stalking about us on the grass, and his favorite birds sing to us from his trees: we wander with Bryant through his island woods, where his heart has learned its lessons of severe simplicity, and his imagination caught the glow of its bright autumnal foilage: we loll in the sumptuous study of Longfellow, where the old panels suggest the memory of Washington, while the poet sings us golden legends of the Old and the New World: we hold high discourse with Emerson, in the shadows of his Concordian Mecca, while the wierd Hawthorne, himself a shade, flits through the umbrage of the Old Manse: the opulent library of Everett is opened to us; Lowell, fresh from his European harvest, conducts us about the nooks of his paternal mansion: Miss Sedgwick roams with us amid the glorious hills of Berkshire: Simms chaperons us among the wild

bays and pines of the Carolina plantation : Kennedy welcomes us to the hospitality of the warm South: the generous Cooper throws open his lordly Northern hall: Irving tells quaint stories of the Western hunters, or of Spanish Dons, or of old English cheer, as we sit beneath the fantastic gables of Wolfert's Roost: and Dana strolls with us along the shores of the far-resounding sea, where we listen to the beat of its mighty pulses, till some image of its boundlessness and glory passes into our souls. But there is one Home, near that same sea, in which we loiter with pleasure no more; for the presiding genius has departed from it, and we tread the vacant lawns, and walk silently through the deserted halls of Marshfield, full of sad and thoughtful memories of Webster.

SOME

OME twenty-five years ago a young Irishman came to New-York, in search of a fortune, bringing a lettc. of recommendation to the late D. L—— from Lady SAfter remaining in NewYork a few weeks, and not finding any employment to his liking, he called upon Mr. L. and told him he wished to go South, but had not the means to pay his passage; upon hearing this Mr. L. loaned him the sum which he required. The adventurer departed on his way, and a few years afterwards Mr. L. died. As he made no memorandum of the sum loaned, of course his family knew nothing about it. But it was not forgotten by the young Irishman, who, last summer, returned to his native country in bettered circumstances, and confessed to his priest that his conscience was troubled about the money he had borrowed twenty-five years ago and had never returned. The priest told him he must return the money, with compound interest, to the heirs of Mr. L., if any could be found. Application was made to Lady S., in Dublin, for information on the subject, and as she happened to know a gentleman who was on the point of making a visit to the United

He

States, she said if the money were sent to her she would place it in his hands. and request him to pay it over to the descendants of Mr. L. The full amount was accordingly handed to her, in Bank of England notes, some five times the original sum loaned, and General Dpromised to make diligent inquiries for the rightful owners. After his arrival in New-York, however, he forgot the matter, but was reminded of his trust by accidentally meeting a daughter of the deceased Mr. L. at a dinner party. stated the circumstance to her, and promised to send the money to her, to be distributed by her among her brothers and sisters. But, on looking over his papers, he could neither find the roll of bills, nor any memorandum by which he could ascertain the amount. It so chanced, however, that a few days afterwards he had occasion to look in a book of heraldry, and there he found the notes, which had been carefully placed there by himself, but forgotten. They were accordingly handed to the rightful claimants, who could well have afforded to forgive a debt whose existence they were not aware of.

WHY the fancy has seized me to write

the strange history which follows, is to me inexplicable. My utter indifference to human sympathy, human praise, or human opinion, which will soon be seen to be no vain affectation, would seem to render such an act superfluous. Perhaps the necessity for some species of action, which even the inert granite is supposed to be imbued with by the progressive spirit of Nature, may account for the proceeding. Since, however, I intend to write, I propose to write intelligibly. It is difficult to describe sensations where memory alone must furnish their corresponding ideas. Were I a human being, in the strict sense of the word, I should, if I may judge by what I see others do, apologize for the imperfection of my narrative. As it is, I shall reproduce the images of the past with the fidelity as also with the indifference of an echo. It is perhaps the first time that a DEAD MAN has spoken in the language of the living, though approximations to the phenomenon are to be found in many writers of the day, whose works, I being absolutely destitute of passions, can alone dispassionately criticise. Weak minds will either fail to comprehend, or recoil with horror from my revelations. the thinking few, they will be a curiosity, which I affirm gravely to be unparalleled in the annals of literature, or the records of history.

To

I was not always a living corpse. I am not a natural monster. I was born alive, in the full sense of the word. Nay, I was the result of an unbridled passion, and gifted with all the fiery vitality which such lawless indulgences not unfrequently produce. My mother was an Italian Princess, my father a private soldier in the Prussian cavalry. My birth took place in secrecy, and with all the precautions of pride and shameful terror. I was brought up in an atmosphere of mystery, and though invisibly protected, was, from my earliest recollection, an utterly isolated being. At the age of oneand-twenty, after completing, as they say, my studies at the University of Í

was placed in possession of a fortune of one hundred thousand dollars invested in the English funds, and informed that henceforth I was my own master; whilst I was supplied with a plain and probable legend to serve as a convenient substitute for a more authentic pedigree. It was under these circumstances that I set out on my travels, in the prime of youth and love of enjoyment. My form was tall

and powerful, my face of a rare and marked beauty, and my talents of that order which make the great heroes, poets, and criminals of this imperfect world. My destiny was in my own hands, and I became, if not the greatest, at least the most extraordinary of earth's children. I state these facts in their naked simplicity, because what is termed vanity, is so utterly impossible to a being of my unique nature, that I can waive all common forms, and introduce myself at once in my true colors to the reader.

I shall commence by a brief account of my youth and education, or rather of the early movements of my mind, which led me to adopt a course so singular in its audacity, both of conception and execution.

My two dominant passions, before the extraordinary events which it is the main purpose of this tale to record, were an intense longing for exalted sensations of pleasure, and as a means to this end, a burning thirst for knowledge. Having renounced all religious creeds, and set at defiance all social prejudices, I resolved to make the aim of my existence the attainment by study and experiment, of the most certain methods of scientific enjoyment.

I was naturally what the world calls pre-eminently selfish; as if one man could be more or less selfish than another; as if, in obeying the laws of his organization, any one could act otherwise than yield invariably to the strongest motive, as if any motive could be aught else than a certain amount of force acting upon an individual being!

But I will not philosophize. My human and living readers would not understand me if I did. Their perceptions are clogged by passions and prejudices. Hence truth is strange to them, and even terrible. There are some few, eagle-eyed, who can gaze upon the sun, undazzled. To these my philosophy would be impertinent; to the mass it is incomprehensible.

I will tell my story without obscurity. I will use the plainest language, and speak to popular acceptations.

I was then, a voluptuary, but not a common voluptuary. I saw that the ordinary mines of enjoyment were soon exhausted, or only to be worked more deeply by labor that defeated its object. I perceived that the most crowded paths of pleasure turned back, by circuitous courses, in never-ending circles.

I resolved to abandon these pastures of gregarious man. But before abandoning

I

them, I tested them by experience. I plunged into all the dissipations of my age. I sought all the distractions that youth, a strong well-nerved body, and an active mind could hope to obtain. bought all the diversion that gold could buy. I lived with my generation; I surpassed them; I led them. I practised systematized moderation. I essayed unbridled excesses. And I was disappointed.

I did not, as the cant phrase goes, awake from my illusions. I had read, seen, and thought too much. I was too clear-headed to have any illusions. Where others saw misty prospects, I saw naked facts. I summed up, and found the balance on the wrong side. My experiment was a failure.

I had travelled, I had seen the wonders of art, and the beauties of nature. I had had access to the best, and to the worst of society. I had labored, and been rewarded by fame. The book which I wrote, won the applause of a nation. I foresaw that it would obtain new triumphs in foreign lands; and my foresight has been confirmed by fact. Lastly, I was united to the woman I loved; who brought me thrice the fortune I expected, and a mind cultivated beyond my hopes. And with all this-I was dissatisfied. I craved for intenser pleasure; more exalted excitement, and I could not disguise from myself that it was so. I reflected deeply.

“What,” said I, "is happiness? Is it a monotony of sensations, which are taken to be pleasurable on the faith of popular opinion, whilst the inward voice still whispers languor and tedium, whilst half the day is passed in a dreary vacuity of mind, which is, at best, merely the bare negative of pain? Is it a feverish working and striving for objects which on attainment invariably become insipid and indifferent ?"

"Certainly not. Reasonably regarded, it is surely a positive, appreciable state of consciousness, in which we can say without hesitation to the moment, in the words of Goethe, 'O linger yet, thou art so fair! It is a certain condition of the nervous system, and without that condition-misery."

I fell to watching myself studiously at different times, and under various circumstances.

I observed that, at a certain stage, wine produced sensations of extreme delight. But I also observed that these sensations soon gave way to other and more sombre feelings; that, in fact, there was a happy crisis in alcoholic stimulus, which, when once past, could not be recalled on one VOL. I.-3

and the same occasion. Indulgence, too, in wine was, I perceived, followed by a vague, dreary despondency, that lasted incomparably longer than the brief passing moments of delicious exhilaration it produced.

On the whole, it was better to leave the mind to nature and mere mental excitements, than to attempt to light the sacred fire at the now neglected altars of Bacchus.

I need not say, that to become vulgarly intoxicated, was, with me, out of the question. There are some strong brains that defy the utmost possibilities of wine. I could have poisoned myself, but I could not render myself an unreasoning animal, by any amount of spirituous liquors. Often I persevered to the last, and when all my wild companions had sunk, I may say in many cases fallen beneath their potent draughts, I alone sat erect, and at worst discovered that my stomach was a weaker organ than my head. In such cases a feeling of awful and gloomy sadness would possess me, and after sitting long in silent and strangely lucid meditations, I would walk home calmly in the gray of the morning with little outward indication of the debauch from which I had emerged.

It was evident that no cascades of wine -even though they beggared Niagara in their ruby or topaz-like curves-could overarch for me that enchanted palace, in which I desired to spend my days, and defy the adversary-Pain, Evil, Devil, Typhon, Ariman or Sathanas, in a word, the dread foe, named or nameless, described or indescribable, of human happiness and its continuance.

Apart from all more palpable causes of suffering, man sits between Memory and Desire, between the Past and the Future, as between two rival mistresses, each dragging him towards her by turns with uneasy passion; whilst before him, and as it were balanced on an eternal and invisible tight-rope, sways the only nymph that can bless him with her love, the only goddess he can really and truly possess, if indeed he can possess anything, the divine Present-and he―dares not clasp the radiant virgin to his heart, dares not drive to the East nor to the West, along the interminable roads of space, the furies that torment him, madden him, and devour him, now, then, and evermore !

For my part, I said to the sad and pale brunette, the angel Præterita, and to the blonde seductive blue-eyed spirit Futura, a like farewell. The genii of Past and Future ruled the race of man-the EarthGod. But one was a rebel and an outlaw; and that one was I.

I said to the Universe, "Let me feel happiness, not merely dream it." And everlasting echoes from all the depths of Kosmos, even from the farthest bounds where creation, ever encroaching, borders upon awful chaos, everlasting echoes answered "DREAM!"

And I replied to the spirits of the Infinite, and demanded proudly, "Ye blind legions of monitors! where in nature is your unclouded happiness? where is your perfection?"

And the echoes laughed back in mockery, “perfection!"

Then I ceased to ask counsel of any men or spirits. For I was determined to be my own guide, and my own teacher, since all the wisdom of the world had not yet led to happiness. Therefore I scorned its pretensions, and derided its impotence with justice.

*

I

I became a great smoker. I purchased the rarest tobaccos and the costliest pipes. I had a perfect museum of meerschaums, nargulés, chibouques, and tubes and bowls of all sorts of shape, size, and contrivance for the inhalation of the fragrant weed. I purchased, at extravagant prices, the choicest boxes of cigars. I smoked grandly, incessantly, infernally. The atmosphere grew dark with my_smoking; at least to my imagination. I wrapped my soul in the incense of tobacco. created worlds of fancies out of its wreathing vapors. I began to think I had found the resource I wanted, and I often exclaimed in dreamy ecstasy-"Divine Nicotiana!"* I doubted whether the vapors which inspired the Pythoness did not arise from the hookahs of the priests smoking in solemn divan in the subterraanean halls of Delphi. And I gave them high credit for having so well preserved the secret they had discovered.

At the same time, like a true Turk, I took care to have the finest coffee of Mocha prepared by the most perfect machinery. I found that, after fasting, the effect of coffee upon the nerves was almost supernatural; but combined with tobacco, it was Elysian. It produced an intense state of enjoyment, during which, I would discourse with a marvellous eloquence to my adoring Mira, who was never weary of following the train of my prolific and far-stretching fantasies. How easily in this period of my madness (as I have since learned to deem it) did I unravel knots in science and philosophy, that had puzzled the wise men of ages. How intuitively did I seize on combina

tions, whose results, in the hands of practical men, might have rendered them the acknowledged benefactors of the world, and enriched whole nations of workers! But with me, all was a reverie of selfish recreation. I created glorious plans, I foreshadowed mighty inventions, as a voluptuous exercise of the mind; I played as it were grand symphonies on the most intellectual themes, and the compositions perished with the dying sounds, like the fantasias of musicians, which are never to be repeated.

But this could not last. My powerful organization resisted for a time the exaggerated abuse of drugs, which, common though they be, are in excess, like all other substances, the deadliest poisons. Smoking destroys the appetite, and ruins the digestive powers. Its effect upon the nerves then becomes tremendous. I soon made this discovery. A neuralgic irritation attacked me, which, as I still pursued my diabolical fumigations, went on with a fearfully crescendo movement. Deadly sickness of a peculiar inactive character, fits of the horrors, in which all things became repugnant, wearisome, and nauseating; ideas of suicide, and awful despondencies, descended upon me like a flight of vultures on a dying antelope. I abandoned the poisons. My prostration was complete and unbearable. I partially resumed them, and tried change of air and scene. I just recovered sufficiently to be able to suffer more acutely. I had evidently, at least temporarily, undermined my constitution. It was at this period, that, like a demon watching his occasion, opium became my comforter.

For the first time a book fell into my hands, a dangerous book, which has made many wretched: I mean "The confessions of an English opium-eater." This work, as all the world knows, was written by Thomas de Quincy, an Englishman of letters, who is still living. And with regard to this de Quincy, I will mention one thing that is curious. He is intimately persuaded that he is a great philosopher. In reality he is a fragmentary poet, imbued with considerable transcendentalism. His book is extremely amusing, but the reverse of philosophical, for it arrives at no conclusion. It is an opium book in more senses than the writer would have you believe. Such as it is, however, this book was the immediate cause of my taking to opium.

It

Its first effects were delightful. tranquillized my irritated nerves, and I entered, as it were, a new world of dreamy