t eidolo

L

make out only a sentence here and there. The writer, it appeared, was an Englishman of the name of Stanton, who had travelled abroad shortly after the Restoration. Travelling was not then attended with the facilities which modern improvement has introduced,

Stanton sometimes wished himself at the miserable Posada from whose filth and famine he had been fighting his escape; but though his reverend antagonists always denounced his creed, and comforted themselves, even in defeat, with the assurance that he must be damned, on the double score of his being a heretic and an Englishman, they were obliged to confess that his Latin was good, and his logic unanswerable; and he was allowed, in most cases, to sup and sleep in peace. This was not doomed to be his fate on the night of the 17th August

and heavy mass of a Moorish fortress, no light playing between its impermeable walls, - the image of power, dark, isolated, impenetrable. Stanton forgot his cowardly guide, his loneliness, his danger amid an approaching storm and an inhospitable country, where his name and country would shut every door against him, and every peal of thunder would be supposed justified by the daring intrusion of a heretic in the dwelling of an old Christian, as the Spanish Catholics absurdly term themselves, to mark the distinction between them and the baptised Moors. - All this was forgot in contemplating the glorious and awful scenery before him, - light struggling with darkness, - and darkness menacing a light still more terrible, and announcing its menace in the blue and livid mass of cloud that hovered like a destroying angel in the air, its arrows aimed, but their direction awfully indefinite. But he ceased to forget these local and petty dangers, as the sublimity of romance would term them, when he saw the first flash of the lightning, broad and red as the banners of an insulting army whose motto is V? victis, shatter to atoms the remains of a Roman tower; - the rifted stones rolled down the hill and fell at the feet of Stanton. He stood appalled, and awaiting his summons from the Power in whose eye pyramids, palaces, and the worms whose toil has formed them, and the worms who toil out their existence under their shadow or their pressure, are perhaps all alike contemptible, he stood collected, and for a moment felt that defiance of danger which danger itself excites, and we love to encounter it as a physical enemy, to bid it 'do its worst,' and feel that its worst will perhaps be ultimately its best for us. He stood and saw another flash dart its bright, brief, and malignant glance over the ruins of ancient power, and the luxuriance of recent fertility.

ned to discharge her volley of anathematization, and shut again as the lightning glanced through the aperture, were unable to repel his importunate request for admittance, in a night whose terrors ought to soften all the miserable petty local passions into one awful feeling of fear for the Power wh

acious, but the melancholy ap

uel long since consumed; - the family portraits looked as if they were the only tenants of the mansion; they seemed to say, from their mouldering frames, 'there are none to gaze on us;' and the echo of the steps of Stanton and his feeble guide, was the only sound audible between the peals of thunder that rolled still awfully, but more distantly, -

n, hoof, or tail, that he could bear the sign of the cross without changing his form, and that, when he spoke, not a puff of sulphur c

ed religion. They were represented beautifully tortured, writhing and howling, and 'Mahomet! Mahomet!' issuing out of their mouths, as they called on him in their burning agonies; - you could almost hear them scream. At the upper end of the room, under a splendid estrade, over which was an image of the blessed Virgin, sat Donna Isabella de Cardoza, mother to the bride, and near her Donna Ines, the bride, on rich almohadas; the bridegroom sat opposite her; and though they never spoke to each other, their eyes, slowly raised, but suddenly withdrawn, (those eyes th

nuscript occurred here, b

- in fact, this was the good Father's forte, and he piqued himself on it accordingly. The devil never fell into worse hands than Father Olavida's, for when he was so contumacious as to resist Latin, and even the first verses of the Gospel of St John in Greek, which the good Father never had recourse to but in cases of extreme stubbornness and difficulty, - (here Stanton recollected the English story of the Boy of Bilsdon, and blushed even in Spain for his countrymen), - then he always applied to the Inquisition; and if the devils were ever so obstinate before, they were always seen to fly out of the possessed, just as, in the midst of their cries, (no doubt of blasphemy), they were tied to the stake. Some held out even till the flames surrounded them; but even the most stubborn must have been dislodged when the operation was over, for the devil himself could no longer tenant a crisp and glutinous lump of cinders. Thus Father Olavida's fame spread far and wide, and the Cardoza family had made uncommon interest to procure him for a Confessor, and happily succeeded. The ceremony he had just been performing, had cast a shade over the good Father's countenance, but it dispersed as he mingled among the guests, and was introduced to them. Room was soon made for him, and he happened accidentally to be seated opposite the Englishman. As the wine was presented to him, Father Olavida, (who, as I observed, was a man of singular sanctity), prepared to utter a short internal prayer. He hesitated, - trembled, - desisted; and, putting down the wine, wiped the drops from his forehead with the sleeve of his habit. Donna Isabella gave a sign to a domestic, and other wine of a higher quality was offered to him. His lips moved, as if in the effort to pronounce a benediction on it and the company, but the effort again failed; and the change in his countenance was so extraordinary, that it

s!' and he attempted to sign the cross, but could not. He raised his voice, and evidently speaking with increased difficulty, - 'By this bread and wine, which the faithful receive as the body and blood of Christ, but which his presence converts into matter as viperous as the suicide foam of the dying Judas, - by all these - I know him, and command him to be gone! - He is - he is - ' and he bent forwards as he s

nally agreed to remain in the house, lest the evil spirit (for they believed the Englishman no better) should take certain liberties with the corse by no means agreeable to a Catholic, particularly as he had

as first. They burst it open, and found th

unhappy maniac; his were the cries you heard as you traversed the deserted rooms. He is for the most part silent during the day, but at midnig

ouch them more deeply. When he inveighed against the tyrants under whose bloody persecutions those holy men suffered, his hearers were roused for a moment, for it is always easier to excite a passion than a moral feeling. But when he spoke of the dead, and pointed with emphatic gesture to the corse, as it lay before them cold and motionless, every eye was fixed, and every ear became attentive. Even the lovers, who, under pretence of dipping their fingers into the holy water, were contriving to exchange amorous billets, forbore for one moment this interesting intercourse, to listen to the preacher. He dwelt with much energy on the virtues of the deceased, whom he declared to be a particular favourite of the Virgin; and enumerating the various losses that would be caused by his departure to the community to which he belonged, to society, and to religion at large; he at last worked up himself to a vehement expostulation with the Deity on the occasion. 'Why hast thou,' he exclaimed, 'why hast thou, Oh God! thus dealt with

ordinary, to surrender him to the power of the Inquisition. He testified great horror when this determination was made known to him, - and offered to tell over and over again all that he could relate of the cause of Father Olavida's death. His humiliation, and repeated offers of confession, came too late. He

n of Heaven, and the merits of all its martyrs, nay, even the absolution of the Pope, cannot deliver you from the curse of dying in unrepented sin.' - 'What sin, then, have I committed?' 'The greatest of all possible sins; you refuse answering the questions put to you at the tribunal of the most holy and merciful Inquisition; - you will not tell us what you know concerning the death of Father Olavida.' - I have told you that I believe he perished in consequence of his ignorance and presumption.' 'What proof can you produce of that?' - 'He sought the knowledge of a secret withheld from man.' 'What was that?' - 'The secret of discovering the presence or agency of the evil power.' 'Do you possess that secret?' - After much agitation on the part of the prisoner, he said distinctly, but very faintly, 'My master forbid

which is indeed insupportable to humanity, either to suffer or relate, he exclaimed in the gasping interval, he would disclos

ighbourhood since; - seen, as she had heard, that very night. 'Great G-d!' exclaimed Stanton, as he recollected the stranger whose

-

der the title of the Englishman; and wondering how Stanton could have thought it worth his while to follow him to Ireland, write a long manuscript about an event that occurred in Spain, and leave it in the hands of his family, to 've

said to himself every moment, 'If I could but trace that being, I will not call him man,' - and the next moment he said, 'and what if I could?' In this state of mind, it is singular enough that he mixed constantly in public amusements, but it is true. When one fierce passio

panting at a c

sk went unim

to virtue, - decorum is the outward expression of that homage; and if this be so, we must acknowledge that vice has latterly grown very humble indeed. There was, however, something splendid, ostentatious, and obtrusive, in the vices of Charles the Second's reign. - A view of the theatres alone proved it, when Stanton was in the habit of visiting them. At the doors stood on one side the footmen of a fashionable nobleman, (with arms concealed under the

tage. She was carried off in the manner described, by Lord Orrery, who, finding all his solicitat

les, whose naked shoulders and bosoms, well testified in the paintings of Lely, and the pages of Grammont, might save modern puritanism many a vituperative groan and affected reminiscence. They had all taken the precaution to send some male relative, on the first night of a new play, to report whether

d Dryden, Lee, and Otway, and quoted Sedley and Rochester; - the other class were the lovers, the gentle 'squires of dames,' equally conspicuous for their white fringed gloves, their obsequious bows, and their commencing every sentence addressed to a lady, with the profane exclamation of 'Oh Jesu!'1 or the softer, but equally unmeaning one of 'I beseech you, Madam,' or, 'Madam, I burn.'2 One circu

, (copying

Gonson will for

tch you at yo

the repetition of these phrases, forbids her lover

instar omnium, read the courtly loves of Rhodophil and Mela

of his huge puritanic cloke, while his eyes, declined with an expression half leering, half ejaculatory, towards a masked female, muffled in a hood and scarf, testified what had seduced him into these 'tents of Kedar.' There were females, too, but all in vizard masks, which, though worn as well as aunt Dinah's in Tristram Shandy, served to conceal them from the 'young bubbles' they were in quest of, and from all but the orange-women, who hailed them loudly as they passed the doors.1 In the galleries we

dient to the b

Mexico and clo

ttle, and John Dryden, all agreeing in their choice of Spanish and Moorish subjects for their principal plays. Among this joyous groupe were seated several women of fashion

e gallery Lau

ests that turn

the play was Alexander, then acted as written by Lee, and the principal character was performed by Hart, whose god-li

Oroonoko, - I me

ong, a murder,

ue to

e Blanc'

ory of the veteran Betterton,1 Mrs Barry, who personated Roxana, had a green-room squabble with Mrs Bowtell, the representative of Statira, about a veil, which the partiality of the property-man adjudged to the latter. Roxana suppressed her rage till the fifth act, when, stabbing Statira, she aimed the blow with such force as to pierce through her stays, and inflict a severe though not dangerous wound. Mrs Bowtell f

ton's History

be mistaken or forgotten. The heart of Stanton palpitated with violence, - a mist overspread his eyes, - a nameless and dea

; 'and are those celestial sounds, that seem to prepare us for heaven, only intended to announce the presence of an incarnate fiend, who mocks the devoted with "airs from heaven," while he prepares to surround them with "blasts from hell"?' It is very singular that at this moment, when his imagination had reached its highest pitch of elevation, - when the object he had pursued so long and fruitlessly, had in one moment become as it were tangible to the grasp both of mind and body, - when this spirit, with whom he had wrestled in darkness, was at last about to declare its name, that Stanton began to feel a kind of disappointment at the futility of his pursuits, like Bruce at discovering the source of the Nile, or Gibbon on concluding his History. The feelin

defence of the foot-passenger), appeared to him of gigantic magnitude. He had been so long accustomed to contend with these phantoms of the imagination, that he took a kind of stubborn delight in subduing them. He walked up to the object, and observing t

asping his arm; 'name your hour and your place.' 'The hour shall be mid-day,' answered the stranger, with a horrid and unintelligible smile; 'and the place shall be the bare walls of a madhouse, where you shall rise rattling in your chains, and rustling from your straw, to greet me, - yet still you shall have the curse of sanity, and of memory. My voice shall ring in your ears till then, and the glance of these eyes

ace its continuation, described Stanton, some ye

n in the misfortunes of our friends,' - a plus forte in those of our enemies; and as every one is an enemy to a man of genius of course, the report of Stanton's malady was propagated with infernal and successful industry. Stanton's next relative, a needy unprincipled man, watched the report in its circulation, and saw the snares closing round his victim. He waited on him one morning, accompanied by a person of a grave, though somewhat repulsive appearance. Stanton was as usual abstracted and restless, and, after a few moments conversation, he proposed

hefou

my aspect.' - 'Hold you content, Cousin,' replied the other; 'I shall take order that you like it better, when you have been some time a dweller therein.' Some attendants of a mean appearance, and with most suspicious visages, awaited them on their entrance, and they ascended a narrow staircase, which led to a room meanly furnished

lculation wild, false, and yet sometimes plausible, that this could be done out of the colossal fragments of Stonehenge, which the writer proposed to remove for that purpose. Subjoined were several

ain Bobadil, - these twenty will convert twenty more a piece, and these two hundred converts, converting their due number in the same time, all Turkey would be converted before the Grand Signior knew where he was. Then comes the coup d'eclat, - one fine morning, every minaret in Constantinople was to ring out with bells, instead of the cry of the Muezzins; and the Imaum, coming out to see what was the matter, was to be encountered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in pontificalibus, performing Cathedral service in the church of St Sophia, which was to finish the business. Here an objection appeared to arise, which the ingenuity of the writer had anticipated. - 'It may be redargued,' sa

ultis

s ended with a complaint of the operator, that his scissars had been taken from him. However, he consoled himself and the reader with the assurance, that he would that night catch a moon-beam as it entered through the grating, and, when

ould bleat like bu

e quatrain of the period. It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his own danger, quite absorbed in the al

, but in tones so wild and discordant, that he desisted in involuntary terror. As the day advanced, and no one approached, he tried the window, and then perceived for the first time it was grated. It looked out on the narrow flagg

eep, which probably the hardness of his seat, and of the de

ength, and uttered the most frightful cries, mixed with expostulations and commands. His cries were in a moment echoed by a hundred voices. In maniacs there is a peculiar malignity, accompanied by an extraordinary acutene

ll the patient soon fell to the ground convulsed with rage and pain. 'Now you see you are where you ought to be,' repeated the ruffian, brandishing the horse-whip over him, 'and now take the advice of a friend, and make no more noise. The lads are ready for you with the darbies, and they'll clink them on in the crack of this whip, unless you prefer another touch of it first.' They then were advancing into the room as he spoke, with fetters in their hands, (str

hus he might in time either propitiate the wretches in whose hands he was, or, by his apparent inoffensiveness, procure such opportunities of indulgence, as might perhaps ultimately facilitate his escape. He therefore determined to conduct himself with the utmost tra

the cavaliers and their ladies, - (for at this time, and much later, down to the reign of Anne, tailors were employed by females even to make and fit on their stays), - who had run mad with drink and loyalty on the burning of the Rump, and ever since had made the cells of the madhouse echo with fragments of the ill-fated Colonel Lovelace's songs, scraps from Cowley's 'Cutter of Coleman street,' and some curious specimens from Mrs Aphra Behn's plays, where the cavaliers are denominated the heroicks, and Lady Lambert and Lady Desborough represented as going to meeting, their large Bibles carried before them by their pages, and falling in love with two banished cavaliers by the

y I liv

l upon

ny suc

him, conf

all aro

ter of Col

Ruth might have derived from this assurance, if she could have heard it, was enjoyed tenfold by the weaver, whose amorous reminiscences were in a moment exchanged for war-like ones, borrowed from a wretched and disarranged mass of intellectual rubbish. 'The Lord is a man of war,' he shouted. - 'Look to Marston Moor! - Look to the city, the proud city, full of pride and sin! - Look to the waves of the Severn, as red with blood as the waves of the Red Sea! - There were the hoofs broken by means of the prancings, the prancings of the mighty ones. - Then, Lord, was thy triumph, and the triumph of thy saints, to bind their kings in chains, and their nobles in links of iron.' The malignant tailor burst out in his turn: 'Thank the false Scots, and their solemn league and covenant, and Carisbrook Castle, for that, ye crop-eared Puritan,' he yelled. 'If it had not been for them, I would have taken measure of the king for a velvet cloak as high as the Tower of London, and one flirt of its folds would have knocked the 'copper nose' into the Thames, and sent it a-drift to Hell.' 'Ye lie, in your teeth,' echoed the weaver; 'and I will prove it unarmed, with my shuttle against your needle, and smite you to the earth thereafter, as David smote Goliah. It was the man's (such was the indecent language in which Charles the First was Spoken of by the Puritans) - it was the man's carnal, self-seeking, World-loving, prelatical hierarchy, that drove the godly to seek the sweet word in season from their own pastors, who righteously abominated the Popish garniture of lawn-sleeves, lewd organs, and steeple houses. Sister Ruth, tempt me not with that calf's head, it is all streaming with blood; - drop it, I beseech thee, sister, it is unmeet in a woman's hand, though the brethren drink of it. - Woe be unto thee, gainsayer, dost thou not see how flames envelope the accursed city under his Arminian and Popish son? - London is on fire! - on fire!' he yelled; 'and the brands are lit by the half-papist, whole-arminian, all-damned people thereof. - Fire! - fire!' The voice in which he shrieked out the last words was powerfully horrible, but it was like the moan of an infant, compared to the voice which took u

ined herself to 'stand in safety and despair,' amid the thousand houseless wretches assembled in the suburbs of London on the dreadful nights after the fire, without food, roof, or raiment, all gazing on the burning ruins of their dwellings and their property. She seemed to listen to their complaints, and even repeated some of them very affectingly, but invariably answered them with the same words, 'But I have lost all my chil

eated, nor the frightful sound of the whip employed to still them. Hope began to fail him, as he observed, that the submissive tranquillity (which he had imagined, by obtaining increased indulgence, might contribute to his escape,

d with or without appetite, regularly forced down his miserable meals; and all these efforts were even pleasant, as long as hope prompted them. But now he began to relax them all. He passed half the day in his wretched bed, in which he frequently took his meals, declined shaving or changing his linen, and, when the sun shone into his cell, turned from it on his straw with a sigh of heart-broken despondency. Formerly, when the air breathed thro

ure to the cries of his miserable companions. He became sq

of some dark object. He turned feebly towards the light, without curiosity, without excitement, but with a wish to diversify the monotony of his misery, by observing the slightest change made even accidentally in the dusky atmosphere of his cell. Betwe

and fearful encounter. He heard his heart beat audibly, and could have exclaimed with Lee's un

d from it?' Stanton tossed on his straw, and its rustling seemed to answer the question. 'I have the power to deliver you from it.' Melmoth spoke very slowly and very softly, and the melodious smoothness of his voice made a frightful contrast to the stony rigour of his features, and the fiend-like brilliancy of his eyes. 'Who are you, and whence come you?' said Stanton, in a tone that was meant to be interrogatory and imperative, but which, from his habits of squalid deb

he power of the enemy seemed without a possibility of opp

uscript, 'You know me now.' - 'I always knew you.' - 'That is false; you

ver, will give you one token of repentance while they feed; there will be gnashing of teeth, and you shall hear it, and feel it too perchance! - And then for meals - Oh you are daintily off! - The soup that the cat has lapped; and (as her progeny has probably contributed to the hell-broth) why not? - Then your hours of solitude, deliciously diversified by the yell of famine, the howl of madness, the crash of whips, and the broken-hearted sob of those who, like you, are supposed, or driven mad by the crimes of others! - Stanton, do you imagine your reason can possibly hold out amid such scenes? - Supposing your reason was unimpaired, your health not destroyed, - suppose all this, which is, after all, more than fair supposition can grant, guess the effect of the continuance of these scenes on your senses alone. A time will come, and soon, when, from mere habit, you will echo the scream of every delirious wretch that harbours near you; then you will pause, clasp your hands on your throbbing head, and listen with horrible anxiety whether the scream proceeded from you or them. The time will come, when, from the want of occupation, the listless and horrible vacancy of your hours, you will feel as anxious to hear those shrieks, as you were at first terrified to hear them, - when you will watch for the ravings of your next neighbour, as you would for a scene on the stage. All humanity will be extinguished in you. The ravings of these wretches will become at once your sport and your torture. You will watch for the sounds, to mock them with the grimaces and bellowings of a fiend. The mind has a power of accommodating itself to its situation, that you will experience in its most frightful and deplorable efficacy. Then comes the dreadful doubt of

mitting suicide in a similar situation, to escape wh

mptations employed by Melmoth, which are too horrible

no crime into which madmen would not, and do not precipitate themselves; mischief is their occupation, malice their habit, murder their sport, and blasphemy their delight. Whether a soul in this state can be in a hopeful one, it is for you to judge; but it seems to me, that with the loss of reason, (and reason cannot long be retained in this place), you lose also the hope of immortality. - Listen,' said the tempter, pausing, 'listen to the wretch who is raving near you, and whose blasphemies might make a demon start. - He was once an eminent

iron posts of his bed, and says he is rooting out the cross from the very foundations of Calvary; and it is remarkable, that in proportion as his morning exercises are

ned, and shud

intellectual powers, your immortal interests, perhaps, depend on the choice of this moment. - There is the door, and the key

been rejected by Stanton with the utmost rage and horror, for Melmoth at last made out, - 'Begone, monster, demon! - begone to yo

at Stanton was finally liberated from his confinement, - that his pursuit of Melmoth was incessant and indefatigable, - that he himself allowed it to be a species of insanity, - that while he acknowledged it to be the master-passion, he also felt it the master-torment of his life. He again visited the Continent, returned to England, - pursued, inquired, traced, bribed, but in vain. The being whom he had met thrice, under circumstances so extraordinary, he was fated never to encounter again in his life-time. At length, discovering that he had been born in Ireland, he resolved to go there, - went, and found his pursuit again fruitless, and his inquiries unanswered. The family knew nothing of him, or at least what they knew or imagined, they prudently refused to disclose to a stranger, and St

fire within me, - it is the necessary condition of my existence. I have vainly sought him at l

mind in a mingled state of stupor and excitement. After a few moments, he raised himself with an involuntary start, and saw the picture gazing at him from its canvas. He was within ten inches of it as he sat, and the proximity a

tions gave the portrait the appearance of smiling. Melmoth felt horror indescribable at this transient and imaginary resuscitation of the figure. He caught it up, rushed into the next room, tore, cut, and hacked it in every direction, and eagerly watched the fragments that burned like tinder in the turf-fire which had been lit in his room. As Melmoth saw the last blaze, he threw himself into bed, in hope of a deep and intense sleep. He had done what was required of him, and felt exhausted both in mind and body; but his slumber was not so sound as he had hoped for. The sullen light of the turf-fire, burning but never blazing, disturbed him every moment. He turned and turned, but still there was the same red light glaring on, but not illuminating, the dusky furniture of the apartment. The wind