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the phantoms of the imagination..."—" You wish to terrify me, but I have a strong head.

These vaults have been closed so many ages that I shall not even Why, that is according. . . ."- "How!

find a bat."

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"But

what do you mean?"-"O! nothing.... come, explain yourself."-" Well, since you desire to know my suspicions, I will tell you freely. The Moors are great knaves, as you have found. They promise all travellers to open catacombs for them that have never been opened before; but they never keep their word." -"So you think that I shall be made a dupe, and I shall not have the advantage of being the first to descend into this catacomb?"-" I do think so."-" Are you certain of it?"-"You shall judge for yourself." At the same moment the Moors invited the Abbé to place himself in a large basket, to the handle of which they had fastened a cord. Furnished with a candle, and every thing necessary to light it, the Abbé took leave of his friends, and caused himself to be let down to the bottom of the cavern. The noise made by the basket touching the bottom echoed suddenly, and was prolonged in the surrounding cavities.

"What a

people was this," said our antiquary to himself, "who knew how to do honour to a man even after his death, by assigning so noble an assylum to his remains! Can the art of embalming bodies be lost then for ever? that art which seemed to preserve men from destruction, and, in some sort, prolonged his life through whole ages? Dr. Shaw mentions seeing one, the muscles of which were very well preserved; perhaps I shall have the same satisfaction."

He got out of the basket, and, having lighted his

candle, began to look around him. Empty coffers, and mummies half stripped of their bandages, struck his

eyes.

O!" cried he, "Montval was right; the Moors have deceived me. These vaults have already been several times opened, and my discoveries in this place will be lost to science!" As he spoke these words, he penetrated a little further into the vault, and he thought he heard a sigh. He stopped, a little agitated, and listened.——Another sigh struck his ear. Suddenly an involuntary motion of terror seized him, but he blamed his timidity, and endeavoured to take courage. After some moments' reflection, he waved the candle round him with a somewhat tremulous hand. But what was his suprise, when he saw, at the corner of the wall, a mummy falling from its place, with its coffin half open! The fall was succeeded by groans and stifled sighs. The Abbé, who had too much sense to attribute these sighs to a supernatural cause, armed himself with courage, and cast a glance on the complaining mummy. He saw it moving in its ancient bandages, and struggling to recover the use of its limbs, and to articulate sounds. He was examining it with attention mixed with dread, when he suddenly perceived shoes on the feet of the pretended mummy: "those are European shoes," said he; "no, you are not an Egyptian mummy; discover yourself, and do not think to terrify me. Who placed you there?"-Take pity on me! save me! They have robbed me, and wanted to make a mummy of me."-" What! are you a victim of the perfidy and avarice of the Moors? How I rejoice in the power of restoring you to the light!"-"Make haste, for I am

almost exhausted."-"Stop! let me call my companions, and afford you all possible assistance."

As he spoke, the Abbé called to his fellow-travellers from the bottom of the cave. "In the name of humanity," said he, " come down, all of you. I have discovered in these dark vaults a victim of the rapacity of the Moors; an unhappy traveller, whom they have swathed like a mummy, after robbing him. Bring him some food and spirits."

While the Abbé was calling for assistance, and the travellers were descending into the catacomb, Dominic, Montval's servant, who, in obedience to his master, had undertaken to counterfeit the mummy, freed himself from his bandages, and managed slyly to rejoin the company, unperceived by the Abbé, who desired his companions, in a hurried manner, to follow him. He went straight to the corner of the wall, and called the unfortunate traveller, to announce to him the promised assistance; but no voice replied. The Abbé called a second time; no one answered: a third time, and a fourth time, still the same silence.

"The poor devil does not know what he refuses," said Seignier, for I have got in my hand a bottle of wine that would revive the dead."

The Abbé was confounded; and sought, in vain, for the pretended mummy. "You have imposed on us," said the others, laughing, " or, perhaps, the sighs and groans you heard were only the effects of a lively imagination."- "I assure you," replied he, "that the poor wretch spoke to me;" and he took, at the same time, a glass of wine from the hands of Seignier; and, renewing his search; O! you," cried he, "whose

groans I lately heard, conceal yourself no longer from my sight. Come and drink some of this wine, it will renew your strength." Dominic suddenly came forward, seized the glass, and emptied it; while the applause and noisy laughter of the party informed the Abbé of the trick which had been played him.

As he was very good-natured, he easily forgave the jest, and laughed at it himself very heartily.

CLEONE, OR MATERNAL DESPAIR.

-Ad humum mærore gravi deducit et angit.-HOR. ——Grief dejects, and wrings the tortur'd soul.

ROSCOMMON.

So when the plague, o'er London's gasping crowds, Shook her dank wing, and steer'd her murky clouds; When o'er the friendless bier no rites were read*, No dirge slow-chanted, and no pall outspread; While Death and night, pil'd up the naked throng, And Silence drove their ebon cars+ along;

* During the last great plague in London, one pit, to receive the dead, was dug in the Charter House, forty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and twenty feet deep, and, in two weeks, received 1114 bodies. During this drear calamity, there were instances of mothers carrying their own children to those public graves; and of people delirious, or in despair from the loss of friends, who threw themselves alive into these pits.

+ Amid the dreadful truths of the description, the dead cart should have been called by its simple name. Car has a fine triumphant sound, which somewhat disturbs the awful

Six lovely daughters, and their father, swept
To the throng'd grave, Cleone saw, and wept.
Her tender mind, with meek religion fraught,
Drank, all-resign'd, Affliction's bitter draught:
Alive, and listening to the whisper'd groan
Of others' woes, unmindful of her own,
One smiling boy, her last sweet hope, she warms,
Hush'd on her bosom, cradled in her arms.
Daughter of woe! ere morn, in vain caress'd,
Clung the cold babe upon thy milkless breast;
With feeble cries thy last sad aid requir'd,
Stretch'd its stiff limbs, and on thy lap expir'd!
Long, with wide eye-lids, on her child she gaz'd,
And long, to Heaven, their tearless orbs she rais'd;
Then, with quick foot and throbbing heart, she found
Where Chartreuse open'd deep his holy ground;
Bore her last treasure through the midnight gloom,
And, kneeling, dropp'd it in the mighty tomb.
"I follow next!" the frantic mourner said,
And, living, plunged amid the festering dead.

horror of the impression. Surely the vehicle, without nominal alteration, and with a stronger epithet prefixed, that should specify its complexion, would be better:

While Death and night pil'd up the naked throng,
And Silence drove their ghastly carts along.

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