wonderful feats of Harlequin, until I found myself actually on the ascent. Thus encouraged, I scrambled and climbed, and at last got my head upon a level with four panes of glass, which it seemed were the medium through which that light had been admitted that had caused me such doubt. I straightway peeped out, and found my encasement to be no other than a tall spire, or turret, belonging to a church. I cast my eyes anxiously around, and became almost convinced that I was still a human being, and overlooking the bustle of a great city. Huge masses of stone and brick were heaped in every direction below me; tiles glittered under my gaze, and great gullying streets sent upward the hum of perpetual clamour and motion. Men and women looked like the figures of a puppet-show; their diminutive eagerness of action caused me to laugh. Here is Lilliput in good earnest, thought I. Oh! ye petty dwellers in dust and difficulty! here am I, mounted above ye all, and can overlook ye all! In truth, I waxed marvellously selfcomplacent, and had no one to oppose my humour, as there was no living thing in my vicinity excepting a large black spider, who inhabited a cranny of the old turret, and the martins that fluttered about the weathercock. Nevertheless, my complacency soon wore off with the sense of novelty, and a weight of listlessness began to press upon my heart. I saw a boy blowing soap bubbles out at a garret window, and two doves cooing upon the roof of a house, and fell into a mood of sentimental sadness. The idea of distance, let me turn my head which way I would, was always most prominently before me, and it cannot therefore be wondered at, if my meditations were carried quite back to my schoolboy days. I thought of the little damsel, with a checked tire, that the schoolmaster almost flogged the tender passion out of my nature for penning a copy of verses to-of the tear that stood in her soft blue eye the while of her growing malapert as she grew up, and at last marrying an alderman, and turning out a dash. Here my own eyes grew dim, and I was fain to seek relief for my sensibilities by thrusting forth my moralizing vein, to expatiate at large over the great panorama of life. But I soon found that the springs of the most enduring delights, as well as the sources of the most acute and bitter sorrow, are only to be found within a narrow circle. Spread over a wide surface, thought becomes thin, and feeling superficial. Objects and points of interest to the moral and intellectual, as well as the material vision, are scattered and made dim by distance. Chequered and various as the world is, yet, viewed in the general, the effect of contrast and picturesque arrangement, and all that gives relief and

beauty to the individual landscape, are effaced and lost to the sense. One unvaried tameness stretches throughout the whole. Nor will the mind, thrown upon itself, fail soon to become weary and dissatisfied. But if the recluse, who, from excessive refinement, cherishes his sympathies apart from the world, dreading the contact of vanity or of artifice as a blight upon their purity, tastes the heaviness of solitude, and is in danger of sinking under a moody misanthropy; how much more pitiable must he be, who, looking down upon his fellow men, has not only the languor of loneliness, but the weight of his own vanity to sustain. And yet a fallacious promise is for ever uttering itself forth in the breath of the million. The cravings of ambition are pampered by it; and in the swell of exultation, and the short-lived ecstacy of triumph, men are seen to take a willing leave of every real good, and renounce, in the levity of intoxication, all chance of solid happiness. The truth is, that action and passion, the strong and quickening impulses, as well as the less obtrusive and more delicately constituted order of our perceptions, owe their highest power and their best influences to an innate acknowledgment of nearness-a home-bred claim of communion-a principle by which warmth and freshness is given to the affections, and freedom, and life, and healthful vigour, is thrown around the social character. I was almost startled to find myself drawing such positive deductions, for a strange sense of being and not being still adhered to me. An invisible spell seemed exercising a fantastic power over me, which I could not control or account for; and I know not but under its influence I might have been held to tenant my old tower as perseveringly as the Egyptian kings their pyramids, had not an incident occurred, which suddenly translated me into new regions of wonder. I have mentioned the large black spider that occupied a nook at my elbow. Reverential and decorous in his carriage, he at first attracted my notice and good will. By degrees, he became to me as a humble companion and pet, and, odd as it may seem, I began to have a sort of an affection towards him. The last recollection I have of my steeple abode, was seeing this spider crawl from his nest, and get upon a beam, when, in the midst of a sympathetic intercourse of kindness between us, he suddenly disengaged his hold and dropped. At that instant I became possessed with the sensation of one falling with great rapidity, seated upon a woolsack and unreeling silk, until I found myself landed safely in a spacious piazza below. In my journey downward, I experienced, as I drew nearer to fresh air, all my fancies about Harlequin to be returning, and as my

feet struck the floor with a great bound, I no longer doubted that I was Harlequin himself; and a strip of lath which I had seized hold of in my first fright, I found actually changed into a wand in my hand. My friend the spider had also undergone a transformation. Black he remained as ink, but a spider no longer. He stepped about, to all intents and purposes, a human being. A silken tissue had extended itself all over him, in form of canonical weeds. He saluted me with a hearty benedicite, and bade me, in tones of the most silvery sweetness, to be of good cheer, and not to be awed by the external solemnity of his air, for that he himself had cut a few antics, notwithstanding outward appearances. "These solemn weeds," said he, as he drew the semblances of his function about him, "are, indeed, a mighty clever disguise, and may well serve to cheat the eye of unsuspecting simplicity by their show of humility; the high-reaching spirit of a Wolsey was wont to masquerade under a covering not less sombre. But, ah! those were days when golden stakes were to be played for by the priesthood. The time has passed for the sovereignty of opinion to be bound prostrate before the cowl and crosier. The purposes of ambition may be brooded over in the cloister, but it is in the world alone, the active and breathing world, that they are to be realized-and must pride of heart be for ever held in rebuke by these trappings of perpetual mortification? Here have I been spreading my webs about these walls, until my theological bowels are quite spun out. Mr. Harlequin, Mr. Harlequin, the aspiring spirit within me chafes under such restraints of function-I can no longer endure it-the part I have been playing must be thrown by-the lowly monk must give place to the man of the world, and I must set forth in the career of ambition, free and unencumbered. And hereupon, Mr. Harlequin, if you will stand still long enough to hear me out," (for I was growing restive,) "would I crave your friendly aid. You must know, that custom, with her awkward notions of decent consistency, has thrown grievous impediments in my way. There is that heap of canonical records-it is a five-barred fence to my wishesif I could once leap that barrier, I might snap my finger at further scruple, and laugh in the face of the inquisition itself. Now if, through the potency of your magic, you would impart the necessary agility to my heels, I doubt not, but by one grand somerset, to clear myself of the church for ever." "And well might mother church rejoice in such a deliverance," said I to myself; signifying, at the same time, my readiness to comply with his request, and waving my wand three times, as a signal

to disrobe. The token was eagerly seized on-cowl, bands, and sacred vestments, were thrown aside with an alacrity that surprised me. Nothing seemed to stay for a moment the hot impetuosity of the young monk's haste, excepting a large chalice of rare workmanship and rich material, which he cast a lingering look upon, and turning to me, had the audacity to inquire whether it might not be possible for him to bear it off under his arm. Offended at such barefaced effrontery, in the impatience of my indignation, I gave him so smart a thwack with my wand, as hurled him, at once, entirely without the precincts of consecrated ground. And that blow was well bestowed, thought I; it has, at least, delivered a sacred calling from the hypocritical grimace and arrogant mockery of one false pretender a fellow on whom neither the solemnity of office nor association could impress one sentiment or feeling beyond the poor expediencies of a vain world. But such is man. The ocean rolls awfully in the storm-the storm passes, and all is hushed, and the outward eye beholds only one vast and quiet expanse. We see not the mighty leviathan in his struggles the ever restless myriads that those depths envelope, send not a ripple to the surface-no gush, or whirlpool, gives note that the voracious shark has seized his preyall to view is serene and peaceful as the slumber of infancy. Nor less dark and mysterious are the depths and workings of the human soul. Who shall trace the secret subtleties of motive the hidden toils and throes in which the spirit labours? One beneficent impulse may seem to wrap the whole being. The remainder of the soliloquy was lost within the folds of a canvass bag. My eyes, that had been fixed in thoughtful sadness upon the young monk, as he capered off among the crowd, were all at once veiled by a goodly thickness of merchantable duck, and in a twinkling I felt myself raised, neck and heels, from the earth, and moving pretty swiftly through the air. 'Paddy O'Rouke in the talons of an eagle," to a certainty, thought I. But no-the breath of two or three hearty curses warned me of a near proximity to the brawny shoulders of a couple of stout porters, and a certain jostling stir and noise that rose up around me, dispelled every idea of a voyage into the regions of infinite space, and at once turned down the imagination to the realities of a mere coastwise navigation, through divers unknown streets and alleys. At last, my pilots made a halt-a door creaked upon its hinges, and then the sound of faltering footsteps, evidently those of age and decrepitude, were heard upon a stairway, and notes, seemingly those of chuckling self-felicitation, issued from the same

66

I

quarter. We were forthwith in motion again, and after ascending a staircase, and passing through one or two passages, was unceremoniously swung from the shoulders of the porters, and bestowed at full length upon the bare floor of an inner apartment. I heard the price of my capture arranged and adjusted; while, from a continuous undertone of exultation, I would now and then catch the words, "glory of natural science,' ""wonderful specimen," "immortality to the discoverer" but these seemingly involuntary ejaculations grew fainter and fainter, as the person who uttered them was manifestly receding from my neighbourhood. At last all was silent. being somewhat impatient to reconnoitre my quarters, I found means to get my head so far without the mouth of the sack in which I lay ensconced, that I could look about me—and a curious view presented itself; large folios, of very musty and ancient appearance, with dried plants and grasses, projecting an ample fringe from between the leaves, were disposed variously about the apartment. Minerals enough to M'Adamise all Picadilly, occupied ample shelves on one side; wide spread surfaces of wainscotting were completely studded with insects; stuffed snakes, lizards, and alligators, hung dangling from the ceiling; here the glass eyes of a bald eagle glared full on the enormous jaws of a shark; and there the feathers of the bird of paradise flaunted gaily over a nest of barnacles—while a small table, on which rested a broken retort, and a half-hour glass, with two or three antique, black looking chairs, constituted the ordinary furniture of the room. As I gazed around upon this motley congregation of wonders, the patting of footsteps along the passage-way, together with the audible whispers of two voices in earnest dialogue, saluted my ear. 66 I vow, Dolly, the old philosopher has been hunting grubs and butterflies to some purpose this morning-as sure as I'm a sinner, he's caught a creature as big as a man." "Yes, and as they trundled it over the bannisters in a great bag, it seemed, for all the world, Jenny, to be formed just like one." "Now, if I wa'nt afraid master was in the larbetary, I'd take a peep-and the door stands ajar too-I'll venture; keep still your giggling; take off that creaking shoe; there now-hush-tiptoe." But, notwithstanding every precaution, the Abigails were not destined to surprise the garrison-for, just as their pretty faces crossed the line of the pannel, and met my already expecting eye, I was visited by an involuntary propensity to gain my feet, and under the impulse, made such a bound of my whole body, as sent the fair ones shrieking from their adventurous post. Nor did the consternation end here-for,