A moist-eyed man, with red hair, here stepped forward, and, with apologies, laid a silver dollar on the table (the rescuer bowed, and went on talking; his half drowned brother was moody and depressed). A second man put down a two, a third a five, dollar bill; there was soon a respect able pile, and all for the gallant and faithful youth who had risked his own life to save a brother's.

"Smart chaps," said a bystander from a suburban village, who saw the two brothers depart cheered by the sympathising crowd.

66

Why, do you know them?" said a second man, who had laid down the dollars pretty freely.

Now, these rude and simple stories, dull as they are, serve better to illustrate Negro-Ame"Know them, sure I do. Why, those are the rican and American-English than all the disquitwo fellers as go about saving each other's lives sitions in the world, or than all Murray or every day or two. They are the two smartest Webster ever penned. It is impossible to exswimmers this side of the Alleghany Moun-plain to an Englishman how clearly the use of tains." "I guess," "I reckon," and "I calkilate," betray the peculiar state from which the speaker comes. The peculiar force of that extraordinary interjection," Du-tell!" which sounds so like an entreaty, must be heard to be appreciated. The peculiar force of " Sure,' Yes, sir," "It is so," cannot well be described without examples.

My next is a New York story, and treats of a possible relation of the two heroic brothers of Cincinnati.

A New York loafer, the other day, being almost starved, and afraid of venturing into any barroom, or eleven o'clock "restorator," for fear of being "booted," at last ventured into an eating booth near the market, magnetically drawn by the savour of fresh pies and roasted oysters. Boldly in he went, ordered a fowl of "Old Java," swallowed a dish of the best Shrewsbury oysters, gulped down six sandwiches, topped off with the biggest half-plate of pumpkin pie, then called for two of the best "Golden Lion" cigars, and pronounced everything darned capital-excellent. The proprietor, not accustomed to such patrons, gloated over the impending four and sixpence.

Suddenly the loafer's face, staring out of! window, became convulsed, and roaring out, "Thunder! there goes my horse!" he ran down the street, whip in hand, fleet as an Indian scout.

By the latest accounts, our epicurean and excitable friend has not yet recovered his horse.

And now I will give in dialogue the latest "nigger" story, the point of which is simple enough, and not in itself worth quoting. will call it

A DARKY'S BULL.

I

The sly use of the word "some," as in " some corn," meant to indicate millions of bushels, is not more especially American than those strange metaphors, such as "Lively as a snapping turtle," or a "Heart as hard as a hickory nut, and as tender as a green-house flower." But it would take a volume to show how full of metaphors and sly dryness American conversation generally is.

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A STRANGE STORY,

BY THE

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No. 135.]

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1861.

A STRANGE STORY.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," RIENZI," &c.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE Manuscript was written in a small and peculiar handwriting, which, though evidently by the same person whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more hard to decipher. Those parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, or alleged secrets in Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submit exclusively to scholars or men of science, were in Latin-and Latin which, though grammatically correct, was frequently obscure. But all that detained the eye and attention on the page, necessarily served to impress the contents more deeply on remembrance.

The narrative commenced with the writer's sketch of his childhood. Both his parents had died before he attained his seventh year. The orphan had been sent by his guardians to a private school, and his holidays had been passed at Derval Court. Here, his earliest reminiscences were those of the quaint old room, in which I now sat, and of his childish wonder at the inscription on the chimney-piece-who and what was the Simon Forman who had there found a refuge from persecution? Of what nature were the studies he had cultivated, and the discoveries he boasted to have made?

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to Derval Court, to live there in solitude and seclusion. On searching for some old title-deeds required for a mortgage, he chanced upon a collection of manuscripts much discoloured and, in part, eaten away by moth or damp. These, on examination, proved to be the writings of Forman. Some of them were astrological observations and predictions; some were upon the nature of the Cabala; some upon the invocation of spirits and the magic of the dark ages. All had a certain interest, for they were interspersed with personal remarks, anecdotes of eminent actors in a very stirring time, and were composed as Colloquies, in imitation of Erasmus; the second person in the dialogue being Sir Miles Derval, the patron and pupil; the first person being Forman, the philo sopher and expounder.

But along with these shadowy lucubrations were treatises of a more uncommon and a more startling character; discussions on various occult laws of nature, and detailed accounts of analytical experiments. These opened a new, and what seemed to Sir Philip a practical, field of inquiry—a true border land between natural science and imaginative speculation. Sir Philip had cultivated philosophical science at the university; he resumed the study, and tested himself the truth of various experiments suggested by Forman. Some, to his surprise, proved successful-some wholly failed. These lucubrations first tempted the writer of the memoir towards the studies in which the remainder of his life had been conWhen he was about sixteen, Philip Derval had sumed. But he spoke of the lucubrations begun to read the many mystic books which the themselves as valuable only where suggestive library contained; but without other result on of some truths which Forman had accidentally his mind than the sentiment of disappointment approached, without being aware of their true and disgust. The impressions produced on the nature and importance. They were debased credulous imagination of childhood vanished. by absurd puerilities, and vitiated by the vain He went to the university; was sent abroad to and presumptuous ignorance which charactravel and on his return took that place in the terised the astrology of the middle ages. For circles of London which is so readily conceded to these reasons the writer intimated his intention a young idler of birth and fortune. He passed (if he lived to return to England) to destroy quickly over that period of his life, as one of ex- Forman's manuscripts, together with sundry travagance and dissipation, from which he was other books, and a few commentaries of his first drawn by the attachment for his cousin to own upon studies which had for a while misled which his letter to Strahan referred. Disap-him-all now deposited in the safes of the room pointed in the hopes which that affection had in which I sat. conceived, and his fortune impaired, partly by some years of reckless profusion, and partly by the pecuniary sacrifices at which he had effected Jis cousin's marriage with another, he retired

After some years passed in the retirement of Derval Court, Sir Philip was seized with the desire to travel, and the taste he had imbibed for occult studies led him towards those Eastern lands in

VOL. VI.

135

which they took their origin, and still retain their | which had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist: professors.

powers

-provided only that the great organs were not irreparably destroyed, there was no disease that he could not cure; no decrepitude to which he could not restore vigour; yet his science w a based on the same theory as that espoused by the best professional practitioners of medicine-viz. that the true art of healing is to assist Nature to throw off the disease-to summon, as it were, the whole system to eject the enemy that has fastened on a part. And thus his processes, though occasionally varying in the means employed, all combined in this-viz. the reinvigorating and recruiting of the principle of life."

With all his

Several pages of the manuscript were now occupied with minute statements of the writer's earlier disappointment in the objects of his singular research. The so-called magicians, accessible to the curiosity of European travellers, were either but ingenious jugglers, or produced effects that perplexed him by practices they had mechanically learned, but of the rationale of which they were as ignorant as himself. It was not till he had resided some considerable time in the East, and acquired a familiar knowledge of its current languages and the social habits of its various populations, that he became acquainted with men in No one knew the birth or origin of Haroun; whom he recognised earnest cultivators of the lore | no one knew his age. In outward appearance which tradition ascribes to the colleges and priest- he was in the strength and prime of mature hoods of the ancient world; men generally living manhood. But, according to testimonies in remote from others, and seldom to be bribed by which the writer of the memoir expressed a belief money to exhibit their marvels or divulge their that, I need scarcely say, appeared to me egresecrets. In his intercourse with these sages, Sir giously credulous, Haroun's existence under the Philip arrived at the conviction that there does same name, and known by the same repute, could exist an art of magic, distinct from the guile of be traced back to more than a hundred years. He the conjuror, and applying to certain latent told Sir Philip that he had thrice renewed his and affinities in nature a philosophy akin to that own life, and had resolved to do so no more-he had grown weary of living on. which we receive in our acknowledged schools, inasmuch as it is equally based upon experiment, gifts, Haroun owned himself to be consumed and produces from definite causes definite results. that there was nothing new to him under the by a profound melancholy. He complained In support of this startling proposition, Sir Philip sun; he said that, while he had at his command now devoted more than half his volume to the unlimited wealth, wealth had ceased to bestow detail of various experiments, to the process and enjoyment; and he preferred living as simply as result of which he pledged his guarantee as a peasant he had tired out all the affections the actual operator. As most of these alleged and all the passions of the human heart; he was experiments appeared to me wholly incredible, and in the universe as in a solitude. In a word, as all of them were unfamiliar to my practical ex- Haroun would often repeat, with mournful solemperience, and could only be verified or falsified by nity, "The soul is not meant to inhabit this tests that would require no inconsiderable amount earth, and in fleshly tabernacle, for more than the of time and care, I passed, with little heed, over period usually assigned to mortals; and when by the pages in which they were set forth. I was im-art in repairing the walls of the body, we so retain patient to arrive at that part of the manuscript it, the soul repines, becomes inert or dejected." which might throw light on the mystery in which "He only," said Haroun, I would feel conmy interest was the keenest. What were the tinued joy in continued existence who could links which connected the existence of Margrave preserve in perfection the sensual part of man, with the history of Sir Philip Derval? Thus with such mind or reason as may be indepenhurrying on, page after page, I suddenly, towards dent of the spiritual essence; but whom soul the end of the volume, came upon a name that itself has quitted! Man, in short, as the grandest arrested all my attention-Haroun of Aleppo. of the animals, but without the sublime disconHe who has read the words addressed to me in tent of earth, which is the peculiar attribute my trance may well conceive the thrill that shot of soul." through my heart when I came upon that name, and will readily understand how much more vividly my memory retains that part of the manuscript to which I now proceed than all which had gone before.

"It was," wrote Sir Philip, "in an obscure suburb of Aleppo that I at length met with the wonderful man from whom I have acquired a knowledge immeasurably more profound and occult than that which may be tested in the experiments to which I have devoted so large a share of this memoir. Haroun of Aleppo had, indeed, mastered every secret in nature which the nobler, or theurgic, magic seeks to fathom.

"He had discovered the great Principle of Life,

One evening Sir Philip was surprised to find at Haroun's house another European. He paused in his narrative to describe this man. He said that for three or four years previously he had heard frequent mention, amongst the cultivators of magic, of an orientalised Englishman engaged in researches similar to his own, and to whom was ascribed a terrible knowledge in those branches of the art which, even in the East, are condemned as instrumental to evil. Sir Philip here distinguished at length, as he had so briefly distinguished in his conversation with me, between the two kinds of magic-that which he alleged to be as pure from sin as any other species of experimental knowledge, and that by which the

agencies of witchcraft are invoked for the pur-presumptions against him were sufficiently strong poses of guilt. to set an indelible brand on his honour, and an The Englishman, to whom the culture of this insurmountable barrier to the hopes which his latter and darker kind of magic was ascribed, Sir early ambition had conceived. After this trial he Philip Derval had never hitherto come across. He had quitted his country to return to it no more. now met him at the house of Haroun ; decrepit, Thenceforth, much of his life had been passed out emaciated, bowed down with infirmities, and of sight or conjecture of civilised men, in remote racked with pain. Though little more than sixty, regions and amongst barbarous tribes. At interhis aspect was that of extreme old age, but still vals, however, he had reappeared in European on his face there were seen the ruins of a once capitals; shunned by and shunning his equals, singular beauty; and still, in his mind, there surrounded by parasites, amongst whom were was a force that contrasted the decay of the always to be found men of considerable learnbody. Sir Philip had never met with an in- ing, whom avarice or poverty subjected to the tellect more powerful and more corrupt. The influences of his wealth. For the last nine or son of a notorious usurer, heir to immense ten years he had settled in Persia, purchased exwealth, and endowed with the talents which tensive lands, maintained the retinue, and exjustify ambition, he had entered upon life bur-ercised more than the power, of an Oriental dened with the odium of his father's name. A prince. Such was the man who, prematurely duel, to which he had been provoked by an un-worn out, and assured by physicians that he had generous taunt on his origin, but in which a temperament fiercely vindictive had led him to violate the usages prescribed by the social laws that regulate such encounters, had subjected him to a trial in which he escaped conviction, either by a flaw in the technicalities of legal procedure, or by the compassion of the jury; but the moral

not six weeks of life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an Eastern satrap,, had caused himself to be borne in his litter to the mud-hut of Haroun the Sage, and now called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, to reprieve him from the grave.

He turned round to Sir Philip when the latter entered the room, and exclaimed in English, "I this man was known to me. am here because you are. Your intimacy with I took your character as the guarantee of his own. Tell me that

* The reader will here observe a discrepancy between Mrs. Poyntz's account and Sir Philip Derval's narrative. According to the former, Louis Grayle was tried in his absence from England, and sen-I am no credulous dupe. Tell him that I, Louis tenced to three years' imprisonment, which his Grayle, am no needy petitioner. Tell me of his flight enabled him to evade. According to the wisdom; assure him of my wealth." latter, Louis Grayle stood his trial, and obtained an acquittal. Sir Philip's account must, at least, be nearer the truth than the lady's, because Louis Grayle could not, according to English law, have

been tried on a capital charge without being present in court. Mrs. Poyntz tells her story as a woman generally does tell a story-sure to make a mistake where she touches on a question of law; and-unconsciously perhaps to herself-the Woman of the World warps the facts in her narrative so as to save the personal dignity of the hero, who has captivated her interest, not from the moral odium of a great crime, but the debasing position of a prisoner at the bar. Allen Fenwick, no doubt, purposely omits to notice the discrepancy between these two statements, or to animadvert on the mistake which, in the eyes of a lawyer, would discredit Mrs. Poyntz's. It is consistent with some of the objects for which Allen Fenwick makes public his Strange Story, to invite the reader to draw his own inferences from the contradictions by which, even in the most common-place matters (and how much more in any tale of wonder!), a fact stated by one person is made to differ from the same fact stated by another. The rapidity with which a truth becomes transformed into fable, when it is once sent on its travels from lip to lip, is illustrated by an amusement at this moment in fashion. The amusement is this: In a party of eight or ten persons, let one whisper to another an account of some supposed transaction, or a piece of invented gossip relating to absent persons, dead or alive; let the person, who thus first hears the story, proceed to whisper it, as exactly as he can remember what he has just heard, to the next; the next does the same to his neighbour, and so on, till the tale has run the

Sir Philip looked inquiringly at Haroun, who remained seated on his carpet in profound silence. "What is it you ask of Haroun ?"

he

"To live on-to live on. For every year of life can give me, I will load these floors with

gold."

round of the party. Each narrator, as soon as he has whispered his version of the tale, writes down what he has whispered. And though, in this game, no one has had any interest to misrepresent, but, on the contrary, each, for his own credit's sake, strives to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he can, it will be almost invariably found that the story told by the first person has received the most material alterations before it has reached the eighth or the tenth. Sometimes, the most important feature of the whole narrative is altogether omitted; sometimes, a feature altogether new, and preposterously absurd, has been added. At the close of the experiment one is tempted to exclaim, "How, after this, can any of those portions of history which the chronicler took from hearsay, be believed?" But, above all, does not every anecdote of scandal which has passed, not through ten lips, but perhaps through ten thousand, before it has reached us, become quite as perplexing to him who would get at the truth, as the marvels he recounts are to the bewildered reason of Fenwick the Sceptic?

Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a reverie. He drew from under his robe a small phial, from which he let fall a single drop into a cup of water, and said, "Drink this. Send to me to-morrow for such medicaments as I may prescribe. Return hither yourself in three days; not before!"

When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked Haroun if, indeed, it were within the compass of his art to preserve life in a frame that appeared so thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "A fever may so waste the lamp of life that one ruder gust of air could extinguish the flame, yet the sick man recovers. This sick man's existence has been one long fever; this sick man can recover."

"You will aid him to do so ?"
"Three days hence I will tell you."

On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request, Sir Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had already derived unspeakable relief from the remedies administered; he was lavish in expressions of gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemed pained when they were refused. This time, Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's own irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerful intellect.

I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's share in the dialogue between himself, Haroun, and Derval-recorded in the narrative in words which I cannot trust my memory to repeat in detail-by stating the effect it produced on my own mind. It seemed, while I read, as if there passed before me some convulsion of Nature-a storm, an earthquake. Outcries of rage, of scorn, of despair; a despot's vehemence of will; a rebel's scoff at authority. Yet, ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some burst of passionate genius abrupt variations from the vaunt of superb defiance to the wail of intense remorse.

At length all the dreary compassion previously inspired vanished in one unqualified abhorrence.

The subjects discussed changed from those which, relating to the common world of men, were within the scope of my reason. Haroun led his wild guest to boast of his own proficiency in magic, and, despite my incredulity, I could not overcome the shudder with which fictions, however extravagant, that deal with that dark Unknown abandoned to the chimeras of poets, will, at night and in solitude, send through the veins of men the least accessible to imaginary terrors.

Grayle spoke of the power he had exercised through the agency of evil spirits-a power to fascinate and to destroy. He spoke of the aid revealed to him, now too late, which such direful allies could afford, not only to a private revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had he acquired the knowledge he declared himself to possess, before the feebleness of the decaying body made it valueless, how he could have triumphed over that world, which had expelled his youth from its pale! He spoke of means by which his influence could work undetected on the minds of others, control agencies that could never betray, defy laws that could never discover. He spoke vaguely of a power by which a spectral reflexion of the ma-terial body could be cast, like a shadow, to a distance; glide through the walls of a prison, elude the sentinels of a camp-a power that he asserted to be-when enforced by concentred will, and acting on the mind, where, in each individual, temptation found mind the weakest-almost infallible in its effect to seduce or to appal. And he closed these and similar boasts of demoniacal arts, which I remember too obscurely to repeat, with a tumultuous imprecation on their nothingness to avail against the gripe of death. All this lore he would communicate to Haroun, in return for what? A boon shared by the meanest peasantlife, common life; to breathe yet a while the air, feel yet a while the sun.

such boastful pretence, was the meanest of all abuses of knowledge, rightly abandoned, in all ages, to the vilest natures. And then, suddenly changing his tone, he spoke, so far as I can remember the words assigned to him in the manuscript, to this effect:

The whole had in it, I know not what, of uncouth but colossal-like the chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who, proud of descent from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements, while still crude and Then Haroun replied. He said, with a quiet conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks, up-disdain, that the dark art to which Grayle made heaved in their struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening Creation to the milder Influences personified and throned in Olympus. But it was not till the later passages of the dialogue in which my interest was now absorbed, that the language ascribed to this sinister personage lost a gloomy pathos, not the less impres- "Fallen and unhappy wretch, and you ask me sive for the awe with which it was mingled. For, for prolonged life!-a prolonged curse to the till then, it seemed to me as if in that tempes-world and to yourself. Shall I employ spells to tuous nature there were still broken glimpses of lengthen the term of the Pestilence, or profane starry light; that a character originally lofty, if the secrets of Nature to restore vigour and youth irregular and fierce, had been embittered by early to the failing energies of Crime ?" and continuous war with the social world, and had, in that war, become maimed and distorted; that, under happier circumstances, its fiery strength might have been disciplined to good; that even now, where remorse was so evidently poignant, evil could not be irredeemably confirmed.

Grayle, as if stunned by the rebuke, fell on his knees with despairing entreaties that strangely contrasted his previous arrogance. 66 And it was," he said, "because his life had been evil that he dreaded death. If life could be renewed he would repent, he would change; he retracted his vaunts, he would forsake the arts he had