the house; but, in his descent down the stairs, was entangled by a noose purposely thrown over him, and tumbled headlong on his face. He was now overpowered by numbers, secured, and underwent, in rapid succession, the gratifying operations, and pleasing varieties of cupping, and scarifying, and blistering, and lashing; all which were duly and copiously administered, according to the established rules of these salutary receptacles of human misery, in a state of affliction that demands the utmost tenderness and kindness. The count, tired with this exercitation, fell asleep, which was considered as a good symptom, and, after thirty-six hours of confinement, he was, as a great favour, and after many an earnest petition, permitted to go down to a little room below, and have his beard shaved by one of his keepers. In this apartment he sat, and already one side of his face was shaved, and the other lathered, when he perceived, that he had but to pass through a passage into a small room, which opened into the street, and his deliverance would be effected. The door was a-jar, he could

see the people pass and repass in the street; not a moment was to be lost, he knocked down the unsuspecting shaver, who had, that moment, taken him by the nose in order to complete the mowing down of the stubble on the remaining side of his face, rushed into the street with half his visage in the suds, and a napkin under his chin, called a coach, and drove directly to his sister in Fitzroy-square. Upon inquiring. after his friend Broadface, he found, that the amiable brewer had gone down to the place of his residence; the count followed him, vowing vengeance and breathing destruction through every step of the journey, arrived at the town, went to the ale-maker's, and was prevailed on by a few smooth words, an abundant dinner, and an amazingly copious ingurgitation of wine, to pass over the whole affair as a piece of harmless merriment, an innocent joke, merely matter of laughter. Harmless merriment, an innocent joke, merely matter of laughter!!! why it was the very essence of grinning, the very spawn of diabolism. Did not that fat-headed evil-hearted slave of ex

cisemen know, that he had committed one of the direst outrages on humanity, one of the most heinous offences in the sight of God, that of endeavouring to degrade a fellow-creature below the level of a brute? for was not this the most effectual method that could be taken to deprive his neighbour of reason, that god-like emanation from the Deity, that broad stamp and impression of mind, which alone severs and disjoins from and elevates man above the beast that perishes? Surely, if this abominable grinner had possessed one ray of understanding, one spark of genius, one little glimmer of reason, he would have shrunk, with horror and dismay, from the perpetration of a deed, which, almost inevitably, must be productive of the direst evil which can befal the human race. We can contemplate the ruins of an edifice, which having stood through the lapse of ages, hath at length bowed its haughty and aspiring head to the all-destroying hand of time, with a mixture of reverential awe and of pleasing melancholy; we can survey the downfall of kingdoms, and the desolation of empires,

with the blended emotions of compassion, of pity, and of elevation, while musing, pensive, as we sit and think—

"That so revolves the scene;

So time ordains, who rolls the things of pride
From dust again to dust. Behold that heap
Of mould'ring urns, (their ashes blown away,
Dust of the mighty,) the same story tell;
And as its base, from whence the serpent glides
Down the green desert street, yon hoary monk
Laments the same, the vision as he views,
The solitary, silent, solemn scene,

Where Caesars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie,
Blended in dust together; where the slave

Rests from his labours; where th' insulting proud
Resigns his pow'r, the miser drops his hoard;
Where human folly sleeps.-There is a mood,
(I sing not to the vacant and the young,)
There is a kindly mood of melancholy,
That wings the soul, and points her to the skies;
When tribulation clothes the child of man,
When age descends with sorrow to the grave,
"Tis sweetly-soothing sympathy to pain,
A gently-wakening call to health and ease.
How musical! when all devouring time;
Here sitting on his throne of ruins hoar,
While winds and tempests sweep his various lyre,
How sweet thy diapason, melancholy !"

But, when we behold the wreck of human intellect; when we see the eye, which once flashed the fire of genius, which once darted the beams of intelligence, now fixed, vacant, dull, unmeaning; or wild, furious, ghastly, rolling in phrenzy; when we behold that countenance, which was once lighted up by the glow of imagination, the warmth of fancy, and the fervour of devotion, now drooping, sad, despondent, wobegone; or haggard, emaciated, pale, distorted, horrible; when we hear that tongue, to whose accents we were wont to listen with joy and with delight, when we imbibed the holy precepts of religion, were instructed in the lessons of philosophy, or exhilarated by the effusions of wit, now utter the drawling, incoherent, unconnected sentences of a driveller and an idiot; or burst forth in the dire vociferating blaspheming gal) of maddening delirium; we have no alloy, no alleviation of our grief, our sorrow is without hope, and our anguish of soul without remedy. In the agony of a wounded spirit, wè prostrate ourselves in the dust before the the Lord, and say, "Who can stand before

we