at the sale of his furniture a few matters that had belonged to my mother, the idea of losing which had cost him sharper pangs than the real loss of every other earthly thing. When he left me to take possession of his poor lodging, I hastened to the auction.

Gentle, happy reader-happy in the endearments of your sweet fireside, sustained in gladsome confidence by the bright smiles of your abiding household deities-if you have suffered to creep and twine about your heart the things of home-if with you they have grown old, and with your strength have gain. ed a mightier hold upon your ripe affections-if the mysterious spirit that links the human soul with dumb and lifeless things, hath made and kept you one, beware of the cruel hour of separation. So sure it comes, so sure you yield a vital portion of yourself, no surgeon can renew, no time can reinstate. How my blood crawled and my flesh winced, as the irreverend hand of strangers tossed and turned about the articles of furniture which I had known, revered from infancy! how their rude and heartless merriment, provoked by the appearance of some curious and much-caredfor relic of my dear mother's, stung me with a mingled sense of sorrow, shame, and anger! how their inhuman observations fell like iron on my heart and crushed it! A number of school-books were offered in one lot for sale. They had been mine when I was under the care of the good clergyman. How familiar were their well-used backs, scrawled and scribbed over, and what a fair scene for a moment did they evoke, carrying me back to the holidays of life, and permitting one passing gleam of joy and innocence undisturbed to stray across my soul-too soon to vanish!"Pity," exclaimed a vulgar, ever-talking huckster, the merryman of the party; "pity the old man didn't read his books a little better. He should have kept at school a few years longer." And he laughed at his own coarse wit, which many of the company praised higbly. I could not execute my commission, but left the place inflamed with indignation.

I joined my parent in his new abode, and discovered him bending over the fire, busy in the preparation of our dinner. It consisted of a few potatoes; and amusing would it have been, under

any other circumstances, to listen to the arguments which he employed to recommend the very homely meal. "He could have procured a richer dish, had he not considered the paramount importance of attending to the health. We were now idle-the simplest diet gave strength to those whose bodies suffered no expenditurestimulating food induced derangement and disease-we could ill afford to pay the doctor now. Prevention of malady was the point he aimed at; we had never regarded this sufficiently before. It was time to look about. The Arabs lived on rice. In truth, the finest creatures in the world were the most moderate." Such were the observations that he poured, by way of relish, over the scanty and otherwise ill-seasoned fare. I agreed with him most cordially, and I was then "a boy of rare wisdom for my years, and undoubtedly on the high road to fortune and success." Ab, poor father! why in the height of all thy panegyrics rise from the table, and shuffle so quickly to the window? Why hum those ineffectual notes ? Why so secretly extract that handkerchief, and carry it to thy cheek? In spite of thy shrewd reasoning, is it so difficult to bring conviction home? Thy case is not a novel one.

The desperate state of our affairs had not as yet plucked my courage from me. I saw the necessity of labouring for my livelihood, and prepared myself immediately for employment. There were but two of us; surely with health and reason I could do something for our support. I could become a clerk-a teacher in a school; there was nothing which I would not gladly undertake to render the last days of my father smooth and peaceful. I communicated my intention to him. Whilst he did not object to my determination, he evinced no pleasure at it. "I do not see the necessity of your leaving me, Caleb," he said; " I can hardly spare you, and I think we have enough to live upon."

"We have four guineas in the world, father," I replied," which will last us about as many weeks."

"Is it so?" he asked with a confused and vacant air. "True, true, I had forgotten-they have taken all." And, having cause for tears, he smiled. Melancholy omen!

I walked into the world with confi

dent steps, sanguine, fortified with youthful freshness. It was a smiling morning of early spring, and buxom and glad as the whole earth appeared, leaping from cold and lethargy, there existed not a more cheerful and ardent nature than mine, when it looked abroad throbbing with hope and satisfaction. I could not doubt that there were many in the world as ready to secure my services, as I was willing to make the offer of them. Sure I was that I had but to present myself as a candidate for employment in the vast market-place of human industry, in order to be greedily accepted. The days of early spring are not remarkable for length, and yet many hours before the sun had dipped into the west, all my brilliant expectations had, by degrees, declined, and waned, and quite expired. Brighter than the sun at noon were my views at daybreak, darker than the sun at midnight were my hopes at eve. Nobody would hire me. I returned to our poverty-struck habitation more depressed than I had ever been, with a keener sense of our abandoned helpless state than I had ever ventured to conceive. Not the less deeply did I feel our sorrows when my father met my dejected countenance with wild expressions of delight. A child may gamble by its mother's corpse. Innocence forgives the inconsistency, and we are grateful that the gloomy thought of death is all too ponderous for the infant soul; but when the man shall laugh at human misery and the wrath of Heaven, be sure his direst woe is that which moved him to his mirth-insanity is there.

My father was busy with pen and paper when I returned from my unsuccessful wanderings. At his side was a dish of tea, that had been prepared, apparently, some hours before; near him an uncut loaf of bread; close to the fire-place was his teapot; the fire itself was out. A candle, whose wick had not been snuffed since it first was kindled, burned on the table with dull and sullen aspect. Around him, and on the ground, were many papers, written, blotted, and scrawled upon. He greeted me, and extreme enjoy ment played in every feature; but he checked himself and me, held up his pen to compel my silence and arrest my progress, lest the motion of my tongue and feet might disturb and

baulk the fit expression of some luminous idea with which his mind seemed big. He wrote some passages in haste and then he stopped. "Well, Caleb," he began, his aged eyes sparkling with unusual animation-" you have failed. I am sure of it. Your looks tell me so. You will not desert your father?"

"I have indeed failed," I answered. "I have been most unfortunate." "No, Caleb, not when you know all. You are fortunate, very fortunate. You will say so too. Shut the door, lad. I have such a secret to communicate." I obeyed him, and he beckoned me to the table, and placed his finger slowly and solemnly upon his papers. "A mine of wealth!" he exclaimed, we shall be richer than ever." I was about to take the papers, when he detained my hand. "Not yet, not yet, Caleb. You must promise not to divulge what is written, until every thing is secure. It is all for you. I shall not live to have the fruition, but you will. I have tortured my brain to make you rich. I am very sorry that you hesitate to promise me. It is wrong of you, Caleb; but you will be the sufferer-not 1."

"Your request is a law with me, father," I replied. "I will do as you bid me."

"Of course you will," he added with a cunning laugh. "We are not so foolish in this world as to fly in the face of our best interests. That is very clever of you, Caleb. There, feast your eyes upon the golden prospect." He placed triumphantly a sheet of paper in my hand, and bade me read from it aloud. The characters were very large, and had been written with an unsteady pen. I read the following announcement: "The secret discovered, or transmutàfim no dream, showing the method of converting the inferior metals into gotd. "Yes, that's it, that's it," he ejaculated, rubbing his hands-"that's the title. It came to me this morning. I have got the process in my head, but I cannot make it clear on paper. You are a scholar, Caleb-you shall help me. It's a simple operation, and cannot fail. When we have written it out, we'll begin. When I was a boy, Caleb, I dreamed that I should keep my carriage. I thought I had lost it when they tore our bed awaywho wouldn't have thought it then? But the dream's out now. Your

mother was a rare believer in old dreams. Ask her what she thinks of this."

Many slight inconsistencies in my father's conduct had alarmed me a few days previously to this sad outbreak; but I was not prepared for what I witnessed. Overcome with astonishment and grief, I remained silent, imploring inwardly the avenging hand of Heaven not to spare me, but to hurl me quickly into the general ruin to which our house was doomed.

"You see, Caleb," continued my afflicted parent, "that you are not allowed to leave your father. You were obstinate, but a miracle has stayed you. Why. I have been chosen from the millions of mankind to penetrate this long dormant mystery, I cannot tell now, but even this will be revealed in its own good time. In the meanwhile we will show ourselves mindful of our privileges. Who knows but I am sent to purify the world-to enrich it first, and then to free it from pollution?" He ceased not here, but advanced from one diseased imagining to another, soaring higher and higher in absurdity, as his hot and eager fancy rioted in liberty, until at length, caught and entangled in a maze of images, he stopped, failing to extricate himself, unable to proceed. dared not leave him again. Had I desired it, he would not have permitted my departure; but, on my own part, I deemed it wrong to abandon him to the perverse guidance of an irresponsible judgment. His days and nights were passed in the working out of his great Idea, as he denominated it, and nothing might interfere with its steady prosecution. I, who was destined to profit so largely by this discovery, was hot permitted to stand idly by. "It would be," he said, "contrary to every law of nature, and against all notions of justice, to think of passiveness. The harvestman must use his sickle, or he cannot reap." Accordingly, I remained, day after day and hour after hour, at my poor father's side, some times writing from his dictation, and delighting him by attempts to clothe in language that might be understood ideas which were not intelligible in themselves, and sometimes copying, in a clear and legible hand, the many pages which he had composed during the long and silent nights, whilst I was sleeping. It is unnecessary to say

that his incessant labour yielded not even the blossom of a wholesome fruit. Idle repetitions, the continual evolving of a few thoughts, through whose dark covering of mysteriousness might with difficulty be traced the kernel of a simple and well-known truth, were the produce of all his brain-work; and yet, for this, rest, air, exercise, and needful food, were but too gladly sacrificed. He continued his employment until the last guinea which we could call our own reminded me of the inevitable destitution towards which we were fast advancing. I communicated our condition to my father, in the hope of eliciting one rational intention, if he still held one, with respect to our proceedings.

Is it the last indeed ?" he asked. "How wonderful are the ways of Providence! We have the means of support up to the very moment when we can part with them. Our last guinea will hold out a week longer, and then we shall be ripe for action. This day week, Caleb, shall be an eventful day for you. You will remember it with reason to the last hour of your life."

He

My father spoke the truth. It was a day never to be forgotten. It stands by itself, flowing like a turbulent river through the plain of my existence, connecting and dividing the life that has followed since, with, and from, the life that went before. He had taken no rest for many nights preceding it, and when it dawned, its first grey gleaming light might easily have settled on his feverish brow without awakening there a consciousness of its approach. His mind was swallowed up in his one great purpose, and day and night, with their vicissitudes and fluctuations, disturbed him not. was above the common doings of the world. Do we pity the poor lunatic, stripped of his wits, dismembered from the social body, exiled and hid in solitary secret corners? Yes, but not half so proudly, as the poor lunatic, in his borrowed majesty, looks down and pities and despises us. The little method that had lingered in my father's composition had entirely vanished. His intellect was running riot, and he wrote and wrote on, without connexion, meaning, aim. He was bewildered; but he still blotted the paper, and was more persevering than ever. I left him for a short time, In order to purchase our

dinner at a neighbouring shop. Upon my return, I discovered him sitting, as when I had left him, at the table, pen in hand; but his eyes were fixed not upon his papers, but upon the ceiling, and he appeared absorbed in thought. A thick sunbeam, with its countless particles, danced from the ceiling to the floor, and darting athwart his countenance, lit every feature up with white and paly fire; but it passed powerless across the madman's eye. That did not shrink or move, but, like a star, shone against the luminous stream. My father heard my footstep, but did not stir.

"Is that you, Caleb?" he enquired in a gentle voice.

"Yes, father," I answered, "and I have brought you a dish that you are fond of. You must be ready for it."

66

Bring candles, my dear," said my father in reply, "it is very dark. Night has taken us by surprise. Lights, Caleb, lights!"

I complied with his request. Throughout his illness I had taken pains to gratify and sooth him, by a ready compliance with his wishes. Why should I not humour the new delusion? Alas, alas, it was impossible to misinterpret the inefficient and endeavouring motions of his hand when I again approached him. Nor candle, nor lamp, nor the blessed light of heaven, could serve him more. Whether the aged eyes of the afflicted man had been bruised or injured in their recent bondage, or whether suddenly the kind hand of Providence, with a wise intent, had put a seal upon them, I could not tell. Blind-stricken he was, and with his reason gonemore helpless than a child. My poor heart fluttered as I led him to his bed. Clustering woes had fallen upon me -it was hard to stand the brunt. My dear father was patient and submissive in my hands. He knew not the extent of his calamity. "He wondered why the night had come so quickly-he wished that it would go, and leave him to his work again.' Having placed him as comfortably as I might upon the bed which was made nightly upon the floor, I secured, without delay, the assistance of a doctor. One, to whom I was directed, and who lived not far from our lane, accompanied me home. He examined his patient carefully, and departed, promising to send the neces

"I shall send the medicine at once, said the doctor, without noticing my passion, "and I will see him again during the night. You will sit up with him, of course. Don't leave him. Should he become much weaker and appear to sink, let me know.

"Give me some little hope," I cried imploringly.

"You hear what I have said," continued the practitioner, "don't forget. Good day.'

And he left me marvelling at the insensibility of mankind.

I sat at my parent's side for many hours. In spite of the doctor's sad assurances, I could not believe in the presence of immediate danger. I would not believe in it. The streets were full of human voices and the hum of busy life, when I drew my chair towards him, and surveyed his pale and placid countenance. There was talking and bustling, without and within, on the pavement under our window, upon the stairs in the house, everywhere but in our own dark chamber of misfortune, where silence, chased and affrighted from the world, kept company with sickness. Now the lamps in the street were lighted, and the stream of life was more distinctly heard, murmuring along. Artisans were returning from their daily toil,