the inside. I felt convinced that I was intentionally shut out, and a cold shuddering pervaded my frame. I covered my face with my hands, not daring to look around; for it seemed as if I was excluded from the company of the living, and doomed to be the associate of the spirits of drowned and murdered men. After a little time I began to walk hastily backwards and forwards; but the light of the lantern happened to flash on a stream of blood that ran along the deck, and I could not summon up resolution to pass the spot where it was a second time. The sky looked black and threatening the sea had a fierceness in its sound and motions—and the wind swept over its bosom with melancholy sighs. Every thing was sombre and ominous; and I looked in vain for some object that would, by its soothing aspect, remove the dark impressions which crowded upon my mind.

While standing near the bows of the vessel, I saw a hand and arm rise slowly behind the stern, and wave from side to side. I started back as far as I could go in horrible affright, and looked again, expecting to hehold the entire spectral figure, of which I supposed they formed a part. But nothing more was visible. I struck my eyes till the light flashed from them, in hopes that my senses had been imposed upon by distempered vision-however it was in vain, for the hand still motioned me to advance, and I rushed forward with wild desperation, and caught hold of it. I was pulled along a little way, notwithstanding the resistance. I made, and soon discovered a man stretched along the stern-cable, aud clinging to it in a convulsive manner. was Morvalden. He raised his head feebly, and said something, but I could only distinguish the words " murderedoverboard-reached this rope-terrible death." I stretched out my arms to support him, but at that moment the vessel plunged violently, and he was shaken off the cable, and dropped among the waves. He floated for an instant, and then disappeared under the keel.

It

I seized the first rope I could find, and threw one end of it over the stern,and likewise flung some planks into the sea,thinking that the unfortunate Morvalden might still retain strength enough to catch hold of them if they came within his reach. I continued on the watch for a considerable time, but at last abandoned all hopes of saving him, and made another at

tempt to get down to the cabin: the doors were now unfastened, and I opened them without any difficulty. The first thing I saw on going below, was Angerstoff stretched along the floor, and fast asleep. His torpid look, flushed countenance, and uneasy respiration, convinced me that he had taken a large quantity of ardent spirits. Marietta was in her own apartment. Even the presence of a murderer appeared less terrible than the frightful solitariness of the deck, and I lay down upon a bench, determining to spend the remainder of the night there. The lamp that hung from the roof soon went out, and left me in total darkness. Imagination began to conjure up a thousand appalling forms, and the voice of Angerstoff, speaking in his sleep, filled my ears at intervals" Hoist up the beacon !-the lamps wont burn-horrible!-they contain blood instead of oil. —Is that a boat coming?—Yes, yes, I hear the oars-Damnation !why is that corpse so long of sinking?—If it doesn't go down soon they'll find me out-How terribly the wind blows! We are driving ashore-See! see! Morvalden is swimming after us-How he writhes in the water!"-Marietta now rushed from her room, with a light in her hand, and seizing Angerstoff by the arm, tried to awake him. He soon rose up with chattering teeth and shivering limbs, and was on the point of speaking, but she prevented him, and he staggered away to his birth, and lay down in it.

Next morning when I went upon deck, after a short and perturbed sleep, I found Marietta dashing water over it, that she might efface all vestige of the transactions of the preceding night. Angerstoff did not make his appearance till noon, and his looks were ghastly and agonized. He seemed stupified with horror, and sometimes entirely lost all perception of the things around him for a considerable time.

(To be resumed.)

ON THE WORLD.

"This house is to be let for life or years;
Her rent is sorrow and her income tears;

Cupid, 't has stood long void; her bills make known;
She must be dearly let, or let alone."

HOLBEIN'S DANCE OF DEATH.

(Resumed from page 289, of the Encyclopædia of Anecdote.')

Psal. 106.

This poor mendicant is endeavouring to escape with his wallet and money-box from the clutches of Death, who has seized him by the cowl, and drags him away with great violence.

LORD BYRON.

We never feel a stronger inclination to write, than when one of the works of Lord Byron is the subject; but we have no sooner taken up the pen, than we reflect that every line of our's withholds from our readers so much of the brilliant effusions of his lordship's muse. As it is known that Lord Byron did not write his first tragedy of "Marino Faliero" for the stage, and was decidedly opposed to its being acted, VOL. I.] [NO. 11.

he could not be expected to feel the usual mortification of authors at its want of success; he has, therefore, in a few short months, produced three other dramas; for "Cain" is a drama, and is entitled a Mystery, in conformity with the ancient title annexed to dramas on scripture subjects, which were styled" Mysteries, or Moralities." In the preface to the volume now before us, his lordship declares that the tragedies were not composed with the most remote view to the stage." He adds, alluding to the managers' dramatizing his former tragedy," with regard to my own feelings, as it seems that they are to stand for nothing, I say nothing."

66

It is our intention, this week, to confine our notice to the tragedy of "Sardanapalus;" but, as the appendix to the second tragedy contains his lordship's defence against some illiberal and unfounded attacks, we shall make a few extracts from it. After handsomely noticing an expression which occurs in Lady Morgan's "Italy," and his own tragedy, as a curious coincidence, his lordship thus answers some of the charges of plagiarism, &c. He says,

"I am informed (for I have seen but few of the specimens, and those accidentally) that there has been lately brought against me charges of plagiarism. I have also had an anonymous sort of threatening intimation of the same kind, apparently with the intent of extorting money. To such charges I have no answer to make. One of them is Judicrous enough. I am reproached for having formed the description of a shipwreck in verse, from the narratives of many actual shipwrecks in prose, selecting such materials as were most striking. Gibbon makes it a merit in Tasso ' to have copied the minutest details of the siege of Jerusalem, from the Chronicles.' In me it may be a demerit, I presume; let it remain so. Whilst I have been occupied in defending Pope's character, the lower orders of Grubstreet appear to have been assailing mine; this is as it should be, both in them and in me. One of the accusations in the nameless epistle alluded to, is still more laughable: it states seriously, that I received five hundred pounds for writing advertisements for Day and Martin's patent blacking!' This is the highest compliment to my literary powers which I ever received.

“Another charge made, I am told, in the Literary

Gazette' is, that I wrote the notes to Queen Mab;' a work which I never saw till some time after its publication, and which I recollect showing to Mr. Southeby, as a poem of great power and imagination. I never wrote a line of the not es, nor ever saw them, except in their published form. No one knows better than their real author, that his opinions and mine differ materially upon the metaphysical portion of that work; though in common with all who are not blinded by baseness and bigotry, I highly admire the poetry of that and his other publications."

Mr. Southey, who made an ungenerous attack on Lord Byron, in his " Vision of Judgment," a poem, which, for absurdity, political profligacy, and blasphemy, is almost without a parallel, meets with a very just and richly-merited castigation from his lordship, who, at the same time, speaks with manly wit, and becoming modesty of himself:

"Mr. Southey, too," says his lordship," in his pious preface to a poem whose blasphemy is as harmless as the sedition of Wat Tyler, because it is equally absurd with that sincere production, calls upon the legislature to look to it,' as the toleration of such writings led to the French Revolution: not such writings as Wat Tyler, but as those of the 'Satanic School.' This is not true, and Mr. Southey knows it not to be true. Every French writer of any freedom was persecuted; Voltaire and Rousseau were exiles, Marmontel and Diderot were sent to the Bastile, and a perpetual war was waged with the whole class by the existing despotism. In the next place, the French Revolution was not occasioned by any writings whatsoever, but must have occurred had no such writers ever existed. It is the fashion to attribute every thing to the French Revolution, and the French Revolution to every thing but its real cause. That cause is obvious the government exacted too much, and the people could neither give nor bear more.

"Mr. S., with a cowardly ferocity, exults over the anticipated death-bed repentance, of the objects of his dislike; and indulges himself in a pleasant Vision of Judgment,' in. prose as well as verse, full of impious impudence. What Mr. S.'s sensations or ours may be in the awful moment of leaving this state of existence neither he nor we can pretend to decide. In common, I presume, with most men of