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upright coffin resembled the door of a cupboard, as you know, for you have seen it, and was hung on two hinges, though the lower one had some time been broken. The sudden puff drove open the decayed door, and slammed it violently back beyond the strength of the hinge to withstand. I thought the skeleton had burst it open, and was now coming after me-but I had no time to reflect. The lid came rattling about my ears, making, as I fancied, the most unearthly noise, and fell with the weight of a grave-stone on my right arm, which held the candle. I would have offered up a final prayer had I been able, --but how could I just then? I might as well have attempted to have looked into the coffin itself as to have spoken a syllable, when this happened. The lid nearly shattered my trembling arm, and knocked the candle away out of my hand,-I know not whither for I have never seen it again from that day to this. Never was a poor man in such a situation. I was in total darkness, beset on all sides by the flitting and unsubstantial ghosts of the dead. This was too much for the living.—I set off to run, as if a legion of spirits had been behind me, with the evil one at the head of them." "Are you sure he was not there ?"

"I suppose, sir, he would scarcely venture to enter such a holy place as a cathedral. But I pictured the worst that a terrified man could imagine, and therefore ran accordingly. I got safe up this aisle, and through the great door at the end of it, and then ran faster than before, because I thought I knew the building well, and could find my way as well in the dark as the light, particularly when I got to the broader aisle of the nave. But when I had passed about half way through it towards the western door, I must, some how or other, have turned aside and got out of my direction without knowing it. There is a large tomb, with two recumbent figures resting on the slab that crowns the pedestal, as it were, standing about five feet high; and this tomb is placed at the base of one of the tall clustered columns of the nave."

"Ah, I know it," said Pedestres.

"Well, sir, I ran full butt against this curs- (I was going to say a naughty word)-against this misplaced monument, and knocked myself to the pavement senseless. This was a piteous adventure." "I'faith, it is well we meet not with such every night :--but how did the frolic terminate ?-how long did you lie there?"

"Verily, sir, it must have been many a long hour," resumed the guide, "for the day had broke when I came to my senses and opened my wondering eyes. At first I could not but think myself in a dream, and it was many minutes ere I could rouse my delirious wits and stand on my feet. Then, indeed, my condition was a sad reality."

"I would have given a trifle just to have peeped in upon you at that moment."

"These tales are all very well to banter at when they are safely past and gone; but there is no mirth in the acting of them."

"You may say that," answered his auditor, who enjoyed the joke. "The best tales to tell are generally the worst to enact.' "But it did not end here, sir," rejoined the man. your patience a space longer, for I think my exploits in returning

"Let me crave

home were worse than all, because they were done in the public

streets."

"Glorious!" exclaimed Pedestres, quite involuntarily.

"I thought there was nothing glorious in it," returned the speaker drily. "I had only a night-cap and cloak, as I mentioned, and under this latter a shirt, that barely descended as low as my knees, whilst my unhosed legs were a prey to the idle winds, and my feet were carelessly thrust into the toes of two odd slippers. On perceiving daylight, consider my reflections. The day had dawned for an hour, and it was perfectly light when I recovered, although the gloom of the cathedral, and the obscurity that reigned within very much deceived me in this. It was much lighter, of course, without; the artisans and trades-people were already up and going to their work, and I found I had no other alternative, in order to regain my home, than to run boldly through the streets in the very face of life, light, and business. The mere thought of this galled me sorely: but I set off to run like a mad dog, and it were well if I had not run so fast and rashly. I believe I was mad at the time;-I know I must have been so. But what could I do? I could not stay here in the building; I could not think of hiding myself all day in some dreary hole or tomb-cold, without covering, without food-and truly, in such a state of thought and reflection as would have rendered everything else ten times more bitter. One would have imagined that my race the night before through the south aisle, and the well nigh spilling o' my brains against the monument, would have been wholesome and dearly-bought experience to keep me wisely in the right path in future, and, moreover, to maintain that path with discretion; but, sir, it was quite otherwise. Instead of making me sober and cautious, as I ought to have been then, it only rendered me desperate and furious in the act of hurrying back to my own house.

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"The people seeing such a strange creature as I was running through the streets, said at once it was a madman, an escaped felon, or a flying thief. Some cried out, Catch him, catch him, and send him to Bedlam!' some hooted after him, and said, Seize him, seize the villain, he has broken out of jail-lay hold of him there!' and others shouted, "Stop thief!' But I ran, sir, as if there had been ten thousand more devils at my heels at that moment, than I fancied there had been behind me the night before. Devils-infernal devils, there is no doubt but they were,-devils more to be dreaded than those harmless spirits I pictured so frightfully to myself in the cathedral, whose only terror consisted in the wild state of my own imagination. Thus I flew like the wind from one street to another, until I thought I should have died from exhaustion and want of breath; but was still able to keep at the head of a tag-rag and bob-tail rabble, that hooted, shouted, roared, yelled, and pelted as if Old Harry himself had broken loose. John Gilpin was a joke-a fool to me.

"Fortunate it was, my home was now at hand; but before I could get there the greatest trouble of all came upon me like a thunderbolt."

"An admirable climax, indeed!" interposed Pedestres.

66

Ay, sir, but it was sad past telling. There had been rain in the night the pavement was muddy, and possessing that gluey con

sistency peculiar to the mud of all large cities. My slippers were loose, and a great impediment to swiftness; this and the dirt I think I could have contended against, had that been everything; but in an evil moment all my rapidity, all my haste, all my hopes, and all my rising inward gratulation of feeling near the end of my career, received such an unforeseen stroke, that I was hurled to the abyss of misery in an instant. One unfortunate corner of my flying cloak hung lower on my ancles than it ought to have done, and I, in my haste, took no note of it; but by degrees it fell so low as to get under my feet. I stepped upon this unhappy end, and like lightning I toppled headlong, face and hands, slap-dash upon the stones! you imagine it, sir?"

Pedestres burst into a roar.

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"Oh, sir, to tell you the tale is nothing-I never can speak what I felt. The mob at my heels thus seeing their game come down, set up a yell more horrible and uproarious than the piercing war-cry of the Indians; and they, either unwilling or unable to stop, for I know not which, rushed over me like a torrent. Never was a poor man so beset! I was nearly crushed to a barbarous death by their weight, and trampled to pieces by their heavy and hob-nailed shoes. They continued to run over me for about ten minutes, as if I had been one of the flags of the pavement; and then finding they had overshot that which they pursued, they hurried back and formed themselves into a large circle around me, thereby adding one of the bitterest torments I had endured. I was covered with mud, bruised, battered, and breathless. I could have cried like a child, had it done me any good. Hundreds stood on all sides glorying in the exploit: the noise they made was dreadful and brutal-to me at any rate. I was vexed, angry, provoked, ashamed, enraged, and would have given the value of a thousand sexton's fees, had I but had the power to have sunk into the earth and concealed myself. I could have burst into tears like an infant, but the mob closed round me, and I rose to run once more. In forcing, or, rather fighting, my way through them, I lost both my mantle and my slippers; so that I was obliged to hurry barefoot on the stones, with nothing to cover me save a shirt that descended not to my knees.

"Thus I got home; where I found my wife wondering at my absence, and now indeed wondering at my presence; and suffering nearly as much in her way, as I did in mine."

Here succeeded a deep pause; and Pedestres knew not whether to laugh outright, or don the garb of supreme sympathy; but with much feeling and consideration, he took the latter course, and at the same time assuming a great air of mock philosophy, "Remember, man," said he, turning to his guide, "remember, O sinful man, that we are born to trouble and vexation :-we come into this world giving sorrow and pain, and while we are yet babes wrapped in swaddling I clothes, we weep-we shed bitter tears of affliction, long-long ere we are able to say what ails us, or what causes our sorrow: nay, may add-long ere we ourselves know the reason of our infant grief." "I confess it, sir: and a pity 'tis, we cannot cry away all our troubles in our childhood."

May 1836.-VOL. XVI.—NO. LX1.

H

"Every man," continued Pedestres with gravity-" every man has to live under his load

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"So I thought, sir," said the man, interrupting him, "when the mob was running over me-only I thought I should have died then." "Bear in mind, that through the whole length of your race

of "

"I never ran such a race in my life, sir, as I did that night." Pedestres felt his sphincter oris giving way to a risible influence: but he instantly recalled his solemnity and tried again.

"We are all to endure our share of vexation and sorrow

"Then, sir, I think my share was like Benjamin's-it was five times as large as the share of any body else. If a man were to suffer crosses in life commensurate with his sins--or rather, sir, if one's sins were always equal to one's troubles, then Heaven have mercy on me, say 1, had I been trampled o'er the threshold of death's door by the mob!" "Your backslidings

"Nay, sir, I slipped forward when I fell with my face and hands all along the pavement."

"Your stiff-neckedness" (trying another façon de parler.)

"True, sir, true: my neck was so painful with the bruises and cold wind o' the night, that for a month afterwards, I was unable to turn my head, had it been ever so."

"Your spiritual blindness"

"No, sir, I neither saw nor tasted a drop o' spirits all that blessed night, as the saying is, though I could say any thing but blessed; and I think a drop o' summut short would a done me a' power o' good when I came to my senses under the monument."

Pedestres could endure this no longer he stamped Clavileno's one leg violently down on the broad flags, and turned on his heel towards the west door. "Confound you, for a most egregious fool!" cried he, partly to himself, yet in a tone somewhat above a whisper: "and I myself am no better for staying here, tumbling my brains over to seek modes, expressions, and idioms, that should meet the comprehension of thy obdurate skull." He gave a hasty glance at the empty corner where had stood the woman-"Ah, chivalry, thou faded blossom!” exclaimed he "but I'll be gone-I will not stay. My patience has fled like a captive I would still have kept within bounds—my time has been wasted by unnecessary speech, and my knight-errantry has been shocked and sneered at."

One of the vergers of the cathedral beckoned to the man, thereby leaving Pedestres again free to his own thoughts. They unconsciously wandered back to the subject of violated chivalry, and the removal of the injured fair.

"Is it possible," thought he to himself, as he walked across the spacious nave; "can it be possible, that things are come to such a pass as this! Oh, thou spirit of knighthood, valour, and all that appertains thereunto-Oh, whither-oh, to what unknown, and inauspicious regions hast thou fled? It has been said by sages and by historians, that knight-errantry and civilisation go never hand in hand: that chivalry, five centuries past, doled to a barbarous world, that protection and safety to its unprotected inhabitants, which is now, in the

days of the present years, shed and dispersed to them, by the sweeter and more benign influences of wholesome laws, civilized hearts, cultivated intellects, and refinement. Every one in these golden ages is secure every one protected--every one free-and every one equally defended by just and equitable statutes. But how then has this Queen of Love and Beauty fared? This lady, paper white,' as the poet hath it, who would have graced the highest gallery on the list of the ancient tournament, where valiant deeds of valiant knights were repaid by radiant favours shed by radiant flowers-and when, in fierce encounters, deadly pointed lances were shivered to atoms in the cause, and for the sakes, of the fair ancestors, of perhaps this unfortunate daughter, whose fate I so chivalrously deplore. My long acquaintance with her had, it is not impossible, engendered within my unconscious breast, a warmer, and I fear more imprudent influence than discretion suggested; the force and height of which I never knew, until the object towards which it tended, was withdrawn. But when did discretion ever find entrance into the throbbing bosom of a lover? (Pedestres shook his head.) There was no plausible reason that I can discern, that would have authorized any man to deprive her of a prerogative she had obtained by time. Her long abode there, entitled her to a longer and her claims to remain may have approached to a right. She was the most inoffensive creature that a boisterous world ever contended with: retired, modest, secluded, and unpresuming. "I think Milton must have mistaken Eve for her, when he wrote thus

"Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retired,

1 The more desirable."

"Mark- the more desirable.""

"I have looked at her often-I have seen others do so: yet I never so much as saw her raise her eyes from the ground. But she is gone -why need I lament? The world has been deprived of one of its blessings. Have not the eyes of multitudes gazed on her with wonder and astonishment? but she is gone-she has been snatched away! Yet many an audacious lover has eloped with the fair object that has delighted the dazzled eyes of hundreds-ay, thousands. This case, then, is not without parallel; but is this reflection a soothing consolation? Alas, no--no-No!"

Pedestres at this moment passed under the arch of the west doorway, and proceeded across the cathedral yard.

"It was unfair-it was unfair," he continued within himself, in spite of the numbers through which he threaded his way, and who much tended towards the dissipation of his praiseworthy meditations; "it was unfair, because she could not vindicate herself-she could not plead her own cause-she had no tongue. What, what's that? what did I say? no tongue? a woman without a tongue? without a tongue, did I say so? could I have said so? Yes, yes-'tis true-it is even so, though this is not the annus mirabilis of Dean Swift. But it was not manly; no, it was mean," he resumed, recalling his composure; "she was unable to defend herself: the natural weakness of her sexhow could she? and she, in sooth, the weakest of the weak: the in

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