and was blessed with a distant view of an inhabited place. He yielded to the first importunity of the beldam, whom he dismissed at a very small distance from the village, after he had earnestly exhorted her to quit such an atrocious course of life, and atone for her past crimes by sacrificing her associates to the demands of justice. She did not fail to vow a perfect reformation, and to prostrate herself before him for the favor she had found; then she betook herself to her habitation, with the full purpose of advising her fellow-murderers to repair with all dispatch to the village and impeach our hero; who, wisely distrusting her professions, stayed no longer in the place than to hire a guide for the next stage, which brought him to the city of Chalons-sur-Marne.'

SMOLLETT.

TOBIAS GEORGE SMOLLETT was born in the County of Dumbarton, Scotland, in 1721. His father, a younger son of Sir James Smollett, of Bonhill, having died early, he was educated by his grandfather, in Glasgow, for the medical profession. At nineteen, his grandfather having died without making a provision for him, the young author proceeded to London with his first work, "The Regicide," which he attempted to bring out at the theaters. Foiled in this juvenile effort, in 1741 he became a surgeon's mate in the navy, and was present in the unfortunate expedition to Carthagena, spent some time elsewhere in the West Indies, and returned to England in 1746. Thenceforth he resided chiefly in London, and became an author for life. His first novel, "Roderick Random," appeared in 1748. From this date to that of his last production, Smollett improved in taste and judgment, but his power of invention, his native humor, and his knowledge of life and character, are as conspicuous in this as in any of his works. He had fine poetic talents, but wrote no extended poem. His novel of "Count Fathom" appeared in 1753. The above scene, extracted from this work, is universally regarded as a masterpiece of interest; a mixture of the terrible and the probable that has never been surpassed. The writing is as fine as the conception. In 1770, Smollett was compelled to seek for health in a warm climate. He took up his residence in a cottage near Leghorn. Here, just before his death, in the autumn of 1771, he finished his "Humphrey Clinker," the most rich, varied, and agreeable of all his novels.

I

IV.

75. DARKNESS.

HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space,

Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

1 Chalons-sur-Marne, (shå lòng′ sår marn), a city of France, capital of the department of Marne, on the right bank of the river Marne, ninety miles E of Paris.

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air.

Morn came, and went--and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions, in the dread

Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chilled into a selfish prayer for light.

And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings, the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons : cities were consumed,
And men were gathered round their blazing homes,
To look once more into each other's face.
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanoes and their mountain torch.
2. A fearful hope was all the world contained:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded; and the crackling trunks
Extinguished with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men, by their despairing light,
Wore an unearthly aspect, as, by fits,

The flashes fell upon them. Some lay down,
And hid their eyes, and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smiled;

And others hurried to and fro, and fed

Their funeral piles with fuel, and looked up,

With mad disquietude, on the dull sky,

The pall of a past world; and then again

With curses, cast them down upon the dust,

And gnashed their teeth, and howled. The wild birds shrieked
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes
Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawled
And twined themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless-they were slain for food.
3. And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again :-a meal was bought
With blood, and cach sat sullenly apart,
Gorging himself in gloom; no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglōrious; and the pang

Of famine fed upon all entrails. Men

Died; and their bones were tombless as their flesh
The meager by the meager were devoured.
Even dogs assailed their masters,—all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famished men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the drooping dead
Lured their lank jaws : himself sought out no food,
But, with a piteous, and perpetual moan,
And a quick, desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answered not with a caress-he died.
4. The crowd was famished by degrees. But two
Of an enormous city did survive,

5.

And they were enemies. They met besido
The dying embers of an altar-place,

Where had been heaped a mass of holy things

For an unholy usage. They raked up,

And, shivering, scraped with their cold, skeleton hands,

The feeble ashes; and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame,
Which was a mockery. Then they lifted
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects—saw, and shrieked, and died;
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was, upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend.

The world was void :

The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless;
A lump of death, a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirred within their silent depths.
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropped

They slept on the abyss, without a surge,—

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired befōre;
The winds were withered in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perished: Darkness had no need
Of aid from them-she was the universe.

LORD BYRON.

V.

76. THE RATTLESNAKE.1

E does not come-he does not come," she murmured, as

"He stood contemplating the thick copse spreading be

fore her, and forming the barrier which terminated the beautiful range of oaks which constituted the grove. How beautiful were the green and garniture of that little copse of wood! The leaves were thick, and the grass around lay folded over and over in bunches, with here and there a wild flower, gleaming from its green, and making of it a beautiful carpet of the richest and most various texture. A small tree rose from the center of a clump, around which a wild grape gadded luxuriantly; and, with an incoherent sense of what she saw, she lingered before the little cluster, seeming to survey' that which, though it seemed to fix her eye, yet failed to fill her thought. Her mind wandered her soul was far away; and the objects in her vision were far other than those which occupied her imagination. 2. Things grew indistinct beneath her eye. The eye rather slept than saw. The musing spirit had given holiday to the ordinary senses, and took no heed of the forms that rose, and Aoated, or glided away before them. In this way, the leaf detached made no impression upon the sight that was yet bent upon it; she saw not the bird, though it whirled, untroubled by a fear, in wanton circles around her head; and the blacksnake, with the rapidity of an arrow, darted over her path without arousing a single terror in the form that otherwise would have shivered at its mere appearance. And yet, though thus indistinct were all things around her to the musing eye of the maiden, her eye was yet singularly fixed-fastened, as it were, to a single spot-gathered and controled by a single object, and glazed, apparently, beneath a curious fascination.

3. Before the maiden rose a little clump of bushes,-bright tangled leaves flaunting wide in glossiëst green, with vines trailing over them, thickly decked with blue and crimson flowers. Her eye communed vacantly with these; fastened by a star-like shining glance, a subtle ray, that shot out from the circle of

1 From "The Yemassee." The heroine, Bess Mathews, in the woods waits the coming of her lover.

green leaves—seeming to be their very eye-and sending out a lurid luster that seemed to stream across the space between, and find its way into her own eyes. Very piercing and beautiful was that subtle brightness, of the sweetest, strängest power. And now the leaves quivered and seemed to float away, only to return; and the vines waved and swung around in fantastic mazes, unfolding ever-changing varieties of form and color to her gaze: but the star-like eye was ever steadfast, bright, and gorgeous, gleaming in their midst, and still fastened, with strange fondness, upon her own. How beautiful with wondrous intensity did it gleam and dilate, growing larger and more lustrous with every ray which it sent forth!

4. And her own glance became intense, fixed also; but with a dreaming sense that conjured up the wildèst fancies, terribly beautiful, that took her soul away from her, and wrapt it about as with a spell. She would have fled, she would have flown ; but she had not the power to move. The will was wanting to her flight. She felt that she could have bent forward to pluck the gem-like thing from the bosom of the leaf in which it seemed to grow, and which it irradiated with its bright white gleam; but ever as she aimed to stretch forth her hand, and bend forward, she heard a rush of wings, and a shrill scream from the tree above her,—such a scream as the mock-bird makes, when angrily it raises its dusky crest, and flaps its wings furiously against its slender sides. Such a scream seemed like a warning, and though yet unawakened to full consciousness, it startled her and forbade her effort. More than once, in her sur'vey of this strange object, had she heard that shrill note, and still had it carried to her ear the same note of warning, and to her mind the same vague consciousness of an evil presence.

5. But the star-like eye was yet upon her own—a small, bright eye, quick, like that of a bird, now steady in its place, and observant seemingly only of hers, now darting forward with all the clustering leaves about it, and shooting up toward her, as if wooing her to seize. At another moment riveted to the vine which lay around it, it would whirl round and round, dazzlingly bright and beautiful, even as a torch, waving hurriedly by night in the hands of some playful boy. But, in all this time, the glance was never taken from her own: there it grew, fixed-a věry principle of light; and such a light-a subtle, burning,