witness a tragedy, and makes the most delicate female feast on groans and agonies. I had an advantage over them,the groan, the agony I feasted on, were real. I took my station at the door that door which, like that of Dante's hell, might have borne the inscription, Here is no hope,'with a face of mock penitence, and genuine, cordial delectation. I could hear every word that transpired. For the first hours they tried to comfort each other, they suggested to each other hopes of liberation,-and as my shadow, crossing the threshold, darkened or restored the light, they said, That is he ;'-then, when this occurred repeatedly, without any effect, they said, No, no, it is not he,' and swallowed down the sick sob of despair, to hide it from each other. Towards night a monk came to take my place, and to offer me food. I would not have quitted my place for worlds; but I talked to the monk in his own language, and told him I would make a merit with God of my sacrifices, and was resolved to remain there all night, with the permission of the Superior. The monk was glad of having a substitute on such easy terms, and I was glad of the food he left me, for I was hungry now, but I reserved the appetite of my soul for richer luxuries. I heard them talking within. While I was eating, I actually lived on the famine that was devouring them, but of which they did not dare to say a word to each other. They debated, deliberated, and, as misery grows ingenious in its own defence, they at last assured each other that it was impossible the Superior had locked them in there to perish by hunger. At these words I could not help laughing. This laugh reached their ears, and they became silent in a moment. All that night, however, I heard their groans,—those groans of physical suffering, that laugh to scorn all the sentimental sighs that are exhaled from the hearts of the most intoxicated lovers that ever breathed. I heard them all that night. I had read French romances, and all their unimaginable nonsense. Madame Sevignè herself says she would have been tired of her daughter in a long tete-a-tete journey, but clap me two lovers into a dungeon, without food, light, or hope, and I will be damned (that I am already, by the bye) if they do not grow sick of each other within the first twelve hours. The second day hunger and darkness had their usual influence. They shrieked for liberation, and knocked loud and long at their dungeon door. They exclaimed they were ready to submit to any punishment; and the approach of the

watched that.

monks, which they would have dreaded so much the preceding night, they now solicited on their knees. What a jest, after all, are the most awful vicissitudes of human life! -they supplicated now for what they would have sacrificed their souls to avert four-and-twenty hours before. Then the agony of hunger increased, they shrunk from the door, and grovelled apart from each other. Apart!-how Í They were rapidly becoming objects of hostility to each other,-Oh, what a feast to me! They could not disguise from each other the revolting circumstances of their mutual sufferings. It is one thing for lovers to sit down to a feast magnificently spread, and another for lovers to couch in darkness and famine,-to exchange that appetite which cannot be supported without dainties and flattery, for that which would barter a descended Venus for a morsel of food. The second night they raved and groaned, (as occurred); and, amid their agonies, (I must do jus tice to women, whom I hate as well as men,) the man often accused the female as the cause of all his sufferings, but the woman never, never reproached him. Her groans might indeed have reproached him bitterly, but she never uttered a word that could have caused him pain. There was a change which I well could mark, however, in their physical feelings. The first day they clung together, and every movement I felt was like that of one person. The next the man alone struggled, and the woman moaned in helplessness. The third night,-how shall I tell it?-but you have bid me go on. All the horrible and loathsome excruciations of famine had been undergone; the disunion of every tie of the heart, of passion, of nature, had commenced. In the agonies of their famished sickness they loathed each other, they could have cursed each other, if they had had breath to curse. It was on the fourth night that I heard the shriek of the wretched female, her lover, in the agony of hunger, had fastened his teeth in her shoulder; that bosom on which he had so often luxuriated, became a meal to him now.'- Monster!" and you laugh ?'-Yes, I laugh at all mankind, and the imposition they dare to practise when they talk of hearts. I laugh at human passions and human cares,-vice and virtue, religion and impiety; they are all the result of petty localities, and artificial situation. One physical want, one severe and abrupt lesson from the tintless and shrivelled lip of necessity, is worth all the logic of the empty wretches who have

presumed to prate it, from Zeno down to Burgersdicius. Oh! it silences in a second all the feeble sophistry of conventional life, and ascetitious passion. Here were a pair who would not have believed all the world on their knees, even though angels had descended to join in the attestation, that it was possible for them to exist without each other. They had risked every thing, trampled on every thing human and divine, to be in each other's sight and arms. One hour of hunger undeceived them. A trivial and ordinary want, whose claims at another time they would have regarded as a vulgar interruption of their spiritualized intercourse, not only, by its natural operation, sundered it for ever, but, before it ceased, converted that intercourse into a source of torment and hostility inconceivable, except among cannibals. The bitterest enemies on earth could not have regarded each other with more abhorrence than these lovers. Deluded wretches! you boasted of having hearts, I boast I have none, and which of us gained most by the vaunt, let life decide. My story is nearly finished. When I was last here I had something to excite me ;talking of those things is poor employment to one who has been a witness to them. On the sixth day all was still. The door was unnailed; we entered, they were no more. They lay far from each other, farther than on that voluptuous couch into which their passion had converted the mat of a convent bed. She lay contracted in a heap, a lock of her long hair in her mouth. There was a slight scar on her shoulder, the rabid despair of famine had produced no farther outrage. He lay extended at his length, his hand was between his lips; it seemed as if he had not strength to execute the purpose for which he had brought it there. The bodies were brought out for interment. As we removed them into the light, the long hair of the female, falling over a face no longer disguised by the novice's dress, recalled a likeness I thought I could remember. I looked closer; she was my own sister,-my only one, -and I had heard her voice grow fainter and fainter. I had heard- -And his own voice grew fainter-it ceased.

[We must now give an account of the death of this parricide a death worthy of the wretch. It is in the words of the Spaniard, to whom the above story was told, and who

now was residing in a Jew's house at Madrid, under hiding from the Inquisition. The parricide had, by this time, got into office in the Inquisition; and it is in a grand procession of the Holy Cross, that the Spaniard witnesses the dreadful judgment overtake him, which is narrated in the following powerful manner.]

The evening came on-the Jew left me; and, under an impression at once unaccountable and irresistible, I ascended to the highest apartment in his house, and with a beating heart listened for the toll of the bells that was to announce the commencement of the ceremony. I had not long to wait. At the close of twilight, every steeple in the city was vibrating with the tolls of their well-plied bells. I was in an upper room of the house. There was but one window; but, hiding myself behind the blind, which I withdrew from time to time, I had a full view of the spectacle. The house of the Jew looked out on an open space, through which the procession was to pass, and which was already so filled, that I wondered how the procession could ever make its way through such a wedged and impenetrable mass. At last, I could distinguish a motion like that, of a distant power, giving a kind of indefinite impulse to the vast body that rolled and blackened beneath me, like the ocean under the first and far-felt agitations of the storm.

The crowd rocked and reeled, but did not seem to give way an inch. The procession commenced. I could see it approach, marked as it was by the crucifix, banner, and taper-(for they had reserved the procession till a late hour, to give it the imposing effect of torch-light). And I saw the multitude at a vast distance give way at once. Then came on the stream of the procession, rushing, like a magnificent river, between two banks of human bodies, who kept as regular and strict distance, as if they had been ramparts of stone,-the banners, and crucifixes, and tapers, appearing like the crests of foam on advancing billows, sometimes rising, sometimes sinking. At last they came on, and the whole grandeur of the procession burst on my view, and nothing was ever more imposing, or more magnificent. The habits of the ecclesiastics, the glare of the torches struggling with the dying twilight, and seeming to say to heaven, We have a sun though yours is set ;-the solemn and resolute look of the whole party, who trod as if their march were on

the bodies of kings, and looked as if they would have said, What is the sceptre to the cross?-the black crucifix itself, trembling in the rear, attended by the banner of St Dominick, with its awful inscription-It was a sight to convert all hearts, and I exulted I was a Catholic. Suddenly a tumult seemed to arise among the crowd-I knew not from what it could arise-all seemed so pleased and so elated.

I drew away the blind, and saw, by torch-light, among a crowd of officials who clustered round the standard of St Dominick, the figure of my companion the parricide. His story was well known. At first a faint hiss was heard, then a wild and smothered howl. Then I heard voices among the crowd repeat, in audible sounds, What is this for? Why do they ask why the Inquisition has been half-burned? -why the virgin has withdrawn her protection ?—why the saints turn away their faces from us?-when a parricide marches among the officials of the Inquisition. Are the hands that have cut a father's throat fit to support the banner of the cross ?' These were the words but of a few at first, but the whisper spread rapidly among the crowd; and fierce looks were darted, and hands were clenched and raised, and some stooped to the earth for stones. The procession went on, however, and every one knelt to the crucifixes as they advanced, held aloft by the priests. But the murmurs increased too, and the words 'parricide, profanation, and victim,' resounded on every side, even from those who knelt in the mire as the cross passed by. The murmur increased-it could no longer be mistaken for that of adoration. The foremost priests paused in terror ill concealed and this seemed the signal for the terrible scene that was about to follow. An officer belonging to the guard at this time ventured to intimate to the chief Inquisitor the danger that might be apprehended, but was dismissed with the short and sullen answer, 'Move on the servants of Christ have nothing to fear. The procession attempted to proceed, but their progress was obstructed by the multitude, who now seemed bent on some deadly purpose. A few stones were thrown ; but the moment the priests raised their crucifixes, the multitude were on their knees again, still, however, holding the stones in their hands. The military officers again addressed the chief Inquisitor, and intreated his permission to disperse the crowd. They received the same dull and stern answer, The cross is sufficient for the protection of its servants-whatever fears you may feel, I

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