I trod had been trodden never before by the foot of a human being. So entirely secluded,

and in fact inaccessible, except through a series of accidents, is the entrance of the ravine, that it is by no

means impossible that I was the first adventurerthe very first and sole adventurer who had ever penetrated

'The thick and peculiar mist, or smoke, which distinguishes the Indian summer, and which now hung heavily

over all objects, served, no doubt, to deepen the vague impressions which these objects created. So dense was

this pleasant fog that I could at no time see more than a dozen yards of the path before me. This path was

excessively sinuous, and as the sun could not be seen, I soon lost all idea of the direction in which I

journeyed. In the meantime the morphine had its customary effectthat of enduing all the external world

with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leafin the hue of a blade of grassin the shape of a

trefoilin the humming of a beein the gleaming of a dewdrop in the breathing of the windin the

faint odours that came from the forestthere came a whole universe of suggestiona gay and motley train

'Busied in this, I walked on for several hours, during which the mist deepened around me to so great an extent

that at length I was reduced to an absolute groping of the way. And now an indescribable uneasiness

possessed mea species of nervous hesitation and tremor. I feared to tread, lest I should be precipitated into

some abyss. I remembered, too, strange stories told about these Ragged Hills, and of the uncouth and fierce

races of men who tenanted their groves and caverns. A thousand vague fancies oppressed and disconcerted

mefancies the more distressing because vague. Very suddenly my attention was arrested by the loud

'My amazement was, of course, extreme. A drum in these hills was a thing unknown. I could not have been

more surprised at the sound of the trump of the Archangel. But a new and still more astounding source of

interest and perplexity arose. There came a wild rattling or jingling sound, as if of a bunch of large keys, and

upon the instant a duskyvisaged and halfnaked man rushed past me with a shriek. He came so close to my

person that I felt his hot breath upon my face. He bore in one hand an instrument composed of an assemblage

of steel rings, and shook them vigorously as he ran. Scarcely had he disappeared in the mist, before, panting

after him, with open mouth and glaring eyes, there darted a huge beast. I could not be mistaken in its

'The sight of this monster rather relieved than heightened my terrorsfor I now made sure that I dreamed,

and endeavoured to arouse myself to waking consciousness. I stepped boldly and briskly forward. I rubbed

my eyes. I called aloud. I pinched my limbs. A small spring of water presented itself to my view, and here,

stooping, I bathed my hands and my head and neck. This seemed to dissipate the equivocal sensations which

had hitherto annoyed me. I arose, as I thought, a new man, and proceeded steadily and complacently on my

'At length, quite overcome by exertion, and by a certain oppressive closeness of the atmosphere, I seated

myself beneath a tree. Presently there came a feeble gleam of sunshine, and the shadow of the leaves of the

tree fell faintly but definitely upon the grass. At this shadow I gazed wonderingly for many minutes. Its

'I now rose hurriedly, and in a state of fearful agitation for the fancy that I dreamed would serve me no

longer. I sawI felt that I had perfect command of my sensesand these senses now brought to my soul a

world of novel and singular sensation. The heat became all at once intolerable. A strange odour loaded the

breeze. A low, continuous murmur, like that arising from a full, but gently flowing river, came to my ears,

'While I listened in an extremity of astonishment which I need not attempt to describe, a strong and brief gust

'I found myself at the foot of a high mountain, and looking down into a vast plain, through which wound a

majestic river. On the margin of this river stood an Easternlooking city, such as we read of in the Arabian

Tales, but of a character even more singular than any there described. From my position, which was far above

the level of the town, I could perceive its every nook and corner, as if delineated on a map. The streets

seemed innumerable, and crossed each other irregularly in all directions, but were rather long winding alleys

than streets, and absolutely swarmed with inhabitants. The houses were wildly picturesque. On every hand

was a wilderness of balconies, of verandas, of minarets, of shrines, and fantastically carved oriels. Bazaars

abounded; and there were displayed rich wares in infinite variety and profusionsilks, muslins, the most

dazzling cutlery, the most magnificent jewels and gems. Besides these things, were seen, on all sides, banners

and palanquins, litters with stately dames closeveiled, elephants gorgeously caparisoned, idols grotesquely

hewn, drums, banners, and gongs, spears, silver and gilded maces. And amid the crowd, and the clamour, and

the general intricacy and confusionamid the million of black and yellow men, turbaned and robed, and of

flowing beard, there roamed a countless multitude of holy filleted bulls, while vast legions of the filthy but

sacred ape clambered, chattering and shrieking, about the cornices of the mosques, or clung to the minarets

and oriels. From the swarming streets to the banks of the river, there descended innumerable flights of steps

leading to bathing places, while the river itself seemed to force a passage with difficulty through the vast

fleets of deeply burdened ships that far and wide encountered its surface. Beyond the limits of the city arose,

in frequent majestic groups, the palm and the cocoa, with other gigantic and weird trees of vast age; and here

and there might be seen a field of rice, the thatched hut of a peasant, a tank, a stray temple, a gipsy camp, or a

solitary graceful maiden taking her way, with a pitcher upon her head, to the banks of the magnificent river.

'You will say now, of course, that I dreamed; but not so. What I sawwhat I heardwhat I feltwhat I

thoughthad about it nothing of the unmistakable idiosyncrasy of the dream. All was rigorously

selfconsistent. At first, doubting that I was really awake, I entered into a series of tests, which soon

convinced me that I really was. Now when one dreams, and, in the dream, suspects that he dreams, the

suspicion never fails to confirm itself, and the sleeper is almost immediately aroused. Thus Novalis errs not

in saying that "we are near waking when we dream that we dream". Had the vision occurred to me as I

describe it, without my suspecting it as a dream, then a dream it might absolutely have been, but, occurring as

it did, and suspected and tested as it was, I am forced to class it among other phenomena.'

'In this I am not sure that you are wrong,' observed Dr Templeton, 'but proceed. You arose and descended

'I arose,' continued Bedloe, regarding the Doctor with an air of profound astonishment, 'I arose as you say,

and descended into the city. On my way I fell in with an immense populace, crowding through every avenue,

all in the same direction, and exhibiting in every action the wildest excitement. Very suddenly, and by some

inconceivable impulse, I became intensely imbued with personal interest in what was going on. I seemed to

feel that I had an important part to play, without exactly understanding what it was. Against the crowd which

environed me, however, I experienced a deep sentiment of animosity. I shrank from amid them, and, swiftly,

by a circuitous path, reached and entered the city. Here all was the wildest tumult and contention. A small

party of men, clad in garments half Indian, half European, and officered by gentlemen in a uniform partly

British, were engaged, at great odds, with the swarming rabble of the allies. I joined the weaker party, arming

myself with the weapons of a fallen officer, and fighting I knew not whom with the nervous ferocity of

despair. We were soon overpowered by numbers, and driven to seek refuge in a species of kiosk. Here we

barricaded ourselves, and, for the present, were secure. From a loophole near the summit of the kiosk, I

perceived a vast crowd, in furious agitation, surrounding and assaulting a gay palace that overhung the river.

Presently, from an upper window of this palace, there descended an effeminatelooking person, by means of

a string made of the turbans of his attendants. A boat was at hand in which he escaped to the opposite bank of

'And now a new object took possession of my soul. I spoke a few hurried but energetic words to my

companions, and, having succeeded in gaining over a few of them to my purpose, made a frantic sally from

the kiosk. We rushed amid the crowd that surrounded it. They retreated, at first, before us. They rallied,

fought madly, and retreated again. In the meantime we were borne far from the kiosk, and became bewildered

and entangled among the narrow streets of tall, overhanging houses, into the recesses of which the sun had

never been able to shine. The rabble pressed impetuously upon us, harassing us with their spears, and

overwhelming us with flights of arrows. These latter were very remarkable, and resembled in some respects

the writhing creese of the Malay. They were made to imitate the body of a creeping serpent, and were long

and black, with a poisoned barb. One of them struck me upon the right temple. I reeled and fell. An

'You will hardly persist now,' said I, smiling, 'that the whole of your adventure was not a dream. You are not

When I said these words, I of course expected some lively sally from Bedloe in reply; but, to my

astonishment, he hesitated, trembled, became fearfully pallid, and remained silent. I looked towards

Templeton. He was erect and rigid in his chairhis teeth chattered, and his eyes were staring from their

'For many minutes,' continued the latter, 'my sole sentimentmy sole feelingwas that of darkness and

nonentity, with the consciousness of death. At length there seemed to pass a violent and sudden shock

through my soul, as if of electricity. With it came the sense of elasticity and of light. This latter I feltnot

saw. In an instant I seemed to rise from the ground. But I had no bodily, no visible, audible, or palpable

presence. The crowd had departed. The tumult had ceased. The city was in comparative repose. Beneath me

lay my corpse, with the arrow in my temple, the whole head greatly swollen and disfigured. But all these

things I feltnot saw. I took interest in nothing. Even the corpse seemed a matter in which I had no concern.

Volition I had none, but appeared to be impelled into motion, and flitted buoyantly out of the city, retracing

the circuitous path by which I had entered it. When I had attained that point of the ravine in the mountains at

which I had encountered the hyena, I again experienced a shock as of a galvanic battery; the sense of weight,

of volition, of substance, returned. I became my original self, and bent my step eagerly homewardbut the

past had not lost the vividness of the realand not now, even for an instant, can I compel my understanding

'Nor was it,' said Templeton, with an air of deep solemnity, 'yet it would be difficult to say how otherwise it

should be termed. Let us suppose only, that the soul of the man of today is upon the verge of some

stupendous psychal discoveries. Let us content ourselves with this supposition. For the rest I have some

explanation to make. Here is a watercolour drawing, which I should have shown you before, but which an

We looked at the picture which he presented. I saw nothing in it of an extraordinary character; but its effect

upon Bedloe was prodigious. He nearly fainted as he gazed. And yet it was but a miniature portraita

miraculously accurate one, to be sureof his own very remarkable features. At least this was my thought as I

'You will perceive', said Templeton, 'the date of this pictureit is here, scarcely visible, in this

corner1780. In this year was the portrait taken. It is the likeness of a dead frienda Mr Oldebto whom

I became much attached at Calcutta, during the administration of Warren Hastings. I was then only twenty

years old. When I first saw you, Mr Bedloe, at Saratoga, it was the miraculous similarity which existed

between yourself and the painting which induced me to accost you, to seek your friendship, and to bring

about those arrangements which resulted in my becoming your constant companion. In accomplishing this

point, I was urged partly, and perhaps principally, by a regretful memory of the deceased, but also, in part, by

'In your detail of the vision which presented itself to you amid the hills, you have described, with the minutest

accuracy, the Indian city of Benares, upon the Holy River. The riots, the combat, the massacre, were the

actual events of the insurrection of Cheyte Sing, which took place in 1780, when Hastings was put in

imminent peril of his life. The man escaping by the string of turbans was Cheyte Sing himself. The party in

the kiosk were sepoys and British officers, headed by Hastings. Of this party I was one, and did all I could do

to prevent the rash and fatal sally of the officer who fell, in the crowded alleys, by the poisoned arrow of a

Bengalee. That officer was my dearest friend. It was Oldeb. You will perceive by these manuscripts' (here the

speaker produced a notebook in which several pages appeared to have been freshly written), 'that at the very

period in which you fancied these things amid the hills I was engaged in detailing them upon paper here at

In about a week after this conversation, the following paragraphs appeared in a Charlottesville paper:

We have the painful duty of announcing the death of Mr AUGUSTUS BEDLO, a gentleman whose amiable

manners and many virtues have long endeared him to the citizens of Charlottesville.

Mr B., for some years past, has been subject to neuralgia, which has often threatened to terminate fatally; but

this can be regarded only as the mediate cause of his decease. The proximate cause was one of especial

singularity. In an excursion to the Ragged Mountains, a few days since, a slight cold and fever were

contracted, attended with great determination of blood to the head. To relieve this, Dr Templeton resorted to

topical bleeding. Leeches were applied to the temples. In a fearfully brief period the patient died, when it

appeared that, in the jar containing the leeches, had been introduced, by accident, one of the venomous

vermicular sangsues which are now and then found in the neighbouring ponds. This creature fastened itself

upon a small artery in the right temple. Its close resemblance to the medicinal leech caused the mistake to be

N.B. The poisonous sangsue of Charlottesville may always be distinguished from the medicinal leech by

its blackness, and especially by its writhing or vermicular motions, which very nearly resemble those of a

I was speaking with the editor of the paper in question, upon the topic of this remarkable accident, when it

occurred to me to ak how it happened that the name of the deceased had been given as Bedlo.

'I presume,' said I, 'you have authority for this spelling, but I have always supposed the name to be written

'Authority?no,' he replied. 'It is a mere typographical error. The name is Bedlo with an e, all the world

'Then,' said I mutteringly, as I turned upon my heel, 'then indeed has it come to pass that one truth is stranger

than any fictionfor Bedlo, without the e, what is it but Oldeb conversed? And this man tells me it is a

[Astounding News by Express, Norfolk! The Atlantic Crossed in Three Days! Signal Triumph of

Mr Monck Mason's Flying Machine! Arrival at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, S.C., of Mr Mason, Mr

Robert Holland, Mr Henson, Mr Harrison Ainsworth, and four others, in the Steering Balloon, ,

after a passage of Seventyfive hours from Land to Land! Full Particulars of the Voyage!]

The subjoined with the preceding heading in magnificent capitals, well interspersed with

notes of admiration, was originally published, as matter of fact, in the , a daily newspaper,

and therein fully subserved the purpose of creating indigestible aliment for the during the few

hours intervening between a couple of the Charleston mails. The rush for the 'sole paper which had the news',

was something beyond even the prodigious; and, in fact, if (as some assert) the not

absolutely accomplish the voyage recorded, it will be difficult to assign a reason why she not have

The great problem is at length solved! The air, as well as the earth and the ocean, has been subdued by

science, and will become a common and convenient highway for mankind. <i The Atlantic has been actually

crossed in a Balloon!> and this too without difficultywithout any great apparent dangerwith thorough

control of the machineand in the inconceivably brief period of seventyfive hours from shore to shore! By

the energy of an agent at Charleston, S.C., we are enabled to be the first to furnish the public with a detailed

account of this most extraordinary voyage, which was performed between Saturday, the 6th instant, at 11

A.M., and 2 P.M., on Tuesday, the 9th instant, by Sir Everard Bringhurst; Mr Osborne, a nephew of Lord

Bentinck's; Mr Monck Mason and Mr Robert Holland, the wellknown aeronauts; Mr Harrison Ainsworth,

author of , etc.; and Mr Henson, the projector of the late unsuccessful flying

machinewith two seamen from Woolwichin all, eight persons. The particulars furnished below may be

relied on as authentic and accurate in every respect, as, with a slight exception, they are copied

from the joint diaries of Mr Monck Mason and Mr Harrison Ainsworth, to whose politeness our agent is

indebted for much verbal information respecting the balloon itself, its construction, and other matters of

interest. The only alteration in the MS received, has been made for the purpose of throwing the hurried

'Two very decided failures, of late,those of Mr Henson and Sir George Cayley,had much weakened the

public interest in the subject of aerial navigation. Mr Henson's scheme (which at first was considered very

feasible even by men of science) was founded upon the principle of an inclined plane, started from an

eminence by an extrinsic force applied and continued by the revolution of impinging vanes in form and

number resembling the vanes of a windmill. But, in all the experiments made with models at the Adelaide

Gallery, it was found that the operation of these fans not only did not propel the machine, but actually

impeded its flight. The only propelling force it ever exhibited, was the mere acquired from the

descent of the inclined plane; and this carried the machine further when the vanes were at rest,

than when they were in motiona fact which sufficiently demonstrates their inutility; and in the absence of

the propelling, which was also the , power, the whole fabric would necessarily descend. This

consideration led Sir George Cayley to think only of adapting a propeller to some machine having of itself an

independent power of supportin a word, to a balloon; the idea however, being novel, or original, with Sir

George, only so far as regards the mode of its application to practice. He exhibited a model of his invention at

the Polytechnic Institution. The propelling principle, or power, was here, also, applied to interrupted surfaces,

or vanes, put in revolution. These vanes were four in number, but were found entirely ineffectual in moving

the balloon, or in aiding its ascending power. The whole project was thus a complete failure.

'It was at this juncture that Mr Monck Mason (whose voyage from Dover to Weilburg in the balloon, <i

Nassau>, occasioned so much excitement in 1837) conceived the idea of employing the principle of the

Archimedean screw for the purpose of propulsion through the airrightly attributing the failure of Mr

Henson's scheme, and of Sir George Cayley's to the interruption of surface in the independent vanes. He

made the first public experiment at Willis's Rooms, but afterward removed his model to the Adelaide Gallery.

'Like Sir George Cayley's balloon, his own was an ellipsoid. Its length was thirteen feet six inchesheight,

six feet eight inches. It contained about three hundred and twenty cubic feet of gas, which, if pure hydrogen,

would support twentyone pounds upon its first inflation, before the gas has time to deteriorate or escape.

The weight of the whole machine and apparatus was seventeen poundsleaving about four pounds to spare.

Beneath the centre of the balloon, was a frame of light wood, about nine feet long, and rigged on to the

balloon itself with a network in the customary manner. From this framework was suspended a wicker basket

'The screw consists of an axis of hollow brass tube, eighteen inches in length, through which, upon a

semispiral inclined at fifteen degrees, pass a series of steelwire radii, two feet long, and thus projecting a

foot on either side. These radii are connected at the outer extremities by two bands of flattened wire the

whole in this manner forming the framework of the screw, which is completed by a covering of oiled silk cut

into gores, and tightened so as to present a tolerably uniform surface. At each end of its axis this screw is

supported by pillars of hollow brass tube descending from the hoop. In the lower ends of these tubes are holes

in which the pivots of the axis revolve. From the end of the axis which is next the car, proceeds a shaft of

steel, connecting the screw with the pinion of a piece of spring machinery fixed in the car. By the operation

of this spring, the screw is made to revolve with great rapidity, communicating a progressive motion to the

whole. By means of the rudder, the machine was readily turned in any direction. The spring was of great

power, compared with its dimensions, being capable of raising fortyfive pounds upon a barrel of four inches

diameter after the first turn, and gradually increasing as it was wound up. It weighed, altogether, eight pounds

six ounces. The rudder was a light frame of cane covered with silk, shaped somewhat like a battledore, and

was about three feet long, and at the widest, one foot. Its weight was about two ounces. It could be turned <i

flat>, and directed upward or downward, as well as to the right or left; and thus enabled the aeronaut to

transfer the resistance of the air which in an inclined position it must generate in its passage, to any side upon

which he might desire to act; thus determining the balloon in the opposite direction.

'This model (which, through want of time, we have necessarily described in an imperfect manner) was put in

action at the Adelaide Gallery, where it accomplished a velocity of five miles per hour; although, strange to

say, it excited very little interest in comparison with the previous complex machine of Mr Hensonso

resolute is the world to despise anything which carries with it an air of simplicity. To accomplish the great

desideratum of aerial navigation, it was very generally supposed that some exceedingly complicated

'So well satisfied, however, was Mr Mason of the ultimate success of his invention, that he determined to

construct immediately, if possible, a balloon of sufficient capacity to test the question by a voyage of some

extentthe original design being to cross the British Channel, as before, in the balloon. To carry

out his views he solicited and obtained the patronage of Sir Everard Bringhurst and Mr Osborne, two

gentlemen well known for scientific acquirement, and especially for the interest they have exhibited in the

progress of aerostation. The project at the desire of Mr Osborne, was kept a profound secret from the

public the only persons entrusted with the design being those actually engaged in the construction of the

machine, which was built (under the superintendence of Mr Mason, Mr Holland, Sir Everard Bringhurst, and

Mr Osborne) at the seat of the latter gentleman near Penstruthal, in Wales. Mr Henson, accompanied by his

friend Mr Ainsworth, was admitted to a private view of the balloon, on Saturday lastwhen the two

gentlemen made final arrangements to be included in the adventure. We are not informed for what reason the

two seamen were also included in the party but, in the course of a day or two, we shall put our readers in

'The balloon is composed of silk, varnished with the liquid gum caoutchouc. It is of vast dimensions,

containing more than 40,000 cubic feet of gas; but as coalgas was employed in place of the more expensive

and inconvenient hydrogen, the supporting power of the machine, when fully inflated, and immediately after

inflation, is not more than about 2500 pounds. The coalgas is not only much less costly, but is easily

'For its introduction into common use for purposes of aerostation, we are indebted to Mr Charles Green. Up

to his discovery, the process of inflation was not only exceedingly expensive, but uncertain. Two and even

three days have frequently been wasted in futile attempts to procure a sufficiency of hydrogen to fill a

balloon, from which it had great tendency to escape, owing to its extreme subtlety, and its affinity for the

surrounding atmosphere. In a balloon sufficiently perfect to retain its contents of coalgas unaltered, in

quality or amount for six months, an equal quantity of hydrogen could not be maintained in equal purity for

'The supporting power being estimated at 2500 pounds, and the united weights of the party amounting only to

about 1200, there was left a surplus of 1300, of which again 1200 was exhausted by ballast, arranged in bags

of different sizes, with their respective weights marked upon themby cordage, barometers, telescopes,

barrels containing provision for a fortnight, watercasks, cloaks, carpetbags, and various other indispensable

matters, including a coffeewarmer, contrived for warming coffee by means of slacklime, so as to dispense

altogether with fire, if it should be judged prudent to do so. All these articles, with the exception of the

ballast, and a few trifles, were suspended from the hoop overhead. The car is much smaller and lighter, in

proportion, than the one appended to the model. It is formed of a light wicker, and is wonderfully strong, for

so fraillooking a machine. Its rim is about four feet deep. The rudder is also very much larger, in proportion,

than that of the model; and the screw is considerably smaller. The balloon is furnished besides with a grapnel,

and a guiderope; which latter is of the most indispensable importance. A few words, in explanation, will

here be necessary for such of our readers as are not conversant with the details of aerostation.

'As soon as the balloon quits the earth, it is subjected to the influence of many circumstances tending to create

a difference in its weight; augmenting or diminishing its ascending power. For example, there may be a

deposition of dew upon the silk, to the extent, even of several hundred pounds; ballast has then to be thrown

out, or the machine may descend. This ballast being discarded, and a clear sunshine evaporating the dew, and

at the same time expanding the gas in the silk, the whole will again rapidly ascend. To check this ascent, the

only resource is (or rather , until Mr Green's invention of the guiderope) the permission of the

escape of gas from the valve; but, in the loss of gas, is a proportionate general loss of ascending power; so

that, in a comparatively brief period, the bestconstructed balloon must necessarily exhaust all its resources,

'The guiderope remedies the difficulty in the simplest matter conceivable. It is merely a very long rope

which is suffered to trail from the car, and the effect of which is to prevent the balloon from changing its

level in any material degree. If, for example, there should be a deposition of moisture upon the silk, and the

machine begins to descend in consequence, there will be no necessity for discharging ballast to remedy the

increase in weight, for it is remedied, or counteracted, in an exactly just proportion, by the deposit on the

ground of just so much of the end of the rope as is necessary. If, on the other hand, any circumstances should

cause undue levity, and consequent ascent, this levity is immediately counteracted by the additional weight of

rope upraised from the earth. Thus, the balloon can neither ascend nor descend, except within very narrow

limits, and its resources, either in gas or ballast, remain comparatively unimpaired. When passing over an

expanse of water, it becomes necessary to employ kegs of copper or wood, filled with liquid ballast of a

lighter nature than water. These float, and serve all the purposes of a mere rope on land. Another most

important office of the guiderope, is to point out the , either

on land or sea, while the balloon is free; the latter, consequently, is always in advance, when any progress

whatever is made: a comparison, therefore, by means of the compass, of the relative positions of the two

objects, will always indicate the . In the same way, the angle formed by the rope with the verticle

axis of the machine, indicates the . When there is anglein other words, when the rope

hangs perpendicularly, the whole apparatus is stationary; but the larger the angle, that is to say, the farther the

balloon precedes the end of the rope, the greater the velocity; and the converse.

'As the original design was to cross the British Channel, and alight as near Paris as possible, the voyagers had

taken the precaution to prepare themselves with passports directed to all parts of the Continent, specifying the

nature of the expedition, as in the case of the voyage, and entitling the adventurers to exemption

from the usual formalities of office; unexpected events, however, rendered these passports superfluous.

'The inflation was commenced very quietly at daybreak, on Saturday morning, the 6th instant, in the

courtyard of WhealVor House, Mr Osborne's seat, about a mile from Penstruthal, in North Wales; and at

seven minutes past eleven, everything being ready for departure, the balloon was set free, rising gently but

steadily, in a direction nearly south; no use being made, for the first half hour, of either the screw or the

rudder. We proceed now with the journal, as transcribed by Mr Forsyth from the joint MSS of Mr Monck

Mason and Mr Ainsworth. The body of the journal, as given, is in the handwriting of Mr Mason, and a PS is

appended, each day, by Mr Ainsworth, who has in preparation, and will shortly give the public a more minute

'.Every preparation likely to embarrass us having been made overnight, we

commenced the inflation this morning at daybreak; but owing to a thick fog, which encumbered the folds of

the silk and rendered it unmanageable, we did not get through before nearly eleven o'clock. Cut loose, then,

in high spirits, and rose gently but steadily, with a light breeze at north, which bore us in the direction of the

British Channel. Found the ascending force greater than we had expected; and as we arose higher and so got

clear of the cliffs, and more in the sun's rays, our ascent became very rapid. I did not wish, however, to lose

gas at so early a period of the adventure, and so concluded to ascend for the present. We soon ran out our

guiderope; but even when we had raised it clear of the earth, we still went up very rapidly. The balloon was

unusually steady, and looked beautifully. In about ten minutes after starting, the barometer indicated an

altitude of 15,000 feet. The weather was remarkably fine, and the view of the subjacent country a most

romantic one when seen from any pointwas now especially sublime. The numerous deep gorges presented

the appearance of lakes, on account of the dense vapours with which they were filled, and the pinnacles and

crags to the southwest, piled in extricable confusion resembling nothing so much as the giant cities of

Eastern fable. We were rapidly approaching the mountains in the south, but our elevation was more than

sufficient to enable us to pass them in safety. In a few minutes we soared over them in fine style; and Mr

Ainsworth, with the seamen, was surprised at their apparent want of altitude when viewed from the car, the

tendency of great elevation in a balloon being to reduce inequalities of the surface below, to nearly a dead

level. At halfpast eleven still proceeding nearly south, we obtained our first view of the British Channel;

and, in fifteen minutes afterwards, the line of breakers on the coast appeared immediately beneath us, and we

were fairly out at sea. We now resolved to let off enough gas to bring our guiderope, with the buoys affixed,

into the water. This was immediately done, and we commenced a gradual descent. In about twenty minutes

our first buoy dipped, and at the touch of the second soon afterward, we remained stationary as to elevation.

We were all now anxious to test the efficiency of the rudder and screw, and we put them both into requisition

forthwith, for the purpose of altering our direction more to the eastward, and in a line for Paris. By means of

the rudder we instantly effected the necessary change of direction, and our course was brought nearly at right

angles to that of the wind; then we set in motion the spring of the screw, and were rejoiced to find it propel as

readily as desired. Upon this we gave nine hearty cheers, and dropped in the sea a bottle, inclosing a slip of

parchment with a brief account of the principle of the invention. Hardly, however, had we done with our

rejoicings, when an unforeseen accident occurred which discouraged us in no little degree. The steel rod

connecting the spring with the propeller was suddenly jerked out of place, at the car end (by a swaying of the

car through some movement of one of the two seamen we had taken up), and in an instant hung dangling out

of reach, from the pivot of the axis of the screw. While we were endeavouring to regain it, our attention being

completely absorbed, we became involved in a strong current of wind from the east, which bore us, with

rapidly increasing force, toward the Atlantic. We soon found ourselves driving out to sea at the rate of not

less, certainly, than fifty or sixty miles an hour, so that we came up with Cape Clear, at some forty miles to

our north, before we had secured the rod, and had time to think what we were about. It was now that Mr

Ainsworth made an extraordinary but, to my fancy, a by no means unreasonable or chimerical proposition, in

which he was instantly seconded by Mr Hollandviz.: that we should take advantage of the strong gale

which bore us on, and in place of beating back to Paris, make an attempt to reach the coast of North America.

After slight reflection I gave a willing assent to this bold proposition, which (strange to say) met with

objection from the two seamen only. As the stronger party, however, we overruled their fears, and kept

resolutely upon our course. We steered due west; but as the trailing of the buoys materially impeded our

progress, and we had the balloon abundantly at command, either for ascent or descent, we first threw out fifty

pounds of ballast, and then wound up (by means of the windlass) so much of the rope as brought it quite clear

of the sea. We perceived the effect of this manoeuvre immediately, in a vastly increased rate of progress; and,

as the gale freshened, we flew with a velocity nearly inconceivable; the guiderope flying out behind the car,

like a streamer from a vessel. It is needless to say that a very short time sufficed us to lose sight of the coast.

We passed over innumerable vessels of all kinds, a few of which were endeavouring to beat up, but the most

of them lying to. We occasioned the greatest excitement on board allan excitement greatly relished by

ourselves, and especially by our two men, who, now under the influence of a dram of Geneva, seemed

resolved to give all scruple, or fear, to the wind. Many of the vessels fired signal guns; and in all we were

saluted with loud cheers (which we heard with surprising distinctness) and the waving of caps and

handkerchiefs. We kept on in this manner throughout the day with no material incident, and, as the shades of

night closed around us, we made a rough estimate of the distance traversed. It could not have been less than

five hundred miles, and was probably much more. The propeller was kept in constant operation, and, no

doubt, aided our progress materially. As the sun went down, the gale freshened into an absolute hurricane,

and the ocean beneath was clearly visible on account of its phosphorescence. The wind was from the east all

night, and gave us the brightest omen of success. We suffered no little from cold, and the dampness of the

atmosphere was most unpleasant; but the ample space in the car enabled us to lie down, and by means of

'PS [by Mr Ainsworth.] The last nine hours have been unquestionably the most exciting of my life. I can

conceive nothing more sublimating than the strange peril and novelty of an adventure such as this. May God

grant that we succeed! I ask not success for mere safety to my insignificant person, but for the sake of human

knowledge andfor the vastness of the triumph. And yet the feat is only so evidently feasible that the sole

wonder is why men have scrupled to attempt it before. One single gale such as now befriends uslet such a

tempest whirl forward a balloon for four or five days (these gales often last longer) and the voyager will be

easily borne, in that period, from coast to coast. In view of such a gale the broad Atlantic becomes a mere

lake. I am more struck, just now, with the supreme silence which reigns in the sea beneath us,

notwithstanding its agitation, than with any other phenomenon presenting itself. The waters give up no voice

to the heavens. The immense flaming ocean writhes and is tortured uncomplainingly. The mountainous

surges suggest the idea of innumerable dumb gigantic fiends struggling in impotent agony. In a night such as

is this to me, a man lives a whole century of ordinary lifenor would I forego this rapturous

'. [Mr Mason's MS.] This morning the gale, by ten, had subsided to an eight or nineknot

breeze (for a vessel at sea), and bears us, perhaps, thirty miles per hour, or more. It has veered, however, very

considerably to the north; and now, at sundown, we are holding our course due west, principally by the screw

and rudder, which answer their purposes to admiration. I regard the project as thoroughly successful, and the

easy navigation of the air in any direction (not exactly in the teeth of a gale) as no longer problematical. We

could not have made head against the strong wind of yesterday; but, by ascending, we might have got out of

its influence, if requisite. Against a pretty stiff breeze, I feel convinced, we can make our way with the

propeller. At noon, today, ascended to an elevation of nearly 25,000 feet, by discharging ballast. Did this to

search for a more direct current, but found none so favourable as the one we are now in. We have an

abundance of gas to take us across this small pond, even should the voyage last three weeks. I have not the

slightest fear for the result. The difficulty has been strangely exaggerated and misapprehended. I can choose

my current, and should I find currents against me, I can make very tolerable headway with the

'PS [By Mr Ainsworth.] I have little to record, except the fact (to me quite a surprising one), that, at an

elevation equal to that of Cotopaxi, I experienced neither intense cold, nor headache, nor difficulty of

breathing; neither, I find, did Mr Mason, nor Mr Holland, nor Sir Everard. Mr Osborne complained of

constriction of the chestbut this soon wore off. We have flown at a great rate during the day, and we must

be more than half way across the Atlantic. We have passed over some twenty or thirty vessels of various

kinds, and all seem to be delightfully astonished. Crossing the ocean in a balloon is not so difficult a feat after

all. at 25,000 feet elevation the sky appears nearly black, and the

stars are distinctly visible; while the sea does not seem convex (as one might suppose) but absolutely and

'. [Mr Mason's MS.] This morning we had again some little trouble with the rod of the

propeller, which must be entirely remodelled, for fear of serious accidentI mean the steel rod, not the

vanes. The latter could not be improved. The wind has been blowing steadily and strongly from the

northeast all day; and so far fortune seems bent upon favouring us. Just before day, we were all somewhat

alarmed at some odd noises and concussions in the balloon, accompanied with the apparent rapid subsidence

of the whole machine. These phenomena were occasioned by the expansion of the gas, through increase of

heat in the atmosphere, and the consequent disruption of the minute particles of ice with which the network

had become encrusted during the night. Threw down several bottles to the vessels below. See one of them

picked up by a large shipseemingly one of the New York line packets. Endeavoured to make out her name,

but could not be sure of it. Mr Osborne's telescope made it out something like . It is now twelve

at night, and we are still going nearly west, at a rapid pace. The sea is peculiarly phosphorescent.

'PS [By Mr Ainsworth.] It is now two A.M., and nearly calm, as well as I can judgebut it is very difficult

to determine this point, since we move the air so completely. I have not slept since quitting

WhealVor, but can stand it no longer, and must take a nap. We cannot be far from the American coast.

<1> NOTEMr Ainsworth has not attempted to account for this phenomenon, which, however, is quite

susceptible of explanation. A line dropped from an elevation of 25,000 feet, perpendicularly to the surface of

the earth (or sea), would form the perpendicular of a rightangled triangle, of which the base would extend

from the right angle to the horizon, and the hypothenuse from the horizon to the balloon. But the 25,000 feet

of altitude is little or nothing, in comparison with the extent of the prospect. In other words, the base and

hypothenuse of the supposed triangle would be so long, when compared with the perpendicular, that the two

former may be regarded as nearly parallel. In this manner the horizon of the aeronaut would appear to be <i

on a level> with the car. But, as the point immediately beneath him seems, and is, at a great distance below

him, it seems, of course, also, at a great distance below the horizon. Hence the impression of ;

and this impression must remain, until the elevation shall bear so great a proportion to the extent of prospect,

that the apparent parallelism of the base and hypothenuse disappearswhen the earth's real convexity must

. The great problem is accomplished. We have crossed the

Atlanticfairly and crossed it in a balloon! God be praised! Who shall say that anything is

The Journal here ceases. Some particulars of the descent were communicated, however, by Mr Ainsworth to

Mr Forsyth. It was nearly dead calm when the voyagers first came in view of the coast, which was

immediately recognized by both the seamen, and by Mr Osborne. The latter gentleman having acquaintances

at Fort Moultrie, it was immediately resolved to descend in its vicinity. The balloon was brought over the

beach (the tide being out and the sand hard, smooth, and admirably adapted for a descent) and the grapnel let

go, which took firm hold at once. The inhabitants of the island, and of the fort, thronged out, of course, to see

the balloon; but it was with the greatest difficulty that any one could be made to credit the actual voyage<i

the crossing of the Atlantic>. The grapnel caught at two P.M. precisely; and thus the whole voyage was

completed in seventyfive hours; or rather less, counting from shore to shore. No serious accident occurred.

No real danger was at any time apprehended. The balloon was exhausted and secured without trouble; and

when the MS from which this narrative is compiled was despatched from Charleston, the party were still at

Fort Moultrie. Their further intentions were not ascertained; but we can safely promise our readers some

additional information either on Monday or in the course of the next day, at furthest.

This is unquestionably the most stupendous, the most interesting, and the most important undertaking ever

accomplished or even attempted by man. What magnificent events may ensue, it would be useless now to

Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas. EBN

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow,

its hues are as various as the hues of the arch,as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the

wide horizon as the rainbow. How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?from the

covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is

sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which have their

My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more

timehonoured than my gloomy, grey, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in

many striking particularsin the character of the family mansionin the frescoes of the chief saloonin

the tapestries of the dormitoriesin the chiselling of some buttresses in the armorybut more especially in

the gallery of antique paintingsin the fashion of the library chamberand, lastly, in the very peculiar

nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.

The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumesof which

latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not

lived beforethat the soul has no previous existence. You deny it?let us not argue the matter. Convinced

myself, I seek not to convince. There is however, a remembrance of aerial formsof spiritual and meaning

eyesof sounds, musical yet sada remembrance which will not be excluded; a memory like a shadow,

vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while

In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity, at

once into the very regions of fairylandinto a palace of imaginationinto the wild dominions of monastic

thought and eruditionit is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye that I

loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie; but it singular that as years

rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers it is wonderful what

stagnation there fell upon the springs of my lifewonderful how total an inversion took place in the

character of my commonest thought. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only,

while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,not the material of my everyday

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls. Yet differently we grewI ill of

health, and buried in gloomshe agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers the ramble on the

hillsidemine the studies of the cloisterI living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the

most intense and painful meditationshe roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in

her path, or the silent flight of the ravenwinged hours. Berenice! I call upon her nameBerenice!and

from the grey ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is

her image before me now, as in the early days of her lightheartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic

beauty! Oh! sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim! Oh! Naiad among its fountains!and thenthen all is

mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Diseasea fatal diseasefell like the simoom upon

her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her

habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of her

person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victimwhere was she? I knew her notor knew her no

Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a

revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most

distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in

itselftrance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in

most instances, startlingly abrupt. In the meantime my own diseasefor I have been told that I should call it

by no other appellationmy own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac

character of a novel and extraordinary formhourly and momently gaining vigourand at length obtaining

over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid

irritability of those properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the . It is more than

probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in no manner possible to convey to the mind of

the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous with which, in my case,

the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried themselves, in the contemplation of

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device on the margin, or in the

typography of a book; to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day, in a quaint shadow falling

aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the door; to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a

lamp, or the embers of a fire; to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat

monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea

whatever to the mind; to lose all sense of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily

quiescence long and obstinately persevered in;such were a few of the most common and least pernicious

vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly

Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in

their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to

all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. It was not even, as might at

first be supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially

distinct and different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually <i

not> frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing

therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a daydream , he finds the <i

incitamentum> or first cause of his musings entirely vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object

was , although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted

and unreal importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in upon

the original object as a centre. The meditations were pleasurable; and, at the termination of the

reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest

which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised

were, with me, as I have said before, the , and are, with the daydreamer, the .

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived,

largely, in their imaginative and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I

well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio, <i De Amplitudine

Beati Regni Dei>; St Austin's great work, ; and Tertullian, , in

which the paradoxical sentence, '<i Mortuus est Dei filius; credibile est quia ineptum est: et sepultus

resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est>', occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and

Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that

oceancrag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which, steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and

the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And

although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her

unhappy malady, in the condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of

that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was

not in any degree the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and,

taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently and

bitterly upon the wonderworking means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to

pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have

occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my

disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the frame of

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange

anomaly of my existence, feelings with me of the heart, and my passions

of the mind. Through the grey of the early morningamong the trellised shadows of the forest at

noondayand in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen hernot as

the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dreamnot as a being of the earth, earthy, but as

the abstraction of such a beingnot as a thing to admire, but to analysenot as an object of love, but as the

theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And now I shuddered in her presence,

and grew pale at her approach; yet bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I called to mind that

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the

year,one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful

<1> For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement

inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes I saw that Berenice stood before me.

Was it my own excited imaginationor the misty influence of the atmosphereor the uncertain twilight of

the chamberor the grey draperies which fell around her figurethat caused in it so vacillating and

indistinct an outline? I could not tell. She spoke no word, and Inot for worlds could I have uttered a

syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming

curiosity pervaded my soul; and sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless and

motionless, with my eyes riveted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of

the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon the face.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once jetty hair fell partially over it, and

overshadowed the hollow temples with innumerable ringlets now of a vivid yellow, and jarring discordantly,

in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and

lustreless, and seemingly pupilless, and I shrank involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of

the thin and shrunken lips. They parted; and in a smile of peculiar meaning, of the changed

Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that,

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found that my cousin had departed from the chamber.

But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the

white and ghastly of the teeth. Not a speck on their surfacenot a shade on their enamelnot

an indenture in their edgesbut what that period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I

saw them even more unequivocally than I beheld them . The teeth!the teeth!they were

here, and there, and everywhere, and visibly and palpably before me; long, narrow, and excessively white,

with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came

the full fury of my , and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the

multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. For these I longed with a

phrenzied desire. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation.

Theythey alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of

my mental life. I held them in every light. I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics. I

dwelt upon their peculiarities. I pondered upon their conformation. I mused upon the alteration in their nature.

I shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by

the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Salle it has been well said, '<i que tous ses pas etaient

des sentiments>', and of Berenice I more seriously believed <i que toutes ses dents etaient des idees. Des

idees!> ah here was the idiotic thought that destroyed me! ah it was that I

coveted them so madly! I felt that their possession could alone ever restore me to peace, in giving me back to

And the evening closed in upon me thusand then the darkness came, and tarried, and wentand the day

again dawned and the mists of a second night were now gathering aroundand still I sat motionless in

that solitary room; and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the of the teeth maintained its

terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights

and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke in upon my dreams a cry as of horror and dismay; and

thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices, intermingled with many low moanings of

sorrow, or of pain. I arose from my seat and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, saw standing out

in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, who told me that Berenice wasno more. She had been

seized with epilepsy in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its

I found myself sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from

a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting

of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which intervened I had no positiveat least

no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was replete with horrorhorror more horrible from being vague,

and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over

with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decipher them, but in vain; while ever and

anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing

in my ears. I had done a deedwhat was it? I asked myself the question aloud, and the whispering echoes of

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box. It was of no remarkable character, and I had

seen it frequently before, for it was the property of the family physician; but how came it , upon my

table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These things were in no manner to be accounted for, and my

eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were

the singular but simple ones of the poet Ebn Zaiat, '<i Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,

curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas>.' Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect

There came a light tap at the library door, and pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His

looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said

he?some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry disturbing the silence of the nightof the

gathering together of the householdof a search in the direction of the sound;and then his tones grew

thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated graveof a disfigured body enshrouded, yet still

He pointed to my garments;they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by

the hand;it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against

the wall;I looked at it for some minutes;it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and

grasped the box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open; and in my tremor it slipped from my hands,

and fell heavily, and burst into pieces; and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of

dental surgery, intermingled with thirtytwo small, white and ivorylooking substances that were scattered to

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad

indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I

notand very surely do I not dream. But tomorrow I die, and today I would unburden my soul. My

immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere

household events. In their consequences, these events have terrifiedhave torturedhave destroyed me.

Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horrorto many they will seem

less terrible than . Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my

phantasm to the commonplacesome intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own,

which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary

From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was

even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was

indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so

happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my

manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection

for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature of the intensity of the

gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and selfsacrificing love of a brute, which

goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my

partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had

This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing

degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made

frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that

she was ever upon this pointand I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it

Plutothis was the cat's namewas my favourite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me

wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and

characterthrough the instrumentality of the fiend Intemperancehad (I blush to confess it) experienced a

radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the

feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even

offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only

neglected, but illused them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from

maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by

accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon mefor what disease is like

alcohol?and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevisheven

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat

avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my

hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul

seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, ginnurtured, thrilled

every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by

the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the

When reason returned with the morningwhen I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauchI

experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at

best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful

appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be

expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by

this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to

irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this

spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is

one of the primitive impulses of the human heartone of the indivisible primary faculties, or

sentiments, which give direction to the character of man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself

committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should ? Have we

not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is , merely because

we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this

unfathomable longing of the soul to offer violence to its own natureto do wrong for the

wrong's sake onlythat urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the

unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a

treehung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my hearthung it <i

because> I knew that it had loved me, and I felt it had given me no reason of offencehung it <i

because> I knew that in so doing I was committing a sina deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal

soul as to place itif such a thing were possibleeven beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most

On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of 'Fire!' The

curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a

servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The destruction was complete. My entire

worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect between the disaster and the

atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of facts, and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day

succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found

in a compartment wall, not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had

rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the action of the firea fact

which I attributed to its having been recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many

persons seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager attention. The

words 'strange!' 'singular!' and other similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if

graven in basrelief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic . The impression was given with

When I first beheld this apparitionfor I could scarcely regard it as lessmy wonder and my terror were

extreme. But at length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent

to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by the crowdby some one of

whom the animal must have been cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber.

This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had

compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshlyspread plaster; the lime of which, with

the flames and the from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.

Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just

detailed, it did not the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself

of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit a halfsentiment that

seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among

the vile haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of somewhat

One night as I sat, halfstupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some

black object, reposing upon the head of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which constituted

the chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of this hogshead for some minutes,

and what now caused me surprise was the fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I

approached it, and touched it with my hand. It was a black cata very large one fully as large as Pluto,

and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a white hair upon any portion of his body;

but this cat had a large, although indefinite, splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the

Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared

delighted with my notice. This, then, was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to

purchase it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to itknew nothing of ithad never seen it

I continued my caresses, and when I prepared to go home, the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me.

I permitted it to do so; occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it

domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favourite with my wife.

For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was just the reverse of what I had

anticipated; butI know not how or why it wasits evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and

annoyed me. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the bitterness of hatred. I

avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the remembrance of my former deed of cruelty,

preventing me from physically abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently illuse it;

but graduallyvery graduallyI came to look upon it with unutterable loathing, and to flee silently from its

What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on the morning after I brought it home,

that, like Pluto, it also had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to

my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that humanity of feeling which had once

been my distinguishing trait, and the source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps

with a pertinacity which it would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would

crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome caresses. If I arose to

walk, it would get between my feet, and thus nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in

my dress, clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it with a

blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my former crime, but chieflylet me confess

This dread was not exactly a dread of physical eviland yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it.

I am almost ashamed to ownyes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to ownthat the terror and

horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of the merest chimeras it would be

possible to conceive. My wife had called my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white

hair, of which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the strange beast and

the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very

indefinite; but, by slow degreesdegrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my reason

struggled to reject as fancifulit had, at length, resumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the

representation of an object that I shudder to nameand for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would

have rid myself of the monster it was now, I say, the image of a hideousof a ghastly

thingof the GALLOWS!oh, mournful and terrible engine of horror and of crimeof agony and death!

And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere humanity. And a whose

fellow I had contemptuously destroyeda to work out for for me, a man, fashioned

in the image of the High Godso much of insufferable woe! Alas! neither by day nor by night knew I the

blessing of rest any more! During the former the creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I

started, hourly, from dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of upon my face, and its

vast weightan incarnate nightmare that I had no power to shake offincumbent eternally upon my <i

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil

thoughts became my sole intimatesthe darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual

temper increased to hatred of things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden, frequent, and

ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife,

One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the cellar of the old building which our

poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me

headlong, exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which

had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal

had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the interference,

into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp, and buried the axe in her brain. She fell

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of

concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the

risk of being observed by the neighbours. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting

the corpse into minute fragments and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in

the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it into the well in the yardabout packing it in a

box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally

I hit upon what I considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it up in the

cellaras the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.

For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been

plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from

hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had

been filled up and made to resemble the rest of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the

bricks at this point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could detect anything

And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a crowbar I easily dislodged the bricks, and having

carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little

trouble, I relaid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every

possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very

carefully went over the new brickwork. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did

not present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with

the minutest care. I looked around triumphantly, and said to myself, 'Here at least, then, my labour has not

My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at

length, firmly resolved to put it to death. Had I been able to meet with it at the moment, there could have been

no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at the violence of my previous

anger, and forbore to present itself in my present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep,

the blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned in my bosom. It did not

make its appearance during the nightand thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I

soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, even with the burden of murder upon my soul!

The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a free man.

The monster, in terror, had fled the premises for ever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was

supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had been made, but these had

been readily answered. Even a search had been institutedbut of course nothing was to be discovered. I

Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and

proceeded again to make rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my

place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade me accompany them in their

search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into

the cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in

innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and

fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied, and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be

restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their assurance of

'Gentlemen,' I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, 'I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish

you all health, and a little more courtesy. Bytheby, gentlemen, thisthis is a very wellconstructed

house.' (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) 'I may say an <i

excellently> wellconstructed house. These wallsare you going, gentlemen?these walls are solidly put

together'; and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my

hand, upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.

But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs on the ArchFiend ! No sooner had the reverberation of my

blows sunk into silence, than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb!by a cry, at first muffled and

broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long, loud, and continuous scream,

half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of

Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party

upon the stairs remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms

were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect

before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the

hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to the

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our ways; nor are the models that we frame in any

way commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and unsearchableness of His works which have a depth in

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes the old man seemed too much

'Not long ago,' said he at length, 'and I could have guided you on this route as well as the youngest of my

sons; but, about three years past, there happened to me an event such as never happened before to mortal

manor, at least, such as no man ever survived to tell ofand the six hours of deadly terror which I then

endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a very old manbut I am not. It took less than a

single day to change these hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my nerves,

so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over

The 'little cliff', upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself down to rest that the weightier portion

of his body hung over it, while he was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and

slippery edgethis 'little cliff' arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of black shining rock, some fifteen or

sixteen hundred feet from the world of crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to be within half a

dozen yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position of my companion, that I fell

at full length upon the ground, clung to the shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the

skywhile I struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of the mountain were in

danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up

'You must get over these fancies,' said the guide, 'for I have brought you here that you might have the best

possible view of the scene of that event I mentionedand to tell you the whole story with the spot just under

'We are now,' he continued, in that particularizing manner which distinguished him'we are now close upon

the Norwegian coastin the sixtyeighth degree of latitudein the great province of Nordlandand in the

dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself

up a little higherhold on to the grass if you feel giddysoand look out, beyond the belt of vapour

I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore so inky a hue as to bring at once to

my mind the Nubian geographer's account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no

human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye could reach, there lay outstretched,

like ramparts of the world, lines of horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the

more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against it its white and ghastly crest, howling and

shrieking for ever. Just opposite the promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some

five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleaklooking island; or, more properly, its position

was discernible through the wilderness of surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land,

arose another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at various intervals by a cluster

The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant island and the shore, had something very

unusual about it. Although, at the time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing

lay to under a doublereefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull out of sight, still there was here

nothing like a regular swell, but only a short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every directionas well

in the teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the immediate vicinity of the rocks.

'The island in the distance,' resumed the old man, 'is called by the Norwegian Vurrgh. The one midway is

Moskoe. That a mile to the northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven, and

Buckholm. Further offbetween Moskoe and Vurrghare Otterholm, Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm.

These are the true names of the placesbut why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more

than either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any change in the water?'

We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which we had ascended from the interior

of Lofoden, so that we had caught no glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the

old man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like the moaning of a vast herd of

buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping

character of the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the eastward. Even while I

gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity. In five minutes the whole sea as far as Vurrgh, was lashed

into ungovernable fury; but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway. Here the

vast bed of the waters seamed and scarred into a thousand conflicting channels, burst suddenly into frenzied

convulsion heaving, boiling, hissinggyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all whirling and

plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never elsewhere assumes, except in precipitous

In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical alteration. The general surface grew

somewhat more smooth, and the whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam

became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length, spreading out to a great distance,

and entering into combination, took unto themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and

seemed to form the germ of another more vast. Suddenlyvery suddenlythis assumed a distinct and

definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a

broad belt of gleaming spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel, whose

interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and jetblack wall of water, inclined to the

horizon at an angle of some fortyfive degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and

sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half shriek, half roar, such as not even

The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw myself upon my face, and clung to the

'This,' said I at length, to the old man'this can be nothing else than the great whirlpool of the Maelstrom.'

'So it is sometimes termed,' said he. 'We Norwegians call it the Moskoestrom, from the island of Moskoe in

The ordinary account of this vortex had by no means prepared me for what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus,

which is perhaps the most circumstantial of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the

magnificence, or of the horror of the sceneor of the wild bewildering sense of the novel which confounds

the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it

could neither have been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some passages of his

description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in

'Between Lofoden and Moskoe,' he says, 'the depth of the water is between thirtysix and forty fathoms; but

on the other side, toward Ver [Vurrgh] this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a

vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the calmest weather. When it is

flood, the stream runs up the country between Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of

its impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful cataracts; the noise being

heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within

its attraction, it is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to pieces against the

rocks; and when the water relaxes, the fragments thereof are thrown up again. But these intervals of

tranquillity are only at the turn of the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its

violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its fury heightened by a storm, it is

dangerous to come within a Norway mile of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not

guarding against it before they were carried within its reach. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come

too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings

and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from

Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on

shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to

such a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to consist of craggy rocks, among

which they are whirled to and fro. This stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the seait being

constantly high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning of Sexagesima Sunday,

it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground.'

In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have been ascertained at all in the

immediate vicinity of the vortex. The 'forty fathoms' must have reference only to portions of the channel

close upon the shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoestrom must be

unmeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is necessary than can be obtained from even the

sidelong glance into the abyss of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking

down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not help smiling at the simplicity with

which the honest Jonas Ramus records, as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the

bears, for it appeared to me, in fact, a selfevident thing, that the largest ships of the line in existence, coming

within the influence of that deadly attraction, could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must

The attempts to account for the phenomenonsome of which, I remember, seemed to me sufficiently

plausible in perusalnow wore a very different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that

this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe Islands, 'have no other cause than the collision of

waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so

that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises, the deeper must the fall be, and the

natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser

experiments'. These are the words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Kircher and others imagine that in the

centre of the channel of the Maelstrom is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very remote

partthe Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was

the one to which, as I gazed, my imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was

rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost universally entertained of the subject by

the Norwegians, it nevertheless was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to

comprehend it; and here I agreed with himfor, however conclusive on paper, it becomes altogether

'You have had a good look at the whirl now,' said the old man, 'and if you creep round this crag, so as to get

in its lee, and deaden the roar of the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know

smack of about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing among the islands beyond

Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has

only the courage to attempt it: but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we three were the only ones

who made a regular business of going out to the islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way

lower down to the southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and therefore these places

are preferred. The choice spots over here among the rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in

far greater abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more timid of the craft could not scrape

together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of desperate speculationthe risk of life standing instead of

'We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than this; and it was our practice, in fine

weather, to take advantage of the fifteen minutes' slack to push across the main channel of the

Moskoestrom, far above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near Otterham, or

Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for

slackwater again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without a

steady side wind for going and comingone that we felt sure would not fail us before our returnand we

seldom made a miscalculation upon this point. Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at

anchor on account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to remain on

the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and

made the channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been driven out to sea

in spite of everything (for the whirlpools threw us round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our

anchor and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable cross currentshere

today and gone tomorrowwhich drove us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

'I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered "on the ground"it is a bad spot to

be in, even in good weatherbut we make shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoestrom itself

without accident: although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so

behind or before the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we

made rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest

brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great

assistance at such times, in using the sweeps as well as afterward in fishingbut, somehow, although we ran

the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the dangerfor, after all said and done,

'It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell you occurred. It was on the tenth of

July, 18, a day which the people of this part of the world will never forget for it was one in which blew

the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in

the afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the southwest, while the sun shone brightly, so that

'The three of usmy two brothers and myselfhad crossed over to the islands about two o'clock P.M., and

soon nearly loaded the smack with fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had

ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and started for home, so as to make the

'We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time spanked along at a great rate, never

dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken

aback by a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusualsomething that had never happened to us

beforeand I began to feel a little uneasy, without exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but

could make no headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to return to the

anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon covered with a singular coppercoloured cloud

'In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away and we were dead becalmed, drifting about in

every direction. This stage of things, however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In

less than a minute the storm was upon usin less than two the sky was entirely overcastand what with

this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so dark that we could not see each other in the smack.

'Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The oldest seaman in Norway never

experienced anything like it. We had to let our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first

puff, both our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed offthe mainmast taking with it my

'Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It had a complete flush deck, with only a

small hatch near the bow, and this hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross

the Strom, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this circumstance we should have

foundered at oncefor we lay entirely buried for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction

I cannot say, for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had let the foresail run, I

threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping

a ringbolt near the foot of the foremast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do thiswhich was

undoubtedly the very best thing I could have donefor I was too much flurried to think.

'For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this time I held my breath, and clung to the

bolt. When I could stand it no longer I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and

thus got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a dog does in coming out of the

water, and thus rid herself, in some measure, of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that

had come over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I felt somebody grasp my

arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboardbut

the next moment all this joy was turned into horrorfor he put his mouth close to my ear, and screamed out

'No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook from head to foot as if I had had the

most violent fit of the ague. I knew what he meant by that one word well enoughI knew what he wished to

make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound for the whirl of the Strom, and

'You perceive that in crossing the Strom channel, we always went a long way up above the whirl, even in the

calmest weather, and then had to wait and watch carefully for the slackbut now we were driving right upon

the pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! "To be sure," I thought, "we shall get there just about the

slackthere is some little hope in that"but in the next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as

to dream of hope at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a ninetygun ship.

'By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we did not feel it so much, as we

scudded before it, but at all events the seas, which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and

frothing, now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over the heavens. Around in

every direction it was still as black as pitch, but nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of

clear skyas clear as I ever sawand of a deep bright blueand through it there blazed forth the full moon

with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She lit up everything about us with the greatest

'I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brotherbut in some manner which I could not understand,

the din had so increased that I could not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my

voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and held up one of his fingers, as if to

'At first I could not make out what he meantbut soon a hideous thought flashed upon me. I dragged my

watch from its fob. It was not going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I flung

it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o'clock! We were behind the time of the slack, and the

'When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the waves in a strong gale, when she is

going large, seem always to slip from beneath herwhich appears strange to a landsmanand this is what

'Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a gigantic sea happened to take us right

under the counter, and bore us with it as it roseupupas if into the sky. I would not have believed that

any wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and a plunge that made me feel

sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some lofty mountaintop in a dream. But while we were up I had

thrown a quick glance aroundand that one glance was allsufficient. I saw our exact position in an instant.

The Moskoestrom whirlpool was about a quarter of a mile dead aheadbut no more like the everyday

Moskoestrom than the whirl, as you now see it, is like a millrace. If I had not known where we were, and

what we had to expect, I should not have recognized the place at all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes

'It could not have been more than two minutes afterwards until we suddenly felt the waves subside, and were

enveloped in foam. The boat made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like a

thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was completely drowned in a kind of shrill

shrieksuch a sound as you might imagine given out by the waterpipes of many thousand steamvessels

letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that always surrounds the whirl; and I

thought, of course, that another moment would plunge us into the abyss, down which we could only see

indistinctly on account of the amazing velocity with which we were borne along. The boat did not seem to

sink into the water at all, but to skim like an airbubble upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was

next the whirl, and on the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge writhing wall

'It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the gulf, I felt more composed than when

we were only approaching it. Having made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that

terror which unmanned me at first. I supposed it was despair that strung my nerves.

'It may look like boastingbut what I tell you is truthI began to reflect how magnificent a thing it was to

die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual

life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power. I do believe that I blushed with shame when this

idea crossed my mind. After a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl itself.

I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I was going to make; and my principal grief

was that I should never be able to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These,

no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man's mind in such extremityand I have often thought since,

that the revolutions of the boat around the pool might have rendered me a little lightheaded.

'There was another circumstance which tended to restore my selfpossession; and this was the cessation of

the wind, which could not reach us in our present situationfor, as you saw for yourself, the belt of the surf

is considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now towered above us, a high, black,

mountainous ridge. If you have never been at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of

mind occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle you, and take away all

power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a great measure, rid of these annoyancesjust as

deathcondemned felons in prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is yet

'How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We careered round and round for perhaps

an hour, flying rather than floating, getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then

nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go of the ringbolt. My brother was

at the stern, holding on to a small empty watercask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the

counter, and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the gale first took us. As we

approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony

of his terror, he endeavoured to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a secure grasp. I

never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this actalthough I knew he was a madman when he did

it a raving maniac through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I knew it

could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let him have the bolt, and went astern to the

cask. This there was no great difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an even

keelonly swaying to and fro with the immense sweeps and swelters of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured

myself in my new position, when we gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I

'As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened my hold upon the barrel, and closed

my eyes. For some seconds I dared not open themwhile I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I

was not already in my deathstruggles with the water. But moment after moment elapsed. I still lived. The

sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt

of foam, with the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage and looked once again upon the

'Never shall I forget the sensation of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me. The boat

appeared to be hanging, as if by magic, midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in

circumference, prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been mistaken for ebony,

but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they

shot forth, as the rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have already described,

streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the

'At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The general burst of terrific grandeur was

all that I beheld. When I recovered myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this

direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in which the smack hung on the

inclined surface of the pool. She was quite upon an even keelthat is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel

with that of the waterbut this latter sloped at an angle of more than fortyfive degrees, so that we seemed

to be lying upon our beam ends. I could not help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty

in maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon a dead level; and this, I

'The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf: but still I could make out

nothing distinctly on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there

hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Mussulmans says is the only

pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the

great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottombut the yell that went up to the heavens

Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had carried us to a great distance down the

slope; but our further descent was by no means proportionate. Round and round we sweptnot with any

uniform movementbut in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a few hundred yards

sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl. Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but

'Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we were thus borne, I perceived that our

boat was not the only object in the embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of

vessels, large masses of buildingtimber and trunks of trees, with many smaller articles, such as pieces of

house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had

taken the place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my

dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our

company. I must have been delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities

of their several descents toward the foam below. "This firtree," I found myself at one time saying, "will

certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears,"and then I was disappointed to find

that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At length, after making several

guesses of this nature, and being deceived in allthis factthe fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me

upon a train of reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.

'It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more exciting hope. This hope arose partly

from memory, and partly from present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that

strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth by the Moskoestrom. By far the

greater number of the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary wayso chafed and roughened as to

have the appearance of being stuck full of splintersbut then I distinctly recollected that there were some of

them which were not disfigured at all. Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that

the roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely absorbedthat the others had

entered the whirl at so late a period of the tide, or, from some reason, had descended so slowly after entering,

that they did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as the case might be. I

conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean,

without undergoing the fate of those which had been drawn in more early or absorbed more rapidly. I made,

also, three important observations. The first was, that as a general rule, the larger the bodies were, the more

rapid their descentthe second that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of

any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the spherethe third, that, between two masses

of equal size, the one cylindrical, and the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more

slowly. Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject with an old schoolmaster of the

district; and it was from him that I learned the use of the words "cylinder" and "sphere". He explained to

mealthough I have forgotten the explanationhow what I observed was, in fact, the natural consequence

of the forms of the floating fragmentsand showed me how it happened that a cylinder, swimming in a

vortex, offered more resistance to its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky

'There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in enforcing these observations, and rendering

me anxious to turn them to account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a barrel,

or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things, which had been on our level when I first

opened my eyes upon the wonders of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved

'I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the watercask upon which I now held,

to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother's attention

by signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything in my power to make him

understand what I was about to do. I thought at length that he comprehended my designbut, whether this

was the case or not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by the ringbolt. It

was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned

him to his fate, fastened myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter, and

'The result was precisely what I hoped it might be. As it is myself who now tell you this taleas you see that

I did escapeand as you are already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and must

therefore anticipate all that I have farther to sayI will bring my story quickly to conclusion. It might have

been an hour, or thereabouts, after my quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath

me, it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession and, bearing my loved brother with it, plunged

headlong, at once and for ever, into the chaos of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very

little further than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I leaped overboard,

before a great change took place in the character of the whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel

became momently less and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less violent. By

degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky

was clear, the winds had gone down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found myself

on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden, and above the spot where the pool of the

Moskoestrom had been. It was the hour of the slackbut the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from

the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the Strom, and in a few minutes, was

hurried down the coast into the "grounds" of the fishermen. A boat picked me upexhausted from

fatigueand (now that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror. Those who drew

me on board were my old mates and daily companionsbut they knew me no more than they would have

known a traveller from the spiritland. My hair, which had been raven black the day before, was as white as

you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my countenance had changed. I told them my

storythey did not believe it. I now tell it to youand I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than

From his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend Ellison along. Nor do I use the word

prosperity in its mere worldly sense. I mean it as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak

seemed born for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley and Condorcetof

exemplifying by individual instance what has been deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief

existence of Ellison I fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man's very nature lies some hidden

principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of his career has given me to understand that, in

general, from the violation of a few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankindthat as a

species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of contentand that, even now, in the

present darkness and madness of all thought on the great question of the social condition, it is not impossible

that man, the individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be happy.

With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued; and thus it is worthy of observation that

the uninterrupted enjoyment which distinguished his life was, in great measure, the result of preconcert. It is,

indeed, evident that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of

experience, Mr Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of his life,

into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no

means my object to pen an essay on happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words.

He admitted but four elementary principles, or, more strictly, conditions, of bliss. That which he considered

chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely physical one of free exercise in the open air. 'The health,' he

said, 'attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name.' He instanced the ecstasies of the foxhunter, and

pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others.

His second condition was the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of realization, was the contempt of

ambition. His fourth was an object of unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent

Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts lavished upon him by fortune. In personal

grace and beauty he exceeded all men. His intellect was of that order to which the acquisition of knowledge is

less a labour than an intuition and a necessity. His family was one of the most illustrious of the empire. His

bride was the loveliest and most devoted of women. His possessions had been always ample; but, on the

attainment of his majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of fate had been played in

his behalf which startled the whole social world amid which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the

It appears that, about a hundred years before Mr Ellison's coming of age, there had died, in a remote

province, one Mr Seabright Ellison. This gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no

immediate connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a century after his

decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate

amount to the nearest of blood, bearing the name Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the hundred years.

Many attempts had been made to set aside this singular bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them

abortive; but the attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally obtained,

forbidding all similar accumulations. This act, however, did not prevent young Ellison from entering into

possession, on his twentyfirst birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred

1 An incident, similar in outline to the one here imagined, occurred, not very long ago, in England. The name

of the fortunate heir was Thelluson. I first saw an account of this matter in the Tour of Prince

PucklerMuskau, who makes the sum inherited ninety millions of pounds, and justly observes that 'in the

contemplation of so vast a sum, and of the services to which it might be applied, there is something even of

the sublime'. To suit the views of this article I have followed the Prince's statement, although a grossly

exaggerated one. The germ, and, in fact, the commencement of the present paper was published many years

agoprevious to the issue of the first number of Sue's admirable Juif Errant, which may possibly have been

When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited, there were, of course, many

speculations as to the mode of its disposal. The magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum

bewildered all who thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount of money might have been

imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. With riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it

would have been easy to suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances of his

timeor busying himself with political intrigueor aiming at ministerial poweror purchasing increase of

nobilityor collecting large museums of virtuor playing the munificent patron of letters, of science, of

artor endowing, and bestowing his name upon, extensive institutions of charity. But for the inconceivable

wealth in the actual possession of the heir, these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too

limited a field. Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen that, even at three

per cent, the annual income of the inheritance amounted to no less than thirteen million and five hundred

thousand dollars; which was one million and one hundred and twentyfive thousand per month; or thirtysix

thousand nine hundred and eightysix per day; or one thousand five hundred and fortyone per hour; or six

and twenty dollars for every minute that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken up.

Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who even conceived that Mr Ellison would divest himself

of at least one half of his fortune, as of utterly superfluous opulenceenriching whole troops of his relatives

by division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in fact, abandon the very unusual wealth

I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his mind on a point which had occasioned

so much discussion to his friends. Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision. In regard to

individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In the possibility of any improvement, properly so called,

being effected by man himself in the general condition of man, he had (I am sorry to confess it) little faith.

Upon the whole, whether happily or unhappily, he was thrown back, in very great measure, upon self.

In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended, moreover, the true character, the august

aims, the supreme majesty and dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole proper satisfaction

of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of novel forms of beauty. Some peculiarities, either

in his early education, or in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism all his

ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led him to believe that the most advantageous at

least, if not the sole legitimate field for the poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely

physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither musician nor poetif we use this latter term in its

everyday acceptation. Or it might have been that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his

idea that in contempt of ambition is to be found one of the essential principles of happiness on earth. Is it not,

indeed, possible that, while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is

termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton have contentedly remained

'mute and inglorious'? I believe that the world has never seenand that, unless through some series of

accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never seethat full

extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of which the human nature is absolutely capable.

Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more profoundly enamoured of music and

poetry. Under other circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have

become a painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical, was too limited in its extent and

consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his attention. And I have now mentioned all the

provinces in which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it capable of expatiating.

But Ellison maintained that the richest, the truest and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive

province, had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscapegardener as of the

poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the landscapegarden offered to the proper Muse the

most magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of imagination in the

endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast

superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and multicolour of the flower

and the trees, he recognized the most direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the

direction or concentration of this effortor, more properly, in its adaptation to the eyes which were to

behold it on earthhe perceived that he should be employing the best meanslabouring to the greatest

advantagein the fulfillment, not only of his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the

'Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth': in his explanation of this phraseology, Mr Ellison

did much towards solving what has always seemed to me an enigma:I mean the fact (which none but the

ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce.

No such paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the most enchanting

of natural landscapes there will always be found a defect or an excessmany excesses and defects. While

the component parts may defy, individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will

always be susceptible of improvement. In short, no position can be attained on the wide surface of the natural

earth, from which an artistical eye, looking steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed the

'composition' of the landscape. And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly instructed

to regard nature as supreme. With her details we shrink from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the

colours of the tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says, of

sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized rather than imitated, is in error. No

pictorial or sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness do more than approach the living and

breathing beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt its truth here, it is but

the headlong spirit of generalization which has led him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art:

having, I say, felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no more

absolute demonstrations than the sentiment of his art yields the artist. He not only believes, but positively

knows, that such and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone constitute the true

beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been matured into expression. It remains for a more profound

analysis than the world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is confirmed in

his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let a 'composition' be defective; let an emendation be

wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by

each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this: in remedy of the defective composition, each

insulated member of the fraternity would have suggested the identical emendation.

I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature susceptible of exaltation, and that,

therefore, her susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to solve. My

own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive intention of nature would have so

arranged the earth's surface as to have fulfilled at all points man's sense of perfection in the beautiful, the

sublime, or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had been frustrated by the known geological

disturbancesdisturbances of form and colourgrouping, in the correction or allaying of which lies the soul

of art. The force of this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it involved of considering

the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that they were

prognostic of death. He thus explained: Admit the earthly immortality of man to have been the first

intention. We have then the primitive arrangement of the earth's surface adapted to his blissful estate, as not

existent but designed. The disturbances were the preparations for his subsequently conceived deathful

'Now,' said my friend, 'what we regard as exaltation of the landscape may be really such, as respects only the

moral or human point of view. Each alternation of the natural scenery may possibly effect a blemish in the

picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at largein massfrom some point distant from the earth's

surface, although not beyond the limits of its atmosphere. It is easily understood that what might improve a

closely scrutinized detail, may at the same time injure a general or more distantly observed effect. There may

be a class of beings, human once, but now invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem

orderour unpicturesqueness picturesque; in a word, the earthangels, for whose scrutiny more especially

than our own, and for whose deathrefined appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God

In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a writer on landscapegardening, who has

'There are properly but two styles of landscapegardening, the natural and the artificial. One seeks to recall

the original beauty of the country, by adapting its means to the surrounding scenery; cultivating trees in

harmony with the hills or plain of the neighbouring land; detecting and bringing into practice those nice

relations of size, proportion and colour which, hid from the common observer, are revealed everywhere to the

experienced student of nature. The result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather in the absence of all

defects and incongruities in the prevalence of a healthy harmony and orderthan in the creation of any

special wonders or miracles. The artificial style has as many varieties as there are different tastes to gratify. It

has a certain general relation to the various styles of building. There are the stately avenues and retirements of

Versailles; Italian terraces; and a various mixed old English style, which bears some relation to the domestic

Gothic or English Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial

landscapegardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is partly pleasing

to the eye, by the show of order and design, and partly moral. A terrace, with an old mosscovered

balustrade, calls up at once to the eye the fair forms that have passed there in other days. The slightest

'From what I have already observed,' said Ellison, 'you will understand that I reject the idea, here expressed,

of recalling the original beauty of the country. The original beauty is never so great as that which may be

introduced. Of course, everything depends on the selection of a spot with capabilities. What is said about

detecting and bringing into practice nice relations of size, proportion, and colour, is one of those mere

vaguenesses of speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The phrase quoted may mean anything, or

nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the

absence of all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles, is a

proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of

genius. The negative merit suggested appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate

Addison into apotheosis. In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of vice appeals

directly to the understanding, and can thus be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in

creation, can be apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denialto the excellences

which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art can but suggest. We may be instructed to build the "Cato", but we

are in vain told how to conceive a Parthenon or an "Inferno". The thing done, however, the wonder

accomplished, and the capacity for apprehension becomes universal. The sophists of the negative school who,

through inability to create, have scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest in applause. What, in its

chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason, never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment,

'The author's observations on the artificial style,' continued Ellison, 'are less objectionable. A mixture of pure

art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to the sense of human

interest. The principle expressed is incontrovertiblebut there may be something beyond it. There may be an

object in keeping with the principlean object unattainable by the means ordinarily possessed by

individuals, yet which, if attained, would lend a charm to the landscapegarden far surpassing that which a

sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet, having very unusual pecuniary resources, might, while

retaining the necessary idea of art, or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs

at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen

that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work

of the harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of wildernessesin the most savage of

the scenes of pure naturethere is apparent the art of a Creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only; in

no respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this sense of the Almighty design to be

one step depressedto be brought into something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human

artto form an intermedium between the two:let us imagine, for example, a landscape whose combined

vastness and definitiveness whose united beauty, magnificence, and strangeness, shall convey the idea of

care, or culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to humanitythen the sentiment

of interest is preserved, while the art intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary

naturea nature which is not God, not an emanation from God, but which still is nature in the sense of the

It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision such as thisin the free exercise in the

open air ensured by the personal superintendence of his plansin the unceasing object which these plans

affordedin the high spirituality of the objectin the contempt of ambition which it enabled him truly to

feelin the perennial springs with which it gratified, without possibility of satiating, that one master passion

of his soul, the thirst for beauty; above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman, not unwomanly, whose

loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the purple atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find,

and found, exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a gar greater amount of positive happiness

I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the marvels which my friend did actually

accomplish. I wish to describe, but am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate between

detail and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite the two in their extremes.

Mr Ellison's first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality; and scarcely had he commenced thinking

on this point, when the luxuriant nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. In fact, he had made up

his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night's reflection induced him to abandon the idea. 'Were I

misanthropic,' he said, 'such a locale would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the

difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms; but as yet I am not Timon. I wish

the composure but not the depression of solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent

and duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I shall need, too, the sympathy of the poetic

in what I have done. Let me seek, then, a spot not far from a populous citywhose vicinity, also, will best

In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for several years, and I was permitted to accompany

him. A thousand spots with which I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for reasons which satisfied

me, in the end, that he was right. We came at length to an elevated tableland of wonderful fertility and

beauty, affording a panoramic prospect very little less in extent than that of AEtna, and, in Ellison's opinion

as well as my own, surpassing the farfamed view from that mountain in all the true elements of the

'I am aware,' said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight after gazing on this scene, entranced, for

nearly an hour, 'I know that here, in my circumstances, ninetenths of the most fastidious of men would rest

content. This panorama is indeed glorious, and I shall rejoice in it but for the excess of its glory. The taste of

all the architects I have ever known leads them, for the sake of "prospect", to put up buildings on hilltops.

The error is obvious. Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent, startles, excitesand then

fatigues, depresses. For the occasional scene nothing can be betterfor the constant view nothing worse.

And, in the constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent; the worst phase of

extent, that of distance. It is at war with the sentiment and with the sense of seclusionthe sentiment and

sense which we seek to humour in "retiring to the country". In looking from the summit of a mountain we

cannot help feeling abroad in the world. The heartsick avoid distant prospects as a pestilence."

It was not until the close of the fourth year of our search that we found a locality with which Ellison

professed himself satisfied. It is, of course, needless to say where was the locality. The late death of my

friend, in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visitor, has given to Arnheim a species

of secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity, similar in kind, although infinitely superior in degree, to that

The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visitor left the city in the early morning. During the

forenoon he passed between shores of a tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable sheep,

their white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. By degrees the idea of cultivation subsided

into that of merely pastoral care. This slowly became merged in a sense of retirementthis again in a

consciousness of solitude. As the evening approached the channel grew more narrow; the banks more and

more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in richer, more profuse, and more sombre foliage. The water

increased in transparency. The stream took a thousand turns, so that at no moment could its gleaming surface

be seen for a greater distance than a furlong. At every instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an

enchanted circle, having insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin, and no

floorthe keel balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a phantom bark which, by some accident

having been turned upside down, floated in constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of

sustaining it. The channel now became a gorgealthough the term is somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it

merely because the language has no word which better represents the most striking not the most

distinctivefeature of the scene. The character of gorge was maintained only in the height and parallelism of

the shores; it was lost altogether in their other traits. The walls of the ravine (through which the clear water

still tranquilly flowed) arose to an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred and fifty feet, and

inclined so much towards each other as, in a great measure, to shut out the light of day; while the long

plumelike moss which depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the whole chasm

an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more frequent and intricate, and seemed often as if returning

in upon themselves, so that the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. He was, moreover, enwrapt in an

exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still remained, but her character seemed to have

undergone modification: there was a weird symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her

works. Not a dead branch, not a withered leaf, not a stray pebble, not a patch of the brown earth, was

anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against the clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a

Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom deepening every moment, a sharp and

unexpected turn of the vessel brought it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin of very

considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. It was about two hundred yards in diameter,

and girt in at all points but onethat immediately fronting the vessel as it enteredby hills equal in general

height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly different character. Their sides sloped from the

water's edge at an angle of some fortyfive degrees, and they were clothed from base to summit not a

perceptible point escapingin a drapery of the most gorgeous flowerblossoms; scarcely a green leaf being

visible among the sea of odorous and fluctuating colour. This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was

the water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of small round alabaster pebbles, was

distinctly visible by glimpsesthat is to say, whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the

inverted heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On these latter there were no trees, nor even shrubs of

any size. The impressions wrought on the observer were those of richness, warmth, colour, quietude,

uniformity, softness, delicacy, daintiness, voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of culture that

suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful, magnificent, and fastidious; but as the eye

traced upward the myriadtinted slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid

the folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy a panoramic cataract of rubies,

The visitor, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of the ravine, is delighted but astounded by

the full orb of the declining sun, which he had supposed to be already far below the horizon, but which now

confronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless vista seen through another chasmlike

But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and descends into a light canoe of ivory,

stained with arabesque devices in vivid scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this boat arise

high above the water, with sharp points, so that the general form is that of an irregular crescent. It lies on the

surface of the bay with the proud grace of a swan. On its ermined floor reposes a single feathery paddle of

satinwood; but no oarsman or attendant is to be seen. The guest is bidden to be of good cheerthat the

fates will take care of him. The larger vessel disappears, and he is left alone in the canoe, which lies

apparently motionless in the middle of the lake. While he considers what course to pursue, however, he

becomes aware of a gentle movement in the fairy bark. It slowly swings itself around until its prow points

toward the sun. It advances with a gentle but gradually accelerated velocity, while the slight ripples it creates

seem to break about the ivory sides in divinest melodyseem to offer the only possible explanation of the

soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin the bewildered voyager looks around him in vain.

The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is approached, so that its depths can be more

distinctly seen. To the right arise a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It is observed,

however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips into the water, still prevails. There is not

one token of the usual river debris. To the left the character of the scene is softer and more obviously

artificial. Here the bank slopes upward from the stream in a very gentle ascent, forming a broad sward of

grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and of a brilliancy of green which would bear

comparison with the tint of the purest emerald. This plateau varies in width from ten to three hundred yards;

reaching from the river bank to a wall, fifty feet high, which extends, in an infinity of curves, but following

the general direction of the river, until lost in the distance to the westward. This wall is of one continuous

rock, and has been formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice of the stream's southern

bank; but no trace of the labour has been suffered to remain. The chiselled stone has the hue of ages and is

profusely overhung and overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the clematis. The

uniformity of the top and bottom lines of the wall is fully relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height,

growing singly or in small groups, both along the plateau and in the domain behind the wall, but in close

proximity to it; so that frequent limbs (of the black walnut especially) reach over and dip their pendent

extremities into the water. Farther back within the domain, the vision is impeded by an impenetrable screen

These things are observed during the canoe's gradual approach to what I have called the gate of the vista. On

drawing nearer to this, however, its chasmlike appearance vanishes; a new outlet from the bay is discovered

to the leftin which direction the wall is also seen to sweep, still following the general course of the stream.

Down this new opening the eye cannot penetrate very far; for the stream, accompanied by the wall, still bends

The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel; and here the shore opposite the wall is

found to resemble that opposite the wall in the straight vista. Lofty hills, rising occasionally into mountains,

Floating gently onward, but with a velocity slight augmented, the voyager, after many short turns, finds his

progress apparently barred by a gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold, elaborately carved and fretted,

and reflecting the direct rays of the now fastsinking sun with an effulgence that seems to wreathe the whole

surrounding forest in flames. This gate is inserted in the lofty wall; which here appears to cross the river at

right angles. In a few moments, however, it is seen that the main body of the water still sweeps in a gentle

and extensive curve to the left, the wall following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume,

diverging from the principal one, makes its way, with a slight ripple, under the door, and is thus hidden from

sight. The canoe falls into the lesser channel and approaches the gate. Its ponderous wings are slowly and

musically expanded. The boat glides between them, and commences a rapid descent into a vast amphitheatre

entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of

their circuit. Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a gush of entrancing

melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet odour;there is a dreamlike intermingling to the eye

of tall slender Eastern treesbosky shrubberiesflocks of golden and crimson birdslilyfringed

lakesmeadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and tuberoseslong intertangled lines of silver

streamletsand, upspringing confusedly from amid all, a mass of semiGothic, semiSaracenic architecture,

sustaining itself as if by miracle in midair, glittering in the red sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and

pinnacles; and seeming the phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii, and of

During a pedestrian tour last summer, through one or two of the river counties of New York, I found myself,

as the day declined, somewhat embarrassed about the road I was pursuing. The land undulated very

remarkably; and my path, for the last hour, had wound about and about so confusedly, in its effort to keep in

the valleys, that I no longer knew in what direction lay the sweet village of B, where I had determined

to stop for the night. The sun had scarcely shonestrictly speakingduring the day, which, nevertheless,

had been unpleasantly warm. A smoky mist, resembling that of the Indian summer, enveloped all things, and,

of course, added to my uncertainty. Not that I cared much about the matter. If I did not hit upon the village

before sunset, or even before dark, it was more than possible that a little Dutch farmhouse, or something of

that kind, would soon make its appearancealthough, in fact, the neighbourhood (perhaps on account of

being more picturesque than fertile) was very sparsely inhabited. At all events, with my knapsack for a

pillow, and my hound as a sentry, a bivouac in the open air was just the thing which would have amused me.

I sauntered on, therefore, quite at easePonto taking charge of my gununtil at length, just as I had begun

to consider whether the numerous little glades that led hither and thither were intended to be paths at all, I

was conducted by one of the most promising of them into an unquestionable carriagetrack. There could be

no mistaking it. The traces of light wheels were evident; and although the tall shrubberies and overgrown

undergrowth met overhead, there was no obstruction whatever below, even to the passage of a Virginian

mountain wagonthe most aspiring vehicle, I take it, of its kind. The road, however, except in being open

through the woodif wood be not too weighty a name for such an assemblage of light treesand except in

the particulars of evident wheeltracksbore no resemblance to any road I had before seen. The tracks of

which I speak were but faintly perceptible, having been impressed upon the firm, yet pleasantly moist surface

ofwhat looked more like green Genoese velvet than anything else. It was grass, clearlybut grass such as

we seldom see out of Englandso short, so thick, so even, and so vivid in colour. Not a single impediment

lay in the wheelroute not even a chip or dead twig. The stones that once obstructed the way had been

carefully placednot thrownalong the sides of the lane, so as to define its boundaries at bottom with a

kind of halfprecise, halfnegligent, and wholly picturesque definition. Clumps of wild flowers grew

What to make of all this, of course I knew not. Here was art undoubtedlythat did not surprise meall

roads, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; nor can I say that there was much to wonder at in the mere

excess of art manifested; all that seemed to have been done, might have been done herewith such natural

'capabilities' (as they have it in the books on Landscape Gardening)with very little labour and expense. No;

it was not the amount but the character of the art which caused me to take a seat on one of the blossomy

stones and gaze up and down this fairylike avenue for half an hour or more in bewildered admiration. One

thing became more and more evident the longer I gazed: an artist, and one with a most scrupulous eye for

form, had superintended all these arrangements. The greatest care had been taken to preserve a due medium

between the neat and graceful on the one hand, and the pittoresco, in the true sense of the Italian term, on the

other. There were few straight, and no long uninterrupted lines. The same effect of curvature or of colour,

appeared twice, usually, but not oftener, at any one point of view. Everywhere was variety in uniformity. It

was a piece of 'composition', in which the most fastidiously critical taste could scarcely have suggested an

I had turned to the right as I entered the road, and now, arising, I continued in the same direction. The path

was so serpentine, that at no moment could I trace its course for more than two or three paces in advance. Its

Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my earand in a few moments afterwards, as I turned with

the road somewhat more abruptly than hitherto, I became aware that a building of some kind lay at the foot of

a gentle declivity just before me. I could see nothing distinctly on account of the mist which occupied all the

little valley below. A gentle breeze, however, now arose, as the sun was about descending; and while I

remained standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into wreaths, and so floated

As it came fully into viewthus gradually as I describe it piece by piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of

water, and here again the summit of a chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of the

By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun had made its way down behind the

gentle hills, and thence, as if with a slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight; glaring with a

purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the west. Suddenly, thereforeand as if by the

The first coup d'oeil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed me very much as I have been

impressed when a boy, by the concluding scene of some wellarranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama.

Not even the monstrosity of colour was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the chasm, tinted all

orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the valley was reflected more or less upon all objects,

from the curtain of vapour that still hung overhead, as if loth to take its total departure from a scene so

The little vale into which I thus peered down from under the fogcanopy, could not have been more than four

hundred yards long; while in breadth it varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty, or perhaps two hundred. It

was most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly, but with no very precise

regularity. The widest portion was within eighty yards of the southern extreme. The slopes which

encompassed the vale could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face. Here a precipitous ledge of

granite arose to a height of some ninety feet; and, as I have mentioned, the valley at this point was not more

than fifty feet wide; but as the visitor proceeded southwardly from this cliff, he found on his right hand and

on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and less rocky. All, in a word, sloped and softened to

the south; and yet the whole vale was engirdled by eminences, more or less high, except at two points. One of

these I have already spoken of. It lay considerably to the north of west, and was where the setting sun made

its way, as I have before described, into the amphitheatre, through a cleanlycut natural cleft in the granite

embankment; this fissure might have been ten yards wide at its widest point, so far as the eye could trace it. It

seemed to lead up, up like a natural causeway, into the recesses of unexplored mountains and forests. The

other opening was directly at the southern end of the vale. Here, generally, the slopes were nothing more than

gentle inclinations, extending from east to west about one hundred and fifty yards. In the middle of this extent

was a depression, level with the ordinary floor of the valley. As regards vegetation, as well as in respect to

everything else, the scene softened and sloped to the south. To the northon the craggy precipicea few

paces from the vergeupsprang the magnificent trunks of numerous hickories, black walnuts, and chestnuts,

interspersed with occasional oak; and the strong lateral branches thrown out by the walnuts especially, spread

far over the edge of the cliff. Proceeding southwardly, the explorer saw, at first, the same class of trees, but

less and less lofty and Salvatorish in character; then he saw the gentler elm, succeeded by the sassafras and

locustthese again by the softer linden, redbud, catalpa, and maplethese yet again by still more graceful

and modest varieties. The whole face of the southern declivity was covered with wild shrubbery alonean

occasional silver willow or white poplar excepted. In the bottom of the valley itself(for it must be borne in

mind that the vegetation hitherto mentioned grew only on the cliffs or hillsides)were to be seen three

insulated trees. One was an elm of fine size and exquisite form: it stood guard over the southern gate of the

vale. Another was a hickory, much larger than the elm, and altogether a much finer tree, although both were

exceedingly beautiful: it seemed to have taken charge of the northwestern entrance, springing from a group

of rocks in the very jaws of the ravine, and throwing its graceful body, at an angle of nearly fortyfive

degrees, far out into the sunshine of the amphitheatre. About thirty yards east of this tree stood, however, the

pride of the valley, and beyond all question the most magnificent tree I have ever seen, unless, perhaps,

among the cypresses of the Itchiatuckanee. It was a triplestemmed tulip treethe Liriodendron

Tulipiferumone of the natural order of magnolias. Its three trunks separated from the parent at about three

feet from the soil, and diverging very slightly and gradually, were not more than four feet apart at the point

where the largest stem shot out into foliage: this was at an elevation of about eighty feet. The whole height of

the principal division was one hundred and twenty feet. Nothing can surpass in beauty the form, or the glossy,

vivid green of the leaves of the tulip tree. In the present instance they were fully eight inches wide; but their

glory was altogether eclipsed by the gorgeous splendour of the profuse blossoms. Conceive, closely

congregated, a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips! Only thus can the reader get any idea of the

picture I would convey. And then the stately grace of the clean, delicatelygranulated columnar stems, the

largest four feet in diameter, at twenty from the ground. The innumerable blossoms, mingling with those of

other trees scarcely less beautiful, although infinitely less majestic, filled the valley with more than Arabian

The general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same character as that I had found in the road: if

anything, more deliciously soft, thick, velvety, and miraculously green. It was hard to conceive how all this

I have spoken of the two openings into the vale. From the one to the northwest issued a rivulet, which came,

gently murmuring and slightly foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the group of rocks out of

which sprang the insulated hickory. Here, after encircling the tree, it passed on a little to the north of east,

leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the south, and making no decided alteration in its course until it

came near the midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. At this point, after a series

of sweeps, it turned off at right angles and pursued a generally southern directionmeandering as it

wentuntil it became lost in a small lake of irregular figure (although roughly oval), that lay gleaming near

the lower extremity of the vale. This lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred yards in diameter at its widest part. No

crystal could be clearer than its water. Its bottom, which could be distinctly seen, consisted altogether of

pebbles brilliantly white. Its banks, of the emerald grass already described, rounded, rather than sloped, off

into the clear heaven below; and so clear was this heaven, so perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects

above it, that where the true bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it was a point of no little

difficulty to determine. The trout, and some other varieties of fish, with which this pond seemed to be almost

inconveniently crowded, had all the appearance of veritably flyingfish. It was almost impossible to believe

that they were not absolutely suspended in the air. A light birch canoe that lay placidly on the water, was

reflected in its minutest fibres with a fidelity unsurpassed by the most exquisitely polished mirror. A small

island, fairly laughing with flowers in full bloom, and affording little more space than just enough for a

picturesque little building, seemingly a fowlhousearose from the lake not far from its northern shoreto

which it was connected by means of an inconceivably lightlooking and yet very primitive bridge. It was

formed of a single, broad and thick plank of the tulip wood. This was forty feet long, and spanned the interval

between shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch, preventing all oscillation. From the southern

extreme of the lake issued a continuation of the rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards,

finally passed through the 'depression' (already described) in the middle of the southern declivity, and

tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred feet, made its devious and unnoticed way to the Hudson.

The lake was deepat some points thirty feetbut the rivulet seldom exceeded three, while its greatest

width was about eight. Its bottom and banks were as those of the pondif a defect could have been

attributed to them, in point of picturesqueness, it was that of excessive neatness.

The expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an occasional showy shrub, such as the

hydrangea, or the common snowball, or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a clump of geraniums

blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which were carefully buried in the soil, so

as to give the plants the appearance of being indigenous. Besides all this, the lawn's velvet was exquisitely

spotted with sheepa considerable flock of which roamed about the vale, in company with three tamed deer,

and a vast number of brilliantlyplumed ducks. A very large mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon

Along the eastern and western cliffswhere, towards the upper portion of the amphitheatre, the boundaries

were more or less precipitousgrew ivy in great profusionso that only here and there could even a

glimpse of the naked rock be obtained. The northern precipice, in like manner, was almost entirely clothed by

grapevines of rare luxuriance; some springing from the soil at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges

The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little domain, was crowned by a neat stone

wall, of sufficient height to prevent the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence kind was observable

elsewhere; for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed:any stray sheep, for example, which should

attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of the ravine, would find its progress arrested, after a few

yards' advance, by the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled the cascade that had arrested my

attention as I first drew near the domain. In short, the only ingress or egress was through a grate occupying a

rocky pass in the road, a few paces below the point at which I stopped to reconnoitre the scene.

I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the whole of its course. Its two general

directions, as I have said, were first from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the stream,

sweeping backwards, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a peninsula which was very nearly an

island, and which included about the sixteenth of an acre. On this peninsula stood a dwellinghouseand

when I say that this house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, 'etait d'une architecture inconnue dans les

annales de la terre', I mean, merely, that its tout ensemble struck me with the keenest sense of combined

novelty and proprietyin a word, of poetry (for, than in the words just employed, I could scarcely give, of

poetry in the abstract, a more rigorous definition)and I do not mean that the merely outre was perceptible

In fact, nothing could well be more simplemore utterly unpretending than this cottage. Its marvellous

effect lay altogether in its artistic arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it, that

The point of view from which I first saw the valley, was not altogether, although it was nearly, the best point

from which to survey the house. I will therefore describe it as I afterwards saw itfrom a position on the

The main building was about twentyfour feet long and sixteen broadcertainly not more. Its total height,

from the ground to the apex of the roof, could not have exceeded eighteen feet. To the west end of this

structure was attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions:the line of its front standing back

about two yards from that of the larger house; and the line of its roof, of course, being considerably depressed

below that of the roof adjoining. At right angles to these buildings, and from the rear of the main onenot

exactly in the middleextended a third compartment, very smallbeing, in general, one third less than the

western wing. The roofs of the two larger were very steepsweeping down from the ridgebeam with a long

concave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in front, so as to form the roofs of two

piazzas. These latter roofs, of course, needed no support; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and

perfectly plain pillars were inserted at the corners alone. The roof of the northern wing was merely an

extension of a portion of the main roof. Between the chief building and western wing arose a very tall and

rather slender square chimney of hard Dutch bricks, alternately black and red:a slight cornice of projecting

bricks at the top. Over the gables, the roofs also projected very much:in the main building about four feet

to the east and two to the west. The principal door was not exactly in the main division, being a little to the

eastwhile the two windows were to the west. These latter did not extend to the floor, but were much longer

and narrower than usualthey had single shutters like doorsthe panes were of lozenge form, but quite

large. The door itself had its upper half of glass, also in lozenge panesa moveable shutter secured it at

night. The door to the west wing was in its gable, and quite simplea single window looked out to the south.

There was no external door to the north wing, and it, also, had only one window to the east.

The blank wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a balustrade) running diagonally across

itthe ascent being from the south. Under cover of the widelyprojecting eave these steps gave access to a

door leading into the garret, or rather loftfor it was lighted only by a single window to the north, and

The piazzas of the main building and western wing had no floors, as is usual; but at the doors and at each

window, large, flat, irregular slabs of granite lay imbedded in the delicious turf, affording comfortable footing

in all weather. Excellent paths of the same materialnot nicely adapted, but with the velvety sod filling

frequent intervals between the stones, led hither and thither from the house, to a crystal spring about five

paces off, to the road, or to one or two outhouses that lay to the north, beyond the brook, and were thoroughly

Not more than six steps from the main door of the cottage stood the dead trunk of a fantastic peartree, so

clothed from head to foot in the gorgeous bignonia blossoms that one required no little scrutiny to determine

what manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung cages of different kinds. In one,

a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top, revelled a mocking bird; in another, an oriole; in a third, the

impudent bobolinkwhile three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with canaries.

The pillars of the piazza were enwreathed in jasmine and sweet honeysuckle; while from the angle formed by

the main structure and its west wing, in front, sprang a grapevine of unexampled luxuriance. Scorning all

restraint, it had clambered first to the lower roofthen to the higher; and along the ridge of this latter it

continued to writhe on, throwing out tendrils to the right and left, until at length it fairly attained the east

The whole house, with its wings, was constructed of the oldfashioned Dutch shinglesbroad, and with

unrounded corners. It is a peculiarity of this material to give houses built of it the appearance of being wider

at bottom than at topafter the manner of Egyptian architecture; and in the present instance, this

exceedingly picturesque effect was aided by numerous pots of gorgeous flowers that almost encompassed the

The shingles were painted a dull grey; and the happiness with which this neutral tint melted into the vivid

green of the tulip tree leaves that partially overshadowed the cottage, can readily be conceived by an artist.

From the position near the stone wall, as described, the buildings were seen at great advantagefor the

southeastern angle was thrown forwardso that the eye took in at once the whole of the two fronts, with

the picturesque eastern gable, and at the same time obtained just a sufficient glimpse of the northern wing,

with parts of a pretty roof to the springhouse, and nearly half of a light bridge that spanned the brook in the

I did not remain very long on the brow of the hill, although long enough to make a thorough survey of the

scene at my feet. It was clear that I had wandered from the road to the village, and I had thus good traveller's

excuse to open the gate before me, and inquire my way, at all events; so, without more ado, I proceeded.

The road, after passing the gate, seemed to lie upon a natural ledge, sloping gradually down along the face of

the northeastern cliffs. It led me on to the foot of the northern precipice, and thence over the bridge, round

by the eastern gable to the front door. In this progress, I took notice that no sight of the outhouses could be

As I turned the corner of the gable, the mastiff bounded towards me in stern silence, but with the eye and the

whole air of a tiger. I held him out my hand, however, in token of amity and I never yet knew the dog who

was proof against such an appeal to his courtesy. He not only shut his mouth and wagged his tail, but

As no bell was discernible, I rapped with my stick against the door, which stood half open. Instantly a figure

advanced to the thresholdthat of a young woman about twentyeight years of ageslender, or rather

slight, and somewhat above the medium height. As she approached, with a certain modest decision of step

altogether indescribable, I said to myself, 'Surely here I have found the perfection of natural, in

contradistinction from artificial grace.' The second impression which she made on me, but by far the more

vivid of the two, was that of enthusiasm. So intense an expression of romance, perhaps I should call it, or of

unworldliness, as that which gleamed from her deepset eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of hearts

before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of the eye, wreathing itself occasionally into the lips,

is the most powerful, if not absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. 'Romance', provided

my readers fully comprehend what I would here imply by the word'romance' and 'womanliness' seem to

me convertible terms; and, after all, what man truly loves in woman is, simply, her womanhood. The eyes of

Annie (I heard some one from the interior call her 'Annie, darling!') were 'spiritual grey'; her hair, a light

At her most courteous of invitations, I enteredpassing first into a tolerably wide vestibule. Having come

mainly to observe, I took notice that to my right as I stepped in, was a window, such as those in front of the

house; to the left, a door leading into the principal room; while, opposite me, an open door enabled me to see

a small apartment, just the size of the vestibule, arranged as a study, and having a large bow window looking

Passing into the parlour, I found myself with Mr Landorfor this, I afterwards found, was his name. He was

civil, even cordial in his manner; but just then, I was more intent on observing the arrangements of the

dwelling which had so much interested me, than the personal appearance of the tenant.

The north wing, I now saw, was a bedchamber: its door opened into the parlour. West of this door was a

single window, looking towards the brook. At the west end of the parlour, were a fireplace, and a door

Nothing could be more rigorously simple than the furniture of the parlour. On the floor was an ingrain carpet,

of excellent texturea white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. At the windows were curtains

of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps rather formally, in

sharp, parallel plaits to the floorjust to the floor. The walls were papered with a French paper of great

delicacya silver ground, with a faint green cord running zigzag throughout. Its expanse was relieved

merely by three of Julien's exquisite lithographs a trois crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. One of

these drawings was a scene of Oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was a 'carnival piece',

spirited beyond compare; the third was a Greek female heada face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an

The more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few chairs (including a large rockingchair), and

a sofa, or rather 'settee': its material was plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly interstriped with

greenthe seat of cane. The chairs and table were 'to match'; but the forms of all had evidently been

On the table were a few books; a large, square, crystal bottle of some novel perfume; a plain, groundglass

astral (not solar) lamp, with an Italian shade; and a large vase of resplendentlyblooming flowers. Flowers

indeed of gorgeous colours and delicate odour, formed the sole mere decoration of the apartment. The

fireplace was nearly filled with a vase of brilliant geranium. On a triangular shelf in each angle of the room

stood also a similar vase, varied only as to its lovely contents. One or two smaller bouquets adorned the

It is not the purpose of this work to do more than give, in detail, a picture of Mr Landor's residenceas I

I am come of a race noted for vigour of fancy and ardour of passion. Men have called me mad; but the

question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence whether much that is

gloriouswhether all that is profounddoes not spring from disease of thoughtfrom of mind

exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which

escape those who dream only by night. In their grey visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in

awaking, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of

the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however

rudderless or compassless, into the vast ocean of the 'light ineffable' and again, like the adventurers of the

Nubian geographer, ''.

We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental

existencethe condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of events

forming the first epoch of my lifeand a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to

the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier

period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due; or doubt it

She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances, was the sole

daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We

had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass. No unguided

footstep ever came upon that vale; for it lay far away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling

around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was trodden in its vicinity; and,

to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of forest

trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all

alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley,I, and my cousin, and her mother.

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a

narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy

courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it

had issued. We called it the 'River of Silence'; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No

murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to

gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station,

The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided, through devious ways, into its channel,

as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until they

reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom,these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the

river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even,

and vanillaperfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple

violet, and the rubyred asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts, in loud tones, of the love and

And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose

tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully towards the light that peered at noonday into the

centre of the valley. Their bark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendour of ebony and silver, and was

smoother than all save the cheeks of Eleonora; so that but for the brilliant green of the huge leaves that spread

from their summits in long tremulous lines, dallying with the Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant

Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I wish Eleonora before Love entered within our

hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own, that we

sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpentlike trees, and looked down within the waters of the

River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day; and our words

even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the god Eros from that wave, and now we felt

that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries

distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together

breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange

brilliant flowers, starshaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. The tints of

the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of

them, ten by ten of the rubyred asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen,

with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the

river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody

more divine than that of the harp of Aeolussweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a

voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in

crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and lower, until its edges rested

upon the tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up, as if for ever,

The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief

life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervour of love which animated her heart, and she

examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass, and

At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall Humanity, she

thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the

songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again and again, in every impressive

She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom that, like the ephemeron, she had been made

perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave, to her, lay solely in a consideration which she

revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having

entombed her in the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass, I would quit for ever its happy recesses, transferring

the love which now was so passionately her own to some maiden of the outer and everyday world. And,

then and there, I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow, to herself and to

Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of Earththat I would in no manner

prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me.

And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the curse

which I invoked of and of her, a saint in Helusion, should I prove traitorous to that promise,

involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the

bright eyes of Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from

her breast; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but she made acceptance of the vow (for what was she

but a child?), and it made easy to her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many days afterwards,

tranquilly dying, that, because of what I had done for the comfort of her spirit, she would watch over me in

that spirit when departed, and, if so it were permitted her, return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but,

if this thing were, indeed, beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she would, at least, give me

frequent indications of her presence; sighing upon me in the evening winds, or filling the air which I breathed

with perfume from the censers of the angels. And with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her

Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Time's path formed by the death of my beloved,

and proceed with the second era of my existence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and I mistrust

the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on. Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled

within the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass; but a second change had come upon all things. The

starshaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet

faded; and, one by one, the rubyred asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by

ten, dark eyelike violets that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. And Life departed from

our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale

into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish

swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. And

the lulling melody that had been softer than the windharp of Aeolus and more divine than all save the voice

of Eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at

length, utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence. And then, lastly the voluminous cloud arose, and,

abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and took

away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass.

Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the

angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, when my

heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs; and indistinct

murmurs filled often the night air; and onceoh, but once only! I was awakened from a slumber like the

But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had before filled it to

overflowing. At length the valley me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it for

I found myself within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet

dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the ManyColoured Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a

stately court, and the mad clangour of arms, and the radiant loveliness of woman, bewildered and intoxicated

my brain. But as yet my soul had proved true to its vows, and the indications of the presence of Eleonora

were still given me in the silent hours of the night. Suddenly, these manifestations they ceased; and the world

grew dark before mine eyes; and I stood aghast at the burning thoughts which possessed at the terrible

temptations which beset me; for there came from some far, far distant and unknown land, into the gay court

of the king I served, a maiden to whose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at onceat whose footstool

I bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. What indeed was my

passion for the young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervour, and the delirium, and the spiritlifting

ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet of the ethereal

Ermengarde? Oh bright was the seraph Ermengarde! and in that knowledge I had room for none other.

Oh divine was the angel Ermengarde! and as I looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes I thought

I wedded;nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. And oncebut

once again in the silence of the night, there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me;

'Sleep in peace!for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate her who is

Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto

I never knew any one so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed to live only for joking. To tell a

good story of the joke kind, and to tell it well, was the surest road to his favour. Thus it happened that his

seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They all took after the king, too, in being

large, corpulent, oily men, as well as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there

is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it

About the refinements, or, as he called them, the 'ghosts' of wit, the king troubled himself very little. He had

an especial admiration for breadth in a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it.

Overniceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais's Gargantua to the Zadig of Voltaire; and,

At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone out of fashion at court. Several of the

great continental 'powers' still retained their 'fools', who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were

expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment's notice, in consideration of the crumbs that

Our king, as a matter of course, retained his 'fool'. The fact is, he required something in the way of follyif

only to counterbalance the heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministersnot to mention

His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value was trebled in the eyes of the king by

the fact of his being also a dwarf and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools; and

many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days (days are rather longer at court than

elsewhere) without both a jester to laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already observed, your

jesters, in ninetynine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and unwieldyso that it was no small source of

selfgratulation with our king that, in HopFrog (this was the fool's name) he possessed a triplicate treasure

I believe the name 'HopFrog' was not given to the dwarf by his sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred

upon him, by general consent of the seven ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men do. In

fact, HopFrog could only get along by a sort of interjectional gaitsomething between a leap and a

wrigglea movement that afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king, for

(notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional swelling of the head) the king,

But although HopFrog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only with great pain and difficulty

along a road or floor, the prodigious muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms,

by way of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform many feats of wonderful

dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question, or anything else to climb. At such exercises he certainly

I am not able to say, with precision, from what country HopFrog originally came. It was from some barbarous

region, however, that no person ever heard ofa vast distance from the court of our king. HopFrog, and a

young girl very little less dwarfish than himself (although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer),

had been forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces, and sent as presents to the

Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a close intimacy arose between the two little

captives. Indeed, they soon became sworn friends. HopFrog, who, although he made a great deal of sport,

was by no means popular, had it not in his power to render Trippetta many services; but she, on account of

her grace and exquisite beauty (although a dwarf), was universally admired and petted: so she possessed

much influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit of HopFrog.

On some grand state occasionI forget whatthe king determined to have a masquerade; and whenever a

masquerade, or anything of that kind, occurred at our court, then the talents both of HopFrog and Trippetta

were sure to be called in play. HopFrog, in especial, was so inventive in the way of getting up pageants,

suggesting novel characters and arranging costume for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it seems,

The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous hall had been fitted up, under Trippetta's eye, with

every kind of device which could possibly give eclat to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever of

expectation. As for costumes and characters, it might well be supposed that everybody had come to a decision

on such points. Many had made up their minds as to what roles they should assume, a week, or even a month,

in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhereexcept in the case of the king and

his seven ministers. Why they hesitated I never could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke. More probably,

they found it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. At all events, time flew; and, as a

When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king, they found him sitting at his wine with the seven

members of his cabinet council; but the monarch appeared to be in a very ill humour. He knew that

HopFrog was not fond of wine; for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and madness is no

comfortable thing. But the king loved his practical jokes, and took pleasure in forcing HopFrog to drink and

'Come here, HopFrog,' said he, as the jester and his friend entered the room: 'swallow this bumper to the

health of your absent friends' (here HopFrog sighed), 'and then let us have the benefit of your invention. We

want characterscharacters, man something novelout of the way. We are wearied with this everlasting

HopFrog endeavoured, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to these advances from the king; but the effort was

too much. It happened to be the poor dwarf's birthday, and the command to drink to his 'absent friends' forced

the tears to his eyes. Many large, bitter drops fell into the goblet as he took it, humbly, from the hand of the

'Ah! ha! ha! ha!' roared the latter, as the dwarf reluctantly drained the beaker. 'See what a glass of good wine

Poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed rather than shone, for the effect of wine on his excitable brain was not

more powerful than instantaneous. He placed the goblet nervously on the table, and looked round upon the

company with a halfinsane stare. They all seemed highly amused at the success of the king's 'joke'.

'Yes,' said the king; 'come, HopFrog, lend us your assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need

of charactersall of usha! ha! ha!' and as this was seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by

'I am endeavouring to think of something novel,' replied the dwarf, abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered

'Endeavouring!' cried the tyrant, fiercely; 'what do you mean by that? Ah, I perceive. You are sulky, and want

more wine. Here, drink this!' and he poured out another gobletful and offered it to the cripple, who merely

The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse,

advanced to the monarch's seat, and, falling to her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.

The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her audacity. He seemed quite at a loss

what to do or say how most becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a syllable, he

pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the brimming goblet in her face.

The poor girl got up as best she could, and, not daring even to sigh, resumed her position at the foot of the

There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the falling of a leaf, or of a feather, might

have been heard. It was interrupted by a low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at

'Whatwhatwhat are you making that noise for?' demanded the king, turning furiously to the dwarf.

The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly

'The sound appeared to come from without,' observed one of the courtiers. 'I fancy it was the parrot at the

'True,' replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion; 'but, on the honour of a knight, I could

Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object to any one's laughing), and

displayed a set of large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to

swallow as much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained another bumper with no

very perceptible ill effect, HopFrog entered at once, and with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.

'I cannot tell what was the association of idea,' observed he, very tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted

wine in his life, 'but just after your majesty had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her facejust after

your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was making that odd noise outside the window, there came

into my mind a capital diversionone of my own country frolicsoften enacted among us, at our

masquerades: but here it will be new altogether. Unfortunately, however, it requires a company of eight

'Here we are!' cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the coincidence; 'eight to a fractionI and

'We call it,' replied the cripple, 'the Eight Chained OurangOutangs, and it really is excellent sport if well

'We will enact it,' remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering his eyelids.

'The beauty of the game,' continued HopFrog, 'lies in the fright it occasions among the women.'

'leave all that to me. The resemblance shall be so striking that the company of masqueraders will take you for

'Oh, this is exquisite!' exclaimed the king. 'HopFrog! I will make a man of you.'

'The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their jangling. You are supposed to have

escaped, en masse, from your keepers. Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade,

by eight chained ourangoutangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the company, and rushing in with

savage cries among the crowd of delicately and gorgeously habited men and women. The contrast is

'It must be,' said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it was growing late), to put in execution the

His mode of equipping the party as ourangoutangs was very simple, but effective enough for his purposes.

The animals in question had, at the epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized

world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently beastlike and more than sufficiently

The king and his ministers were first encased in tightfitting stockinette shirts and drawers. They were then

saturated with tar. At this stage of the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion

was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by ocular demonstration, that the hair of

such a brute as the ourangoutang was much more efficiently represented by flax. A thick coating of the

latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long chain was now procured. First, it was passed

about the waist of the king, and tied; then about another of the party, and also tied, then about all

successively, and in the same manner. When this chaining arrangement was complete, and the party stood as

far apart from each other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear natural, HopFrog

passed the residue of the chain, in two diameters, at right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted,

at the present day, by those who capture Chimpanzees, or other large apes, in Borneo.

The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular room, very lofty, and receiving

the light of the sun only through a single window at top. At night (the season for which the apartment was

especially designed), it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending by a chain from the

centre of the skylight, and lowered, or elevated, by means of a counterbalance as usual; but (in order not to

The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta's superintendence; but, in some particulars, it seems,

she had been guided by the calmer judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it was that, on this

occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings (which, in weather so warm, it was quite

impossible to prevent) would have been seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on

account of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from out its centrethat is to

say, from under the chandelier. Additional sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the way; and a

flambeau, emitting sweet odour, was placed in the right hand of each of the Caryatides that stood against the

The eight ourangoutangs, taking HopFrog's advice, waited patiently until midnight (when the room was

thoroughly filled with masqueraders) before making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased

striking, however, than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all togetherfor the impediment of their chains

The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled the heart of the king with glee. As had

been anticipated, there were not a few of the guests who supposed the ferociouslooking creatures to be beasts

of some kind in reality, if not precisely ourangoutangs. Many of the women swooned with affright; and had

not the king taken the precaution to exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated

their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the doors; but the king had ordered them to

be locked immediately upon his entrance; and, at the dwarf's suggestion, the keys had been deposited with

While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to his own safety (for, in fact, there

was much real danger from the pressure of the excited crowd), the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily

hung, and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very gradually to descend, until its

Soon after this, the king and his seven friends, having reeled about the hall in all directions, found

themselves, at length, in its centre, and, of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thus

situated, the dwarf, who had followed closely at their heels, inciting them to keep up the commotion, took

hold of their own chain at the intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically and at

right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the hook from which the chandelier had been

wont to depend; and, in an instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelierchain was drawn so far upward as

to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable consequence, to drag the ourangoutangs together in close

The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their alarm; and, beginning to regard

the whole matter as a wellcontrived pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the

'Leave them to me!' now screamed HopFrog, his shrill voice making itself easily heard through all the din.

'Leave them to me. I fancy I know them. If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are.'

Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the wall; when, seizing a flambeau from

one of the Caryatides, he returned, as he went, to the centre of the room leaped, with the agility of a

monkey, upon the king's headand thence clambered a few feet up the chainholding down the torch to

examine the group of ourangoutangs, and still screaming, 'I shall soon find out who they are!'

And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsed with laughter, the jester suddenly

uttered a shrill whistle; when the chain flew violently up for about thirty feet dragging with it the dismayed

and struggling ourangoutangs, and leaving them suspended in midair between the skylight and the floor.

HopFrog, clinging to the chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the eight

maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to thrust his torch down towards them, as though

So thoroughly astonished were the whole company at this ascent, that a dead silence, of about a minute's

duration, ensued. It was broken by just such a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention

of the king and his councillors, when the former threw the wine in the face of Trippetta. But, on the present

occasion, there could be no question as to whence the sound issued. It came from the fanglike teeth of the

dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and glared, with an expression of

maniacal rage, into the upturned countenances of the king and his seven companions.

'Ah, ha!' said at length the infuriated jester. 'Ah, ha! I begin to see who these people are, now!' Here,

pretending to scrutinize the king more closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him,

and which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a minute the whole eight

ourangoutangs were blazing fiercely, amid the shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below,

At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester to climb higher up the chain, to be

out of their reach; and as he made this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence. The

'I now see distinctly,' he said, 'what manner of people these maskers are. They are a great king and his seven

privycouncillors a king who does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl, and his seven councillors who

abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply HopFrog, the jesterand this is my last jest.'

Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to which it adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made

an end of his brief speech before the work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung in their

chains, a fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled his torch at them,

It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had been the accomplice of her friend in his

fiery revenge, and that, together, they effected their escape to their own country: for neither was seen again.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung

oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of

country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy

House of Usher. I know not how it wasbut, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable

gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that halfpleasureable,

because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the

desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before meupon the mere house, and the simple landscape

features of the domainupon the bleak wallsupon the vacant eyelike windowsupon a few rank

sedgesand upon a few white trunks of decayed treeswith an utter depression of soul which I can

compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the afterdream of the reveller upon opiumthe bitter

lapse into everyday lifethe hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of

the heartan unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into

aught of the sublime. What was itI paused to thinkwhat was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation

of the House of Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that

crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while,

beyond doubt, there combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus

affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I

reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would

be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression; and, acting

upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre

by the dwelling, and gazed downbut with a shudder even more thrilling than beforeupon the remodelled

and inverted images of the grey sedge, and the ghastly treestems, and the vacant and eyelike windows.

Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor,

Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last

meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the countrya letter from him

which, in its wildly importunate nature, had admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS gave

evidence of nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illnessof a mental disorder which

oppressed himand of an earnest desire to see me, as his best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a

view of attempting, by the cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the manner in

which all this, and much more, was saidit was the apparent that went with his requestwhich

allowed me no room for hesitation; and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular

Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really knew little of my friend. His reserve had

been always excessive and habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted, time

out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying itself, through long ages, in many works of

exalted art, and manifested, of late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a

passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the orthodox and easily recognizable

beauties, of musical science. I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all

timehonoured as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire

family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so

lain. It was this deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping of the character of

the premises with the accredited character of the people, and while speculating upon the possible influence

which the one, in the long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the otherit was this

deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating transmission, from sire to son, of the

patrimony with the name, which had, at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate

in the quaint and equivocal appellation of the 'House of Usher'an appellation which seemed to include, in

I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experimentthat of looking down within the

tarnhad been to deepen the first singular impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the

rapid increase of my suspersitionfor why should I not so term it?served mainly to accelerate the

increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And

it might have been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house itself, from its image

in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancya fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to

show the vivid force of the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination as really to

believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their

immediate vicinity an atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had reeked up

from the decayed trees, and the grey wall, and the silent tarna pestilent and mystic vapour, dull, sluggish,

Shaking off from my spirit what have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the

building. Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been

great. Minute overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled webwork from the eaves.

Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there

appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition

of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old woodwork

which has rotted for long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of the external

air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the fabric gave little token of instability.

Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,

extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the wall in a zigzag direction, until it

Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A servant in waiting took my horse, and I

entered the Gothic archway of the hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through

many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the of his master. Much that I encountered on

the way contributed, I know not how, to heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken.

While the objects around mewhile the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon

blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters

to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancywhile I hesitated not to

acknowledge how familiar was all thisI still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which

ordinary images were stirring up. On one of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His

countenance, I thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He accosted me with

trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a door and ushered me into the presence of his master.

The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows were long, narrow, and pointed,

and at so vast a distance from the black oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble

gleams of encrimsoned light made their way through the trellised panes, and served to render sufficiently

distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of

the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The

general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay

scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An

Upon my entrance, Usher rose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a

vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordialityof the constrained

effort of the man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his

perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling

half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had

Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before

me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable.

A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin

and very pallid, but of a surpassing beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a breadth of

nostril unusual in similar formations; a finelymoulded chin, speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want

of moral energy; hair of a more than weblike softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate

expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a countenance not easily to be forgotten. And

now in the mere exaggeration of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were

wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The now ghastly pallor of the skin,

and the now miraculous lustre of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too,

had been suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it floated rather than fell about

the face, I could not, even with effort, connect its arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.

In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherencean inconsistency; and I soon found

this to arise from a series of feeble and futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancyan excessive

nervous agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less by his letter, than by

reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation

and temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice varied rapidly from a tremulous

indecision (when the animal spirits seemed utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic

concisionthat abrupt, weighty, unhurried, and hollowsounding enunciationthat leaden, selfbalanced

and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable

It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me, and of the solace he

expected me to afford him. He entered, at some length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady.

It was, he said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to find a remedya mere

nervous affection, he immediately added, which would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host

of unnatural sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered me; although, perhaps,

the terms, and the general manner of the narration had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid

acuteness of the senses; the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of certain

texture; the odours of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were tortured by even a faint light; and there were

but peculiar sounds, and these from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.

To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. 'I shall perish,' said he, 'I perish in

this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in

themselves, but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial, incident, which may

operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have, indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute

effectin terror. In this unnervedin this pitiable conditionI feel that the period will sooner or later

arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.'

I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his

mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he

tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forthin regard to an influence whose

supposititious force was conveyed in terms too shadowy here to be restatedan influence which some

peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance,

he said, obtained over his spiritan effect which the of the grey walls and turrets, and of the

dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about upon the of his existence.

He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him

could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable originto the severe and longcontinued

illnessindeed to the evidently approaching dissolution of a tenderly beloved sisterhis sole companion

for long yearshis last and only relative on earth. 'Her decease,' he said, with a bitterness which I can never

forget, 'would leave him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the Ushers.' While he

spoke, the Lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment,

and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment not

unmingled with dreadand yet I found it impossible to account for such feelings. A sensation of stupor

oppressed me, as my eyes followed her retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance

sought instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brotherbut he had buried his face in his hands, and

I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through

The disease of the Lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual

wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character,

were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had

not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she

succumbed (as her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating power of the

destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should

For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or myself; and during this period I was

busied in earnest endeavours to alleviate the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together;

or I listened, as if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as a closer and still

closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive

the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured

forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in one unceasing radiation of gloom.

I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus spent alone with the master of the

House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of

the occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and highly distempered ideality

threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long improvised dirges will ring for ever in my ears. Among other

things, I hold painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild air of the last waltz

of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch,

into vagueness at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not why;from

these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I would in vain endeavour to educe more than a

small portion which should lie within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the

nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal painted an idea, that mortal was

Roderick Usher. For me at leastin the circumstances then surrounding methere arose out of the pure

abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no

shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of

One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may

be shadowed forth, although feebly, in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long

and rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without interruption or device. Certain

accessory points of the design served well to convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth

below the surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast extent, and no torch,

or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the

I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which rendered all music intolerable to the

sufferer, with the exception of certain effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to

which he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great measure, to the fantastic character

of the performances. But the fervid of his could not be so accounted for. They

must have been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasies (for he not unfrequently

accompanied himself with rhymed verbal improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and

concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in particular moments of the highest

artificial excitement. The words of one of these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the

more forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic current of its meaning, I

fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a full consciousness on the part of Usher, of the tottering of his

lofty reason upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled 'The Haunted Palace', ran very nearly, if not

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a train of thought wherein there became

manifest an opinion of Usher's which I mention not so much on account of its novelty (for other men1 have

thought thus), as on account of the pertinacity with which he maintained it. This opinion, in its general form,

was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more

daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of inorganization. I lack words

to express the full extent, or the earnest of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected

(as I have previously hinted) with the grey stones of the home of his forefathers. The conditions of the

sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the method of collocation of these stonesin the order of

their arrangement, as well as in that of the many which overspread them, and of the decayed trees

which stood around above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of this arrangement, and in its

reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its evidencethe evidence of the sentiencewas to be seen, he

said, (and I here started as he spoke) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an atmosphere of their own

about the waters and the walls. The result was discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and

terrible influence which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which made what

Our booksthe books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the

invalidwere, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together

over such works as the of Gresset; the of Machiavelli; the <i

1 Watson, Dr Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of Landaff. Swedenborg; the <i

Subterranean Voyage of Nicholas Klimm> by Holberg; the of Robert Flud, of Jean

D'Indagine, and of De la Chambre; the of Tieck; and the <i City of the

Sun> by Campanella. One favourite volume was a small octavo edition of the ,

by the Dominican Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in , about the old

African Satyrs and Aegipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming for hours. His chief delight, however,

was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothicthe manual of a

I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the

hypochondriac, when, one evening, having informed me abruptly that the Lady Madeline was no more, he

stated his intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight (previously to its final interment), in one of the

numerous vaults within the main walls of the building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this

singular proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother had been led to his

resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain

obtrusive and eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and exposed situation of the

burialground of the family. I will not deny that when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person

whom I met upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to oppose what I

At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for the temporary entombment. The body

having been encoffined, we two alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had been

so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for

investigation) was small, damp, and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth,

immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own sleeping apartment. It had been used,

apparently, in remote feudal times, for the worst purpose of a donjonkeep, and, in later days, as a

place of deposit for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its floor, and the

whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it, were carefully sheathed with copper. The

door, of massive iron, had been, also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp

Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of horror, we partially turned aside the

yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the

brother and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my thoughts, murmured out

some few words from which I learned that the deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a

scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however, rested not long upon the

deadfor we could not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of

youth, had left, as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint blush upon

the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We

replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil, into the

And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change came over the features of the

mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or

forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and objectless step. The pallor of his

countenance had assumed, if possible, a more ghastly huebut the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone

out. The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a tremulous quaver, as if of extreme

terror, habitually characterized his utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly

agitated mind was labouring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which he struggled for the necessary

courage. At times, again, I was obliged to resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I

beheld him gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest attention, as if

listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his condition terrifiedthat it infected me. I felt

creeping upon me, by slow yet certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive

It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or eighth day after the placing of the

Lady Madeline within the donjon, that I experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my

couchwhile the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the nervousness which had

dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering

influence of the gloomy furniture of the roomof the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into

motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about

the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my

frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm. Shaking this off

with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense

darkness of the chamber, hearkened I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted meto

certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not

whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw on my

clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself

from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.

I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I

presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant afterwards he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door,

and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wanbut, moreover, there was a

species of mad hilarity in his eyesan evidently restrained in his whole demeanour. His air

appalled mebut anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed

'And you have not seen it?' he said abruptly, after having stared about him for some moments in

silence'you have not then seen it?but, stay! you shall.' Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his

lamp, he hurried to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.

The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It was, indeed, a tempestuous yet

sternly beautiful night, and one wildly singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently

collected its force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the direction of the wind;

and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not

prevent our perceiving the lifelike velocity with which they flew careering from all points against each other,

without passing away into the distance. I say that even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving

thisyet we had no glimpse of the moon or starsnor was there any flashing forth of the lightning. But the

under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapour, as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us,

were glowing in the unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous exhalation which

'You must notyou shall not behold this!' said I, shudderingly, to Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence,

from the window to a seat. 'These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena not

uncommonor it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank miasma of the tarn. Let us close this

casement;the air is chilling and dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favourite romances. I will

read, and you shall listen;and so we will pass away this terrible night together.'

The antique volume which I had taken up was the of Sir Launcelot Canning; but I had called it

a favourite of Usher's more in sad jest than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and

unimaginative prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of my friend. It was,

however, the only book immediately at hand; and I indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now

agitated the hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of similar anomalies)

even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read. Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild

overstrained air of vivacity with which he hearkened, or apparently hearkened, to the words of the tale, I

I had arrived at that wellknown portion of the story where Ethelred, the hero of the Trist, having sought in

vain for peaceable admission into the dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force.

'And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now mighty withal, on account of the

powerfulness of the wine which he had drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in

sooth, was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his shoulders, and fearing the rising

of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright, and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door

for his gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and ripped, and tore all asunder,

that the noise of the dry and hollowsounding wood alarmed and reverberated throughout the forest.'

At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at

once concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)it appeared to me that, from some very remote

portion of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its exact similarity of

character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir

Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone which had arrested my

attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still

increasing storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested or disturbed me. I

'But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore enraged and amazed to perceive no

signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanour, and of

a fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of silver; and upon the wall there

and Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon, which fell before him, and gave up

his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his

ears with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never before heard.'

Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazementfor there could be no doubt

whatever that, in this instance, I did actually hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it

impossible to say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual screaming or grating

soundthe exact counterpart of what my fancy had already conjured up for the dragon's unnatural shriek as

Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of the second and most extraordinary coincidence, by a

thousand conflicting sensations, in which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained

sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the sensitive nervousness of my

companion. I was by no means certain that he had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a

strange alteration had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanour. From a position fronting my

own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I

could but partially perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were murmuring

inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breastyet I knew that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid

opening of the eye as I caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance with this

ideafor he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken

notice of all this, I resumed the narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:

'And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the dragon, bethinking himself of the

brazen shield, and of the breaking up of the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of

the way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the castle to where the

shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the

No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, thanas if a shield of brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen

heavily upon a floor of silverI became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently

muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the measured rocking movement of

Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and

throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I placed my hand upon his shoulder,

there came a strong shudder over his whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he

spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my presence. Bending closely over him,

'Not hear it?yes, I hear it, and heard it. Long longlongmany minutes, many hours, many

days, have I heard ityet I dared notoh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!I dared notI

not speak! ! Said I not that my senses were acute? I tell you

that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I heard themmany, many days agoyet I

dared not! And nowtonightEthelredha! ha!the breaking of the hermit's

door, and the deathcry of the dragon, and the clangour of the shield!say, rather, the rending of her coffin,

and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison, and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault!

Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not

heard her footsteps on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart?

MADMAN!' here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he was

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spellthe huge

antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous

and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gustbut then without those doors there DID stand the lofty

and enshrouded figure of the Lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the

evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained

trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon

the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final deathagonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and

From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was still abroad in all its wrath as I found

myself crossing the old causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence

a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance

was that of the full, setting, and bloodred moon which now shone vividly through that once

barelydiscernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the building, in a

zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widenedthere came a fierce breath of the

whirlwindthe entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sightmy brain reeled as I saw the mighty

walls rushing asunderthere was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand

watersand the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the 'HOUSE

In the consideration of the faculties and impulsesof the of the human soul, the

phrenologists have failed to make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical,

primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In

the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have suffered its existence to escape our

senses solely through want of beliefof faith;whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith in the Kabbala.

The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of its supererogation. We saw no of

impulsefor the propensity. We could not perceive its necessity. We could not understand, that is to say, we

could not have understood, had the notion of this ever obtruded itself;we could not

have understood in what manner it might be made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or

eternal. It cannot be denied that phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism have been concocted

. The intellectual or logical man, rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to

imagine designsto dictate purposes to God. Having thus fathomed, to his satisfaction, the intentions of

Jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter of phrenology, for

example, we first determined, naturally enough, that it was the design of the Deity that man should eat. We

then assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge with which the Deity compels

man, willI nillI, into eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that man should continue his

species, we discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith. And so with combativeness, with ideality, with

causality, with constructiveness,so, in short, with every organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral

sentiment, or a faculty of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the of human action,

the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle, the

footsteps of their predecessors; deducing and establishing everything from the preconceived destiny

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify we must) upon the basis of what

man usually or occasionally did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what he

took it for granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his visible works, how then

in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective

Induction, , would have brought phrenology to admit, as an innate and primitive principle of

human action, a paradoxical something, which we may call , for want of a more

characteristic term. In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a without motive, a motive not .

Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or, if this shall be understood as a

contradiction in terms, we may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for

the reason that we should . In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none

more strong. With certain minds, under certain conditions it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more

certain that I breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one

unconquerable which impels us, and alone impels us to its prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming

tendency to do wrong for the wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is radical,

a primitive impulseelementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we

should persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the <i

combativeness> of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. The phrenological

combativeness has, for its essence, the necessity of selfdefence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its

principle regards our wellbeing; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its

development. It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited simultaneously with any principle which

shall be merely a modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term <i

perverseness>, the desire to be well is not only aroused, but a strongly antagonistical sentiment

An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly

consults and thoroughly questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the

propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no man who at some

period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The

speaker is aware that he displeases, he has every intention to please; he is usually curt, precise, and clear; the

most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his tongue; it is only with difficulty that

he restrains himself from giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses; yet,

the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single

thought is enough. The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an uncontrollable

longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay.

The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpettongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we

are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole

souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken today, and yet we put it off until tomorrow; and why?

There is no answer, except that we feel , using the word with no comprehension of the principle.

Tomorrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of

anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving

gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the

conflict within us,of the definite with the indefiniteof the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest

has proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevailswe struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the

knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleernote to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It

fliesit disappearswe are free. The old energy returns. We will labour . Alas, it is <i too

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abysswe grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is

to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror

become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes

shape, as did the vapour from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the . But out of

this cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any

genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the

very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would

be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fallthis rushing

annihilationfor the very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most ghastly

and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imaginationfor

this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the

brink, do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally

impatient as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge,

for a moment, in any attempt at , is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and

it is, I say, that we . If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden

effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.

Examine these and similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting solely from the spirit of the <i

Perverse>. We perpetrate them merely because we feel that we should Beyond or behind this there is

no intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the archfiend,

I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your questionthat I may explain to you why I

am herethat I may assign to you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my

wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned. Had I not been thus prolix,

you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is, you

will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more thorough deliberation. For weeks, for

months, I pondered upon the means of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their

accomplishment involved a of detection. At length, in reading some French memoirs, I found an

account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally

poisoned. The idea struck my fancy at once. I knew my victim's habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that his

apartment was narrow and illventilated. But I need not vex you with impertinent details. I need not describe

the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his bedroom candle stand, a waxlight of my own making for

the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and the coroner's verdict

Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of detection never once entered my

brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper I had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clue by

which it would be possible to convict, or even suspect, me of the crime. It is inconceivable how rich a

sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long period

of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than all the mere worldly

advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling

grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed me because it

haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is quite a common thing to be thus annoyed with the

ringing in our ears, or rather in our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive

snatches from an opera. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in itself be good, or the opera air

meritorious. In this manner, at last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and

One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act of murmuring, half aloud,

these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance I remodelled them thus: 'I am safeI am safeyesif I be

No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my heart. I had had some experience in

these fits of perversity (whose nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I remembered well that in

no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual selfsuggestion, that I might

possibly be fool enough to confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost

At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked vigorouslyfasterstill fasterat

length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me

with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well, understood that to , in my situation, was to be lost. I still

quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace

took the alarm and pursued me. I felt the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out my

tongue, I would have done itbut a rough voice resounded in my earsa rougher grasp seized me by the

shoulder. I turnedI gasped for breath. For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became

blind, and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his broad palm upon the

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in

dread of interruption before concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the hangman

Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon.

But why shall I say more? Today I wear these chains, and am ! Tomorrow I shall be

'La musique,' says Marmontel, in those 'Contes Moraux'<1> which, in all our translations, we have insisted

upon calling 'Moral Tales' as if in mockery of their spirit'la musique est le seul des talents qui jouissent de

luimeme; tous les autres veulent des temoins.' He here confounds the pleasure derivable from sweet sounds

with the capacity for creating them. No more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete

enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it is only in common

<1>Moraux is here derived from moeurs and its meaning is fashionable, or, more strictly, 'of manners'.

with other talents that it produces effects which may be fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the

raconteur has either failed to entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of point,

is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is the most thoroughly estimated when we

are exclusively alone. The proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the lyre for

its sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still within the reach of fallen mortalityand

perhaps only onewhich owes even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean

the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth, the man who would behold aright

the glory of God upon earth must in solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presencenot of human

life only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow upon the soil and are

voicelessis a stain upon the landscapeis at war with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the

dark valleys, and the grey rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in uneasy

slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon allI love to regard these as themselves

but the colossal members of one vast animate and sentient wholea whole whose form (that of the sphere) is

the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate planets; whose meek handmaiden is

the moon; whose mediate sovereign is the sun; whose life is eternity; whose thought is that of a God; whose

enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity; whose cognizance of ourselves is akin with

our own cognizance of the animalculae which infest the braina being which we, in consequence, regard as

purely inanimate and material, much in the same manner as these animalculae must thus regard us.

Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every handnotwithstanding the cant of the

more ignorant of the priesthoodthat space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes

of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted for the evolution, without

collision, of the greatest possible number of bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as, within

a given surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter; while the surfaces themselves are so

disposed as to accommodate a denser population than could be accommodated on the same surfaces

otherwise arranged. Nor is it any argument against bulk being an object with God, that space itself is infinite;

for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see clearly that the endowment of matter with

vitality is a principleindeed as far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of

Deityit is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute, where we daily trace it, and

not extending to those of the august. As we find cycle within cycle without endyet all revolving around

one fardistant centre which is the Godhead, may we not analogically suppose, in the same manner, life within

life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through

selfesteem, in believing man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the

universe than that vast 'clod of the valley' which he tills and contemns, and to which he denies a soul for no

These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations among the mountains, and the forests,

by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of what the everyday world would not fail to term the fantastic. My

wanderings amid such scenes have been many, and farsearching, and often solitary; and the interest with

which I have strayed through many a dim deep valley, or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright

lake, has been an interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed alone. What flippant

Frenchman<2> was it who said, in allusion to the wellknown work of Zimmerman, that 'la solitude est une

belle chose; mais il faut quelqu'un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose'. The epigram cannot be

It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a fardistant region of mountain locked within mountain,

and sad rivers and melancholy tarns writhing or sleeping within allthat I chanced

<1>Speaking of the tides, Pomponius Mela, in his treatise De Situ Orbis, says: 'Either the world is a great

upon a certain rivulet and island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon the

turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt

On all sidessave to the west, where the sun was about sinkingarose the verdant walls of the forest. The

little river which turned sharply in its course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit

from its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the east while in the opposite

quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and

continuously into the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of the sky.

About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one small circular island, profusely

So blended bank and shadow there, That each seemed pendulous in air so mirrorlike was the glassy

water, that it was scarcely possible to say at what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion

My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and western extremities of the islet; and I

observed a singularlymarked difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden

beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eye of the slant sunlight, and fairly laughed with flowers. The

grass was short, springy, sweetscented, and Asphodelinterspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect

bright, slender, and gracefulof eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth, glossy, and particoloured.

There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about all; and although no airs blew from out the Heavens, yet

everything had motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies, that might have

The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful

gloom here pervaded all things. The trees were dark in colour and mournful in form and attitudewreathing

themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes, that conveyed ideas of mortal sorrow and untimely death.

The grass wore the deep tint of the cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and, hither and

thither among it, were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very long, that had the aspect

of graves, but were not; although over and all about them the rue and rosemary clambered. The shade of the

trees fell heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the depths of the element

with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly

from the trunk that gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows issued

This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost myself forthwith in reverie. 'If ever

island were enchanted'said I to myself'this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain

from the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?or do they yield up their sweet lives as mankind

yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather waste away mournfully; rendering unto God little by little

their existence, as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance unto dissolution?

What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may

As I thus mused, with halfshut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest, and eddying currents careered round

and round the island, bearing upon their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the

sycamoreflakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick imagination might have

converted into anything it pleasedwhile I thus mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very

Fays about whom I had been pondering, made its way slowly into the darkness from out the light at the

western end of the island. She stood erect, in a singularly fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom

of an oar. While within the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of joybut

sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she glided along, and at length rounded the islet

and reentered the region of light. 'The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,' continued I

musingly'is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through her winter and through her

summer. She is a year nearer unto Death: for I did not fail to see that as she came into the shade, her shadow

fell from her, and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black.'

And again the boat appeared, and the Fay; but about the attitude of the latter there was more of care and

uncertainty, and less of ecstatic joy. She floated again from out of the light and into the gloom (which

deepened momently), and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water and became absorbed into its

blackness. And again and again she made the circuit of the island (while the sun rushed down to his

slumbers), and at each issuing into the light, there was more sorrow about her person, while it grew feebler,

and far fainter, and more indistinct; and at each passage into the gloom, there fell from her a darker shade,

which became whelmed in a shadow more black. But at length, when the sun had utterly departed, the Fay,

now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her boat into the region of the ebony

flood,and that she issued thence I cannot say,for darkness fell over all things, and I beheld her magical

About twelve o'clock, one night in the month of October, and during the chivalrous reign of the third Edward,

two seamen belonging to the crew of the Free and Easy, a trading schooner plying between Sluys and the

Thames, and then at anchor in that river, were much astonished to find themselves seated in the taproom of an

alehouse in the parish of St Andrews, Londonwhich alehouse bore for sign the portraiture of a 'Jolly

The room, although illcontrived, smokeblackened, lowpitched, and in every other respect agreeing with

the general character of such places of the periodwas nevertheless, in the opinion of the grotesque groups

Of these groups our two seamen formed, I think,the most interesting, if not the most conspicuous.

The one who appeared to be the elder, and whom his companion addressed by the characteristic appellation

of 'Legs', was at the same time much the taller of the two. He might have measured six feet and a half, and an

habitual stoop in the shoulders seemed to have been the necessary consequence of an altitude so enormous.

Superfluities in height were, however, more than accounted for by deficiencies in other respects. He was

exceedingly thin; and might, as his associates asserted, have answered, when drunk, for a pennant at the

masthead, or, when sober, have served for a jibboom. But these jests, and others of a similar nature, had

evidently produced, at no time, any effect upon the cachinnatory muscles of the tar. With high cheekbones,

a large hawknose, retreating chin, fallen underjaw, and huge protruding white eyes, the expression of his

countenance, although tinged with a species of dogged indifference to matters and things in general, was not

the less utterly solemn and serious beyond all attempts at imitation or description.

The younger seaman was, in all outward appearance, the converse of his companion. His stature could not

have exceeded four feet. A pair of stumpy bow legs supported his squat, unwieldy figure, while his unusually

short and thick arms, with no ordinary fists at their extremities, swung off dangling from his sides like the

fins of a seaturtle. Small eyes, of no particular colour, twinkled far back in his head. His nose remained

buried in the mass of flesh which enveloped his round, full, and purple face; and his thick upperlip rested

upon the still thicker one beneath with an air of complacent selfsatisfaction, much heightened by the owner's

habit of licking them at intervals. He evidently regarded his tall shipmate with a feeling halfwondrous

halfquizzical; and stared up occasionally in his face as the red setting sun stares up at the crags of Ben

Various and eventful, however, had been the peregrinations of the worthy couple in and about the different

taphouses of the neighbourhood during the earlier hours of the night. Funds, even the most ample, are not

always everlasting; and it was with empty pockets our friends had ventured upon the present hostelrie.

At the precise period, then, when this history properly commences, Legs, and his fellow, Hugh Tarpaulin, sat,

each with both elbows resting upon the large oak table in the middle of the floor, and with a hand upon either

cheek. They were eyeing, from behind a huge flagon of unpaidfor 'hummingstuff', the portentous words,

'No Chalk', which to their indignation and astonishment were scored over the doorway by means of that

very mineral whose presence they purported to deny. Not that the gift of deciphering written charactersa

gift among the commonalty of that day considered little less cabalistical than the art of inditingcould, in

strict justice, have been laid to the charge of either disciple of the sea; but there was, to say the truth, a certain

twist in the formation of the lettersan indescribable leelurch about the wholewhich foreboded, in the

opinion of both seamen, a long run of dirty weather; and determined them at once, in the allegorical words of

Having accordingly disposed of what remained of the ale, and looped up the points of their short doublets,

they finally made a bolt for the street. Although Tarpaulin rolled twice into the fireplace, mistaking it for the

door, yet their escape was at length happily effectedand half after twelve o'clock found our heroes ripe for

mischief, and running for life down a dark alley in the direction of St Andrew's Stair, hotly pursued by the

At the epoch of this eventful tale, and periodically, for many years before and after, all England, but more

especially the metropolis, resounded with the fearful cry of 'Plague!' The city was in a great measure

depopulatedand in those horrible regions, in the vicinity of the Thames, where, amid the dark, narrow, and

filthy lanes and alleys, the Demon of Disease was supposed to have had his nativity, Awe, Terror, and

By authority of the king such districts were placed under ban, and all persons forbidden, under pain of death,

to intrude upon their dismal solitude. Yet neither the mandate of the monarch, nor the huge barriers erected at

the entrances of the streets, nor the prospect of that loathsome death which, with almost absolute certainty,

overwhelmed the wretch whom no peril could deter from the adventure, prevented the unfurnished and

untenanted dwellings from being stripped, by the hand of nightly rapine, of every article, such as iron, brass,

Above all, it was usually found, upon the annual winter opening of the barriers, that locks, bolts, and secret

cellars had proved but slender protection to those rich stores of wines and liquors which, in consideration of

the risk and trouble of removal, many of the numerous dealers having shops in the neighbourhood had

But there were very few of the terrorstricken people who attributed these doings to the agency of human

hands. Pestspirits, plaguegoblins, and feverdemons were the popular imps of mischief; and tales so

bloodchilling were hourly told, that the whole mass of forbidden buildings was, at length, enveloped in

terror as in a shroud, and the plunderer himself was often scared away by the horrors his own depredations

had created; leaving the entire vast circuit of prohibited district to gloom, silence, pestilence, and death.

It was by one of the terrific barriers already mentioned, and which indicated the region beyond to be under

the Pestban, that, in scrambling down an alley, Legs and the worthy Hugh Tarpaulin found their progress

suddenly impeded. To return was out of the question, and no time was to be lost, as their pursuers were close

upon their heels. With thoroughbred seamen to clamber up the roughly fashioned plankwork was a trifle;

and maddened with the twofold excitement of exercise and liquor, they leaped unhesitatingly down within the

enclosure, and holding on their drunken course with shouts and yellings, were soon bewildered in its noisome

Had they not, indeed, been intoxicated beyond moral sense, their reeling footsteps must have been palsied by

the horrors of their situation. The air was cold and misty. The pavingstones, loosened from their beds, lay in

wild disorder amid the tall, rank grass, which sprang up around the feet and ankles. Fallen houses choked up

the streets. The most fetid and poisonous smells everywhere prevailed: and by the aid of that ghastly light

which, even at midnight, never fails to emanate from a vapoury and pestilential atmosphere, might be

discerned lying in the bypaths and alleys, or rotting in the windowless habitations, the carcass of many a

nocturnal plunderer arrested by the hand of the plague in the very perpetration of his robbery.

But it lay not in the power of the images, or sensations, or impediments such as these, to stay the course of

men who, naturally brave, and at that time especially, brimful of courage and of 'hummingstuff', would have

reeled, as straight as their condition might have permitted, undauntedly into the very jaws of Death.

Onwardstill onward stalked the grim Legs, making the desolate solemnity echo and reecho with yells like

the terrific warwhoop of the Indian; and onward, still onward rolled the dumpy Tarpaulin, hanging on to the

doublet of his more active companion, and far surpassing the latter's most strenuous exertions in the way of

vocal music, by bullroarings in basso, from the profundity of his stentorian lungs.

They had now evidently reached the stronghold of the pestilence. Their way at every step or plunge grew

more noisome and more horriblethe paths more narrow and more intricate. Huge stones and beams falling

momently from the decaying roofs above them, gave evidence, by their sullen and heavy descent, of the vast

height of the surrounding houses; and while actual exertion became necessary to force a passage through

frequent heaps of rubbish, it was by no means seldom that the hand fell upon a skeleton or rested upon a more

Suddenly, as the seamen stumbled against the entrance of a tall and ghastlylooking building, a yell more

than usually shrill from the throat of the excited Legs, was replied to from within, in a rapid succession of

wild, laughterlike, and fiendish shrieks. Nothing daunted at sounds which, of such a nature, at such a time,

and in such a place, might have curdled the very blood in hearts less irrevocably on fire, the drunken couple

rushed headlong against the door, burst it open, and staggered into the midst of things with a volley of curses.

The room within which they found themselves proved to be the shop of an undertaker; but an open trapdoor,

in the corner of the floor near the entrance, looked down upon a long range of winecellars, whose depths the

occasional sound of bursting bottles proclaimed to be well stored with their appropriate contents. In the

middle of the room stood a tablein the centre of which again arose a huge tub of what appeared to be

punch. Bottles of various wines and cordials, together with jugs, pitchers, and flagons of every shape and

quality, were scattered profusely upon the board. Around it, upon coffintressels, was seated a company of

Fronting the entrance, and elevated a little above his companions, sat a personage who appeared to be the

president of the table. His stature was gaunt and tall, and Legs was confounded to behold in him a figure

more emaciated than himself. His face was as yellow as saffronbut no feature excepting one alone, was

sufficiently marked to merit a particular description. This one consisted in a forehead so unusually and

hideously lofty, as to have the appearance of a bonnet or crown of flesh superadded upon the natural head.

His mouth was puckered and dimpled into an expression of ghastly affability, and his eyes, as indeed the eyes

of all at table, were glazed over with the fumes of intoxication. This gentleman was clothed from head to foot

in a richlyembroidered black silkvelvet pall, wrapped negligently around his form after the fashion of a

Spanish cloak. His head was stuck full of sable hearseplumes, which he nodded to and fro with a jaunty and

knowing air; and, in his right hand, he held a huge human thighbone, with which he appeared to have been

Opposite him, and with her back to the door, was a lady of no whit less extraordinary character. Although

quite as tall as the person just described, she had no right to complain of his unnatural emaciation. She was

evidently in the last stage of a dropsy; and her figure resembled nearly that of the huge puncheon of October

beer which stood, with the head driven in, close by her side, in a corner of the chamber. Her face was

exceedingly round, red, and full; and the same peculiarity, or rather want of peculiarity, attached itself to her

countenance, which I before mentioned in the case of the presidentthat is to say, only one feature of her

face was sufficiently distinguished to need a separate characterization: indeed the acute Tarpaulin

immediately observed that the same remark might have applied to each individual person of the party, every

one of whom seemed to possess a monopoly of some particular portion of physiognomy. With the lady in

question this portion proved to be the mouth. Commencing at the right ear, it swept with a terrific chasm to

the leftthe short pendants which she wore in either auricle continually bobbing into the aperture. She made,

however, every exertion to keep her mouth closed and look dignified, in a dress consisting of a

newlystarched and ironed shroud coming up close under her chin, with a crimpled ruffle of cambric muslin.

At her right hand sat a diminutive young lady whom she appeared to patronize. This delicate little creature, in

the trembling of her wasted fingers, in the livid hue of her lips, and in the slight hectic spot which tinged her

otherwise leaden complexion, gave evident indications of a galloping consumption. An air of extreme haut

ton, however, pervaded her whole appearance; she wore, in a graceful and degage manner, a large and

beautiful windingsheet of the finest India lawn; her hair hung in ringlets over her neck; a soft smile played

about her mouth; but her nose, extremely long, thin, sinuous, flexible, and pimpled, hung down far below her

underlip, and, in spite of the delicate manner in which she now and then moved it to one side or the other

Over against her, and upon the left of the dropsical lady, was seated a little puffy, wheezing, and gouty old

man, whose cheeks reposed upon the shoulders of their owner, like two huge bladders of Oporto wine. With

his arms folded, and with one bandaged leg deposited upon the table, he seemed to think himself entitled to

some consideration. He evidently prided himself much upon every inch of his personal appearance, but took

more especial delight in calling attention to his gaudycolored surtout. This, to say the truth, must have cost

him no little money, and was made to fit him exceedingly wellbeing fashioned from one of the curiously

embroidered silken covers appertaining to those glorious escutcheons which, in England and elsewhere, are

customarily hung up, in some conspicuous place, upon the dwellings of departed aristocracy.

Next to him, and at the right hand of the president, was a gentleman in long white hose and cotton drawers.

His frame shook, in a ridiculous manner, with a fit of what Tarpaulin called 'the horrors'. His jaws, which had

been newly shaved, were tightly tied up by a bandage of muslin; and his arms being fastened in a similar way

at the wrists, prevented him from helping himself too freely to the liquors upon the table; a precaution

rendered necessary, in the opinion of Legs, by the peculiarly sottish and winebibbing cast of his visage. A

pair of prodigious ears, nevertheless, which it was no doubt found impossible to confine, towered away into

the atmosphere of the apartment, and were occasionally pricked up in a spasm at the sound of the drawing of

Fronting him, sixthly and lastly, was situated a singularly stifflooking personage, who, being afflicted with

paralysis, must, to speak seriously, have felt very ill at ease in his unaccommodating habiliments. He was

habited, somewhat uniquely, in a new and handsome mahogany coffin. Its top or headpiece pressed upon

the skull of the wearer, and extended over it in the fashion of a hood, giving to the entire face an air of

indescribable interest. Armholes had been cut in the sides for the sake not more of elegance than of

convenience; but the dress, nevertheless, prevented its proprietor from sitting as erect as his associates; and as

he lay reclining against his tressel, at an angle of fortyfive degrees, a pair of huge goggle eyes rolled up their

Before each of the party lay a portion of a skull, which was used as a drinkingcup. Overhead was suspended

a human skeleton, by means of a rope tied round one of the legs and fastened to a ring in the ceiling. The

other limb, confined by no such fetter, stuck off from the body at right angles, causing the whole loose and

rattling frame to dangle and twirl about at the caprice of every occasional puff of wind which found its way

into the apartment. In the cranium of this hideous thing lay a quantity of ignited charcoal, which threw a fitful

but vivid light over the entire scene; while coffins, and other wares appertaining to the shop of an undertaker,

were piled high up around the room, and against the windows, preventing any ray escaping into the street.

At sight of this extraordinary assembly, and of their still more extraordinary paraphernalia, our two seamen

did not conduct themselves with that degree of decorum which might have been expected. Legs, leaning

against the wall near which he happened to be standing, dropped his lower jaw still lower than usual, and

spread open his eyes to their fullest extent; while Hugh Tarpaulin, stooping down so as to bring his nose upon

a level with the table, and spreading out a palm upon either knee, burst into a long, loud, and obstreperous

Without, however, taking offence at behaviour so excessively rude, the tall president smiled very graciously

upon the intrudersnodded to them in a dignified manner with his head of sable plumesand, arising, took

each by the arm, and led him to a seat which some others of the company had placed in the meantime for his

accommodation. Legs to all this offered not the slightest resistance, but sat down as he was directed; while

the gallant Hugh, removing his coffintressel from its station near the head of the table, to the vicinity of the

little consumptive lady in the windingsheet, plumped down by her side in high glee, and pouring out a skull

of red wine, quaffed it to their better acquaintance. But at this presumption the stiff gentleman in the coffin

seemed exceedingly nettled; and serious consequences might have ensued, had not the president, rapping

upon the table with his truncheon, diverted the attention of all present to the following speech:

'Avast there!' interrupted Legs, looking very serious, 'avast there a bit, I say, and tell us who the devil ye all

are, and what business ye have here, rigged off like the foul fiends, and swilling the snug blue ruin stowed

At this unpardonable piece of illbreeding, all the original company halfstarted to their feet, and uttered the

same rapid succession of wild fiendish shrieks which had before caught the attention of the seamen. The

president, however, was the first to recover his composure, and at length, turning to Legs with great dignity,

'Most willingly will we gratify any reasonable curiosity on the part of guests so illustrious, unbidden though

they be. Know then that in these dominions I am monarch, and here rule with undivided empire under the title

'This apartment, which you no doubt profanely suppose to be the shop of Will Wimble the undertakera

man whom we know not, and whose plebeian appellation has never before this night thwarted our royal

earsthis apartment, I say, is the DaisChamber of our Palace, devoted to the councils of our kingdom, and to

'The noble lady who sits opposite is Queen Pest, our Serene Consort. The other exalted personages whom you

behold are all of our family, and wear the insignia of the blood royal under the respective titles of "His Grace

the Arch Duke PestIferous""His Grace the Duke PestIlential""His Grace the Duke TemPest"and

'As regards,' continued he, 'your demand of the business upon which we sit here in council, we might be

pardoned for replying that it concerns, and concerns alone, our own private and regal interest, and is in no

manner important to any other than ourself. But in consideration of those rights to which as guests and

strangers you may feel yourselves entitled, we will furthermore explain that we are here this night, prepared

by deep research and accurate investigation, to examine, analyse, and thoroughly determine the indefinable

spiritthe incomprehensible qualities and natureof those inestimable treasures of the palate, the wines,

ales, and liqueurs of this goodly metropolis: by so doing to advance not more our own designs than the true

welfare of that unearthly sovereign whose reign is over us all, whose dominions are unlimited, and whose

'Whose name is Davy Jones!' ejaculated Tarpaulin, helping the lady by his side to a skull of liqueur, and

'Profane varlet!' said the president, now turning his attention to the worthy Hugh, 'profane and execrable

wretch!we have said, that in consideration of those rights which, even in thy filthy person, we feel no

inclination to violate, we have condescended to make reply to thy rude and unreasonable inquiries. We

nevertheless, for your unhallowed intrusion upon our councils, believe it our duty to mulct thee and thy

companion in each a gallon of Black Straphaving imbibed which to the prosperity of our kingdomat a

single draughtand upon your bended kneesye shall be forthwith free either to proceed upon your way, or

remain and be admitted to the privileges of our table, according to your respective and individual pleasures.'

'It would be a matter of utter impossibility,' replied Legs, whom the assumptions and dignity of King Pest the

First had evidently inspired with some feelings of respect, and who arose and steadied himself by the table as

he spoke'it would, please your majesty, be a matter of utter impossibility to stow away in my hold even

onefourth party of that same liquor which your majesty has just mentioned. To say nothing of the stuffs

placed on board in the forenoon by way of ballast, and not to mention the various ales and liqueurs shipped

this evening at various seaports, I have, at present, a full cargo of "hummingstuff" taken in and duly paid for

at the sign of the "Jolly Tar". You will, therefore, please your majesty, be so good as to take the will for the

deedfor by no manner of means either can I or will I swallow another dropleast of all a drop of that

'Belay that,' interrupted Tarpaulin, astonished not more at the length of his companion's speech than at the

nature of his refusal'Belay that, you lubber!and I say, Legs, none of your palaver. My hull is still light,

although I confess you yourself seem to be a little topheavy; and as far as the matter of your share of the

cargo, why rather than raise a squall I would find stowageroom for it myself, but'

'This proceeding,' interposed the president, 'is by no means in accordance with the terms of the mulct or

sentence, which is in its nature Median, and not to be altered or recalled. The conditions we have imposed

must be fulfilled to the letter, and that without a moment's hesitationin failure of which fulfilment we

decree that you do here be tied neck and heels together, and duly drowned as rebels in yon hogshead of

'A sentence!a sentence!a righteous and just sentence!a glorious decree!a most worthy and upright

and holy condemnation!' shouted the Pest family together. The king elevated his forehead into innumerable

wrinkles; the gouty little old man puffed like a pair of bellows; the lady of the windingsheet waved her nose

to and fro; the gentleman in the cotton drawers pricked up his ears; she of the shroud gasped like a dying fish;

'Ugh! ugh! ugh!' chuckled Tarpaulin, without heeding the general excitation, 'ugh! ugh! ugh!ugh! ugh!

ugh! ugh!ugh! ugh! ugh!I was saying,' said he'I was saying when Mr. King Pest poked in his

marlinspike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or less of Black Strap, it was a trifle to a tight

seaboat like myself not overstowedbut when it comes to drinking the health of the Devil (whom God

assoilzie) and going down upon my marrowbones to his illfavoured majesty there, whom I know, as well

as I know myself to be a sinner, to be nobody in the whole world but Tim Hurlygurly the

stageplayer!why! it's quite another guess sort of a thing, and utterly and altogether past my

He was not allowed to finish this speech in tranquility. At the name of Tim Hurlygurly the whole assembly

'Treason! treason!' shrieked her majesty of the mouth, and, seizing by the hinder part of his breeches the

unfortunate Tarpaulin, who had just commenced pouring out for himself a skull of liqueur, she lifted him

high into the air, and let him fall without ceremony into the huge open puncheon of his beloved ale. Bobbing

up and down, for a few seconds, like an apple in a bowl of toddy, he, at length, finally disappeared amid the

whirlpool of foam which, in the already effervescent liquor, his struggles easily succeeded in creating.

Not tamely, however, did the tall seaman behold the discomfiture of his companion. Jostling King Pest

through the open trap, the valiant Legs slammed the door down upon him with an oath, and strode towards

the centre of the room. Here tearing down the skeleton which swung over the table, he laid it about him with

so much energy and goodwill that, as the last glimpses of light died away within the apartment, he

succeeded in knocking out the brains of the little gentleman with the gout. Rushing then with all his force

against the fatal hogshead full of October ale and Hugh Tarpaulin, he rolled it over and over in an instant. Out

poured a deluge of liquor so fierceso impetuous so overwhelmingthat the room was flooded from

wall to wallthe loaded table was overturnedthe tressels were thrown upon their backsthe tub of punch

into the fireplaceand the ladies into hysterics. Piles of deathfurniture floundered about. Jugs, pitchers,

and carboys mingled promiscuously in the melee, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of

junk. The man with the horrors was drowned upon the spotthe little stiff gentleman floated off in his

coffinand the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the

street, and made a beeline for the Free and Easy, followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh

Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Arch Duchess