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off, our guide proceeded to show us the monastery, which I thought curious only because it differed less than I had expected from the convents of Europe. Just as we were going off, an underling howler pulled me by the coat, and pointed to a cell with many gesticulations, and some words which I could not understand. Our guide told me that I was specially honoured, for I was invited to converse separately with the Dervish Yussuf the Wise, a most holy man, and, as he said, commonly called the Wise, because he was thought to be out of his senses.

I entered, and found my dirty, dancing, howling, swelled-faced, grey-bearded Beau Nash of the morning's service, stretched on a carpet, evidently overcome with fatigue, and solacing himself with a little box of Mash-Allah, a kind of opium lozenges. Scarcely were we alone, than he rose with an air of dignity, and startled me by addressing me in English.

"Time has laid his hand gently upon you, Francis Herbert. You are stouter-and I see grey hairs straggling through your brown curls-otherwise you are unchanged since I left you in America twenty-five years ago. I am old. I am old before my time. Prisons and battles and the plague have borne me down. But the hand

of God is with me. He is great, and Mahommed is his prophet. Mahommed Resoul Allah!" "What-Egerton-Hussein!-when-how

why left you Egypt."

"It was so written in the eternal councils of him who fashions all things to his will. It was fore-ordained-even as all things are fore-ordained-that I should escape from the tyrant and become a prophet, and a holy one. In that predestination is thy fate mysteriously linked to

mine."

His eye kindled, his form dilated, and he burst into the horrible howl of his order-Ullah-hoo, Ullah-hoo.

Was this fanaticism? Was this lunacy? Was it the temporary intoxication of opium; or was this wretched man masking under wild enthusiasm some deep plot of ambition or fraud?

I know not. I was glad to leave the cell. I left it wondering, sorrowing, disgusted, and have never since seen him.

Yet frequently in crowds, or in the hurry of commercial cities, I have met faces that seemed familiar to me, though I knew them not, and I have often fancied some of them to be his.

Sometimes, too, I dream of this fearful Proteus, and meet him in new shapes.

It was but last week that I supped in company with an intelligent English officer, who had accompanied Lord Amherst in his mission to Pekin, and went to bed with my head full of China and its customs. I dreamt that our government had sent out Dr. Mitchill as ambassador to the Celestial Empire, and that I accompanied my learned friend. The moment we arrived at Canton, a fat old mandarin, with a blue button in his cap, and a gilt dragon on his breast, came on board our frigate, flourished his hands twenty times, and thumped his forehead as often on the deck, and then jumping up, burst into a laugh, and asked me if I did not recollect the Black Wild Cat, alias the Reverend Major, Rector, Romeo, Bardolph, Hussein, Yussuf Egerton.

R

SONNET.

[The subject of Tell in chains has given occasion to a splendid original picture, by a distinguished American artist. An engraving of this picture, by Durand, has been placed at the beginning of this volume.]

CHAINS may subdue the feeble spirit—but thee

TELL, of the iron heart! they could not tame: For thou wert of the mountains-they proclaim The everlasting creed of Liberty.

That creed is written on the untrampled snow,

Thundered by torrents which no power can hold, Save that of God, when he sends forth his cold, And breathed by winds that through the free heaven blow.

Thou, while thy prison walls were dark around,
Didst meditate the lesson nature taught,
And to thy brief captivity was brought
A vision of thy Switzerland unbound.
The bitter cup they mingled, strengthened thee
For the great work to set thy country free.

THE CLOSE OF AUTUMN.

THE melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sere.

Heaped in the hollows of the grove the withered leaves lie dead,

They rustle to the eddying gust and to the rabbit's tread.

The robin and the wren are flown, and from the shrubs

the jay,

And from the wood-top calls the crow, through all the gloomy day.

Where are the flowers, the fair young flowers, that lately sprung and stood,

In brighter light and softer airs, a beauteous sisterhood?

Alas! they all are in their graves-the gentle race of flowers

Are lying in their lowly beds, with the fair and good of ours:

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