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in

other contentment- -a very Tempe for the toilworn; which my magnificent garden of worsted flowers on the hearthrug diffused a more odorous breath-shone with greater smoothness and more sedatively-toned radiance than the hollyhocks of even the fabulously perfect vale of delight-whether of carpets or of Canary Islands.

O softest carpet on which no foot dare sound! O winking mahogany which art as a very mirror to this noble flame-this flame of true glowing seaborne coal! O silence-if I may call upon silence-in the street! Dost thou not lull me into the gratulate obliviousness of Lethe?-the "wharf" of which referred to I as a City man and a sort of coal-merchant ought certainly to understand; but I do not. Are not all the pricks of the arrows of my counting-house vexations extracted now like most titillating thistletop out of my luxurious pillow-like body in this securest and sunniest of havens ?

I had a book. I had an angel that was bidden to pour into my mind its philosophy. I had a heavenly Presence who was all alight (as it were) with magic flame. And who, through the mists of my state of drowse, shone with an intense nimbus; and in an encircling atmosphere of joy that seemed to await me just beyond, and just outside of that ring of semi-somnolence in which I lay.

I took no heed of time. Clocks were not for me. Wheel-like registers, and dial-points, were for slaves. I was as a free man whose liberty filled and penetrated the whole world. I had the whole sun to myself. Two or ten-night or day-were alike indifferent to me. But in sober verity, and in plain English, it was in the manner following that I passed an hour or two. First perhaps a selfish revery was mine; in which, truly, I played unimaginable pranks; the most innocent of which, doubtless, if through any magic means he could have become aware of it, would have startled the Policeman (whom I heard with his tramp, tramp) into sudden knocking. But there was silence. And Policeman B 15 went on his way (like policemen sometimes) quite unsuspecting of what tricks are going on under his nose. Then awaking to a sense of the good things (happy

pauper upon the plenteous "out-of-door" relief of Nature), that were no farther off than within the reach of my hand, I drew the case-bottle of rum towards me. I described sundry circles on the table without looking that way, until I found the lemon; and shaking the smoking water with no very steady hand I mixed as exciting a tumbler as the comfortable absurdity of my ideas at that time about everything and my disdain about everybody admitted. A pause to let the tumbler cool, and a stir of the fire and a piling-up of the coals -for there had been several heavy showers, and the night was damp outside and cold-a sip or two of my rum-and-water with the full smart in my lips of the lemon, and intervals of thinking; then a certain nodding that betokened "Bedfordshire;" and a sudden waking and arrest of myself on the edge of the precipice made by my chair, and a certain startled, yet seated, pugilistic encounter, in my dream, with Nobody and his Nobodies -these were in my experience. But at last a sort of dogged, self-assured, thickheaded touch of waking sense set in. And I felt that these symptoms were not to be propitiated by aught short of bolster and pillow. Bed, unmistakable bed, was what it all meant.

At ten o'clock (or a "little" after) I swept up my hearth, which I always do before going to bed, being a neat and tidy man, and an altogether irreproachable housekeeper and bachelor. I clapped my book under my arm. It was a "mad book," by the way, which had in it a Story of Magic, capitally told, as all such stories should be. I rang for my chamber-candlestick; left on her appearance authority for the fastening-up of the house for the first time for I cannot tell how long to my trusty Betty; then I deliberately and full of thought about all sorts of things

"Bedward plodded my weary way,"

leaving the house finally to darkness and my housekeeper: who was to see the end of the "world."

I had had several fits of terrible headache this night, an ailment to which I am not subject. I was puzzled. I felt uneasy about this Piece of Silver which had come

FAC-SIMILE OF A SEEING-CRYSTAL.

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so strangely into my hands. And repeatedly (but without any object in doing so, and only because I could not help it) I went to look at my prize as it lay-slyly

This is the picture of the famous crystal globe (or glass), through which (having made it my own), I indeed saw very strange things. It was an item of a magician's private furniture.

by itself I could have sworn-in the drawer to which I had unconcernedly at first committed it. Once I actually came down from the top of the house with a motive

which any unprepossessed and common-sense person would have declared mad. It was to assure myself that the "Thing" was still there; just as if it should have wings wherewith to fly away. Anxiety beset me as to the fact whether it was there when I got again into bed; though I seemed heartily to wish that I had never seen it. I began to associate some devil with the marks and the figures upon this Coin-a Real Devil.

Now the possession of this Silver Piece put me in such a nervous state that, naturally a man of rapid motives and movements, I ran to the drawer and seized it with the same fear with which I would have snatched a snake. I shuddered all over while I held the thing at arm's length between finger and thumb to look at it. I opened the window wide, and I flung it forth with a violence-nay, with a horror-which caused the Coin actually to spin seemingly spitefully into a trail of light. As it flew it meandered. Was it fancy or was there really a flash upwards into the sky, like the yellow flicker of a candle, as it alighted again with its CURSE upon the earth?

I was now wide-awake enough. This (all) sounds strange, but it is true. I burst into a passion of tears -childish and foolish as this may be. I ran to my arm-chair, I knelt down at it and I prayed God fervently. I besought that the mischief I dreaded from this-which I now construed as a messenger of evilmight fall (lightly as it should please the Disposer of all events) upon my heedless head. That its malice might be limited to the mere fancy. That the terror I expected might be unreal, and only of the imagination. That no severer hold should be taken of me than the temporary affliction of the wandering mind. And my prayer was granted. As the reader will find in my subsequent history. Blessed be the heavenly care over me by night as by day! Thank all the Good Things for it, I escaped.

And that which was the result of all this proved astonishing, and beyond expression dreadful, as the reader will find who pursues me in my farther narrative. This I should advise him to do for his own sake, if he seek instruction, or is nervous. Events soon happened of the most tremendous national threatening in my

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house. I am aware that I write very strangely, but I cannot altogether persuade myself that I move in a thorough day-dream. It is true that occasionally (to alleviate very violent neuralgic pains), I avail of a most. extraordinary Chinese drug, which I never found a European medical man to be acquainted with; and which was presented to me in very small, cautious quantity by a friend, a merchant who was conversant with the peculiar pharmacopoeia of the Land of Flowers; and who himself made use of this drug to raise pleasurable reveries, he said, of the nature of which he would never apprise me.

No. 1.

No. 2.

No. 1-No. 2.-Engravings upon a miniature metal-chest in which I kept my ordinary Chinese drug-unknown to European medical men."

With myself, however, the strange stories which I lived through when at a chance time under this influence, were anything but pleasant. As the reader who peruses my confessions much farther will soon perceive. Mine is a very strange history of self; and-read aright—a very sensational one, to use the hackneyed phrase of the time. For as the reader finds stated in the outset, this is a wild story in the German manner; which is the best romantic manner.