cold grave where the worm only is a reveller! to think

that though

"Friends, brothers, and sisters are laid side by side,

Yet none have ere questioned, nor none have replied "; yet that all felt in their cold and mouldering hearts the loves and affections of life, budding and blossoming as though the stem was not rotting to corruption that bore them. I brought to mind the awful punishment of the despot who chained the living to the dead man, and thought it mercy when compared to this.

'How long I lay thus I know not, but the dreary silence of the chamber was again broken, and I found that some of my dearest friends were come to take a farewell look at me ere the coffin was closed upon me for ever. Again the horror of my state struck me with all its forcible reality, and like a meteor there shot through my heart the bitterness of years of misery condensed into the space of a minute. And then I remembered how gradual is death, and how by degrees it creeps over every portion of the frame, like the track of the destroyer, blighting as it goes, and said to my heart, All may yet be still within me, and the mind as lifeless as the body it dwelt in. Yet these feelings partook of life in all their strength and vigour; there was the will to move, to speak, to see, to live, and yet all was torpid and inactive, as though it had never lived. Was it that the nerves, from some depressing cause, had ceased to transmit the influence of the brain? Had these winged messengers of the mind refused their office? And then I recalled the almost miraculous efficacy of the will, exerted under circumstances of great exigency, and with a concentration of power that some men only are capable of. I had heard of the Indian father who suckled his child at his own bosom, when he had laid its mother in her grave; yet was it not the will had wrought this miracle? I myself have seen the paralytic limb awake to life and motion by the powerful application of the mind

stimulating the nervous channels of communication, and awakening the dormant powers of vitality to their exercise. I knew of one whose heart beat fast or slow as he did will it. Yes, thought I, in a transport, the will to live is the power to live; and only when this faculty has yielded with bodily strength need death be the conqueror over us.

"The thought of reanimation was ecstatic, but I dared not dwell upon it; the moments passed rapidly on, and even now the last preparations were about to be made, ere they committed my body to the grave. How was the effort to be made? If the will did indeed possess the power I trusted in, how was it to be applied? I had often wished to speak or move during my illness, yet was unable to do either. I then remembered that in those cases where the will had worked its wonders, the powers of the mind had entirely centred themselves in the one heart-filling desire to accomplish a certain object, as the athlete in the games strains every muscle to lift some ponderous weight. Thus I knew that if the heart could be so subjected to the principle of volition, as that, yielding to its impulse, it would again transmit the blood along its accustomed channels, and that then the lungs should be brought to act upon the blood by the same agency, the other functions of the body would be more readily restored by the sympathy with these great ones. Besides, I trusted that so long as the powers of the mind existed in the vigour I felt them in, that much of what might be called latent vitality existed in the body. Then I set myself to think upon those nerves which preside over the action of the heart —their origin, their course, their distribution, their relation, their sympathies; I traced them as they arose in the brain, and tracked them till they were lost in millions of tender threads upon the muscle of the heart. I thought, too, upon the lungs as they lay flaccid and collapsed within my chest, the life-blood stagnant in their vessels, and tried to possess my mind with the relation of these two parts to the utter exclusion of every other. I

endeavoured then to transmit along the nerves the impulse of that faculty my whole hopes rested on. Alas! it was in vain. I tried to heave my chest and breathe, but could not; my heart sank within me, and all my former terrors came thickening around me, more dreadful by far as the stir and bustle in the room indicated they were about to close the coffin.

'At this moment my dear friend B entered the room. He had come many miles to see me once more, and they made way for him to approach me as I lay. He placed his warm hand upon my breast, and oh the throb it sent through my heart! Again, but almost unconsciously to myself, the impulse rushed along my nerves; a bursting sensation seized my chest, a tingling ran through my frame, a crashing, jarring sensation, as if the tense nervous cords were vibrating to some sudden and severe shock, took hold on me; and then, after one violent convulsive throe which brought the blood from my mouth and eyes, my heart swelled, at first slowly, then faster, and the nerves reverberated, clank! clank! responsive to the stroke. At the same time the chest expanded, the muscles strained like the cordage of a ship in a heavy sea, and I breathed once more.

While thus the faint impulse to returning life was given, the dread thought flashed on me that it might not be real, and that to my own imagination alone were referable the phenomena I experienced. At the same instant the gloomy doubt crossed my mind it was dispelled; for I heard a cry of horror through the room, and the words, "He is alive! he still lives!" from a number of voices around me. The noise and confusion increased. I heard them say, "Carry out B before he sees him again; he has fainted!" Directions and exclamations of wonder and dread followed one upon another; and I can but call to mind the lifting me from the coffin, and the feeling of returning warmth I experienced as I was placed before a fire, and supported by the arms of my friend.

'I will only add that after some weeks of painful debility I was again restored to health, having tasted the full bitterness of death.'

CHAPTER XXIX

THE STRANGE GUEST

THE Eil Wagen, into whose bowels I had committed myself on leaving Frankfort, rolled along for twenty-four hours before I could come to any determination as to whither I should go; for so is it that perfect liberty is sometimes rather an inconvenience, and a little despotism is now and then no bad thing; and at this moment I could have given a ten-gulden piece to any one who should have named my road, and settled my destination.

'Where are we?' said I, at length, as we straggled, nine horses and all, into a great vaulted porte cochère.

'At the "Koenig von Preussen," mein Herr,' said a yellow-haired waiter, who flourished a napkin about him in truly professional style.

'Ah, very true; but in what town, city, or village, and in whose kingdom?'

'Ach, du lieber Gott!' exclaimed he, with his eyes opened to their fullest extent. "Where would you be but in the city of Hesse-Cassel, in the Grand-Duchy of Seiner Königlichen Hoheit-—'

'Enough, more than enough! Let me have supper.'

The Speisesaal was crowded with travellers and townspeople as I entered; but the room was of great size, and a goodly table, amply provided, occupied the middle of it. Taking my place at this, I went ahead through the sliced shoe-leather, yclept beef, the Kalbs-braten and the Gurkensalat, and all the other indigestible abominations of that light meal a German takes before he lies down at night. The company were, with the exception of a few military men, of that nondescript class every German town

abounds with a large-headed, long-haired, ploddinglooking generation, with huge side-pockets in their trousers, from one of which a cherry-wood pipe-stick is sure to project; civil, obliging, good sort of people they are, but by no means remarkable for intelligence or agreeability. But then, what mind could emerge from beneath twelve solid inches of beetroot and bouilli, and what brain could bear immersion in Bavarian beer?

One never can understand fully how atrocious the tyranny of Napoleon must have been in Germany, until he has visited that country and seen something of its inhabitants; then only can one compute what must the hurricane have been that convulsed the waters of such a landlocked bay. Never was there a people so little disposed to compete with their rulers, never was obedience more thoroughly an instinct. The whole philosophy of the German's mind teaches him to look within rather than without; his own resources are more his object in life than the enjoyment of state privileges, and to his peaceful temper endurance is a pleasanter remedy than resistance. Almost a Turk in his love of tranquillity, he has no sympathy with revolutions or public disturbances of any kind, and the provocation must indeed be great when he arouses himself to resist it. That when he is thus called on he can act with energy and vigour, the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 abundantly testify. Twice the French armies had to experience the heavy retribution on unjust invasion. Both Spain and Germany repaid the injuries they had endured, but with a characteristic difference of spirit. In the one case it was the desultory attacks of savage guerillas, animated by the love of plunder as much as by patriotism; in the other, the rising of a great people to defend their homes and altars, presented the glorious spectacle of a nation going forth to the fight. The wild notes of the Basque bugle rang not out with such soul-stirring effects as the beautiful songs of Körner, heard beside the watch-fire or at the peasant's hearth. The conduct of their own princes might have