DURING a visit lately paid by me to the monastery of St. Macarius-which is situated, as you know, in the Valley of the Lakes of Natron-I was lucky enough to obtain possession of a curious Greek manuscript which, in the hope that you may be induced to translate it, I herewith transmit to you. Observing one of the monks very busily occupied in tearing up into a variety of fantastic shapes some papers which had the appearance of being the leaves of old books, I inquired of him the meaning of his task, and received the following explanation :

The Arabs, it seems, who are as fond of pigeons as the ancient Egyptians, have a superstitious notion that, if they place in their pigeon-houses small scraps of paper, written over with learned charac

ters, the birds are always sure to thrive the better for the charm; and the monks, who are never s in profiting by superstition, have, at all times, a supply of such amulets for purchasers.

In general, the fathers of the monastery ha been in the habit of scribbling these fragmen's themselves; but a discovery lately made by then. saves all this trouble. Having dug up (as m informant stated) a chest of old manuscripts, whic being chiefly on the subject of alchemy, must bare been buried in the time of Dioclesian, "we thoug added the monk, "that we could not employ s rubbish more properly, than in tearing it up, as yo see, for the pigeon-houses of the Arabs."

On my expressing a wish to rescue some par these treasures from the fate to which his indoles fraternity had consigned them, he produced t manuscript which I have now the pleasure of sen. ing you-the only one, he said, remaining entreand I very readily paid the price which he demane ed for it.

You will find the story, I think, not altoget uninteresting; and the coincidence, in maar spects, of the curious details in Chap. VI with t description of the same ceremonies in the Ro

of Sethos,' will, I have no doubt, strike you. Hoping that you may be induced to give a translation of this Tale to the world,

I am, my dear Sir, Very truly yours,

THE EPICUREAN.

CHAPTER I.

Ir was in the fourth year of the reign of the late Emperor Valerian, that the followers of Epicurus, who were at that time numerous in Athens, proceeded to the election of a person to fill the vacant Chair of their sect;-and, by the unanimous voice of the School, I was the individual chosen for their Chief. I was just then entering on my twentyfourth year, and no instance had ever before occurred, of a person so young being selected for that high office. Youth, however, and the personal advantages that adorn it, could not but rank among the most agreeable recommendations to a sect that included within its circle all the beauty as well as the wit of Athens, and which, though dignifying its pursuits with the name of philosophy, was little else than a plausible pretext for the more refined cultivation of pleasure.

The character of the sect had, indeed, much changed since the time of its wise and virtuous founder, who, while he asserted that Pleasure is the only Good, inculcated also that Good is the only source of Pleasure. The purer part of this doctrine had long evaporated, and the temperate Epicurus would have as little recognised his own sect in the assemblage of refined voluptuaries who now usurped its name, as he would have known his own quiet Garden in the luxurious groves and bowers among which the meetings of the School were now held.

Many causes concurred, at this period, besides the attractiveness of its doctrines, to render our school by far the most popular of any that still survived the glory of Greece. It may generally be observed, that the prevalence, in one half of a community, of very

rigid notions on the subject of religion, produces the opposite extreme of laxity and infidelity in the other; and this kind of reaction it was that now mainly contributed to render the doctrines of the Garden the most fashionable philosophy of the day. The rapid progress of the Christian faith had alarmed all those, who, either frem piety or worldliness, were interested in the continuance of the old established creed-all who believed in the Deities of Olympus, and all who lived by them. The natural consequence was, a considerable increase of zeal and activity, throughout the constituted authorities and priesthood of the whole Heathen world. What was wanting in sincerity of belief was made up in rigor; the weakest parts of the Mythology were those, of course, most angrily defended, and any reflections, tending to bring Saturn, or his wife Ops, into contempt, were punished with the atmost severity of the law.

In this state of affairs, between the alarmed bigotry of the declining Faith and the simple, sublime austerity of her rival, it was not wonderful that those lovers of ease and 'easure, who had no interest, reversionary or otherwise, in the old religion, and were too indolent to inquire into the sanctions of the new, should take refuge from the severities of both in the arms of a luxurious philosophy, which, leaving to others the task of disputing about the future, centred all its wisdom in the full enjoyment of the present.

The sectaries of the Garden had, ever since the death of their founder, been accustomed to dedicate to his memory the twentieth day of every month. To these monthly rites had, for some time, been added a grand annual Festival, in commemoration of his birth. The feasts given on this occasion by my predecessors in the Chair, had been invariably distinguished for their taste and splendor; and it was my ambition, not merely to imitate this example, but even to render the anniversary, now celebrated under my auspices, so lively and brilliant as to efface the recollection of all that had preceded it.

Seldom, indeed, had Athens witnessed so bright a scene. The grounds that formed the original site of the Garden had received, from time to time, considerable additions; and the whole extent was now laid out with that perfect taste which understands how to wed Nature with Art, without sacrificing any of her simplicity to the alliance. Walks, leading through wildernesses of shade and fragranceglades, opening, as if to afford a playground for the

The description, here aliuded to, may also be found, copied verbatim from Sethos, in the "Voyages d'Antenor."-**In that philosophical romance, called 'La Vie de Sethos,'"

says Warburton, "we find a much juster account of old Egyptian wisdom, than in all the pretended Histoire du Ciel.'"-Div. Leg. book iv. sect. 14.

sunshine-temples, rising on the very spots where Imagination herself would have called them up, and fountains and lakes, in alternate motion and repose, either wantonly courting the verdure, or calmly sleeping in its embrace-such was the variety of feature that diversified these fair gardens; and, animated as they were on this occasion, by all the living wit and loveliness of Athens, it afforded a scene such as my own youthful fancy, rich as it was then in images of luxury and beauty, could hardly have anticipated.

The ceremonies of the day began with the very dawn, when, according to the form of simpler and better times, those among the disciples who had apartments within the Garden, bore the image of our Founder in procession from chamber to chamber, chanting verses in praise of what had long ceased to be objects of our imitation-his frugality and temperance.

Round a beautiful lake, in the centre of the Garden, stood four white Doric temples, in one of which was collected a library containing all the flowers of Grecian literature; while, in the remaining three, Conversation, the Song, and the Dance, held, uninterrupted by each other, their respective rites. In the Library stood busts of all the most illustrious Epicureans, both of Rome and Greece-Horace, Atticus, Pliny the elder, the poet Lucretius, Lucian, and the lamented biographer of the Philosophers, lately lost to us, Diogenes Laertius. There were also the portraits, in marble, of all the eminent female votaries of the schoolLeontium and her fair daughter Danaë, Themista, Philænis, and others.

It was here that, in my capacity of Heresiarch, on the mming of the Festival, I received the felicitations of the day from some of the fairest lips of Athens; and, in pronouncing the customary oration to the memory of our Master, (in which it was usual to dwell upon the doctrines he had inculcated,) endeavored to attain that art, so useful before such an audience, of lending to the gravest subjects a charm, which secures them listeners even among the simplest and most volatile.

Though study, as may be supposed, engrossed but little the nights or mornings of the Garden, yet all the lighter parts of learning-that portion of its attic honey, for which the bee is not compelled to go very deep into the flower-was somewhat zealously cultivated by us. Even here, however, the young student had to encounter that kind of distraction, which is, of all others, the least favorable to composure of thought; and, with more than one of my fair disciples, there used to occur such scenes as the following, which a poet of the Garden, taking his picture from the life, thus described :

"As o'er the lake, în evening's glow,

That temple threw its lengthening shade.
Upon the marble steps below

There sate a fair Corinthian maid,
Gracefully o'er some volume bending;
While, by her side, the youthful Sage
Held back her ringlets, lest, descending,

They should o'ershadow all the page"

But it was for the evening of that day, that the richest of our luxuries were reserved Every part of the Garden was illuminated, with the most skilfu! variety of lustre; while over the Lake of the Temples were scattered wreaths of flowers, through which boats, filled with beautiful children, floated, as through a liquid parterre.

Between two of these boats a mock combat was perpetually carried or :-their respective commanders, two blooming youths, being habited to represent Eros and Anteros: the former, the Ce lestial Love of the Platonists, and the latter, that more earthly spirit, which usurps the name of Love among the Epicureans. Throughout the whole evening their conflict was maintained with various success; the timid distance at which Eros kept aloof from his lively antagonist being his only safeguard against those darts of fire, with showers of which the other assailed him, but which, falling short of their mark upon the lake, only scorched the few flowers on which they fell, and were extinguished.

In another part of the Gardens, on a wide glace, illuminated only by the moon, was performed an imitation of the torch-race of the Panathenæa by young boys chosen for their fleetness, and arrayed with wings, like Cupids; while, not far off, a group of seven nymphs, with each a star on her forehead. represented the movements of the planetary chair. and embodied the dream of Pythagoras into rea motion and song.

At every turning some new enchantment becke unexpectedly on the eye or ear; and now, from the depth of a dark grove, from which a fountain st Le same time issued, there came a strain of sweet mesic, which, ringling with the murmur of the watch. seemed like he voice of the spirit that presided ov its flow;-while, at other times, the same straa appeared to come breathing from among flowes or was heard suddenly from under ground, as if the foot had just touched some spring that set its melody in motion.

It may seem strange that I should now dwe upon all these trifling details; but they were to full of the future; and every thing connected with that memorable night—even its long-repented is lies-must forever live fondly and sacredly in memory. The festival concluded with a banque at which, as master of the Sect, I presided; &

being, myself, in every sense, the ascendant spirit of the whole scene, gave life to all around me, and saw my own happiness reflected in that of others.

CHAPTER II.

THE festival was over;-the sounds of the song and dance had ceased, and I was now left in those luxurious gardens, alone. Though so ardent and active a votary of pleasure, I had, by nature, a disposition full of melancholy;-an imagination that, even in the midst of mirth and happiness, presented saddening thoughts, and threw the shadow of the future over the gayest illusions of the present. Melancholy was, indeed, twin-born in my soul with Passion; and not even in the fullest fervor of the latter were they ever separated. From the first moment that I was conscious of thought and feeling, the same dark thread had run across the web; and images of death and annihilation came to mingle themselves with even the most smiling scenes through which love and enjoyment led me. My very passion for pleasure but deepened these gloomy thoughts. For, shut out, as I was by my creed, from a future life, and having no hope beyond the narrow horizon of this, every minute of earthly delight assumed, in my eyes, a mournful preciousness; and pleasure, like the flower of the cemetery, grew but more luxuriant from the neighborhood of death.

This very night my triumph, my happiness, had seemed complete. I had been the presiding genius of that voluptuous scene. Both my ambition and my love of pleasure had drunk deep of the rich cup for which they thirsted. Looked up to as I was by the learned, and admired and loved by the beautiful and the young, I had seen, in every eye that met mine, either the acknowledgment of bright triumphs already won, or the promise of others, still brighter, that awaited me. Yet, even in the midst of all this, the same dark thoughts had presented themselves; the perishableness of myself and all around me had recurred every instant to my mind. Those hands I had pressed-those eyes, in which I had seen sparkling a spirit of light and life that ought never to die those voices, that had spoken of eternal love all, all I felt, were but a mockery of the moment, and would leave nothing eternal but the silence of their dust!

Oh, were it not for this sad voice,
Stealing amid our mirth to say,
That all, in which we most rejoice,

Ere night may be the earth-worm's prey,

But for this bitter-only this-
Full as the world is brimm'd with bliss,
And capable as feels my soul

Of draining to its depth the whole,
I should turn earth to heaven, and be,
If bliss made gods, a deity!

Such was the description I gave of my own feelings in one of those wild, passionate songs, to which this mixture of mirth and melancholy, in a spirit so buoyant, naturally gave birth.

And seldom had my heart so fully surrendered itself to this sort of vague sadness as at that very moment, when, as I paced thoughtfully among the fading lights and flowers of the banquet, the echo of my own step was all that now sounded, where so many gay forms had lately been revelling. The moon was still up, the morning had not yet glimmered, and the calm glories of the night still rested on all around. Unconscious whither my pathway led, I continued to wander along, till I, at length, found myself before that fair statue of Venus, with which the chisel of Alcamenes had embellished our Garden;-that image of deified woman, the only idol to which I had ever yet bent the knee. Leaning against the pedestal of the statue, I raised my eyes to heaven, and fixing them sadly and intently on the ever-burning stars, as if seeking to read the mournful secret in their light, asked, wherefore was it that Man alone must fade and perish, while they, so much less wonderful, less godlike than he, thus still lived on in radiance unchangeable and forever! "Oh, that there were some spell, some talisman," I exclaimed, "to make the spirit that burns within us deathless as those stars, and open to it a career like theirs, as bright and inextinguishable throughout all time!"

While thus indulging in wild and melancholy fancies, I felt that lassitude which earthly pleasure, however sweet, still leaves behind, come insensibly over me, and at length sunk at the base of the statue to sleep.

But even in sleep, the same fancies continued to haunt me; and a dream,' so distinct and vivid as to leave behind it the impression of reality, thus presented itself to my mind. I found myself suddenly transported to a wide and desolate plain, where nothing appeared to breathe, or move, or live. The very sky that hung above it looked pale and extinct, giving the idea, not of darkness, but of light that had become dead;-and had that whole region been the remains of some older world, left broken up and sunless, it could not have presented an aspect more quenched and desolate

1 For the importance attached to dreams by the ancients, see Jortin, Remarks on Ecclesiastical History, vol. i., p. 30

The only thing that bespoke life, throughout this melancholy waste, was a small spark of light, that at first glimmered in the distance, but, at length, slowly approached the bleak spot where I stood. As it drew nearer, I could see that its small but steady gleam came from a taper in the hand of an ancient and venerable man, who now stood, like a pale messenger from the grave, before me. After a few moments of awful silence, during which he looked at me with a sadness that thrilled my very soul, he said, "Thou, who seekest eternal life, go unto the shores of the dark Nile-go unto the shores of the dark Nile, and thou wilt find the eternal life thou seekest!"

No sooner had he uttered these words than the deathlike hue of his cheek at once brightened into a smile of more than earthly promise; while the small torch he held in his hand sent forth a glow of radiance, by which suddenly the whole surface of the desert was illuminated ;-the light spreading even to the distant horizon's edge, along whose line I could now see gardens, palaces, and spires, all as bright as the rich architecture of the clouds at sunset. Sweet music, too, came floating in every direction through the air, and, from all sides, such varieties of enchantment broke upon me, that, with the excess alike of harmony and of radiance, I awoke.

That infidels should be superstitious is an anomaly neither unusual nor strange. A belief in superhuman agency seems natural and necessary to the mind; and, if not suffered to flow in the obvious channels, it will find a vent in some other. Hence, many who have doubted the existence of a God, have yet implicitly placed themselves under the patronage of Fate or the stars. Much the same inconsistency I was conscious of in my own feelings. Though rejecting all belief in a Divine Providence, I had yet a faith in dreams, that all my philosophy could not conquer. Nor was experience wanting to confirm me in my delusion; for, by some of those accidental coincidences, which make the fortune of soothsayers and prophets, dreams, more than once, had been to me

Oracles, truer far than oak,

Or dove, or tripod, ever spoke.

It was not wonderful, therefore, that the vision of that night-touching, as it did, a chord so ready to vibrate-should have affected me with more than ordinary power, and even sunk deeper into my memory with every effort I made to forget it. In vain did I mock at my own weakness;-such self-derision is seldom sincere. In vain did I pursue my accustomed pleasures. Their zest was, as usual, forever new; but still, in the midst of all my enjoy

ment, came the cold and saddening consciousness of mortality, and, with it, the recollection of that visionary promise, to which my fancy, in defiance of reason, still continued to cling.

At times indulging in reveries, that were little else than a continuation of my dream, I even con templated the possible existence of some mighty secret, by which youth, if not perpetuated, might be at least prolonged, and that dreadful vicinity of death, within whose circle love pines and pleasure sickens, might be for a whe averted. "Wh knows," I wou'd ask, "but that in Egypt, that region of wonders vhere Mystery hath yet folded but half her treasures-where still remain undeciphered, upon the pillars of Seth, so many written secrets of the antediluvian world—who can tell but that some powerful charm, some ambie may there lie hid, whose discovery, as this phantom hath promised, but awaits my coming-some com pound of the same pure atoms that form the e sence of the living stars, and whose infusion into the frame of man might render him also unfading and immortal!"

Thus fondly did I sometimes speculate, in those vague moods of mind, when the life of excitemen in which I was engaged, acting upon a warm heat and vivid fancy, produced an intoxication of spirt during which I was not wholly myself. This b wilderment, too, was not a little increased by the constant struggle I experienced between my o natural feelings, and the cold, mortal creed of sect-in endeavoring to escape from whose deaden ing bondage I but broke loose into the realms of fantasy and romance.

Even in my soberest moments, however, t strange vision forever haunted me; and ever effort I made to chase it from my recollection unavailing. The deliberate conclusion, therefore to which I at last came, was, that to visit Eg was now my only resource; that, without sa that land of wonders, I could not rest, nor, convinced of my folly by disappointment, be rease able. Without delay, accordingly, I announced > my friends of the Garden, the intention I had fores to pay a visit to the land of Pyramids. To nost them, however, did I dare to confess the r visionary impulse that actuated me;-know being the object that I alleged, while Pleasure that for which they gave me credit. The inters of the School, it was feared, might suffer by absence; and there were some tenderer ties, wh had still more to fear from separation. But for ormer convenience a temporary remedy provided; while the latter a skilful distribution vows and sighs alleviated. Being furnished recommendatory letters to all parts of Egy