and alarm of the fugitive, on arriving at the bay and finding no trace of the bark to which he trusted for escape, may be imagined. He was suffering the extremes of cold, weariness, and exhaustion, for he had been the whole night a-foot and without shelter, exposed to the wind and heavy rain; but mere bodily suffering was forgotten or disregarded in the keener inflictions of his mental anguish. Death was behind him, and the refuge to which he trusted was suddenly withdrawn; his pursuers were already perhaps upon his traces-he was perhaps surrounded, watched, it might be betrayed, and his only hope had failed him.— He had not even the means of knowing whether an effort had been made in his behalf-whether he was not deceived and abandoned by those in whom he had placed his trust. As the day advanced, he became aware of the necessity that existed for concealment. Solitary as was the bay on whose expanse of waters he gazed in vain to catch a glimpse of the desired sail on which his hopes depended, it might be visited by those whose encounter would be destruction. Yet a lingering hope forbade removal to a distance; and, as his only means of safety, he was compelled to climb into the thick clustering branches of a chestnut-tree, whence he could overlook the bay, and in which he remained until night, shivering with cold, tormented with the pangs of thirst and hunger, and more wretched still in mind, yet not daring to leave his place of concealment until darkness should avert the peril of discovery. Wearied and worn out as he was, anxiety-the horrors of despair, which but a single slender hope alleviated-kept his eyes from closing all the second night, which he passed in wandering to and fro upon the beach, like a caged lion, straining his eyes to catch the gleam of the yet expected sail. But it came not, and hunger drove him on the following day to seek relief and shelter, even at the hazard of his life. It was a happy thing for the fallen monarch that the cabin to which chance had led his steps, was inhabited by a veteran who had served in the armies of Napoleon, and in whose bosom still glowed, undimmed by time or change of fortune, that enthusiastic devotion with which, for so many years, the soldiery of France had pealed forth alike in victory and defeat, in wassail and in death, their cheering battle-cry of Vive l'Empereur !

As might be expected, the old soldier and his wife, whose attachment to the person, and reverence for the character of Napoleon were equal to his own, dedicated themselves, body and soul, to the service of the unhappy Murat. A large portion of the night was employed in devising means for his escape, and providing for his safety until those means should become practicable; and, in the meantime, there was no limit to the exertions and contrivances of the old woman, for the comfort of her honoured guest. In the palmiest condition of his fortunes, he had never been waited on with more respectful and affectionate solicitude, than now when he was an outcast and a fugitive. It was agreed that the old man should set out for Toulon the next morning, furnished by the king with directions to the secret friends who had already made arrangements for his escape, only to be baffled, as we have seen, by the accident of the storm. But a change of plan was soon occasioned, by the appearance of another character upon the scene.

As the old couple and their guest were seated round the table at their frugal meal, on the morning of the ensuing

day, they were startled by a knock at the cottage-door. Murat sprang to his feet, for to him the approach of any visitor portended danger, but before he could leave the room the door was opened, and a single individual joined the party. This person appeared to be a man of perhaps thirty-five, whose singularly delicate features scarcely accorded even with his slender figure, and whose countenance bore a strangely mingled expression of sadness and resolution. As he entered the apartment, an eager, and apparently joyful look flashed from his eyes, seeming to indicate an unexpected, but most welcome discovery.

His object in visiting the cottage was promptly declared as an apology for his intrusion; it was simply to inquire the nearest route to the port of Toulon, whither he was charged to convey a message to a person residing there, "perhaps" he said, "one of the individuals he now addressed," and his eye rested for a moment on the countenance of Murat, "would undertake to accompany him as guide, receiving a reasonable compensation for the service." The old man expressed his willingness to bear him company, and the stranger, having returned thanks for the proffer, added, that perhaps he might even be able to conduct him at once to the person whom he sought: the name, he said, with another glance at Murat, was Louis Debac.

"Debac!" the fugitive king repeated, "did you say Louis Debac? Perhaps if I knew the person by whom the message was sent, I could promote the object of your journey."

The stranger slightly smiled as he replied that in the hope of such a result, he would communicate not only the name of his employer, but his own. "I am called,” he continued, "Hypolite Bastide, and the message which I bear is "

"And you are Bastide," interrupted Murat, hastily advancing and grasping the hand of the stranger with a warm pressure, "You are Bastide, the faithful and untiring, to whom I already owe so much. The end of your journey is reached, for I am Louis Debac-or rather, for there is no need of concealment here, I am the king of Naples."

Many hours were passed, after this avowal, in consultation between the dethroned monarch and the trusty agent of his friends in Toulon, whom he had not before seen, but in whose fidelity, sagacity, and prudence, he had been instructed to place the utmost confidence; and as soon as their conference was ended, Bastide, accompanied by the old man, set out for Toulon, there to make arrangements for another and more successful effort at escape.

They had been gone scarcely an hour, and Murat, with a characteristic forgetfulness of the perils which surrounded him, was amusing himself and his hostess by narrating some of the most brilliant passages in his adventurous career, and repeating anecdotes of his imperial brother-inlaw, when they were alarmed by a distant sound, like that of horsemen rapidly approaching; and the fugitive had barely time to escape through the back door, and conceal himself in a small pit that had been dug in the garden, where the old woman covered him with brushwood and vine branches, collected for fuel, when a party of some fifty or sixty dragoons rode up to the door, and dismounting proceeded to ransack the house, and the grounds adjoining it. A number of them searched the garden, spreading themselves among the vines, and passing, more than once, within stabbing distance of their prey; while others en

deavoured, but in vain, by alternate threats and tempting offers, to extract from the old woman the information she could so easily have given. At one time the suspicions which had led them to the cottage were almost converted to certainty, by the presence of the great-coat and cap which the king had worn when he reached the cottage; and Murat, who could hear all that passed, was on the point of starting from his lair, to save his hostess from the cruelties with which she was menaced, when his generous purpose was prevented by the evident success of her plausible and well-sustained assurances, that it was her husband's pardonable fancy still to wear the military garb, although long since discharged, in which he had so often marched to victory with the eagles of the Emperor. The dragoons had also fought beneath those eagles, although now they served the Bourbon, and the whim of the "vieux moustache," found an echo in their rude bosoms; they desisted from their threats, and soon after mounted and rode off, perhaps not altogether regetting the failure of their purpose.

The security of the dethroned monarch was not again disturbed; and before morning of the next day, his host returned with Bastide, and announced the successful issue of their mission. A skiff was engaged to convey the unfortunate Murat to Corsica, and the following night-the twenty-second of August-was the time appointed for his embarkation.

But a little more than a month had elapsed, and Joachim Murat was a captive at Pizzo, on the coast of Calabria-in the power of his enemies, and doomed to die, although as yet he knew it not, upon the morrow. The events which led to this disasterous termination of his career, are chronicled in history, and need not therefore be repeated here. It is enough to say that the fervour with which he was received at Corsica inspired him with brilliant but fallacious hopes of a like success in Naples; he there embarked on the twenty-eighth of September, with six small vessels for his fleet, some two hundred and fifty adventurous followers for his army, and a treasury containing eleven thousand francs, and jewels worth, perhaps, a hundred and fifty thousand more-madly believing that, with this small force, aided by the affection of his quondam subjects, he could replace himself upon the throne; that treachery and corwardice had reduced his armament to a single vessel and thirty followers, when he reached Pizzo, where his reception was a shower of bullets from the muskets of the Austrian garrison: and that, abandoned by the traitor Barbaro, the commander of the little squadron with which he had embarked at Corsica, who hoisted sail and bore away the moment he had landed; after a brief but desperate struggle, in which he displayed most signally the daring bravery that had always distinguished him in battle, Murat was taken prisoner, stripped of his purse, his jewels, and his passports, and hurried like a thief to the common prison, with the few of his devoted adherents who survived, and whom he laboured to console, as if he had no sorrows of his own.

The idle formality of a trial by military commission was yet to be gone through, but his doom was pronounced at Naples, before the members of the commission were appointed; and the night of October 12th, to which the progress of our tale now carries us, was the last through which he was to live, though his trial was to take place on the morrow. His demeanour, during the four days of his

imprisonment had been worthy of his fame, and of the gallant part he had played among the great spirits of an age so prolific in mighty deeds; and now, having thrown himself, without undressing, upon the rude couch provided for a fallen king; he slept as tranquilly and well as though he had neither care nor grief to drive slumber from his pillow. But his sleep was not without its dream.

The tide of time was rolled back forty years, and he was again a child in the humble dwelling of his father; again sporting with the playmates of his boyhood, in the village where he was born, and displaying, even as a boy, in the pastimes and occupations of his age, the dawning of that fearless spirit which in after days had born him to a throne. In every trial of courage, agility, and strength, he was again outstripping all his youthful competitors; foremost in the race, the conqueror in every battle, already noted for his bold and skilful horsemanship, and at school the most turbulent, idle, and mischievous of his fellows, yet winning affection from the school-mates over whom he tyrannised, and even from the teacher whom he worried and defied, by the generosity, the frankness, and the gay good-humour of his spirit. Scenes and incidents that had long been effaced from his waking memory, by the dazzling succession of bold and successful achievements, which had been the history of his manhood, were now presented to his imagination with all the freshness of reality; the chivalrous warrior, the marshal of France, the sovereign duke of Berg and Cleves, the husband of the beautiful Caroline, and the king of Naples, all were merged and lost in the son of the village inn-keeper; the splendid leader of the cavalry charges at Aboukir, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, and Leipsic, was dimly shadowed forth in the reckless boy, whose chief delight it was to scour through the lanes and across the open fields of Frontonier, upon one of his father's horses, scorning alike the admonitions of prudence and of parental fear.

Anon the scene was changed, and the boy was approaching manhood, still wild, passionate, reckless, and daring as before, but displaying those faults of his nature in other and more censurable modes. Intended for the church, he was now a student at Toulouse, in name, but in reality a youthful libertine; vain of his handsome person, eager in pursuit of pleasure, in love with every pretty face he met, ardent and enterprising in the licentious prosecution of his fickle attachments, and ever ready to engage in the quarrels for which such a life gave frequent cause. The ecclesiastical profession had never been his own free choice, and now the martial spirit, which was to shine so gloriously forth in after years, was already contending for the mastery with his habits of idleness and dissipation. An escapade surpassing all his past exploits of folly, was now to bring his studies to a close, and decide the as yet uncertain current of his destiny. The turning incident of his youthful life was again enacted in the captive monarch's dream.

The prettiest maiden of his native village was Mariette Majastre, the only daughter of a peasant, who tilled a little farm of some half-dozen acres, lying about a mile from his father's house, on the road to Perigord. About five years younger than himself, she had been his favorite playmate when a boy, and as he advanced in years, the only one who could control the violence of his temper, or persuade him from his headlong impulses of mischief, either to others or himself. When at the age of fifteen he was sent to the academy at Toulouse, Mariette, a blooming, bright-eyed

child of ten, wept sorely at parting, and Joachim did not altogether escape the infection of her sorrow; but Mariette was almost forgotten, or remembered only as a child, when six years afterward, the Abbé Murat, as he was now called, met her again at Toulouse, whither she had gone to pass a few weeks with a relative, and met her as a charming country girl, with eyes like diamonds, teeth like pearls, a graceful shape, and manners by no means inelegant or coarse, though telling somewhat of her rustic birth and breeding. Despite his destination for the church, the abbé was a passionate and by no means self-denying admirer of beauty, and the charms of Mariette were irresistible.— Almost from the moment of her arrival, he neglected, not his studies merely, for they had never engrossed too much of his attention, but the frolics, the boon companions, and the flirtations and intrigues that, for the last three or four years, had constituted the chief employment of his time; and the admiration excited by her beauty soon ripened to a passion which he had not the virtue, if the power, to resist. Mariette was a good girl, and had been well brought up-but she was young, artless, and confiding-Murat was handsome, and his passionate eloquence, aided by the memories of an attachment which had begun in childhood, and, though dormant, had never ceased to occupy her warm young heart, prevailed at last over the dictates of prudence, and the restraints of principle. Yet she did not fall a victim to unbridled passion-her purity was left unstained. although the pleadings of her lover and of her own tenderness were powerful enough to turn her from the strict path of rectitude; and if she did consent to fly with the young abbé, it was only upon his reiterated promise to renounce the ecclesiastical habit, and make her his lawful and honored wife. It was a mad scheme, but perfectly in harmony with the character of Murat, whose fault it was, through life, to rush upon performance, by whatever impulse led, without regard to consequences. He had neither money nor the means of gaining it to support even himself, much less a wife and children; and Mariette was no better off; yet, with no more ample provision for the future than a few score of francs, which he borrowed from his school fellows, the Abbé Murat and Mariette Majastre, at the mature ages of twenty-one and sixteen, absconded one morning from the house of Mariette's relative, and set off by diligence for Preissac, for the purpose of being married. Fortunately, perhaps, for both, their absence was quickly discovered-pursuit was made-and they had scarcely arrived at Preissac in the evening, before Mariette's uncle, with his brother and three sons, made their appearance, and claimed possession of the would-be bride. Murat resisted with fury, but his single arm, vigorous as it was, could not prevail against so great a disparity of force, and foaming with rage he was compelled to see his mistress borne away, weeping bitterly, and vowing eternal constancy to her half frantic lover.

The natural consequence of such an escapade would have been a dismissal from the ecclesiastical school in which he had been entered, but he did not wait for it. Tearing the abbe's frock from his shoulders, he rushed into the street, and happening to meet with a sub-officer belonging to a regiment of chasseurs quartered in Preissac for the night, while on its march to Paris, enlisted as a private; and thus, in a moment of wrath and disappointment, began that dazzling career which was destined to place upon his brow the crown of a rich kingdom.

Thus through the fancy of the sleeping captive, with more than lightning speed, coursed the re-awakened memory of events that had been the story of his early years. He felt again the ardour of his youthful passion-the excitement of a first and frenzied love-the triumph of success -the eagerness of flight, and the fury of that moment when love, success, and hope, on the very eve of fulfilment, were dashed aside in bitterness and wrath. The form of Mariette was again before him in the freshness of its youthful beauty-her lovely eyes, streaming with tears, were fixed with an imploring passionate look upon his own, and her voice was ringing in his ears, as she was borne away, calling upon her Joachim to the rescue. "Joachim! Joachim!" -the name echoed through his brain, with the startling clearness of a trumpet sounding to the charge-and with a start the chain of sleep was broken, and Murat, the conqueror, monarch, exile, and doomed captive of the present, beheld the dawn of his last day among the living.

For a moment reality mingled with his dream, and he gazed doubtfully upon the figure of an individnal who stood before him, enveloped in an ample cloak, gazing upon his face with an earnest and mournful look--and it was borne upon his mind that the voice which called upon the name -the long disused name of Joachim, was not the mere coinage of a dream-excited fancy. A second glance assured him of the truth, and hastily advancing to seize the hand of his unexpected visitor, he exclaimed, "Then you have not perished, Bastide my friend-Bastide the noble-hearted and true-nor yet abandoned me, when fate has determined my ruin!"

"The king was betrayed and deserted-he is in the power of his enemies-and Bastide is here to do him service, if it may be, to the last."

Murat answered not, but gazed intently upon the features of the speaker, and his own wore a troubled expression of surprise and doubt. "Bastide," he said at length—“Bastide, my mind has been disturbed by painful dreams, and the recollections of the past are strangely and confusedly mingled with the impressions of the moment. Even your voice appears sadly familiar, as though it had often met my ear in earlier and more happy days-speak to me once again -Did you call upon me ere I woke, and by the name I bore in childhood? Speak once again, and solve the mystery which I have little time to penetrate.'

"Joachim!" was again uttered, and in the tones so long forgotten, but so well remembered now-the cowl was thrown back from the face of the speaker, the cloak fell to the ground, and Mariette-the Mariette of his youthful love, though bearing the impress of years and sorrow, was indeed before him.

"I should have known it," said Murat, after a brief silence, into which a world of thoughts and feelings was condensed; "I should have known that only in the love and constancy of woman could the secret of Bastide's devo. ted fidelity be read."

The reader can neither expect nor wish to be advised at length of the conversation that ensued. The hours of Murat were numbered, and rapidly drawing to their close; and the remaining interest of this sketch, if any it has, belongs to the consummation of the drama, to which his life has been not inappropriately likened. The explanations required by him from Mariette can easily be imagined. Her love for Murat had never known abatement; and although her image had long since passed from his memory, his success and

fame had been the treasured happiness of her existence; his misfortunes and his danger called her loving spirit to more active ministration, and a determined heart, a woman's ingenuity, gold, and the aid of an honest and gentle-natured cousin will readily account for all that she had done or attempted in his behalf. Gold, the habit of a priest, and the kind assistance of an old father confessor, who was in the habit of visiting the prison on errands of mercy, perhaps connived at by the governor, had even obtained for her the interview of which the reader has just been informed, and which was but too soon interrupted by the entrance of the aged padre, who came to warn them that the governor was approaching, and that Mariette must be gone. A hurried farewell-a last embrace, which even Caroline of Naples, would not have forbidden-a fervent blessing interchanged --and Murat was left alone, prepared to meet, as became his character, his rank, and fame, the doom of which he little needed information.

The governor's tidings were brief, but conveyed with a respect and sympathy that did him honor. The tribunal appointed for the trial of "General Murat" was already sitting in an adjoining apartment, and the advocate assigned for his defence was waiting for admission. Murat asked the names and rank of the eight officers named in the commission, and at once refused to appear before them "They are my subjects, not my judges," was his firm reply to the remonstrances of the governor; 66 'seven of them received their commissions from my hand, and neither of them is my equal, even in the military rank which the order for my trial concedes to me. But were they marshals of France, like me, I am their sovereign, not their equal, and I will not appear before them. They cau condemn unheard, and to condemn is the task assigned them." In vain the governor tried to combat his resolution by argument, and Starage, the advocate assigned him, by entreaty and the eloquence of tears; the king was immovable, and even commanded Starage not to speak in his defence. "I am the king of Naples," he continued; "they may take my life, but the keeping of my dignity and honour is my own."

His conduct was in accordance with this elevated feeling to the last. The commission proceeded to the trial in his absence; and when the secretary waited upon him to ask him his name, his age, and the other formal questions usual in the continental tribunals, he cut the ceremony short with the brief and almost contemptuous avowal, "I am Joachim Napoleon, king of the two Sicilies; begone, sir, and bid them do their work." He then conversed freely and composedly with the governor and his fellow-prisoners, who were admitted to an interview by the kindness of that officer, adverting earnestly, but without ostentation or self-eulogy, to to the disinterestedness of his conduct on the throne, and to the services he had rendered the Neapolitans-received with calmness the sentence of immediate death conveyed to him by one of the commissioners-wrote a short, affectionate, and eloquent letter to his queen and children-passed the allotted half-hour with his confessor, and then came forth with a firm step, simply remarking to the governor, "Let us delay no longer-I am ready!"

On his way to the place of execution, his movement was as dignified and self-possessed, his look as calm, as though he was merely taking part in some familiar pageant of court

The death of Madam Murat (sister of Napoleon) was announced recently in the newspapers.

ceremony. Once only he was seen to cast an anxious glance around, as if in search of one whose presence at that moment he desired, yet scarce had reason to expect; and when his eyes rested on the face and form of Mariette, again disguised from all but him in the cloak and outward bearing of Hypolite Bastide, a smile of satisfaction lighted up his features, which seemed to give assurance that already the bitterness of death was past. That glance, that smile, were once more noted when the fatal spot was reached—and Murat, proudly facing the carabineers who stood with ready weapons to fulfil his doom, drew from his bosom a trinket bearing in medallion the portrait of his queen, and kissing it fervently, uttered his last command, "Aim at my heart!' -in a voice as clear and calm as had ever issued from his lips in the council-tent, the glittering hall of royalty, or on the battle-field. The carbines rung sharply at the word, and Joachim Murat lay extended dead upon the ground fast moistening with his blood.

FROM THE ARABIC,

AN IMITATION.

My faint spirit was sitting in the light
Of thy looks, my love;

It panted for thee like the hind at noon
For the brooks, my love.

Thy barb, whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight,
Bore thee far fom me;

My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon,
Did companion thee.

Ah! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,
Or the death they bear,

The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove
With the wings of care;

In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,
Shall mine cling to thee,

Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love,
It may bring to thee.

THE MAN WITH THE HEAD.

There is scarcely any man that has lived much in the world, who does not know what it is to be haunted. I do not mean by ghosts, goblins, or devils, (unless they be blue devils,) brownies, bogles, or banshees;-I allude to the continual meeting of some individual face, which seems as if it had been formed for the sole purpose of being always opposite your own. Wherever you may chance to be,—'in church or market, at wedding or at burial, Sunday or Sat. urday, meal-time or fasting,'-the everlasting haunter is sure to be at your side. In town (and of course when I spoke of a man living much in the world, I meant in London) this has happened to me to a degree very nearly intolerable; for sometimes your haunter chances to be your horror also; and the conjunction of the characters is truly deplorable. In the course of onc evening, I have dined at the same coffee-house with one of this genus-found myself in the same box with him at the play-and afterwards been squeezed against him at the same party. It has sometimes happened to me to have a haunter, who evidently regarded

B

me in the same light-till at last the absurdity of continually finding ourselves nose to nose has caused us to half smile, half laugh at each other in recognition, whenever we met. I have once or twice become acquainted with some of these subsequently, and we have compared notes in amicable disputation, which had played the part of the haunter, and which that of aparition. I shall never forget being introduced to a man who had been my torment for nearly two years. I did not know who he was; but I had noted him as possessing a countenance of the most solid, obese, and intolerable self-satisfaction on which it had ever been my ill fortune to gaze. There must indeed have been something peculiarly insupportable in this persons appearance; for a friend of mine, who is rather nervous, was at last very nearly driven to confine himself to the house, to avoid the never-failing meeting which was sure to follow his venturing out. It was at a very small party where I became known to him:-we were waiting dinner for two or three who had not arrived. At last they came; and in walked my monster at the head of them! I happened to be standing by the side of my host; but when he turned to me to introduce me to the new comers, I had started back several paces in the extremity of my surprise and dismay. There was no real occasion for wonder-for I had often seen this terrible man in fashionable crowds enough--but I certainly should have as soon expected to have been presented to the ghost in Hamlet, or the bleeding nun in Raymond and Agnes, as to this much more formidable apparition. While I met him only in the streets, or at theatres-or at parties-it was like seeing the spirits I have mentioned on the stage, or reading of them in Shakspeare and Monk Lewis ; but to sit at the same small table with him-to be named to him, and have him named to me-and to see the creature open its lips and talk, and talk to myself, can be compared only to Hamlet's sensations during his interview with his dead father, or to the still more unpleasant ones of poor Raymond at finding himself wedded to a bleeding corpse, instead of to a young lady whose flesh was living, and whose blood

was warm.

But the person of whom I am about to speak does not come into this class. So far from having met him at every turn, I have seen him only four or five times in the course of my life, after periods of considerable interval, and at places and under circumstances the more distant and dissimilar. from each other. Neither has there been anything to connect me with him, farther than these very casual meetings. There is nothing mysterious about him, for I know his name and rank in life-which are in no way peculiar or romantic. In fact, I doubt whether I shall be able to convey the causes or the nature of my sensations and impressions, with respect to him; it is probable, indeed, that I shall not, for I am not quite confident that they are perfectly clear to myself. His very extaordinary personal as pect must have been the origin of the whole; and my falling in with him again in places and at points of time when he has been the farthest from my thoughts, and consequently when his appearances have had something of the nature of apparitions, has probably confirmed and strengthened the original feeling concerning him,

The first time I saw him was at the door of a French post-house, where I had the satisfaction of being detained above two hours for horses, during one of which he was my fellow-sufferer. I had overtaken him in the early part of the preceding stage; and as the never-to-be-sufficiently-ac

cursed laws of the French post would not allow us to pass him, he arrived about three quarters of a minute before us, and was, therefore, to be served first. It was an extremely cold day, and, as I was very comfortably wrapped up, and packed into the carriage (an arrangement which had taken me some pains and considerable time in the morning.) I remained where I was, digesting my ill-humour as best I might. The stranger fortified himself against the weather by the warmth derivable from walking up and down before the door at a stout pace, and from the fumes of a German tobacco-pipe. For some time I took no particular notice of him-but when my eye did glance upon him, it was not speedily removed. There was nothing peculiar in his figure, or in his dress, or in any thing but the extraordinary and almost superhuman length of his face. The features in themselves were good; and the eyes intrinsically had no peculiarity of expression. But the excessive elongation of the whole head had changed the aspect of the individual details. It seemed as if a face of comely and quiet intelligence had been seized by the chin and the forelock, and drawn out as though it had been made of putty or of dough. Or it may, perhaps, be a more intelligible illustration to compare it to a face reflected on the convex side of a spoon held perpendicularly-a pleasant pastime, in which I have no doubt some of my readers (to say nothing of myself) have occasionally indulged. The expression of the eyes was not, as I have said, of itself particularly remarkable --but their very quietness seemed to possess something unnatural when contrasted with the unearthly head in which they were set. Such an outline ought to have had a filling upas strange and singular as itself. The mouth placidly puffing forth the successive volumes of smoke-the eyes, like any other eyes, varying their meditave expression only by occasional glances of moderate impatience towards the stable --all this seemed quite out of keeping, even in a discrepancy which was irksome and disagreeable, when considered with reference to the portentous and unspeakable head of which they formed (though they scarcely seemed to form) a part.

My companion and I had some discussion as to the country and the calling of 'The Man with the Head.' His carriage was a German drotsky; but this proved nothing--for a person of any country, coming from Vienna, would His servant was a very probably have such a vehicle. courier, so this proved nothing-for the members of that craft may almost, like the gipsies, be considered a nation of themselves. They speak all languages, and live in no country for a quarter of a year together. The master did not open his lips except to let out the smoke; the servant talking, bustling, and swearing, as the French say, pour quatre. At length the horses were ready, when 'the man' put his 'head' into the carriage, followed it and drove off. We agreed, from his smoke and his silence, that he was a German. Au reste, I was convinced that he was a disciple of Kant, as nothing upon earth could possibly fill such a head short of the subtleties of the transcendental philosophy.

It was some years before I saw him again, but I did not forget him, I used frequently to talk of the extraordinary Iman I had seen at * and tried as well as I could to describe him;-ill enough, I dare say; for there is nothing so difficult as to describe personal appearance so as to produce any defined and embodied idea in the party upon whom the description is inflicted. Eyes, hair, nose, mouth, and chin may be described with an exactness which would