appearances; they sometimes occur after death."

I was surprised to hear him speak thus, but yielded to his request; and pouring some liquid from a phial he gave me, I chafed Meeta's hands and forehead, and employed every means of restoration in my power. These means appeared now to be successful, now to be entirely without effect; yet I continued them mechanically, with a vague hope of I knew not what.

I can give no idea of the time employed in this strange and awful occupation; for my feelings were bound up, like one in a hideous dream. Hours must have passed, and I could not say yet whether she lived or not. But all at once a change took place; she moved, like one waking from sleep. She lifted her arm, so that the white sleeve fell from it, then let it sink again on her breast; she unclasped her hands, but seemed unable to raise them to her face. Soon after, with a slow and languid effort, she rose from the bed and sat upright. Her head drooped, first on one side, then on the other, as if sleep overpowered her; her lips moved, but no sound came from them, and her eyes were closed. Her hair hung over her face; slowly she raised her hand, and with the thin wasted fingers put aside the locks. Then her hand fell heavily and wearily by her side. The fearful drama went on; she folded her arms on her breast, stood upon her feet, and, with a deeply drawn sigh, opened her eyes. They were bright as ever, but their look of intelligence was gone. She was like a sleep-walker, that looks at objects without seeing them, for, though her gaze was fixed on me, she seemed wholly unconscious of my presence. What were my feelings during this frightful enactment of Life in Death? I cannot describe them; nay, I knew not what they were. I was conscious of but one hideous thought, and gasped long for breath before I could give it utterance-"If you have indeed done this"-cried I to the Count "if your WILL has indeed summoned this prey of the tomb ere the tomb has received her back to a ghastly life which is not life-beware what you do! Disturb not the repose of the dead! Look at her! if those pale lips could frame language, would

they not implore the peace you have impiously marred ?"

The Count cast on me a stern glance, and walked across the room to the spot where stood the Life-in-Death. She made a step forwards to meet him; waved her head gently, laid her hand upon his arm and looked in his face with an expression like that of a pleased child, while her lips murmured his name softly.

The Count took both her hands in his, and looked at her fixedly and solemnly. "Dost thou live ?" he asked. She shook her head, and the expression of pleasure in her eyes gave place to one of deep sadness. The Count suddenly let fall her hands, staggered backward, and struck his hand against his forehead. "Art thou, then, Oh Heaven! the spectre of her İ loved ?”

The apparition stretched out her arms towards him. "Basil, dear Basil!" she murmured. He approached her, and I saw him shudder as her hand again touched his. She laid one hand upon his shoulder, as if to support herself, and spoke slowly and interruptedly. "Let me receive strength from thee to speak what I would utter. I live-Basil-but no longer the life of earth, nor yet that of immortality. Soon I shall live-in the Creatorwhen thou dost release me from this heavy thraldom. Release me, Basil. Call me not back to this cloud-lifethat is agony to the panting_spirit. Give me thy blessing, that I may depart!"

Bewildered as my senses were to everything else, they were fearfully alive to what passed by that couch of death. The Count placed her passive form upon the bed; her eyes closed, but the smile remained on her lips. Again her hands were folded across her breast; her features gradually became rigid; the coldness of death once more settled over them; the grave reclaimed its prey! He covered her face, and led me from her without a word; and long before the dawn of morning, all was as it had been when we first took our places for that solemn deathwatch; nor till this record goes forth to the world, will have been known to a single human being, save one, the occurrences of that terrible night.

AN author is a kind of anomaly in the human family, an exception to the general rule of the species, living apart from his race, inhabiting an ideal world, with feelings and impulses peculiarly his own, and governed by laws which are alien to all mankind beside. In his dizzy altitude, enjoying a sort of living apotheosis, yet sharing equally in the weaknesses incident to our frail mortality, it is not surprising that we sometimes should discern traces of the human, even amidst the celestial halo of immortal genius. Thus, all but superhuman, with the common-places of every-day life he has generally but little sympathy. In fine, he is essentially an anti-social being, having usually a strong spice of asceticism and saturnine exclusiveness that at once induces our commingled pity and admiration. Caressed, and in fact, at some time, almost deified as he is by the "base multitude," he becomes the unconscious victim of an insatiate love of fame, while the indulgence of this very passion renders him but the more acutely sensitive to the chilling influences of those reverses which he is often mercilessly destined to abide.

Lavish, indeed, as we have been in our devotions at the shrine of modern genius, we find our sober forefathers were not a whit behind us in this respect. Sir Isaac Newton was so highly esteemed that it is related of one of the greatest mathematicians of his age, the Marquis de l'Hôpital, that he inquired, on one occasion, whether the great astronomer actually was seen to eat, drink, and sleep as other men; as, he confessed, he had represented to himself a being of celestial attributes, entirely disengaged from corporeal matter. Of the renowned Bishop Berkeley, a name that will be conse crated as long as learning is held in honor, or virtue has reverence among men, and to whom Pope has assigned the possession of every known excellence that can impart lustre to our nature (and whose memory ought certainly to be ever dear to us, as having been the first found associated with the organization of a University in one of our Eastern States)—a similarly superhuman notion was enter tained by his cousin, who once exclaimed on quitting his room, lifting up his hands with astonishment: "So much

understanding and learning coupled with such exemplary humility and innocence, I did not believe could have been the portion of any but an angel, till I beheld him!" Again, we find it recorded of the celebrated French divine, Saurin, that on occasion of his preaching, one of his astonished audience is said to have exclaimed: "Is it an angel, or a mere man ?”

It certainly involves a seeming paradox, that where we find such towering compliments lavished with so unsparing a hand on the labors of an author, he should be left so singularly destitute of a proportionate pecuniary recompense. It was Ariosto, if we remember rightly, who, when asked by a friend why he did not erect for himself a more noble villa, replied, "words are cheaper than stones." But the truth of the matter is, that although our authors may be, in their intellectuality, thus supernal, they signally fail in verifying the axiom of the ancient sage, which declares that "they are most like the gods, who have fewest wants," for the reverse has been notoriously the fact. The subject of the poverty and sufferings of authors has been worn threadbare; our present object is to cast a glance upon the other side of the ac

count.

Hazlitt, in his amusing essay on the inconveniences of "the want of money," has some admirable hits on the subject of the proverbial improvidence and extravagance of literary men; among others we find several characteristic anecdotes about Sheridan. He exhibited a perfect specimen of what is styled living from hand to mouth. Always in need of means, although often in the receipt of vast sums of money, he is known to have exercised the most singular ingenuity in avoiding the payment of his debts. On one occasion he is reported to have squandered away no less a sum than £1600 in a six weeks' jaunt to Bath, returning without a single copper. When he accepted an invitation to the country, it was his usual custom to hire a post-chaise and four for himself, and another for his son Tom. Taylor, of the Opera House, was accustomed to say of him, that he could not pull off his hat to him in the street without its costing him fifty pounds; and if he stopped to speak to hin, it was a hundred. Once when a creditor brought him a bill for payment,

which had been often presented to him before, and the man complained of its soiled and tattered state, and said he was ashamed of it, "I'll tell you what I'd advise you to do with it, my friend," said Sheridan, "take it home and write it upon parchment!" He once mounted a horse which a horse-dealer was showing off near a coffee-house at the bottom of St. James's street, rode it to Tattersall's, sold it, and walked quietly back to the spot from which he set out with the money in his pocket; the owner was furious, and swore he would be the death of him; but in a quarter of an hour afterwards they were both seen sitting together over a bottle of wine, in the same coffee-house, the horse-jockey with the tears running down his face at Sheridan's jokes, and almost ready to hug him as an honest fellow. His house and lobby were beset with duns every morning, who were generally told that Mr. Sheridan was not yet up, and were accordingly shown into the several roonis on each side of the entrance. As soon as he had breakfasted, he once asked: "Are all these doors shut, John?" and being assured they were, he marched out very deliberately between them, to the chagrin and amazement of his self-invited guests. Perhaps few, however, could be found to equal Sheridan in this species of legerdemain; but the above may afford a fair sample of the foolish indifference to the value of money which we so frequently find to belong to the members of the literary profession. When Fielding was interrogated as to his reasons for espousing the literary profession, he replied, “that he had no alternative between being either a hackney writer or a hackney coachman ;" and we find Butler making the following rather depreciating allusion to the votaries of the muse;

"It is not poetry that makes men poor, For few do write, that were not so before; And those who have writ best, had they been rich,

Had ne'er been seized with the poetic itch; Had loved their ease too well to take the pains

To undergo that drudgery of brains :-
But being for all other trades unfit,
Only t' avoid being idle, set up wit!"

The earliest evidence we can find upon record of a recognition of literary property, occurred under the pontificate