8. This declaration had its effect on the withered Hěcăte, who, with many supplications for mercy and forgiveness, promised to guide him in safety to a certain village at the distance of two leagues, where he might lodge in security, and be provided with a fresh horse, or other conveniences for pursuing his route. On these conditions he told her she might deserve his clemency; and they accordingly took their departure together, she being placed astride upon the saddle, holding the bridle in one hand, and a switch in the other, and our adventurer sitting on the crupper superintending her conduct, and keeping the muzzle of a pistol close to her ear. In this equipage' they traveled across part of the same wood in which his guide had forsaken him; and it is not to be supposed that he passed his time in the most agrecable reverie, while he found himself involved in the labyrinth of those shades, which he considered as the haunts of robbery and assassination.

9. Common fear was a comfortable sensation to what he felt in this excursion.3 The first steps he had taken for his preservation were the effect of mere instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or suppressed by despair; but now, as his reflection began to recur, he was haunted by the most intolerable apprehensions. Every whisper of the wind through the thickets was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder; the shaking of the boughs was construed into the brandishing of poniards; and every shadow of a tree became the apparition of a ruffian eager for blood. In short, at each of these occurrences he felt what was infinitely more tormenting than the stab of a real dagger; and at every fresh fillip of his fear, he acted as a remembrancer to his conductress in a new volley of imprecations, importing, that her life was absolutely connected with his opinion of his own safety.

'HECATE, represented in mythology as a mysterious divinity who ruled in heaven, on the earth, and in the sea, bestowing on mortals wealth, victory, wisdom; good luck to sailors and hunters, and prosperity to youth and to the flocks of cattle. She was afterward, however, regarded by the Athenians and others as a spectral being, regardless of demons and terrible phantoms from the lower world, who taught sorcery, witchcraft, and dwelt at places where two roads crossed, on tombs, and near the blood of murdered persons.- Equipage (èk' we påj) 'Excursion (eks ker' shun).

10. Human nature could not lõng subsist under such compli cated terror; but at last he found himself clear of the forest, 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 věry 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 săcrificing 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-surMarne.'

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.

1. I

103. DARKNESS.

HAD a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars

Chalons-sur-Marne (shä long' ser marn), a city of France, capital of the department of Marne, on the right bank of the river Marne, 90 miles E. of Paris.

Did wander, darkling, in the eternal space,
Rayless and pathless, and the icy earth

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 chill'd into a selfish prayer for light.

And they did live by watch-fires; and the thrones,
The palaces of crownèd kings, the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons: cities were consumed,
And men were gather'd 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 contain'd:
Forests were set on fire; but, hour by hour,
They fell and faded; and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash-and all was black.
The brows of men, by the 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 look'd 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 gnash'd their teeth, and howl'd. The wild birds shriek d, And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,

And flap their useless wings: the wildest brutes Came tame, and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd 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 each sat sullenly apart,

Gorging.himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; 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 devour'd.
Even dogs assail'd their masters,—all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept

The birds, and beasts, and famish❜d 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 answer'd not with a caress-he died.

4. The crowd was famish'd by degrees. But two
Of an enormous city did survive,

5.

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

Where had been heap'd 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

grew lighter, and beheld

Each other's aspects-saw, and shriek'd, 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 stirr'd within their silent depths.
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss, without a surge,—

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

LORD BYRON.'

"HE

104. THE RATTLESNAKE."

E does not come- -he does not come," she murmured, as she stood contem'plating the thick copse spreading before 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 floated, 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 ǎrrow, 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

1See Biographical Sketch, p. 292.- From "The Yemassee." heroine, Bess Mathews, in the woods waits the coming of her lover.

The