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Title: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 2

Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Release date: April 1, 2000 [eBook #2148]
Most recently updated: May 17, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2148

Credits: David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF
EDGAR ALLAN POE — VOLUME 2 ***

T h e Wo r k s o f E d g a r A l l a n
Poe

by Edgar Allan Poe

The Raven Edition
VOLUME II.

Contents

THE PURLOINED LETTER
THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF SCHEHERAZADE
A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM.
VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY
MESMERIC REVELATION
THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR
THE BLACK CAT.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
SILENCE—A FABLE
THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.
THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.
THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE
THE ISLAND OF THE FAY
THE ASSIGNATION
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
THE PREMATURE BURIAL
THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM
LANDOR’S COTTAGE
WILLIAM WILSO
THE TELL-TALE HEART.
BERENICE
ELEONORA
NOTES TO THE SECOND VOLUME
[Redactor’s Note—Some endnotes are by Poe and some were added by
Griswold. In this volume the notes are at the end.]

THE PURLOINED LETTER
Nil sapientiæ odiosius acumine nimio.—Seneca.

At Paris, just after dark one gusty evening in the autumn of 18-, I was
enjoying the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum, in company
with my friend C. Auguste Dupin, in his little back library, or book-closet,
au troisième, No. 33, Rue Dunôt, Faubourg St. Germain. For one hour at
least we had maintained a profound silence; while each, to any casual
observer, might have seemed intently and exclusively occupied with the
curling eddies of smoke that oppressed the atmosphere of the chamber. For
myself, however, I was mentally discussing certain topics which had
formed matter for conversation between us at an earlier period of the
evening; I mean the affair of the Rue Morgue, and the mystery attending the
murder of Marie Rogêt. I looked upon it, therefore, as something of a
coincidence, when the door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted
our old acquaintance, Monsieur G——, the Prefect of the Parisian police.
We gave him a hearty welcome; for there was nearly half as much of the
entertaining as of the contemptible about the man, and we had not seen him
for several years. We had been sitting in the dark, and Dupin now arose for
the purpose of lighting a lamp, but sat down again, without doing so, upon
G.‘s saying that he had called to consult us, or rather to ask the opinion of
my friend, about some official business which had occasioned a great deal
of trouble.
“If it is any point requiring reflection,” observed Dupin, as he forebore to
enkindle the wick, “we shall examine it to better purpose in the dark.”
“That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion
of calling every thing “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus
lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”
“Very true,” said Dupin, as he supplied his visitor with a pipe, and rolled
towards him a comfortable chair.

“And what is the difficulty now?” I asked. “Nothing more in the
assassination way, I hope?”
“Oh no; nothing of that nature. The fact is, the business is very simple
indeed, and I make no doubt that we can manage it sufficiently well
ourselves; but then I thought Dupin would like to hear the details of it,
because it is so excessively odd.”
“Simple and odd,” said Dupin.
“Why, yes; and not exactly that, either. The fact is, we have all been a
good deal puzzled because the affair is so simple, and yet baffles us
altogether.”
“Perhaps it is the very simplicity of the thing which puts you at fault,”
said my friend.
“What nonsense you do talk!” replied the Prefect, laughing heartily.
“Perhaps the mystery is a little too plain,” said Dupin.
“Oh, good heavens! who ever heard of such an idea?”
“A little too self-evident.”
“Ha! ha! ha—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho!” roared our visitor, profoundly
amused, “oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!”
“And what, after all, is the matter on hand?” I asked.
“Why, I will tell you,” replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady and
contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. “I will tell you in a few
words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair
demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the
position I now hold, were it known that I confided it to any one.”
“Proceed,” said I.
“Or not,” said Dupin.
“Well, then; I have received personal information, from a very high
quarter, that a certain document of the last importance has been purloined
from the royal apartments. The individual who purloined it is known; this
beyond a doubt; he was seen to take it. It is known, also, that it still remains
in his possession.”
“How is this known?” asked Dupin.
“It is clearly inferred,” replied the Prefect, “from the nature of the
document, and from the non-appearance of certain results which would at

once arise from its passing out of the robber’s possession; that is to say,
from his employing it as he must design in the end to employ it.”
“Be a little more explicit,” I said.
“Well, I may venture so far as to say that the paper gives its holder a
certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely
valuable.” The Prefect was fond of the cant of diplomacy.
“Still I do not quite understand,” said Dupin.
“No? Well; the disclosure of the document to a third person, who shall be
nameless, would bring in question the honor of a personage of most exalted
station; and this fact gives the holder of the document an ascendancy over
the illustrious personage whose honor and peace are so jeopardized.”
“But this ascendancy,” I interposed, “would depend upon the robber’s
knowledge of the loser’s knowledge of the robber. Who would dare—”
“The thief,” said G., “is the Minister D——, who dares all things, those
unbecoming as well as those becoming a man. The method of the theft was
not less ingenious than bold. The document in question—a letter, to be
frank—had been received by the personage robbed while alone in the royal
boudoir. During its perusal she was suddenly interrupted by the entrance of
the other exalted personage from whom especially it was her wish to
conceal it. After a hurried and vain endeavor to thrust it in a drawer, she was
forced to place it, open as it was, upon a table. The address, however, was
uppermost, and, the contents thus unexposed, the letter escaped notice. At
this juncture enters the Minister D——. His lynx eye immediately perceives
the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion
of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret. After some business
transactions, hurried through in his ordinary manner, he produces a letter
somewhat similar to the one in question, opens it, pretends to read it, and
then places it in close juxtaposition to the other. Again he converses, for
some fifteen minutes, upon the public affairs. At length, in taking leave, he
takes also from the table the letter to which he had no claim. Its rightful
owner saw, but, of course, dared not call attention to the act, in the presence
of the third personage who stood at her elbow. The minister decamped;
leaving his own letter—one of no importance—upon the table.”
“Here, then,” said Dupin to me, “you have precisely what you demand to
make the ascendancy complete—the robber’s knowledge of the loser’s
knowledge of the robber.”

“Yes,” replied the Prefect; “and the power thus attained has, for some
months past, been wielded, for political purposes, to a very dangerous
extent. The personage robbed is more thoroughly convinced, every day, of
the necessity of reclaiming her letter. But this, of course, cannot be done
openly. In fine, driven to despair, she has committed the matter to me.”
“Than whom,” said Dupin, amid a perfect whirlwind of smoke, “no more
sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired, or even imagined.”
“You flatter me,” replied the Prefect; “but it is possible that some such
opinion may have been entertained.”
“It is clear,” said I, “as you observe, that the letter is still in possession of
the minister; since it is this possession, and not any employment of the
letter, which bestows the power. With the employment the power departs.”
“True,” said G.; “and upon this conviction I proceeded. My first care was
to make thorough search of the minister’s hotel; and here my chief
embarrassment lay in the necessity of searching without his knowledge.
Beyond all things, I have been warned of the danger which would result
from giving him reason to suspect our design.”
“But,” said I, “you are quite au fait in these investigations. The Parisian
police have done this thing often before.”
“Oh, yes; and for this reason I did not despair. The habits of the minister
gave me, too, a great advantage. He is frequently absent from home all
night. His servants are by no means numerous. They sleep at a distance
from their master’s apartment, and, being chiefly Neapolitans, are readily
made drunk. I have keys, as you know, with which I can open any chamber
or cabinet in Paris. For three months a night has not passed, during the
greater part of which I have not been engaged, personally, in ransacking the
D—— Hotel. My honor is interested, and, to mention a great secret, the
reward is enormous. So I did not abandon the search until I had become
fully satisfied that the thief is a more astute man than myself. I fancy that I
have investigated every nook and corner of the premises in which it is
possible that the paper can be concealed.”
“But is it not possible,” I suggested, “that although the letter may be in
possession of the minister, as it unquestionably is, he may have concealed it
elsewhere than upon his own premises?”

“This is barely possible,” said Dupin. “The present peculiar condition of
affairs at court, and especially of those intrigues in which D—— is known
to be involved, would render the instant availability of the document—its
susceptibility of being produced at a moment’s notice—a point of nearly
equal importance with its possession.”
“Its susceptibility of being produced?” said I.
“That is to say, of being destroyed,” said Dupin.
“True,” I observed; “the paper is clearly then upon the premises. As for
its being upon the person of the minister, we may consider that as out of the
question.”
“Entirely,” said the Prefect. “He has been twice waylaid, as if by
footpads, and his person rigorously searched under my own inspection.”
“You might have spared yourself this trouble,” said Dupin. “D——, I
presume, is not altogether a fool, and, if not, must have anticipated these
waylayings, as a matter of course.”
“Not altogether a fool,” said G., “but then he’s a poet, which I take to be
only one remove from a fool.”
“True,” said Dupin, after a long and thoughtful whiff from his
meerschaum, “although I have been guilty of certain doggrel myself.”
“Suppose you detail,” said I, “the particulars of your search.”
“Why the fact is, we took our time, and we searched everywhere. I have
had long experience in these affairs. I took the entire building, room by
room; devoting the nights of a whole week to each. We examined, first, the
furniture of each apartment. We opened every possible drawer; and I
presume you know that, to a properly trained police agent, such a thing as a
secret drawer is impossible. Any man is a dolt who permits a ‘secret’ drawer
to escape him in a search of this kind. The thing is so plain. There is a
certain amount of bulk—of space—to be accounted for in every cabinet.
Then we have accurate rules. The fiftieth part of a line could not escape us.
After the cabinets we took the chairs. The cushions we probed with the fine
long needles you have seen me employ. From the tables we removed the
tops.”
“Why so?”
“Sometimes the top of a table, or other similarly arranged piece of
furniture, is removed by the person wishing to conceal an article; then the

leg is excavated, the article deposited within the cavity, and the top
replaced. The bottoms and tops of bedposts are employed in the same way.”
“But could not the cavity be detected by sounding?” I asked.
“By no means, if, when the article is deposited, a sufficient wadding of
cotton be placed around it. Besides, in our case, we were obliged to proceed
without noise.”
“But you could not have removed—you could not have taken to pieces
all articles of furniture in which it would have been possible to make a
deposit in the manner you mention. A letter may be compressed into a thin
spiral roll, not differing much in shape or bulk from a large knitting-needle,
and in this form it might be inserted into the rung of a chair, for example.
You did not take to pieces all the chairs?”
“Certainly not; but we did better—we examined the rungs of every chair
in the hotel, and, indeed the jointings of every description of furniture, by
the aid of a most powerful microscope. Had there been any traces of recent
disturbance we should not have failed to detect it instantly. A single grain of
gimlet-dust, for example, would have been as obvious as an apple. Any
disorder in the glueing—any unusual gaping in the joints—would have
sufficed to insure detection.”
“I presume you looked to the mirrors, between the boards and the plates,
and you probed the beds and the bed-clothes, as well as the curtains and
carpets.”
“That of course; and when we had absolutely completed every particle of
the furniture in this way, then we examined the house itself. We divided its
entire surface into compartments, which we numbered, so that none might
be missed; then we scrutinized each individual square inch throughout the
premises, including the two houses immediately adjoining, with the
microscope, as before.”
“The two houses adjoining!” I exclaimed; “you must have had a great
deal of trouble.”
“We had; but the reward offered is prodigious!”
“You include the grounds about the houses?”
“All the grounds are paved with brick. They gave us comparatively little
trouble. We examined the moss between the bricks, and found it
undisturbed.”

“You looked among D——‘s papers, of course, and into the books of the
library?”
“Certainly; we opened every package and parcel; we not only opened
every book, but we turned over every leaf in each volume, not contenting
ourselves with a mere shake, according to the fashion of some of our police
officers. We also measured the thickness of every book-cover, with the most
accurate admeasurement, and applied to each the most jealous scrutiny of
the microscope. Had any of the bindings been recently meddled with, it
would have been utterly impossible that the fact should have escaped
observation. Some five or six volumes, just from the hands of the binder,
we carefully probed, longitudinally, with the needles.”
“You explored the floors beneath the carpets?”
“Beyond doubt. We removed every carpet, and examined the boards with
the microscope.”
“And the paper on the walls?”
“Yes.”
“You looked into the cellars?”
“We did.”
“Then,” I said, “you have been making a miscalculation, and the letter is
not upon the premises, as you suppose.”
“I fear you are right there,” said the Prefect. “And now, Dupin, what
would you advise me to do?”
“To make a thorough re-search of the premises.”
“That is absolutely needless,” replied G——. “I am not more sure that I
breathe than I am that the letter is not at the Hotel.”
“I have no better advice to give you,” said Dupin. “You have, of course,
an accurate description of the letter?”
“Oh yes!”—And here the Prefect, producing a memorandum-book,
proceeded to read aloud a minute account of the internal, and especially of
the external appearance of the missing document. Soon after finishing the
perusal of this description, he took his departure, more entirely depressed in
spirits than I had ever known the good gentleman before.
In about a month afterwards he paid us another visit, and found us
occupied very nearly as before. He took a pipe and a chair and entered into

some ordinary conversation. At length I said,—
“Well, but G——, what of the purloined letter? I presume you have at
last made up your mind that there is no such thing as overreaching the
Minister?”
“Confound him, say I—yes; I made the re-examination, however, as
Dupin suggested—but it was all labor lost, as I knew it would be.”
“How much was the reward offered, did you say?” asked Dupin.
“Why, a very great deal—a very liberal reward—I don’t like to say how
much, precisely; but one thing I will say, that I wouldn’t mind giving my
individual check for fifty thousand francs to any one who could obtain me
that letter. The fact is, it is becoming of more and more importance every
day; and the reward has been lately doubled. If it were trebled, however, I
could do no more than I have done.”
“Why, yes,” said Dupin, drawlingly, between the whiffs of his
meerschaum, “I really—think, G——, you have not exerted yourself—to
the utmost in this matter. You might—do a little more, I think, eh?”
“How?—in what way?”
“Why—puff, puff—you might—puff, puff—employ counsel in the
matter, eh?—puff, puff, puff. Do you remember the story they tell of
Abernethy?”
“No; hang Abernethy!”
“To be sure! hang him and welcome. But, once upon a time, a certain rich
miser conceived the design of spunging upon this Abernethy for a medical
opinion. Getting up, for this purpose, an ordinary conversation in a private
company, he insinuated his case to the physician, as that of an imaginary
individual.
“‘We will suppose,’ said the miser, ‘that his symptoms are such and such;
now, doctor, what would you have directed him to take?’
“‘Take!’ said Abernethy, ‘why, take advice, to be sure.’”
“But,” said the Prefect, a little discomposed, “I am perfectly willing to
take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to
any one who would aid me in the matter.”
“In that case,” replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a check-
book, “you may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When

you have signed it, I will hand you the letter.”
I was astounded. The Prefect appeared absolutely thunder-stricken. For
some minutes he remained speechless and motionless, looking
incredulously at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed starting
from their sockets; then, apparently recovering himself in some measure, he
seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and
signed a check for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to
Dupin. The latter examined it carefully and deposited it in his pocket-book;
then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the Prefect.
This functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of joy, opened it with a
trembling hand, cast a rapid glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and
struggling to the door, rushed at length unceremoniously from the room and
from the house, without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested
him to fill up the check.
When he had gone, my friend entered into some explanations.
“The Parisian police,” he said, “are exceedingly able in their way. They
are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the
knowledge which their duties seem chiefly to demand. Thus, when G——
detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D——, I felt
entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation—so far as
his labors extended.”
“So far as his labors extended?” said I.
“Yes,” said Dupin. “The measures adopted were not only the best of their
kind, but carried out to absolute perfection. Had the letter been deposited
within the range of their search, these fellows would, beyond a question,
have found it.”
I merely laughed—but he seemed quite serious in all that he said.
“The measures, then,” he continued, “were good in their kind, and well
executed; their defect lay in their being inapplicable to the case, and to the
man. A certain set of highly ingenious resources are, with the Prefect, a sort
of Procrustean bed, to which he forcibly adapts his designs. But he
perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow for the matter in hand; and
many a schoolboy is a better reasoner than he. I knew one about eight years
of age, whose success at guessing in the game of ‘even and odd’ attracted
universal admiration. This game is simple, and is played with marbles. One
player holds in his hand a number of these toys, and demands of another

whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins
one; if wrong, he loses one. The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles
of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in
mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents.
For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed
hand, asks, ‘are they even or odd?’ Our schoolboy replies, ‘odd,’ and loses;
but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, ‘the
simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is
just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore
guess odd;’—he guesses odd, and wins. Now, with a simpleton a degree
above the first, he would have reasoned thus: ‘This fellow finds that in the
first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself,
upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first
simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a
variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will
therefore guess even;’—he guesses even, and wins. Now this mode of
reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed ‘lucky,’—what, in its
last analysis, is it?”
“It is merely,” I said, “an identification of the reasoner’s intellect with
that of his opponent.”
“It is,” said Dupin; “and, upon inquiring of the boy by what means he
effected the thorough identification in which his success consisted, I
received answer as follows: ‘When I wish to find out how wise, or how
stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at
the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible,
in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts
or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with
the expression.’ This response of the schoolboy lies at the bottom of all the
spurious profundity which has been attributed to Rochefoucault, to La
Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella.”
“And the identification,” I said, “of the reasoner’s intellect with that of
his opponent, depends, if I understand you aright, upon the accuracy with
which the opponent’s intellect is admeasured.”
“For its practical value it depends upon this,” replied Dupin; “and the
Prefect and his cohort fail so frequently, first, by default of this
identification, and, secondly, by ill-admeasurement, or rather through non-

admeasurement, of the intellect with which they are engaged. They consider
only their own ideas of ingenuity; and, in searching for anything hidden,
advert only to the modes in which they would have hidden it. They are right
in this much—that their own ingenuity is a faithful representative of that of
the mass; but when the cunning of the individual felon is diverse in
character from their own, the felon foils them, of course. This always
happens when it is above their own, and very usually when it is below. They
have no variation of principle in their investigations; at best, when urged by
some unusual emergency—by some extraordinary reward—they extend or
exaggerate their old modes of practice, without touching their principles.
What, for example, in this case of D——, has been done to vary the
principle of action? What is all this boring, and probing, and sounding, and
scrutinizing with the microscope and dividing the surface of the building
into registered square inches—what is it all but an exaggeration of the
application of the one principle or set of principles of search, which are
based upon the one set of notions regarding human ingenuity, to which the
Prefect, in the long routine of his duty, has been accustomed? Do you not
see he has taken it for granted that all men proceed to conceal a letter,—not
exactly in a gimlet hole bored in a chair-leg—but, at least, in some out-of-
the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought which would
urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg? And do
you not see also, that such recherchés nooks for concealment are adapted
only for ordinary occasions, and would be adopted only by ordinary
intellects; for, in all cases of concealment, a disposal of the article
concealed—a disposal of it in this recherché manner,—is, in the very first
instance, presumable and presumed; and thus its discovery depends, not at
all upon the acumen, but altogether upon the mere care, patience, and
determination of the seekers; and where the case is of importance—or, what
amounts to the same thing in the political eyes, when the reward is of
magnitude,—the qualities in question have never been known to fail. You
will now understand what I meant in suggesting that, had the purloined
letter been hidden any where within the limits of the Prefect’s examination
—in other words, had the principle of its concealment been comprehended
within the principles of the Prefect—its discovery would have been a matter
altogether beyond question. This functionary, however, has been thoroughly
mystified; and the remote source of his defeat lies in the supposition that the
Minister is a fool, because he has acquired renown as a poet. All fools are

poets; this the Prefect feels; and he is merely guilty of a non distributio
medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools.”
“But is this really the poet?” I asked. “There are two brothers, I know;
and both have attained reputation in letters. The Minister I believe has
written learnedly on the Differential Calculus. He is a mathematician, and
no poet.”
“You are mistaken; I know him well; he is both. As poet and
mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not
have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.”
“You surprise me,” I said, “by these opinions, which have been
contradicted by the voice of the world. You do not mean to set at naught the
well-digested idea of centuries. The mathematical reason has long been
regarded as the reason par excellence.”
“‘Il y a à parièr,’” replied Dupin, quoting from Chamfort, “‘que toute
idée publique, toute convention reçue est une sottise, car elle a convenue au
plus grand nombre.’ The mathematicians, I grant you, have done their best
to promulgate the popular error to which you allude, and which is none the
less an error for its promulgation as truth. With an art worthy a better cause,
for example, they have insinuated the term ‘analysis’ into application to
algebra. The French are the originators of this particular deception; but if a
term is of any importance—if words derive any value from applicability—
then ‘analysis’ conveys ‘algebra’ about as much as, in Latin, ‘ambitus’
implies ‘ambition,’ ‘religio’ ‘religion,’ or ‘homines honesti’ a set of
honorable men.”
“You have a quarrel on hand, I see,” said I, “with some of the algebraists
of Paris; but proceed.”
“I dispute the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is
cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical. I dispute, in
particular, the reason educed by mathematical study. The mathematics are
the science of form and quantity; mathematical reasoning is merely logic
applied to observation upon form and quantity. The great error lies in
supposing that even the truths of what is called pure algebra, are abstract or
general truths. And this error is so egregious that I am confounded at the
universality with which it has been received. Mathematical axioms are not
axioms of general truth. What is true of relation—of form and quantity—is
often grossly false in regard to morals, for example. In this latter science it

is very usually untrue that the aggregated parts are equal to the whole. In
chemistry also the axiom fails. In the consideration of motive it fails; for
two motives, each of a given value, have not, necessarily, a value when
united, equal to the sum of their values apart. There are numerous other
mathematical truths which are only truths within the limits of relation. But
the mathematician argues, from his finite truths, through habit, as if they
were of an absolutely general applicability—as the world indeed imagines
them to be. Bryant, in his very learned ‘Mythology,’ mentions an analogous
source of error, when he says that ‘although the Pagan fables are not
believed, yet we forget ourselves continually, and make inferences from
them as existing realities.’ With the algebraists, however, who are Pagans
themselves, the ‘Pagan fables’ are believed, and the inferences are made,
not so much through lapse of memory, as through an unaccountable addling
of the brains. In short, I never yet encountered the mere mathematician who
could be trusted out of equal roots, or one who did not clandestinely hold it
as a point of his faith that x2+px was absolutely and unconditionally equal
to q. Say to one of these gentlemen, by way of experiment, if you please,
that you believe occasions may occur where x2+px is not altogether equal to
q, and, having made him understand what you mean, get out of his reach as
speedily as convenient, for, beyond doubt, he will endeavor to knock you
down.
“I mean to say,” continued Dupin, while I merely laughed at his last
observations, “that if the Minister had been no more than a mathematician,
the Prefect would have been under no necessity of giving me this check. I
know him, however, as both mathematician and poet, and my measures
were adapted to his capacity, with reference to the circumstances by which
he was surrounded. I knew him as a courtier, too, and as a bold intriguant.
Such a man, I considered, could not fail to be aware of the ordinary policial
modes of action. He could not have failed to anticipate—and events have
proved that he did not fail to anticipate—the waylayings to which he was
subjected. He must have foreseen, I reflected, the secret investigations of
his premises. His frequent absences from home at night, which were hailed
by the Prefect as certain aids to his success, I regarded only as ruses, to
afford opportunity for thorough search to the police, and thus the sooner to
impress them with the conviction to which G——, in fact, did finally arrive
—the conviction that the letter was not upon the premises. I felt, also, that
the whole train of thought, which I was at some pains in detailing to you

just now, concerning the invariable principle of policial action in searches
for articles concealed—I felt that this whole train of thought would
necessarily pass through the mind of the Minister. It would imperatively
lead him to despise all the ordinary nooks of concealment. He could not, I
reflected, be so weak as not to see that the most intricate and remote recess
of his hotel would be as open as his commonest closets to the eyes, to the
probes, to the gimlets, and to the microscopes of the Prefect. I saw, in fine,
that he would be driven, as a matter of course, to simplicity, if not
deliberately induced to it as a matter of choice. You will remember, perhaps,
how desperately the Prefect laughed when I suggested, upon our first
interview, that it was just possible this mystery troubled him so much on
account of its being so very self-evident.”
“Yes,” said I, “I remember his merriment well. I really thought he would
have fallen into convulsions.”
“The material world,” continued Dupin, “abounds with very strict
analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to
the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen
an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis
inertiæ, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is
not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in
motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is
commensurate with this difficulty, than it is, in the latter, that intellects of
the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant, and more eventful
in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily
moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of
their progress. Again: have you ever noticed which of the street signs, over
the shop-doors, are the most attractive of attention?”
“I have never given the matter a thought,” I said.
“There is a game of puzzles,” he resumed, “which is played upon a map.
One party playing requires another to find a given word—the name of town,
river, state or empire—any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed
surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his
opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept
selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart
to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the
street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here

the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension
by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which
are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it
appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the Prefect. He
never once thought it probable, or possible, that the Minister had deposited
the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world, by way of best
preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.
“But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating
ingenuity of D——; upon the fact that the document must always have been
at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive
evidence, obtained by the Prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of
that dignitary’s ordinary search—the more satisfied I became that, to
conceal this letter, the Minister had resorted to the comprehensive and
sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.
“Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles,
and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the Ministerial hotel. I
found D—— at home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling, as usual, and
pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most
really energetic human being now alive—but that is only when nobody sees
him.
“To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the
necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and
thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only
upon the conversation of my host.
“I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and
upon which lay confusedly, some miscellaneous letters and other papers,
with one or two musical instruments and a few books. Here, however, after
a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular
suspicion.
“At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery
fillagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon,
from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantel-piece. In this
rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting cards
and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn
nearly in two, across the middle—as if a design, in the first instance, to tear
it entirely up as worthless, had been altered, or stayed, in the second. It had

a large black seal, bearing the D—— cipher very conspicuously, and was
addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D——, the minister, himself. It
was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of
the uppermost divisions of the rack.
“No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of
which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically
different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a
description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D—— cipher; there
it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S—— family. Here, the
address, to the Minister, diminutive and feminine; there the superscription,
to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone
formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these
differences, which was excessive; the dirt; the soiled and torn condition of
the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D——, and so
suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the
worthlessness of the document—these things, together with the hyper-
obtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and
thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously
arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion, in one
who came with the intention to suspect.
“I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most
animated discussion with the Minister upon a topic which I knew well had
never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted
upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its external
appearance and arrangement in the rack; and also fell, at length, upon a
discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained.
In scrutinizing the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed
than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is
manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a
folder, is refolded in a reversed direction, in the same creases or edges
which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was
clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-
directed, and re-sealed. I bade the Minister good morning, and took my
departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.
“The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed, quite
eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged,

however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the
windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and
the shoutings of a terrified mob. D—— rushed to a casement, threw it open,
and looked out. In the meantime, I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter,
put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile, (so far as regards
externals,) which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings—imitating the D
—— cipher, very readily, by means of a seal formed of bread.
“The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic
behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women
and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow
was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D
—— came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon
securing the object in view. Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The
pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay.”
“But what purpose had you,” I asked, “in replacing the letter by a fac-
simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have seized it
openly, and departed?”
“D——,” replied Dupin, “is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His
hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the
wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the Ministerial presence
alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had
an object apart from these considerations. You know my political
prepossessions. In this matter, I act as a partisan of the lady concerned. For
eighteen months the Minister has had her in his power. She has now him in
hers—since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will
proceed with his exactions as if it was. Thus will he inevitably commit
himself, at once, to his political destruction. His downfall, too, will not be
more precipitate than awkward. It is all very well to talk about the facilis
descensus Averni; but in all kinds of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it
is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have
no sympathy—at least no pity—for him who descends. He is that monstrum
horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I
should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts, when,
being defied by her whom the Prefect terms ‘a certain personage’ he is
reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the card-rack.”
“How? did you put any thing particular in it?”

“Why—it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank—that
would have been insulting. D——, at Vienna once, did me an evil turn,
which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I
knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person
who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well
acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank
sheet the words—
“‘— — Un dessein si funeste,
S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.

They are to be found in Crébillon’s ‘Atrée.’”

THE THOUSAND-AND-SECOND TALE OF
SCHEHERAZADE
Truth is stranger than fiction.—Old Saying

Having had occasion, lately, in the course of some Oriental
investigations, to consult the Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a work which (like the
Zohar of Simeon Jochaides) is scarcely known at all, even in Europe; and
which has never been quoted, to my knowledge, by any American—if we
except, perhaps, the author of the “Curiosities of American Literature”;—
having had occasion, I say, to turn over some pages of the first-mentioned
very remarkable work, I was not a little astonished to discover that the
literary world has hitherto been strangely in error respecting the fate of the
vizier’s daughter, Scheherazade, as that fate is depicted in the “Arabian
Nights”; and that the dénouement there given, if not altogether inaccurate,
as far as it goes, is at least to blame in not having gone very much farther.
For full information on this interesting topic, I must refer the inquisitive
reader to the “Isitsöornot” itself; but in the meantime, I shall be pardoned
for giving a summary of what I there discovered.
It will be remembered, that, in the usual version of the tales, a certain
monarch having good cause to be jealous of his queen, not only puts her to
death, but makes a vow, by his beard and the prophet, to espouse each night
the most beautiful maiden in his dominions, and the next morning to deliver
her up to the executioner.
Having fulfilled this vow for many years to the letter, and with a religious
punctuality and method that conferred great credit upon him as a man of
devout feeling and excellent sense, he was interrupted one afternoon (no
doubt at his prayers) by a visit from his grand vizier, to whose daughter, it
appears, there had occurred an idea.

Her name was Scheherazade, and her idea was, that she would either
redeem the land from the depopulating tax upon its beauty, or perish, after
the approved fashion of all heroines, in the attempt.
Accordingly, and although we do not find it to be leap-year (which makes
the sacrifice more meritorious), she deputes her father, the grand vizier, to
make an offer to the king of her hand. This hand the king eagerly accepts—
(he had intended to take it at all events, and had put off the matter from day
to day, only through fear of the vizier),—but, in accepting it now, he gives
all parties very distinctly to understand, that, grand vizier or no grand vizier,
he has not the slightest design of giving up one iota of his vow or of his
privileges. When, therefore, the fair Scheherazade insisted upon marrying
the king, and did actually marry him despite her father’s excellent advice
not to do any thing of the kind—when she would and did marry him, I say,
will I, nill I, it was with her beautiful black eyes as thoroughly open as the
nature of the case would allow.
It seems, however, that this politic damsel (who had been reading
Machiavelli, beyond doubt), had a very ingenious little plot in her mind. On
the night of the wedding, she contrived, upon I forget what specious
pretence, to have her sister occupy a couch sufficiently near that of the royal
pair to admit of easy conversation from bed to bed; and, a little before cock-
crowing, she took care to awaken the good monarch, her husband (who
bore her none the worse will because he intended to wring her neck on the
morrow),—she managed to awaken him, I say, (although on account of a
capital conscience and an easy digestion, he slept well) by the profound
interest of a story (about a rat and a black cat, I think) which she was
narrating (all in an undertone, of course) to her sister. When the day broke,
it so happened that this history was not altogether finished, and that
Scheherazade, in the nature of things could not finish it just then, since it
was high time for her to get up and be bowstrung—a thing very little more
pleasant than hanging, only a trifle more genteel!
The king’s curiosity, however, prevailing, I am sorry to say, even over his
sound religious principles, induced him for this once to postpone the
fulfilment of his vow until next morning, for the purpose and with the hope
of hearing that night how it fared in the end with the black cat (a black cat, I
think it was) and the rat.

The night having arrived, however, the lady Scheherazade not only put
the finishing stroke to the black cat and the rat (the rat was blue) but before
she well knew what she was about, found herself deep in the intricacies of a
narration, having reference (if I am not altogether mistaken) to a pink horse
(with green wings) that went, in a violent manner, by clockwork, and was
wound up with an indigo key. With this history the king was even more
profoundly interested than with the other—and, as the day broke before its
conclusion (notwithstanding all the queen’s endeavors to get through with it
in time for the bowstringing), there was again no resource but to postpone
that ceremony as before, for twenty-four hours. The next night there
happened a similar accident with a similar result; and then the next—and
then again the next; so that, in the end, the good monarch, having been
unavoidably deprived of all opportunity to keep his vow during a period of
no less than one thousand and one nights, either forgets it altogether by the
expiration of this time, or gets himself absolved of it in the regular way, or
(what is more probable) breaks it outright, as well as the head of his father
confessor. At all events, Scheherazade, who, being lineally descended from
Eve, fell heir, perhaps, to the whole seven baskets of talk, which the latter
lady, we all know, picked up from under the trees in the garden of Eden;
Scheherazade, I say, finally triumphed, and the tariff upon beauty was
repealed.
Now, this conclusion (which is that of the story as we have it upon
record) is, no doubt, excessively proper and pleasant—but alas! like a great
many pleasant things, is more pleasant than true, and I am indebted
altogether to the “Isitsöornot” for the means of correcting the error. “Le
mieux,” says a French proverb, “est l’ennemi du bien,” and, in mentioning
that Scheherazade had inherited the seven baskets of talk, I should have
added that she put them out at compound interest until they amounted to
seventy-seven.
“My dear sister,” said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the
language of the “Isitsöornot” at this point, verbatim) “my dear sister,” said
she, “now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over,
and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty
of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry
to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of
Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous other and more
interesting adventures than those which I related; but the truth is, I felt

sleepy on the particular night of their narration, and so was seduced into
cutting them short—a grievous piece of misconduct, for which I only trust
that Allah will forgive me. But even yet it is not too late to remedy my great
neglect—and as soon as I have given the king a pinch or two in order to
wake him up so far that he may stop making that horrible noise, I will
forthwith entertain you (and him if he pleases) with the sequel of this very
remarkable story.”
Hereupon the sister of Scheherazade, as I have it from the “Isitsöornot,”
expressed no very particular intensity of gratification; but the king, having
been sufficiently pinched, at length ceased snoring, and finally said,
“Hum!” and then “Hoo!” when the queen, understanding these words
(which are no doubt Arabic) to signify that he was all attention, and would
do his best not to snore any more—the queen, I say, having arranged these
matters to her satisfaction, re-entered thus, at once, into the history of
Sinbad the sailor:
“‘At length, in my old age,’ [these are the words of Sinbad himself, as
retailed by Scheherazade]—‘at length, in my old age, and after enjoying
many years of tranquillity at home, I became once more possessed of a
desire of visiting foreign countries; and one day, without acquainting any of
my family with my design, I packed up some bundles of such merchandise
as was most precious and least bulky, and, engaging a porter to carry them,
went with him down to the sea-shore, to await the arrival of any chance
vessel that might convey me out of the kingdom into some region which I
had not as yet explored.
“‘Having deposited the packages upon the sands, we sat down beneath
some trees, and looked out into the ocean in the hope of perceiving a ship,
but during several hours we saw none whatever. At length I fancied that I
could hear a singular buzzing or humming sound; and the porter, after
listening awhile, declared that he also could distinguish it. Presently it grew
louder, and then still louder, so that we could have no doubt that the object
which caused it was approaching us. At length, on the edge of the horizon,
we discovered a black speck, which rapidly increased in size until we made
it out to be a vast monster, swimming with a great part of its body above the
surface of the sea. It came toward us with inconceivable swiftness, throwing
up huge waves of foam around its breast, and illuminating all that part of

the sea through which it passed, with a long line of fire that extended far off
into the distance.
“‘As the thing drew near we saw it very distinctly. Its length was equal to
that of three of the loftiest trees that grow, and it was as wide as the great
hall of audience in your palace, O most sublime and munificent of the
Caliphs. Its body, which was unlike that of ordinary fishes, was as solid as a
rock, and of a jetty blackness throughout all that portion of it which floated
above the water, with the exception of a narrow blood-red streak that
completely begirdled it. The belly, which floated beneath the surface, and of
which we could get only a glimpse now and then as the monster rose and
fell with the billows, was entirely covered with metallic scales, of a color
like that of the moon in misty weather. The back was flat and nearly white,
and from it there extended upwards of six spines, about half the length of
the whole body.
“‘This horrible creature had no mouth that we could perceive; but, as if to
make up for this deficiency, it was provided with at least four score of eyes,
that protruded from their sockets like those of the green dragon-fly, and
were arranged all around the body in two rows, one above the other, and
parallel to the blood-red streak, which seemed to answer the purpose of an
eyebrow. Two or three of these dreadful eyes were much larger than the
others, and had the appearance of solid gold.
“‘Although this beast approached us, as I have before said, with the
greatest rapidity, it must have been moved altogether by necromancy—for it
had neither fins like a fish nor web-feet like a duck, nor wings like the
seashell which is blown along in the manner of a vessel; nor yet did it
writhe itself forward as do the eels. Its head and its tail were shaped
precisely alike, only, not far from the latter, were two small holes that
served for nostrils, and through which the monster puffed out its thick
breath with prodigious violence, and with a shrieking, disagreeable noise.
“‘Our terror at beholding this hideous thing was very great, but it was
even surpassed by our astonishment, when upon getting a nearer look, we
perceived upon the creature’s back a vast number of animals about the size
and shape of men, and altogether much resembling them, except that they
wore no garments (as men do), being supplied (by nature, no doubt) with an
ugly uncomfortable covering, a good deal like cloth, but fitting so tight to
the skin, as to render the poor wretches laughably awkward, and put them

apparently to severe pain. On the very tips of their heads were certain
square-looking boxes, which, at first sight, I thought might have been
intended to answer as turbans, but I soon discovered that they were
excessively heavy and solid, and I therefore concluded they were
contrivances designed, by their great weight, to keep the heads of the
animals steady and safe upon their shoulders. Around the necks of the
creatures were fastened black collars, (badges of servitude, no doubt,) such
as we keep on our dogs, only much wider and infinitely stiffer, so that it
was quite impossible for these poor victims to move their heads in any
direction without moving the body at the same time; and thus they were
doomed to perpetual contemplation of their noses—a view puggish and
snubby in a wonderful, if not positively in an awful degree.
“‘When the monster had nearly reached the shore where we stood, it
suddenly pushed out one of its eyes to a great extent, and emitted from it a
terrible flash of fire, accompanied by a dense cloud of smoke, and a noise
that I can compare to nothing but thunder. As the smoke cleared away, we
saw one of the odd man-animals standing near the head of the large beast
with a trumpet in his hand, through which (putting it to his mouth) he
presently addressed us in loud, harsh, and disagreeable accents, that,
perhaps, we should have mistaken for language, had they not come
altogether through the nose.
“‘Being thus evidently spoken to, I was at a loss how to reply, as I could
in no manner understand what was said; and in this difficulty I turned to the
porter, who was near swooning through affright, and demanded of him his
opinion as to what species of monster it was, what it wanted, and what kind
of creatures those were that so swarmed upon its back. To this the porter
replied, as well as he could for trepidation, that he had once before heard of
this sea-beast; that it was a cruel demon, with bowels of sulphur and blood
of fire, created by evil genii as the means of inflicting misery upon
mankind; that the things upon its back were vermin, such as sometimes
infest cats and dogs, only a little larger and more savage; and that these
vermin had their uses, however evil—for, through the torture they caused
the beast by their nibbling and stingings, it was goaded into that degree of
wrath which was requisite to make it roar and commit ill, and so fulfil the
vengeful and malicious designs of the wicked genii.

“This account determined me to take to my heels, and, without once even
looking behind me, I ran at full speed up into the hills, while the porter ran
equally fast, although nearly in an opposite direction, so that, by these
means, he finally made his escape with my bundles, of which I have no
doubt he took excellent care—although this is a point I cannot determine, as
I do not remember that I ever beheld him again.
“‘For myself, I was so hotly pursued by a swarm of the men-vermin (who
had come to the shore in boats) that I was very soon overtaken, bound hand
and foot, and conveyed to the beast, which immediately swam out again
into the middle of the sea.
“‘I now bitterly repented my folly in quitting a comfortable home to peril
my life in such adventures as this; but regret being useless, I made the best
of my condition, and exerted myself to secure the goodwill of the man-
animal that owned the trumpet, and who appeared to exercise authority over
his fellows. I succeeded so well in this endeavor that, in a few days, the
creature bestowed upon me various tokens of his favor, and in the end even
went to the trouble of teaching me the rudiments of what it was vain enough
to denominate its language; so that, at length, I was enabled to converse
with it readily, and came to make it comprehend the ardent desire I had of
seeing the world.
“‘Washish squashish squeak, Sinbad, hey-diddle diddle, grunt unt
grumble, hiss, fiss, whiss,’ said he to me, one day after dinner—but I beg a
thousand pardons, I had forgotten that your majesty is not conversant with
the dialect of the Cock-neighs (so the man-animals were called; I presume
because their language formed the connecting link between that of the horse
and that of the rooster). With your permission, I will translate. ‘Washish
squashish,’ and so forth:—that is to say, ‘I am happy to find, my dear
Sinbad, that you are really a very excellent fellow; we are now about doing
a thing which is called circumnavigating the globe; and since you are so
desirous of seeing the world, I will strain a point and give you a free
passage upon back of the beast.’”
When the Lady Scheherazade had proceeded thus far, relates the
“Isitsöornot,” the king turned over from his left side to his right, and said:
“It is, in fact, very surprising, my dear queen, that you omitted, hitherto,
these latter adventures of Sinbad. Do you know I think them exceedingly
entertaining and strange?”

The king having thus expressed himself, we are told, the fair
Scheherazade resumed her history in the following words:
“Sinbad went on in this manner with his narrative—‘I thanked the man-
animal for its kindness, and soon found myself very much at home on the
beast, which swam at a prodigious rate through the ocean; although the
surface of the latter is, in that part of the world, by no means flat, but round
like a pomegranate, so that we went—so to say—either up hill or down hill
all the time.’
“That I think, was very singular,” interrupted the king.
“Nevertheless, it is quite true,” replied Scheherazade.
“I have my doubts,” rejoined the king; “but, pray, be so good as to go on
with the story.”
“I will,” said the queen. “‘The beast,’ continued Sinbad to the caliph,
‘swam, as I have related, up hill and down hill until, at length, we arrived at
an island, many hundreds of miles in circumference, but which,
nevertheless, had been built in the middle of the sea by a colony of little
things like caterpillars.’” (*1)
“Hum!” said the king.
“‘Leaving this island,’ said Sinbad—(for Scheherazade, it must be
understood, took no notice of her husband’s ill-mannered ejaculation)
‘leaving this island, we came to another where the forests were of solid
stone, and so hard that they shivered to pieces the finest-tempered axes with
which we endeavoured to cut them down.’” (*2)
“Hum!” said the king, again; but Scheherazade, paying him no attention,
continued in the language of Sinbad.
“‘Passing beyond this last island, we reached a country where there was a
cave that ran to the distance of thirty or forty miles within the bowels of the
earth, and that contained a greater number of far more spacious and more
magnificent palaces than are to be found in all Damascus and Bagdad. From
the roofs of these palaces there hung myriads of gems, like diamonds, but
larger than men; and in among the streets of towers and pyramids and
temples, there flowed immense rivers as black as ebony, and swarming with
fish that had no eyes.’” (*3)
“Hum!” said the king.

“‘We then swam into a region of the sea where we found a lofty
mountain, down whose sides there streamed torrents of melted metal, some
of which were twelve miles wide and sixty miles long (*4); while from an
abyss on the summit, issued so vast a quantity of ashes that the sun was
entirely blotted out from the heavens, and it became darker than the darkest
midnight; so that when we were even at the distance of a hundred and fifty
miles from the mountain, it was impossible to see the whitest object,
however close we held it to our eyes.’” (*5)
“Hum!” said the king.
“‘After quitting this coast, the beast continued his voyage until we met
with a land in which the nature of things seemed reversed—for we here saw
a great lake, at the bottom of which, more than a hundred feet beneath the
surface of the water, there flourished in full leaf a forest of tall and luxuriant
trees.’” (*6)
“Hoo!” said the king.
“Some hundred miles farther on brought us to a climate where the
atmosphere was so dense as to sustain iron or steel, just as our own does
feather.’” (*7)
“Fiddle de dee,” said the king.
“Proceeding still in the same direction, we presently arrived at the most
magnificent region in the whole world. Through it there meandered a
glorious river for several thousands of miles. This river was of unspeakable
depth, and of a transparency richer than that of amber. It was from three to
six miles in width; and its banks which arose on either side to twelve
hundred feet in perpendicular height, were crowned with ever-blossoming
trees and perpetual sweet-scented flowers, that made the whole territory one
gorgeous garden; but the name of this luxuriant land was the Kingdom of
Horror, and to enter it was inevitable death.’” (*8)
“Humph!” said the king.
“‘We left this kingdom in great haste, and, after some days, came to
another, where we were astonished to perceive myriads of monstrous
animals with horns resembling scythes upon their heads. These hideous
beasts dig for themselves vast caverns in the soil, of a funnel shape, and line
the sides of them with rocks, so disposed one upon the other that they fall
instantly, when trodden upon by other animals, thus precipitating them into

the monster’s dens, where their blood is immediately sucked, and their
carcasses afterwards hurled contemptuously out to an immense distance
from “the caverns of death."’” (*9)
“Pooh!” said the king.
“‘Continuing our progress, we perceived a district with vegetables that
grew not upon any soil but in the air. (*10) There were others that sprang
from the substance of other vegetables; (*11) others that derived their
substance from the bodies of living animals; (*12) and then again, there
were others that glowed all over with intense fire; (*13) others that moved
from place to place at pleasure, (*14) and what was still more wonderful,
we discovered flowers that lived and breathed and moved their limbs at will
and had, moreover, the detestable passion of mankind for enslaving other
creatures, and confining them in horrid and solitary prisons until the
fulfillment of appointed tasks.’” (*15)
“Pshaw!” said the king.
“‘Quitting this land, we soon arrived at another in which the bees and the
birds are mathematicians of such genius and erudition, that they give daily
instructions in the science of geometry to the wise men of the empire. The
king of the place having offered a reward for the solution of two very
difficult problems, they were solved upon the spot—the one by the bees,
and the other by the birds; but the king keeping their solution a secret, it
was only after the most profound researches and labor, and the writing of an
infinity of big books, during a long series of years, that the men-
mathematicians at length arrived at the identical solutions which had been
given upon the spot by the bees and by the birds.’” (*16)
“Oh my!” said the king.
“‘We had scarcely lost sight of this empire when we found ourselves
close upon another, from whose shores there flew over our heads a flock of
fowls a mile in breadth, and two hundred and forty miles long; so that,
although they flew a mile during every minute, it required no less than four
hours for the whole flock to pass over us—in which there were several
millions of millions of fowl.’” (*17)
“Oh fy!” said the king.
“‘No sooner had we got rid of these birds, which occasioned us great
annoyance, than we were terrified by the appearance of a fowl of another

kind, and infinitely larger than even the rocs which I met in my former
voyages; for it was bigger than the biggest of the domes on your seraglio,
oh, most Munificent of Caliphs. This terrible fowl had no head that we
could perceive, but was fashioned entirely of belly, which was of a
prodigious fatness and roundness, of a soft-looking substance, smooth,
shining and striped with various colors. In its talons, the monster was
bearing away to his eyrie in the heavens, a house from which it had
knocked off the roof, and in the interior of which we distinctly saw human
beings, who, beyond doubt, were in a state of frightful despair at the
horrible fate which awaited them. We shouted with all our might, in the
hope of frightening the bird into letting go of its prey, but it merely gave a
snort or puff, as if of rage and then let fall upon our heads a heavy sack
which proved to be filled with sand!’”
“Stuff!” said the king.
“‘It was just after this adventure that we encountered a continent of
immense extent and prodigious solidity, but which, nevertheless, was
supported entirely upon the back of a sky-blue cow that had no fewer than
four hundred horns.’” (*18)
“That, now, I believe,” said the king, “because I have read something of
the kind before, in a book.”
“‘We passed immediately beneath this continent, (swimming in between
the legs of the cow), and, after some hours, found ourselves in a wonderful
country indeed, which, I was informed by the man-animal, was his own
native land, inhabited by things of his own species. This elevated the man-
animal very much in my esteem, and in fact, I now began to feel ashamed
of the contemptuous familiarity with which I had treated him; for I found
that the man-animals in general were a nation of the most powerful
magicians, who lived with worms in their brain, (*19) which, no doubt,
served to stimulate them by their painful writhings and wrigglings to the
most miraculous efforts of imagination!’”
“Nonsense!” said the king.
“‘Among the magicians, were domesticated several animals of very
singular kinds; for example, there was a huge horse whose bones were iron
and whose blood was boiling water. In place of corn, he had black stones
for his usual food; and yet, in spite of so hard a diet, he was so strong and

swift that he would drag a load more weighty than the grandest temple in
this city, at a rate surpassing that of the flight of most birds.’” (*20)
“Twattle!” said the king.
“‘I saw, also, among these people a hen without feathers, but bigger than
a camel; instead of flesh and bone she had iron and brick; her blood, like
that of the horse, (to whom, in fact, she was nearly related,) was boiling
water; and like him she ate nothing but wood or black stones. This hen
brought forth very frequently, a hundred chickens in the day; and, after
birth, they took up their residence for several weeks within the stomach of
their mother.’” (*21)
“Fal lal!” said the king.
“‘One of this nation of mighty conjurors created a man out of brass and
wood, and leather, and endowed him with such ingenuity that he would
have beaten at chess, all the race of mankind with the exception of the great
Caliph, Haroun Alraschid. (*22) Another of these magi constructed (of like
material) a creature that put to shame even the genius of him who made it;
for so great were its reasoning powers that, in a second, it performed
calculations of so vast an extent that they would have required the united
labor of fifty thousand fleshy men for a year. (*23) But a still more
wonderful conjuror fashioned for himself a mighty thing that was neither
man nor beast, but which had brains of lead, intermixed with a black matter
like pitch, and fingers that it employed with such incredible speed and
dexterity that it would have had no trouble in writing out twenty thousand
copies of the Koran in an hour, and this with so exquisite a precision, that in
all the copies there should not be found one to vary from another by the
breadth of the finest hair. This thing was of prodigious strength, so that it
erected or overthrew the mightiest empires at a breath; but its powers were
exercised equally for evil and for good.’”
“Ridiculous!” said the king.
“‘Among this nation of necromancers there was also one who had in his
veins the blood of the salamanders; for he made no scruple of sitting down
to smoke his chibouc in a red-hot oven until his dinner was thoroughly
roasted upon its floor. (*24) Another had the faculty of converting the
common metals into gold, without even looking at them during the process.
(*25) Another had such a delicacy of touch that he made a wire so fine as to
be invisible. (*26) Another had such quickness of perception that he

counted all the separate motions of an elastic body, while it was springing
backward and forward at the rate of nine hundred millions of times in a
second.’” (*27)
“Absurd!” said the king.
“‘Another of these magicians, by means of a fluid that nobody ever yet
saw, could make the corpses of his friends brandish their arms, kick out
their legs, fight, or even get up and dance at his will. (*28) Another had
cultivated his voice to so great an extent that he could have made himself
heard from one end of the world to the other. (*29) Another had so long an
arm that he could sit down in Damascus and indite a letter at Bagdad—or
indeed at any distance whatsoever. (*30) Another commanded the lightning
to come down to him out of the heavens, and it came at his call; and served
him for a plaything when it came. Another took two loud sounds and out of
them made a silence. Another constructed a deep darkness out of two
brilliant lights. (*31) Another made ice in a red-hot furnace. (*32) Another
directed the sun to paint his portrait, and the sun did. (*33) Another took
this luminary with the moon and the planets, and having first weighed them
with scrupulous accuracy, probed into their depths and found out the
solidity of the substance of which they were made. But the whole nation is,
indeed, of so surprising a necromantic ability, that not even their infants,
nor their commonest cats and dogs have any difficulty in seeing objects that
do not exist at all, or that for twenty millions of years before the birth of the
nation itself had been blotted out from the face of creation.’” (*34)
“Preposterous!” said the king.
“‘The wives and daughters of these incomparably great and wise magi,’”
continued Scheherazade, without being in any manner disturbed by these
frequent and most ungentlemanly interruptions on the part of her husband
—“‘the wives and daughters of these eminent conjurers are every thing that
is accomplished and refined; and would be every thing that is interesting
and beautiful, but for an unhappy fatality that besets them, and from which
not even the miraculous powers of their husbands and fathers has, hitherto,
been adequate to save. Some fatalities come in certain shapes, and some in
others—but this of which I speak has come in the shape of a crotchet.’”
“A what?” said the king.
“‘A crotchet’” said Scheherazade. “‘One of the evil genii, who are
perpetually upon the watch to inflict ill, has put it into the heads of these

accomplished ladies that the thing which we describe as personal beauty
consists altogether in the protuberance of the region which lies not very far
below the small of the back. Perfection of loveliness, they say, is in the
direct ratio of the extent of this lump. Having been long possessed of this
idea, and bolsters being cheap in that country, the days have long gone by
since it was possible to distinguish a woman from a dromedary—’”
“Stop!” said the king—“I can’t stand that, and I won’t. You have already
given me a dreadful headache with your lies. The day, too, I perceive, is
beginning to break. How long have we been married?—my conscience is
getting to be troublesome again. And then that dromedary touch—do you
take me for a fool? Upon the whole, you might as well get up and be
throttled.”
These words, as I learn from the “Isitsöornot,” both grieved and
astonished Scheherazade; but, as she knew the king to be a man of
scrupulous integrity, and quite unlikely to forfeit his word, she submitted to
her fate with a good grace. She derived, however, great consolation, (during
the tightening of the bowstring,) from the reflection that much of the history
remained still untold, and that the petulance of her brute of a husband had
reaped for him a most righteous reward, in depriving him of many
inconceivable adventures.

A DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTROM.

The ways of God in Nature, as in Providence, are not as our
ways; nor are the models that we frame any way
commensurate to the vastness, profundity, and
unsearchableness of His works, which have a depth in them
greater than the well of Democritus.

—Joseph Glanville.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag. For some minutes
the old man seemed too much exhausted to speak.
“Not long ago,” said he at length, “and I could have guided you on this
route as well as the youngest of my sons; but, about three years past, there
happened to me an event such as never happened to mortal man—or at least
such as no man ever survived to tell of—and the six hours of deadly terror
which I then endured have broken me up body and soul. You suppose me a
very old man—but I am not. It took less than a single day to change these
hairs from a jetty black to white, to weaken my limbs, and to unstring my
nerves, so that I tremble at the least exertion, and am frightened at a
shadow. Do you know I can scarcely look over this little cliff without
getting giddy?”
The “little cliff,” upon whose edge he had so carelessly thrown himself
down to rest that the weightier portion of his body hung over it, while he
was only kept from falling by the tenure of his elbow on its extreme and
slippery edge—this “little cliff” arose, a sheer unobstructed precipice of
black shining rock, some fifteen or sixteen hundred feet from the world of
crags beneath us. Nothing would have tempted me to within half a dozen
yards of its brink. In truth so deeply was I excited by the perilous position
of my companion, that I fell at full length upon the ground, clung to the
shrubs around me, and dared not even glance upward at the sky—while I

struggled in vain to divest myself of the idea that the very foundations of
the mountain were in danger from the fury of the winds. It was long before
I could reason myself into sufficient courage to sit up and look out into the
distance.
“You must get over these fancies,” said the guide, “for I have brought
you here that you might have the best possible view of the scene of that
event I mentioned—and to tell you the whole story with the spot just under
your eye.”
“We are now,” he continued, in that particularizing manner which
distinguished him—“we are now close upon the Norwegian coast—in the
sixty-eighth degree of latitude—in the great province of Nordland—and in
the dreary district of Lofoden. The mountain upon whose top we sit is
Helseggen, the Cloudy. Now raise yourself up a little higher—hold on to
the grass if you feel giddy—so—and look out, beyond the belt of vapor
beneath us, into the sea.”
I looked dizzily, and beheld a wide expanse of ocean, whose waters wore
so inky a hue as to bring at once to my mind the Nubian geographer’s
account of the Mare Tenebrarum. A panorama more deplorably desolate no
human imagination can conceive. To the right and left, as far as the eye
could reach, there lay outstretched, like ramparts of the world, lines of
horridly black and beetling cliff, whose character of gloom was but the
more forcibly illustrated by the surf which reared high up against its white
and ghastly crest, howling and shrieking forever. Just opposite the
promontory upon whose apex we were placed, and at a distance of some
five or six miles out at sea, there was visible a small, bleak-looking island;
or, more properly, its position was discernible through the wilderness of
surge in which it was enveloped. About two miles nearer the land, arose
another of smaller size, hideously craggy and barren, and encompassed at
various intervals by a cluster of dark rocks.
The appearance of the ocean, in the space between the more distant
island and the shore, had something very unusual about it. Although, at the
time, so strong a gale was blowing landward that a brig in the remote offing
lay to under a double-reefed trysail, and constantly plunged her whole hull
out of sight, still there was here nothing like a regular swell, but only a
short, quick, angry cross dashing of water in every direction—as well in the

teeth of the wind as otherwise. Of foam there was little except in the
immediate vicinity of the rocks.
“The island in the distance,” resumed the old man, “is called by the
Norwegians Vurrgh. The one midway is Moskoe. That a mile to the
northward is Ambaaren. Yonder are Islesen, Hotholm, Keildhelm, Suarven,
and Buckholm. Farther off—between Moskoe and Vurrgh—are Otterholm,
Flimen, Sandflesen, and Stockholm. These are the true names of the places
—but why it has been thought necessary to name them at all, is more than
either you or I can understand. Do you hear anything? Do you see any
change in the water?”
We had now been about ten minutes upon the top of Helseggen, to which
we had ascended from the interior of Lofoden, so that we had caught no
glimpse of the sea until it had burst upon us from the summit. As the old
man spoke, I became aware of a loud and gradually increasing sound, like
the moaning of a vast herd of buffaloes upon an American prairie; and at the
same moment I perceived that what seamen term the chopping character of
the ocean beneath us, was rapidly changing into a current which set to the
eastward. Even while I gazed, this current acquired a monstrous velocity.
Each moment added to its speed—to its headlong impetuosity. In five
minutes the whole sea, as far as Vurrgh, was lashed into ungovernable fury;
but it was between Moskoe and the coast that the main uproar held its sway.
Here the vast bed of the waters, seamed and scarred into a thousand
conflicting channels, burst suddenly into phrensied convulsion—heaving,
boiling, hissing—gyrating in gigantic and innumerable vortices, and all
whirling and plunging on to the eastward with a rapidity which water never
elsewhere assumes except in precipitous descents.
In a few minutes more, there came over the scene another radical
alteration. The general surface grew somewhat more smooth, and the
whirlpools, one by one, disappeared, while prodigious streaks of foam
became apparent where none had been seen before. These streaks, at length,
spreading out to a great distance, and entering into combination, took unto
themselves the gyratory motion of the subsided vortices, and seemed to
form the germ of another more vast. Suddenly—very suddenly—this
assumed a distinct and definite existence, in a circle of more than a mile in
diameter. The edge of the whirl was represented by a broad belt of gleaming
spray; but no particle of this slipped into the mouth of the terrific funnel,

whose interior, as far as the eye could fathom it, was a smooth, shining, and
jet-black wall of water, inclined to the horizon at an angle of some forty-
five degrees, speeding dizzily round and round with a swaying and
sweltering motion, and sending forth to the winds an appalling voice, half
shriek, half roar, such as not even the mighty cataract of Niagara ever lifts
up in its agony to Heaven.
The mountain trembled to its very base, and the rock rocked. I threw
myself upon my face, and clung to the scant herbage in an excess of
nervous agitation.
“This,” said I at length, to the old man—“this can be nothing else than
the great whirlpool of the Maelström.”
“So it is sometimes termed,” said he. “We Norwegians call it the
Moskoe-ström, from the island of Moskoe in the midway.”
The ordinary accounts of this vortex had by no means prepared me for
what I saw. That of Jonas Ramus, which is perhaps the most circumstantial
of any, cannot impart the faintest conception either of the magnificence, or
of the horror of the scene—or of the wild bewildering sense of the novel
which confounds the beholder. I am not sure from what point of view the
writer in question surveyed it, nor at what time; but it could neither have
been from the summit of Helseggen, nor during a storm. There are some
passages of his description, nevertheless, which may be quoted for their
details, although their effect is exceedingly feeble in conveying an
impression of the spectacle.
“Between Lofoden and Moskoe,” he says, “the depth of the water is
between thirty-six and forty fathoms; but on the other side, toward Ver
(Vurrgh) this depth decreases so as not to afford a convenient passage for a
vessel, without the risk of splitting on the rocks, which happens even in the
calmest weather. When it is flood, the stream runs up the country between
Lofoden and Moskoe with a boisterous rapidity; but the roar of its
impetuous ebb to the sea is scarce equalled by the loudest and most dreadful
cataracts; the noise being heard several leagues off, and the vortices or pits
are of such an extent and depth, that if a ship comes within its attraction, it
is inevitably absorbed and carried down to the bottom, and there beat to
pieces against the rocks; and when the water relaxes, the fragments thereof
are thrown up again. But these intervals of tranquility are only at the turn of
the ebb and flood, and in calm weather, and last but a quarter of an hour, its

violence gradually returning. When the stream is most boisterous, and its
fury heightened by a storm, it is dangerous to come within a Norway mile
of it. Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding
against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently,
that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence;
and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their
fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim
from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while
he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine
trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such
a degree as if bristles grew upon them. This plainly shows the bottom to
consist of craggy rocks, among which they are whirled to and fro. This
stream is regulated by the flux and reflux of the sea—it being constantly
high and low water every six hours. In the year 1645, early in the morning
of Sexagesima Sunday, it raged with such noise and impetuosity that the
very stones of the houses on the coast fell to the ground.”
In regard to the depth of the water, I could not see how this could have
been ascertained at all in the immediate vicinity of the vortex. The “forty
fathoms” must have reference only to portions of the channel close upon the
shore either of Moskoe or Lofoden. The depth in the centre of the Moskoe-
ström must be immeasurably greater; and no better proof of this fact is
necessary than can be obtained from even the sidelong glance into the abyss
of the whirl which may be had from the highest crag of Helseggen. Looking
down from this pinnacle upon the howling Phlegethon below, I could not
help smiling at the simplicity with which the honest Jonas Ramus records,
as a matter difficult of belief, the anecdotes of the whales and the bears; for
it appeared to me, in fact, a self-evident thing, that the largest ship of the
line in existence, coming within the influence of that deadly attraction,
could resist it as little as a feather the hurricane, and must disappear bodily
and at once.
The attempts to account for the phenomenon—some of which, I
remember, seemed to me sufficiently plausible in perusal—now wore a very
different and unsatisfactory aspect. The idea generally received is that this,
as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, “have no other
cause than the collision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux,
against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it
precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises, the

deeper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirlpool or vortex,
the prodigious suction of which is sufficiently known by lesser
experiments.”—These are the words of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
Kircher and others imagine that in the centre of the channel of the
Maelström is an abyss penetrating the globe, and issuing in some very
remote part—the Gulf of Bothnia being somewhat decidedly named in one
instance. This opinion, idle in itself, was the one to which, as I gazed, my
imagination most readily assented; and, mentioning it to the guide, I was
rather surprised to hear him say that, although it was the view almost
universally entertained of the subject by the Norwegians, it nevertheless
was not his own. As to the former notion he confessed his inability to
comprehend it; and here I agreed with him—for, however conclusive on
paper, it becomes altogether unintelligible, and even absurd, amid the
thunder of the abyss.
“You have had a good look at the whirl now,” said the old man, “and if
you will creep round this crag, so as to get in its lee, and deaden the roar of
the water, I will tell you a story that will convince you I ought to know
something of the Moskoe-ström.”
I placed myself as desired, and he proceeded.
“Myself and my two brothers once owned a schooner-rigged smack of
about seventy tons burthen, with which we were in the habit of fishing
among the islands beyond Moskoe, nearly to Vurrgh. In all violent eddies at
sea there is good fishing, at proper opportunities, if one has only the
courage to attempt it; but among the whole of the Lofoden coastmen, we
three were the only ones who made a regular business of going out to the
islands, as I tell you. The usual grounds are a great way lower down to the
southward. There fish can be got at all hours, without much risk, and
therefore these places are preferred. The choice spots over here among the
rocks, however, not only yield the finest variety, but in far greater
abundance; so that we often got in a single day, what the more timid of the
craft could not scrape together in a week. In fact, we made it a matter of
desperate speculation—the risk of life standing instead of labor, and
courage answering for capital.
“We kept the smack in a cove about five miles higher up the coast than
this; and it was our practice, in fine weather, to take advantage of the fifteen
minutes’ slack to push across the main channel of the Moskoe-ström, far

above the pool, and then drop down upon anchorage somewhere near
Otterholm, or Sandflesen, where the eddies are not so violent as elsewhere.
Here we used to remain until nearly time for slack-water again, when we
weighed and made for home. We never set out upon this expedition without
a steady side wind for going and coming—one that we felt sure would not
fail us before our return—and we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this
point. Twice, during six years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on
account of a dead calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and
once we had to remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death,
owing to a gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the
channel too boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have
been driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor and
dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the innumerable
cross currents—here to-day and gone to-morrow—which drove us under
the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
“I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we encountered
‘on the grounds’—it is a bad spot to be in, even in good weather—but we
made shift always to run the gauntlet of the Moskoe-ström itself without
accident; although at times my heart has been in my mouth when we
happened to be a minute or so behind or before the slack. The wind
sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at starting, and then we made
rather less way than we could wish, while the current rendered the smack
unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son eighteen years old, and I had
two stout boys of my own. These would have been of great assistance at
such times, in using the sweeps, as well as afterward in fishing—but,
somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves, we had not the heart to let the
young ones get into the danger—for, after all is said and done, it was a
horrible danger, and that is the truth.
“It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to tell
you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18—, a day which the people
of this part of the world will never forget—for it was one in which blew the
most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens. And yet all the
morning, and indeed until late in the afternoon, there was a gentle and
steady breeze from the south-west, while the sun shone brightly, so that the
oldest seaman among us could not have foreseen what was to follow.

“The three of us—my two brothers and myself—had crossed over to the
islands about two o’clock P. M., and had soon nearly loaded the smack with
fine fish, which, we all remarked, were more plenty that day than we had
ever known them. It was just seven, by my watch, when we weighed and
started for home, so as to make the worst of the Ström at slack water, which
we knew would be at eight.
“We set out with a fresh wind on our starboard quarter, and for some time
spanked along at a great rate, never dreaming of danger, for indeed we saw
not the slightest reason to apprehend it. All at once we were taken aback by
a breeze from over Helseggen. This was most unusual—something that had
never happened to us before—and I began to feel a little uneasy, without
exactly knowing why. We put the boat on the wind, but could make no
headway at all for the eddies, and I was upon the point of proposing to
return to the anchorage, when, looking astern, we saw the whole horizon
covered with a singular copper-colored cloud that rose with the most
amazing velocity.
“In the meantime the breeze that had headed us off fell away, and we
were dead becalmed, drifting about in every direction. This state of things,
however, did not last long enough to give us time to think about it. In less
than a minute the storm was upon us—in less than two the sky was entirely
overcast—and what with this and the driving spray, it became suddenly so
dark that we could not see each other in the smack.
“Such a hurricane as then blew it is folly to attempt describing. The
oldest seaman in Norway never experienced any thing like it. We had let
our sails go by the run before it cleverly took us; but, at the first puff, both
our masts went by the board as if they had been sawed off—the mainmast
taking with it my youngest brother, who had lashed himself to it for safety.
“Our boat was the lightest feather of a thing that ever sat upon water. It
had a complete flush deck, with only a small hatch near the bow, and this
hatch it had always been our custom to batten down when about to cross the
Ström, by way of precaution against the chopping seas. But for this
circumstance we should have foundered at once—for we lay entirely buried
for some moments. How my elder brother escaped destruction I cannot say,
for I never had an opportunity of ascertaining. For my part, as soon as I had
let the foresail run, I threw myself flat on deck, with my feet against the
narrow gunwale of the bow, and with my hands grasping a ring-bolt near

the foot of the fore-mast. It was mere instinct that prompted me to do this—
which was undoubtedly the very best thing I could have done—for I was
too much flurried to think.
“For some moments we were completely deluged, as I say, and all this
time I held my breath, and clung to the bolt. When I could stand it no longer
I raised myself upon my knees, still keeping hold with my hands, and thus
got my head clear. Presently our little boat gave herself a shake, just as a
dog does in coming out of the water, and thus rid herself, in some measure,
of the seas. I was now trying to get the better of the stupor that had come
over me, and to collect my senses so as to see what was to be done, when I
felt somebody grasp my arm. It was my elder brother, and my heart leaped
for joy, for I had made sure that he was overboard—but the next moment all
this joy was turned into horror—for he put his mouth close to my ear, and
screamed out the word ‘Moskoe-ström!’
“No one ever will know what my feelings were at that moment. I shook
from head to foot as if I had had the most violent fit of the ague. I knew
what he meant by that one word well enough—I knew what he wished to
make me understand. With the wind that now drove us on, we were bound
for the whirl of the Ström, and nothing could save us!
“You perceive that in crossing the Ström channel, we always went a long
way up above the whirl, even in the calmest weather, and then had to wait
and watch carefully for the slack—but now we were driving right upon the
pool itself, and in such a hurricane as this! ‘To be sure,’ I thought, ‘we shall
get there just about the slack—there is some little hope in that’—but in the
next moment I cursed myself for being so great a fool as to dream of hope
at all. I knew very well that we were doomed, had we been ten times a
ninety-gun ship.
“By this time the first fury of the tempest had spent itself, or perhaps we
did not feel it so much, as we scudded before it, but at all events the seas,
which at first had been kept down by the wind, and lay flat and frothing,
now got up into absolute mountains. A singular change, too, had come over
the heavens. Around in every direction it was still as black as pitch, but
nearly overhead there burst out, all at once, a circular rift of clear sky—as
clear as I ever saw—and of a deep bright blue—and through it there blazed
forth the full moon with a lustre that I never before knew her to wear. She

lit up every thing about us with the greatest distinctness—but, oh God, what
a scene it was to light up!
“I now made one or two attempts to speak to my brother—but, in some
manner which I could not understand, the din had so increased that I could
not make him hear a single word, although I screamed at the top of my
voice in his ear. Presently he shook his head, looking as pale as death, and
held up one of his fingers, as if to say ‘listen! ‘
“At first I could not make out what he meant—but soon a hideous
thought flashed upon me. I dragged my watch from its fob. It was not
going. I glanced at its face by the moonlight, and then burst into tears as I
flung it far away into the ocean. It had run down at seven o’clock! We were
behind the time of the slack, and the whirl of the Ström was in full fury!
“When a boat is well built, properly trimmed, and not deep laden, the
waves in a strong gale, when she is going large, seem always to slip from
beneath her—which appears very strange to a landsman—and this is what is
called riding, in sea phrase.
“Well, so far we had ridden the swells very cleverly; but presently a
gigantic sea happened to take us right under the counter, and bore us with it
as it rose—up—up—as if into the sky. I would not have believed that any
wave could rise so high. And then down we came with a sweep, a slide, and
a plunge, that made me feel sick and dizzy, as if I was falling from some
lofty mountain-top in a dream. But while we were up I had thrown a quick
glance around—and that one glance was all sufficient. I saw our exact
position in an instant. The Moskoe-Ström whirlpool was about a quarter of
a mile dead ahead—but no more like the every-day Moskoe-Ström than the
whirl as you now see it, is like a mill-race. If I had not known where we
were, and what we had to expect, I should not have recognised the place at
all. As it was, I involuntarily closed my eyes in horror. The lids clenched
themselves together as if in a spasm.
“It could not have been more than two minutes afterward until we
suddenly felt the waves subside, and were enveloped in foam. The boat
made a sharp half turn to larboard, and then shot off in its new direction like
a thunderbolt. At the same moment the roaring noise of the water was
completely drowned in a kind of shrill shriek—such a sound as you might
imagine given out by the waste-pipes of many thousand steam-vessels,
letting off their steam all together. We were now in the belt of surf that

always surrounds the whirl; and I thought, of course, that another moment
would plunge us into the abyss, down which we could only see indistinctly
on account of the amazing velocity with which we wore borne along. The
boat did not seem to sink into the water at all, but to skim like an air-bubble
upon the surface of the surge. Her starboard side was next the whirl, and on
the larboard arose the world of ocean we had left. It stood like a huge
writhing wall between us and the horizon.
“It may appear strange, but now, when we were in the very jaws of the
gulf, I felt more composed than when we were only approaching it. Having
made up my mind to hope no more, I got rid of a great deal of that terror
which unmanned me at first. I suppose it was despair that strung my nerves.
“It may look like boasting—but what I tell you is truth—I began to
reflect how magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how
foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own
individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God’s power. I
do believe that I blushed with shame when this idea crossed my mind. After
a little while I became possessed with the keenest curiosity about the whirl
itself. I positively felt a wish to explore its depths, even at the sacrifice I
was going to make; and my principal grief was that I should never be able
to tell my old companions on shore about the mysteries I should see. These,
no doubt, were singular fancies to occupy a man’s mind in such extremity—
and I have often thought since, that the revolutions of the boat around the
pool might have rendered me a little light-headed.
“There was another circumstance which tended to restore my self-
possession; and this was the cessation of the wind, which could not reach us
in our present situation—for, as you saw yourself, the belt of surf is
considerably lower than the general bed of the ocean, and this latter now
towered above us, a high, black, mountainous ridge. If you have never been
at sea in a heavy gale, you can form no idea of the confusion of mind
occasioned by the wind and spray together. They blind, deafen, and strangle
you, and take away all power of action or reflection. But we were now, in a
great measure, rid of these annoyances—just as death-condemned felons in
prison are allowed petty indulgences, forbidden them while their doom is
yet uncertain.
“How often we made the circuit of the belt it is impossible to say. We
careered round and round for perhaps an hour, flying rather than floating,

getting gradually more and more into the middle of the surge, and then
nearer and nearer to its horrible inner edge. All this time I had never let go
of the ring-bolt. My brother was at the stern, holding on to a small empty
water-cask which had been securely lashed under the coop of the counter,
and was the only thing on deck that had not been swept overboard when the
gale first took us. As we approached the brink of the pit he let go his hold
upon this, and made for the ring, from which, in the agony of his terror, he
endeavored to force my hands, as it was not large enough to afford us both a
secure grasp. I never felt deeper grief than when I saw him attempt this act
—although I knew he was a madman when he did it—a raving maniac
through sheer fright. I did not care, however, to contest the point with him. I
knew it could make no difference whether either of us held on at all; so I let
him have the bolt, and went astern to the cask. This there was no great
difficulty in doing; for the smack flew round steadily enough, and upon an
even keel—only swaying to and fro, with the immense sweeps and swelters
of the whirl. Scarcely had I secured myself in my new position, when we
gave a wild lurch to starboard, and rushed headlong into the abyss. I
muttered a hurried prayer to God, and thought all was over.
“As I felt the sickening sweep of the descent, I had instinctively tightened
my hold upon the barrel, and closed my eyes. For some seconds I dared not
open them—while I expected instant destruction, and wondered that I was
not already in my death-struggles with the water. But moment after moment
elapsed. I still lived. The sense of falling had ceased; and the motion of the
vessel seemed much as it had been before, while in the belt of foam, with
the exception that she now lay more along. I took courage, and looked once
again upon the scene.
“Never shall I forget the sensations of awe, horror, and admiration with
which I gazed about me. The boat appeared to be hanging, as if by magic,
midway down, upon the interior surface of a funnel vast in circumference,
prodigious in depth, and whose perfectly smooth sides might have been
mistaken for ebony, but for the bewildering rapidity with which they spun
around, and for the gleaming and ghastly radiance they shot forth, as the
rays of the full moon, from that circular rift amid the clouds which I have
already described, streamed in a flood of golden glory along the black
walls, and far away down into the inmost recesses of the abyss.

“At first I was too much confused to observe anything accurately. The
general burst of terrific grandeur was all that I beheld. When I recovered
myself a little, however, my gaze fell instinctively downward. In this
direction I was able to obtain an unobstructed view, from the manner in
which the smack hung on the inclined surface of the pool. She was quite
upon an even keel—that is to say, her deck lay in a plane parallel with that
of the water—but this latter sloped at an angle of more than forty-five
degrees, so that we seemed to be lying upon our beam-ends. I could not
help observing, nevertheless, that I had scarcely more difficulty in
maintaining my hold and footing in this situation, than if we had been upon
a dead level; and this, I suppose, was owing to the speed at which we
revolved.
“The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound
gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist
in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a
magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which
Mussulmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist,
or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the
funnel, as they all met together at the bottom—but the yell that went up to
the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe.
“Our first slide into the abyss itself, from the belt of foam above, had
carried us a great distance down the slope; but our farther descent was by
no means proportionate. Round and round we swept—not with any uniform
movement—but in dizzying swings and jerks, that sent us sometimes only a
few hundred yards—sometimes nearly the complete circuit of the whirl.
Our progress downward, at each revolution, was slow, but very perceptible.
“Looking about me upon the wide waste of liquid ebony on which we
were thus borne, I perceived that our boat was not the only object in the
embrace of the whirl. Both above and below us were visible fragments of
vessels, large masses of building timber and trunks of trees, with many
smaller articles, such as pieces of house furniture, broken boxes, barrels and
staves. I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the
place of my original terrors. It appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer
and nearer to my dreadful doom. I now began to watch, with a strange
interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been
delirious, for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative

velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. ‘This fir tree,’ I
found myself at one time saying, ‘will certainly be the next thing that takes
the awful plunge and disappears,’—and then I was disappointed to find that
the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook it and went down before. At
length, after making several guesses of this nature, and being deceived in all
—this fact—the fact of my invariable miscalculation, set me upon a train of
reflection that made my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily
once more.
“It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more
exciting hope. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from present
observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant matter that
strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and then thrown forth
by the Moskoe-ström. By far the greater number of the articles were
shattered in the most extraordinary way—so chafed and roughened as to
have the appearance of being stuck full of splinters—but then I distinctly
recollected that there were some of them which were not disfigured at all.
Now I could not account for this difference except by supposing that the
roughened fragments were the only ones which had been completely
absorbed—that the others had entered the whirl at so late a period of the
tide, or, for some reason, had descended so slowly after entering, that they
did not reach the bottom before the turn of the flood came, or of the ebb, as
the case might be. I conceived it possible, in either instance, that they might
thus be whirled up again to the level of the ocean, without undergoing the
fate of those which had been drawn in more early, or absorbed more rapidly.
I made, also, three important observations. The first was, that, as a general
rule, the larger the bodies were, the more rapid their descent—the second,
that, between two masses of equal extent, the one spherical, and the other of
any other shape, the superiority in speed of descent was with the sphere—
the third, that, between two masses of equal size, the one cylindrical, and
the other of any other shape, the cylinder was absorbed the more slowly.
Since my escape, I have had several conversations on this subject with an
old school-master of the district; and it was from him that I learned the use
of the words ‘cylinder’ and ‘sphere.’ He explained to me—although I have
forgotten the explanation—how what I observed was, in fact, the natural
consequence of the forms of the floating fragments—and showed me how it
happened that a cylinder, swimming in a vortex, offered more resistance to

its suction, and was drawn in with greater difficulty than an equally bulky
body, of any form whatever. (*1)
“There was one startling circumstance which went a great way in
enforcing these observations, and rendering me anxious to turn them to
account, and this was that, at every revolution, we passed something like a
barrel, or else the yard or the mast of a vessel, while many of these things,
which had been on our level when I first opened my eyes upon the wonders
of the whirlpool, were now high up above us, and seemed to have moved
but little from their original station.
“I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the
water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to
throw myself with it into the water. I attracted my brother’s attention by
signs, pointed to the floating barrels that came near us, and did everything
in my power to make him understand what I was about to do. I thought at
length that he comprehended my design—but, whether this was the case or
not, he shook his head despairingly, and refused to move from his station by
the ring-bolt. It was impossible to reach him; the emergency admitted of no
delay; and so, with a bitter struggle, I resigned him to his fate, fastened
myself to the cask by means of the lashings which secured it to the counter,
and precipitated myself with it into the sea, without another moment’s
hesitation.
“The result was precisely what I had hoped it might be. As it is myself
who now tell you this tale—as you see that I did escape—and as you are
already in possession of the mode in which this escape was effected, and
must therefore anticipate all that I have farther to say—I will bring my story
quickly to conclusion. It might have been an hour, or thereabout, after my
quitting the smack, when, having descended to a vast distance beneath me,
it made three or four wild gyrations in rapid succession, and, bearing my
loved brother with it, plunged headlong, at once and forever, into the chaos
of foam below. The barrel to which I was attached sunk very little farther
than half the distance between the bottom of the gulf and the spot at which I
leaped overboard, before a great change took place in the character of the
whirlpool. The slope of the sides of the vast funnel became momently less
and less steep. The gyrations of the whirl grew, gradually, less and less
violent. By degrees, the froth and the rainbow disappeared, and the bottom
of the gulf seemed slowly to uprise. The sky was clear, the winds had gone

down, and the full moon was setting radiantly in the west, when I found
myself on the surface of the ocean, in full view of the shores of Lofoden,
and above the spot where the pool of the Moskoe-ström had been. It was
the hour of the slack—but the sea still heaved in mountainous waves from
the effects of the hurricane. I was borne violently into the channel of the
Ström, and in a few minutes was hurried down the coast into the ‘grounds’
of the fishermen. A boat picked me up—exhausted from fatigue—and (now
that the danger was removed) speechless from the memory of its horror.
Those who drew me on board were my old mates and daily companions—
but they knew me no more than they would have known a traveller from the
spirit-land. My hair which had been raven-black the day before, was as
white as you see it now. They say too that the whole expression of my
countenance had changed. I told them my story—they did not believe it. I
now tell it to you—and I can scarcely expect you to put more faith in it than
did the merry fishermen of Lofoden.”

VON KEMPELEN AND HIS DISCOVERY

After the very minute and elaborate paper by Arago, to say nothing of the
summary in ‘Silliman’s Journal,’ with the detailed statement just published
by Lieutenant Maury, it will not be supposed, of course, that in offering a
few hurried remarks in reference to Von Kempelen’s discovery, I have any
design to look at the subject in a scientific point of view. My object is
simply, in the first place, to say a few words of Von Kempelen himself (with
whom, some years ago, I had the honor of a slight personal acquaintance),
since every thing which concerns him must necessarily, at this moment, be
of interest; and, in the second place, to look in a general way, and
speculatively, at the results of the discovery.
It may be as well, however, to premise the cursory observations which I
have to offer, by denying, very decidedly, what seems to be a general
impression (gleaned, as usual in a case of this kind, from the newspapers),
viz.: that this discovery, astounding as it unquestionably is, is unanticipated.
By reference to the ‘Diary of Sir Humphrey Davy’ (Cottle and Munroe,
London, pp. 150), it will be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that this illustrious
chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question, but had actually
made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in the very identical
analysis now so triumphantly brought to an issue by Von Kempelen, who
although he makes not the slightest allusion to it, is, without doubt (I say it
unhesitatingly, and can prove it, if required), indebted to the ‘Diary’ for at
least the first hint of his own undertaking.
The paragraph from the ‘Courier and Enquirer,’ which is now going the
rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for a Mr.
Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I confess, a little apocryphal,
for several reasons; although there is nothing either impossible or very
improbable in the statement made. I need not go into details. My opinion of
the paragraph is founded principally upon its manner. It does not look true.
Persons who are narrating facts, are seldom so particular as Mr. Kissam

seems to be, about day and date and precise location. Besides, if Mr.
Kissam actually did come upon the discovery he says he did, at the period
designated—nearly eight years ago—how happens it that he took no steps,
on the instant, to reap the immense benefits which the merest bumpkin must
have known would have resulted to him individually, if not to the world at
large, from the discovery? It seems to me quite incredible that any man of
common understanding could have discovered what Mr. Kissam says he
did, and yet have subsequently acted so like a baby—so like an owl—as Mr.
Kissam admits that he did. By-the-way, who is Mr. Kissam? and is not the
whole paragraph in the ‘Courier and Enquirer’ a fabrication got up to ‘make
a talk’? It must be confessed that it has an amazingly moon-hoaxy-air. Very
little dependence is to be placed upon it, in my humble opinion; and if I
were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of science are
mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry, I should be
profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist as Professor Draper,
discussing Mr. Kissam’s (or is it Mr. Quizzem’s?) pretensions to the
discovery, in so serious a tone.
But to return to the ‘Diary’ of Sir Humphrey Davy. This pamphlet was
not designed for the public eye, even upon the decease of the writer, as any
person at all conversant with authorship may satisfy himself at once by the
slightest inspection of the style. At page 13, for example, near the middle,
we read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide of azote: ‘In less
than half a minute the respiration being continued, diminished gradually
and were succeeded by analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.’
That the respiration was not ‘diminished,’ is not only clear by the
subsequent context, but by the use of the plural, ‘were.’ The sentence, no
doubt, was thus intended: ‘In less than half a minute, the respiration [being
continued, these feelings] diminished gradually, and were succeeded by [a
sensation] analogous to gentle pressure on all the muscles.’ A hundred
similar instances go to show that the MS. so inconsiderately published, was
merely a rough note-book, meant only for the writer’s own eye, but an
inspection of the pamphlet will convince almost any thinking person of the
truth of my suggestion. The fact is, Sir Humphrey Davy was about the last
man in the world to commit himself on scientific topics. Not only had he a
more than ordinary dislike to quackery, but he was morbidly afraid of
appearing empirical; so that, however fully he might have been convinced
that he was on the right track in the matter now in question, he would never

have spoken out, until he had every thing ready for the most practical
demonstration. I verily believe that his last moments would have been
rendered wretched, could he have suspected that his wishes in regard to
burning this ‘Diary’ (full of crude speculations) would have been
unattended to; as, it seems, they were. I say ‘his wishes,’ for that he meant
to include this note-book among the miscellaneous papers directed ‘to be
burnt,’ I think there can be no manner of doubt. Whether it escaped the
flames by good fortune or by bad, yet remains to be seen. That the passages
quoted above, with the other similar ones referred to, gave Von Kempelen
the hint, I do not in the slightest degree question; but I repeat, it yet remains
to be seen whether this momentous discovery itself (momentous under any
circumstances) will be of service or disservice to mankind at large. That
Von Kempelen and his immediate friends will reap a rich harvest, it would
be folly to doubt for a moment. They will scarcely be so weak as not to
‘realize,’ in time, by large purchases of houses and land, with other property
of intrinsic value.
In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the ‘Home
Journal,’ and has since been extensively copied, several misapprehensions
of the German original seem to have been made by the translator, who
professes to have taken the passage from a late number of the Presburg
‘Schnellpost.’ ‘Viele’ has evidently been misconceived (as it often is), and
what the translator renders by ‘sorrows,’ is probably ‘lieden,’ which, in its
true version, ‘sufferings,’ would give a totally different complexion to the
whole account; but, of course, much of this is merely guess, on my part.
Von Kempelen, however, is by no means ‘a misanthrope,’ in appearance,
at least, whatever he may be in fact. My acquaintance with him was casual
altogether; and I am scarcely warranted in saying that I know him at all; but
to have seen and conversed with a man of so prodigious a notoriety as he
has attained, or will attain in a few days, is not a small matter, as times go.
“The Literary World” speaks of him, confidently, as a native of Presburg
(misled, perhaps, by the account in “The Home Journal”) but I am pleased
in being able to state positively, since I have it from his own lips, that he
was born in Utica, in the State of New York, although both his parents, I
believe, are of Presburg descent. The family is connected, in some way,
with Mäelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory. In person, he is short
and stout, with large, fat, blue eyes, sandy hair and whiskers, a wide but

pleasing mouth, fine teeth, and I think a Roman nose. There is some defect
in one of his feet. His address is frank, and his whole manner noticeable for
bonhomie. Altogether, he looks, speaks, and acts as little like ‘a
misanthrope’ as any man I ever saw. We were fellow-sojourners for a week
about six years ago, at Earl’s Hotel, in Providence, Rhode Island; and I
presume that I conversed with him, at various times, for some three or four
hours altogether. His principal topics were those of the day; and nothing
that fell from him led me to suspect his scientific attainments. He left the
hotel before me, intending to go to New York, and thence to Bremen; it was
in the latter city that his great discovery was first made public; or, rather, it
was there that he was first suspected of having made it. This is about all that
I personally know of the now immortal Von Kempelen; but I have thought
that even these few details would have interest for the public.
There can be little question that most of the marvellous rumors afloat
about this affair are pure inventions, entitled to about as much credit as the
story of Aladdin’s lamp; and yet, in a case of this kind, as in the case of the
discoveries in California, it is clear that the truth may be stranger than
fiction. The following anecdote, at least, is so well authenticated, that we
may receive it implicitly.
Von Kempelen had never been even tolerably well off during his
residence at Bremen; and often, it was well known, he had been put to
extreme shifts in order to raise trifling sums. When the great excitement
occurred about the forgery on the house of Gutsmuth & Co., suspicion was
directed toward Von Kempelen, on account of his having purchased a
considerable property in Gasperitch Lane, and his refusing, when
questioned, to explain how he became possessed of the purchase money. He
was at length arrested, but nothing decisive appearing against him, was in
the end set at liberty. The police, however, kept a strict watch upon his
movements, and thus discovered that he left home frequently, taking always
the same road, and invariably giving his watchers the slip in the
neighborhood of that labyrinth of narrow and crooked passages known by
the flash name of the ‘Dondergat.’ Finally, by dint of great perseverance,
they traced him to a garret in an old house of seven stories, in an alley
called Flatzplatz,—and, coming upon him suddenly, found him, as they
imagined, in the midst of his counterfeiting operations. His agitation is
represented as so excessive that the officers had not the slightest doubt of

his guilt. After hand-cuffing him, they searched his room, or rather rooms,
for it appears he occupied all the mansarde.
Opening into the garret where they caught him, was a closet, ten feet by
eight, fitted up with some chemical apparatus, of which the object has not
yet been ascertained. In one corner of the closet was a very small furnace,
with a glowing fire in it, and on the fire a kind of duplicate crucible—two
crucibles connected by a tube. One of these crucibles was nearly full of lead
in a state of fusion, but not reaching up to the aperture of the tube, which
was close to the brim. The other crucible had some liquid in it, which, as the
officers entered, seemed to be furiously dissipating in vapor. They relate
that, on finding himself taken, Kempelen seized the crucibles with both
hands (which were encased in gloves that afterwards turned out to be
asbestic), and threw the contents on the tiled floor. It was now that they
hand-cuffed him; and before proceeding to ransack the premises they
searched his person, but nothing unusual was found about him, excepting a
paper parcel, in his coat-pocket, containing what was afterward ascertained
to be a mixture of antimony and some unknown substance, in nearly, but
not quite, equal proportions. All attempts at analyzing the unknown
substance have, so far, failed, but that it will ultimately be analyzed, is not
to be doubted.
Passing out of the closet with their prisoner, the officers went through a
sort of ante-chamber, in which nothing material was found, to the chemist’s
sleeping-room. They here rummaged some drawers and boxes, but
discovered only a few papers, of no importance, and some good coin, silver
and gold. At length, looking under the bed, they saw a large, common hair
trunk, without hinges, hasp, or lock, and with the top lying carelessly across
the bottom portion. Upon attempting to draw this trunk out from under the
bed, they found that, with their united strength (there were three of them, all
powerful men), they ‘could not stir it one inch.’ Much astonished at this,
one of them crawled under the bed, and looking into the trunk, said:
‘No wonder we couldn’t move it—why it’s full to the brim of old bits of
brass!’
Putting his feet, now, against the wall so as to get a good purchase, and
pushing with all his force, while his companions pulled with all theirs, the
trunk, with much difficulty, was slid out from under the bed, and its
contents examined. The supposed brass with which it was filled was all in

small, smooth pieces, varying from the size of a pea to that of a dollar; but
the pieces were irregular in shape, although more or less flat-looking, upon
the whole, “very much as lead looks when thrown upon the ground in a
molten state, and there suffered to grow cool.” Now, not one of these
officers for a moment suspected this metal to be anything but brass. The
idea of its being gold never entered their brains, of course; how could such
a wild fancy have entered it? And their astonishment may be well
conceived, when the next day it became known, all over Bremen, that the
“lot of brass” which they had carted so contemptuously to the police office,
without putting themselves to the trouble of pocketing the smallest scrap,
was not only gold—real gold—but gold far finer than any employed in
coinage—gold, in fact, absolutely pure, virgin, without the slightest
appreciable alloy.
I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen’s confession (as far as it
went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. That he has actually
realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the
philosopher’s stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt. The opinions of
Arago are, of course, entitled to the greatest consideration; but he is by no
means infallible; and what he says of bismuth, in his report to the Academy,
must be taken cum grano salis. The simple truth is, that up to this period all
analysis has failed; and until Von Kempelen chooses to let us have the key
to his own published enigma, it is more than probable that the matter will
remain, for years, in statu quo. All that as yet can fairly be said to be known
is, that ‘Pure gold can be made at will, and very readily from lead in
connection with certain other substances, in kind and in proportions,
unknown.’
Speculation, of course, is busy as to the immediate and ultimate results of
this discovery—a discovery which few thinking persons will hesitate in
referring to an increased interest in the matter of gold generally, by the late
developments in California; and this reflection brings us inevitably to
another—the exceeding inopportuneness of Von Kempelen’s analysis. If
many were prevented from adventuring to California, by the mere
apprehension that gold would so materially diminish in value, on account of
its plentifulness in the mines there, as to render the speculation of going so
far in search of it a doubtful one—what impression will be wrought now,
upon the minds of those about to emigrate, and especially upon the minds
of those actually in the mineral region, by the announcement of this

astounding discovery of Von Kempelen? a discovery which declares, in so
many words, that beyond its intrinsic worth for manufacturing purposes
(whatever that worth may be), gold now is, or at least soon will be (for it
cannot be supposed that Von Kempelen can long retain his secret), of no
greater value than lead, and of far inferior value to silver. It is, indeed,
exceedingly difficult to speculate prospectively upon the consequences of
the discovery, but one thing may be positively maintained—that the
announcement of the discovery six months ago would have had material
influence in regard to the settlement of California.
In Europe, as yet, the most noticeable results have been a rise of two
hundred per cent. in the price of lead, and nearly twenty-five per cent. that
of silver.

MESMERIC REVELATION

Whatever doubt may still envelop the rationale of mesmerism, its
startling facts are now almost universally admitted. Of these latter, those
who doubt, are your mere doubters by profession—an unprofitable and
disreputable tribe. There can be no more absolute waste of time than the
attempt to prove, at the present day, that man, by mere exercise of will, can
so impress his fellow, as to cast him into an abnormal condition, of which
the phenomena resemble very closely those of death, or at least resemble
them more nearly than they do the phenomena of any other normal
condition within our cognizance; that, while in this state, the person so
impressed employs only with effort, and then feebly, the external organs of
sense, yet perceives, with keenly refined perception, and through channels
supposed unknown, matters beyond the scope of the physical organs; that,
moreover, his intellectual faculties are wonderfully exalted and invigorated;
that his sympathies with the person so impressing him are profound; and,
finally, that his susceptibility to the impression increases with its frequency,
while, in the same proportion, the peculiar phenomena elicited are more
extended and more pronounced.
I say that these—which are the laws of mesmerism in its general features
—it would be supererogation to demonstrate; nor shall I inflict upon my
readers so needless a demonstration; to-day. My purpose at present is a very
different one indeed. I am impelled, even in the teeth of a world of
prejudice, to detail without comment the very remarkable substance of a
colloquy, occurring between a sleep-waker and myself.
I had been long in the habit of mesmerizing the person in question (Mr.
Vankirk), and the usual acute susceptibility and exaltation of the mesmeric
perception had supervened. For many months he had been laboring under
confirmed phthisis, the more distressing effects of which had been relieved
by my manipulations; and on the night of Wednesday, the fifteenth instant, I
was summoned to his bedside.

The invalid was suffering with acute pain in the region of the heart, and
breathed with great difficulty, having all the ordinary symptoms of asthma.
In spasms such as these he had usually found relief from the application of
mustard to the nervous centres, but to-night this had been attempted in vain.
As I entered his room he greeted me with a cheerful smile, and although
evidently in much bodily pain, appeared to be, mentally, quite at ease.
“I sent for you to-night,” he said, “not so much to administer to my
bodily ailment, as to satisfy me concerning certain psychal impressions
which, of late, have occasioned me much anxiety and surprise. I need not
tell you how sceptical I have hitherto been on the topic of the soul’s
immortality. I cannot deny that there has always existed, as if in that very
soul which I have been denying, a vague half-sentiment of its own
existence. But this half-sentiment at no time amounted to conviction. With
it my reason had nothing to do. All attempts at logical inquiry resulted,
indeed, in leaving me more sceptical than before. I had been advised to
study Cousin. I studied him in his own works as well as in those of his
European and American echoes. The ‘Charles Elwood’ of Mr. Brownson,
for example, was placed in my hands. I read it with profound attention.
Throughout I found it logical, but the portions which were not merely
logical were unhappily the initial arguments of the disbelieving hero of the
book. In his summing up it seemed evident to me that the reasoner had not
even succeeded in convincing himself. His end had plainly forgotten his
beginning, like the government of Trinculo. In short, I was not long in
perceiving that if man is to be intellectually convinced of his own
immortality, he will never be so convinced by the mere abstractions which
have been so long the fashion of the moralists of England, of France, and of
Germany. Abstractions may amuse and exercise, but take no hold on the
mind. Here upon earth, at least, philosophy, I am persuaded, will always in
vain call upon us to look upon qualities as things. The will may assent—the
soul—the intellect, never.
“I repeat, then, that I only half felt, and never intellectually believed. But
latterly there has been a certain deepening of the feeling, until it has come
so nearly to resemble the acquiescence of reason, that I find it difficult to
distinguish between the two. I am enabled, too, plainly to trace this effect to
the mesmeric influence. I cannot better explain my meaning than by the
hypothesis that the mesmeric exaltation enables me to perceive a train of

ratiocination which, in my abnormal existence, convinces, but which, in full
accordance with the mesmeric phenomena, does not extend, except through
its effect, into my normal condition. In sleep-waking, the reasoning and its
conclusion—the cause and its effect—are present together. In my natural
state, the cause vanishing, the effect only, and perhaps only partially,
remains.
“These considerations have led me to think that some good results might
ensue from a series of well-directed questions propounded to me while
mesmerized. You have often observed the profound self-cognizance evinced
by the sleep-waker—the extensive knowledge he displays upon all points
relating to the mesmeric condition itself; and from this self-cognizance may
be deduced hints for the proper conduct of a catechism.”
I consented of course to make this experiment. A few passes threw Mr.
Vankirk into the mesmeric sleep. His breathing became immediately more
easy, and he seemed to suffer no physical uneasiness. The following
conversation then ensued:—V. in the dialogue representing the patient, and
P. myself.
P. Are you asleep?
V. Yes—no; I would rather sleep more soundly.
P. [After a few more passes.] Do you sleep now?
V. Yes.
P. How do you think your present illness will result?
V. [After a long hesitation and speaking as if with effort.] I must die.
P. Does the idea of death afflict you?
V. [Very quickly.] No—no!
P. Are you pleased with the prospect?
V. If I were awake I should like to die, but now it is no matter. The
mesmeric condition is so near death as to content me.
P. I wish you would explain yourself, Mr. Vankirk.
V. I am willing to do so, but it requires more effort than I feel able to
make. You do not question me properly.
P. What then shall I ask?
V. You must begin at the beginning.

P. The beginning! But where is the beginning?
V. You know that the beginning is GOD. [This was said in a low,
fluctuating tone, and with every sign of the most profound veneration.]
P. What then, is God?
V. [Hesitating for many minutes.] I cannot tell.
P. Is not God spirit?
V. While I was awake I knew what you meant by “spirit,” but now it
seems only a word—such, for instance, as truth, beauty—a quality, I mean.
P. Is not God immaterial?
V. There is no immateriality—it is a mere word. That which is not matter,
is not at all—unless qualities are things.
P. Is God, then, material?
V. No. [This reply startled me very much.]
P. What, then, is he?
V. [After a long pause, and mutteringly.] I see—but it is a thing difficult
to tell. [Another long pause.] He is not spirit, for he exists. Nor is he matter,
as you understand it. But there are gradations of matter of which man
knows nothing; the grosser impelling the finer, the finer pervading the
grosser. The atmosphere, for example, impels the electric principle, while
the electric principle permeates the atmosphere. These gradations of matter
increase in rarity or fineness, until we arrive at a matter unparticled—
without particles—indivisible—one; and here the law of impulsion and
permeation is modified. The ultimate, or unparticled matter, not only
permeates all things but impels all things; and thus is all things within itself.
This matter is God. What men attempt to embody in the word “thought,” is
this matter in motion.
P. The metaphysicians maintain that all action is reducible to motion and
thinking, and that the latter is the origin of the former.
V. Yes; and I now see the confusion of idea. Motion is the action of mind,
not of thinking. The unparticled matter, or God, in quiescence, is (as nearly
as we can conceive it) what men call mind. And the power of self-
movement (equivalent in effect to human volition) is, in the unparticled
matter, the result of its unity and omniprevalence; how I know not, and now

clearly see that I shall never know. But the unparticled matter, set in motion
by a law, or quality, existing within itself, is thinking.
P. Can you give me no more precise idea of what you term the
unparticled matter?
V. The matters of which man is cognizant escape the senses in gradation.
We have, for example, a metal, a piece of wood, a drop of water, the
atmosphere, a gas, caloric, electricity, the luminiferous ether. Now we call
all these things matter, and embrace all matter in one general definition; but
in spite of this, there can be no two ideas more essentially distinct than that
which we attach to a metal, and that which we attach to the luminiferous
ether. When we reach the latter, we feel an almost irresistible inclination to
class it with spirit, or with nihility. The only consideration which restrains
us is our conception of its atomic constitution; and here, even, we have to
seek aid from our notion of an atom, as something possessing in infinite
minuteness, solidity, palpability, weight. Destroy the idea of the atomic
constitution and we should no longer be able to regard the ether as an entity,
or at least as matter. For want of a better word we might term it spirit. Take,
now, a step beyond the luminiferous ether—conceive a matter as much
more rare than the ether, as this ether is more rare than the metal, and we
arrive at once (in spite of all the school dogmas) at a unique mass—an
unparticled matter. For although we may admit infinite littleness in the
atoms themselves, the infinitude of littleness in the spaces between them is
an absurdity. There will be a point—there will be a degree of rarity, at
which, if the atoms are sufficiently numerous, the interspaces must vanish,
and the mass absolutely coalesce. But the consideration of the atomic
constitution being now taken away, the nature of the mass inevitably glides
into what we conceive of spirit. It is clear, however, that it is as fully matter
as before. The truth is, it is impossible to conceive spirit, since it is
impossible to imagine what is not. When we flatter ourselves that we have
formed its conception, we have merely deceived our understanding by the
consideration of infinitely rarified matter.
P. There seems to me an insurmountable objection to the idea of absolute
coalescence;—and that is the very slight resistance experienced by the
heavenly bodies in their revolutions through space—a resistance now
ascertained, it is true, to exist in some degree, but which is, nevertheless, so
slight as to have been quite overlooked by the sagacity even of Newton. We

know that the resistance of bodies is, chiefly, in proportion to their density.
Absolute coalescence is absolute density. Where there are no interspaces,
there can be no yielding. An ether, absolutely dense, would put an infinitely
more effectual stop to the progress of a star than would an ether of adamant
or of iron.
V. Your objection is answered with an ease which is nearly in the ratio of
its apparent unanswerability.—As regards the progress of the star, it can
make no difference whether the star passes through the ether or the ether
through it. There is no astronomical error more unaccountable than that
which reconciles the known retardation of the comets with the idea of their
passage through an ether: for, however rare this ether be supposed, it would
put a stop to all sidereal revolution in a very far briefer period than has been
admitted by those astronomers who have endeavored to slur over a point
which they found it impossible to comprehend. The retardation actually
experienced is, on the other hand, about that which might be expected from
the friction of the ether in the instantaneous passage through the orb. In the
one case, the retarding force is momentary and complete within itself—in
the other it is endlessly accumulative.
P. But in all this—in this identification of mere matter with God—is there
nothing of irreverence? [I was forced to repeat this question before the
sleep-waker fully comprehended my meaning.]
V. Can you say why matter should be less reverenced than mind? But you
forget that the matter of which I speak is, in all respects, the very “mind” or
“spirit” of the schools, so far as regards its high capacities, and is,
moreover, the “matter” of these schools at the same time. God, with all the
powers attributed to spirit, is but the perfection of matter.
P. You assert, then, that the unparticled matter, in motion, is thought?
V. In general, this motion is the universal thought of the universal mind.
This thought creates. All created things are but the thoughts of God.
P. You say, “in general.”
V. Yes. The universal mind is God. For new individualities, matter is
necessary.
P. But you now speak of “mind” and “matter” as do the metaphysicians.
V. Yes—to avoid confusion. When I say “mind,” I mean the unparticled
or ultimate matter; by “matter,” I intend all else.

P. You were saying that “for new individualities matter is necessary.”
V. Yes; for mind, existing unincorporate, is merely God. To create
individual, thinking beings, it was necessary to incarnate portions of the
divine mind. Thus man is individualized. Divested of corporate investiture,
he were God. Now, the particular motion of the incarnated portions of the
unparticled matter is the thought of man; as the motion of the whole is that
of God.
P. You say that divested of the body man will be God?
V. [After much hesitation.] I could not have said this; it is an absurdity.
P. [Referring to my notes.] You did say that “divested of corporate
investiture man were God.”
V. And this is true. Man thus divested would be God—would be
unindividualized. But he can never be thus divested—at least never will be
—else we must imagine an action of God returning upon itself—a
purposeless and futile action. Man is a creature. Creatures are thoughts of
God. It is the nature of thought to be irrevocable.
P. I do not comprehend. You say that man will never put off the body?
V. I say that he will never be bodiless.
P. Explain.
V. There are two bodies—the rudimental and the complete; corresponding
with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call
“death,” is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is
progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate,
immortal. The ultimate life is the full design.
P. But of the worm’s metamorphosis we are palpably cognizant.
V. We, certainly—but not the worm. The matter of which our rudimental
body is composed, is within the ken of the organs of that body; or, more
distinctly, our rudimental organs are adapted to the matter of which is
formed the rudimental body; but not to that of which the ultimate is
composed. The ultimate body thus escapes our rudimental senses, and we
perceive only the shell which falls, in decaying, from the inner form; not
that inner form itself; but this inner form, as well as the shell, is appreciable
by those who have already acquired the ultimate life.

P. You have often said that the mesmeric state very nearly resembles
death. How is this?
V. When I say that it resembles death, I mean that it resembles the
ultimate life; for when I am entranced the senses of my rudimental life are
in abeyance, and I perceive external things directly, without organs, through
a medium which I shall employ in the ultimate, unorganized life.
P. Unorganized?
V. Yes; organs are contrivances by which the individual is brought into
sensible relation with particular classes and forms of matter, to the
exclusion of other classes and forms. The organs of man are adapted to his
rudimental condition, and to that only; his ultimate condition, being
unorganized, is of unlimited comprehension in all points but one—the
nature of the volition of God—that is to say, the motion of the unparticled
matter. You will have a distinct idea of the ultimate body by conceiving it to
be entire brain. This it is not; but a conception of this nature will bring you
near a comprehension of what it is. A luminous body imparts vibration to
the luminiferous ether. The vibrations generate similar ones within the
retina; these again communicate similar ones to the optic nerve. The nerve
conveys similar ones to the brain; the brain, also, similar ones to the
unparticled matter which permeates it. The motion of this latter is thought,
of which perception is the first undulation. This is the mode by which the
mind of the rudimental life communicates with the external world; and this
external world is, to the rudimental life, limited, through the idiosyncrasy of
its organs. But in the ultimate, unorganized life, the external world reaches
the whole body, (which is of a substance having affinity to brain, as I have
said,) with no other intervention than that of an infinitely rarer ether than
even the luminiferous; and to this ether—in unison with it—the whole body
vibrates, setting in motion the unparticled matter which permeates it. It is to
the absence of idiosyncratic organs, therefore, that we must attribute the
nearly unlimited perception of the ultimate life. To rudimental beings,
organs are the cages necessary to confine them until fledged.
P. You speak of rudimental “beings.” Are there other rudimental thinking
beings than man?
V. The multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulæ, planets,
suns, and other bodies which are neither nebulæ, suns, nor planets, is for the
sole purpose of supplying pabulum for the idiosyncrasy of the organs of an

infinity of rudimental beings. But for the necessity of the rudimental, prior
to the ultimate life, there would have been no bodies such as these. Each of
these is tenanted by a distinct variety of organic, rudimental, thinking
creatures. In all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. At
death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate life—
immortality—and cognizant of all secrets but the one, act all things and
pass everywhere by mere volition:—indwelling, not the stars, which to us
seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly
deem space created—but that SPACE itself—that infinity of which the truly
substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows—blotting them out as
non-entities from the perception of the angels.
P. You say that “but for the necessity of the rudimental life” there would
have been no stars. But why this necessity?
V. In the inorganic life, as well as in the inorganic matter generally, there
is nothing to impede the action of one simple unique law—the Divine
Volition. With the view of producing impediment, the organic life and
matter, (complex, substantial, and law-encumbered,) were contrived.
P. But again—why need this impediment have been produced?
V. The result of law inviolate is perfection—right—negative happiness.
The result of law violate is imperfection, wrong, positive pain. Through the
impediments afforded by the number, complexity, and substantiality of the
laws of organic life and matter, the violation of law is rendered, to a certain
extent, practicable. Thus pain, which in the inorganic life is impossible, is
possible in the organic.
P. But to what good end is pain thus rendered possible?
V. All things are either good or bad by comparison. A sufficient analysis
will show that pleasure, in all cases, is but the contrast of pain. Positive
pleasure is a mere idea. To be happy at any one point we must have suffered
at the same. Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.
But it has been shown that, in the inorganic life, pain cannot be thus the
necessity for the organic. The pain of the primitive life of Earth, is the sole
basis of the bliss of the ultimate life in Heaven.
P. Still, there is one of your expressions which I find it impossible to
comprehend—“the truly substantive vastness of infinity.”

V. This, probably, is because you have no sufficiently generic conception
of the term “substance” itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a
sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of
matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which
would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and
tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing
at all. But to the inorganic beings—to the angels—the whole of the
unparticled matter is substance—that is to say, the whole of what we term
“space” is to them the truest substantiality;—the stars, meantime, through
what we consider their materiality, escaping the angelic sense, just in
proportion as the unparticled matter, through what we consider its
immateriality, eludes the organic.
As the sleep-waker pronounced these latter words, in a feeble tone, I
observed on his countenance a singular expression, which somewhat
alarmed me, and induced me to awake him at once. No sooner had I done
this, than, with a bright smile irradiating all his features, he fell back upon
his pillow and expired. I noticed that in less than a minute afterward his
corpse had all the stern rigidity of stone. His brow was of the coldness of
ice. Thus, ordinarily, should it have appeared, only after long pressure from
Azrael’s hand. Had the sleep-waker, indeed, during the latter portion of his
discourse, been addressing me from out the region of the shadows?

THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF M. VALDEMAR

Of course I shall not pretend to consider it any matter for wonder, that the
extraordinary case of M. Valdemar has excited discussion. It would have
been a miracle had it not—especially under the circumstances. Through the
desire of all parties concerned, to keep the affair from the public, at least for
the present, or until we had farther opportunities for investigation—through
our endeavors to effect this—a garbled or exaggerated account made its
way into society, and became the source of many unpleasant
misrepresentations; and, very naturally, of a great deal of disbelief.
It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts—as far as I comprehend
them myself. They are, succinctly, these:
My attention, for the last three years, had been repeatedly drawn to the
subject of Mesmerism; and, about nine months ago it occurred to me, quite
suddenly, that in the series of experiments made hitherto, there had been a
very remarkable and most unaccountable omission:—no person had as yet
been mesmerized in articulo mortis. It remained to be seen, first, whether, in
such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the
magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or
increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period,
the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process. There were
other points to be ascertained, but these most excited my curiosity—the last
in especial, from the immensely important character of its consequences.
In looking around me for some subject by whose means I might test these
particulars, I was brought to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the
well-known compiler of the “Bibliotheca Forensica,” and author (under the
nom de plume of Issachar Marx) of the Polish versions of “Wallenstein”
and “Gargantua.” M. Valdemar, who has resided principally at Harlem,
N.Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) particularly noticeable for the extreme
spareness of his person—his lower limbs much resembling those of John
Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in violent contrast to

the blackness of his hair—the latter, in consequence, being very generally
mistaken for a wig. His temperament was markedly nervous, and rendered
him a good subject for mesmeric experiment. On two or three occasions I
had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but was disappointed in other
results which his peculiar constitution had naturally led me to anticipate.
His will was at no period positively, or thoroughly, under my control, and in
regard to clairvoyance, I could accomplish with him nothing to be relied
upon. I always attributed my failure at these points to the disordered state of
his health. For some months previous to my becoming acquainted with him,
his physicians had declared him in a confirmed phthisis. It was his custom,
indeed, to speak calmly of his approaching dissolution, as of a matter
neither to be avoided nor regretted.
When the ideas to which I have alluded first occurred to me, it was of
course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the steady
philosophy of the man too well to apprehend any scruples from him; and he
had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him
frankly upon the subject; and, to my surprise, his interest seemed vividly
excited. I say to my surprise, for, although he had always yielded his person
freely to my experiments, he had never before given me any tokens of
sympathy with what I did. His disease was of that character which would
admit of exact calculation in respect to the epoch of its termination in death;
and it was finally arranged between us that he would send for me about
twenty-four hours before the period announced by his physicians as that of
his decease.
It is now rather more than seven months since I received, from M.
Valdemar himself, the subjoined note:

MY DEAR P——,
You may as well come now. D—— and F—— are agreed that I cannot
hold out beyond to-morrow midnight; and I think they have hit the time
very nearly.

VALDEMAR

I received this note within half an hour after it was written, and in fifteen
minutes more I was in the dying man’s chamber. I had not seen him for ten

days, and was appalled by the fearful alteration which the brief interval had
wrought in him. His face wore a leaden hue; the eyes were utterly
lustreless; and the emaciation was so extreme that the skin had been broken
through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive. The pulse
was barely perceptible. He retained, nevertheless, in a very remarkable
manner, both his mental power and a certain degree of physical strength. He
spoke with distinctness—took some palliative medicines without aid—and,
when I entered the room, was occupied in penciling memoranda in a
pocket-book. He was propped up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D—— and
F—— were in attendance.
After pressing Valdemar’s hand, I took these gentlemen aside, and
obtained from them a minute account of the patient’s condition. The left
lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state,
and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in
its upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the
lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles, running one into
another. Several extensive perforations existed; and, at one point,
permanent adhesion to the ribs had taken place. These appearances in the
right lobe were of comparatively recent date. The ossification had
proceeded with very unusual rapidity; no sign of it had been discovered a
month before, and the adhesion had only been observed during the three
previous days. Independently of the phthisis, the patient was suspected of
aneurism of the aorta; but on this point the osseous symptoms rendered an
exact diagnosis impossible. It was the opinion of both physicians that M.
Valdemar would die about midnight on the morrow (Sunday). It was then
seven o’clock on Saturday evening.
On quitting the invalid’s bed-side to hold conversation with myself,
Doctors D—— and F—— had bidden him a final farewell. It had not been
their intention to return; but, at my request, they agreed to look in upon the
patient about ten the next night.
When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar on the subject of
his approaching dissolution, as well as, more particularly, of the experiment
proposed. He still professed himself quite willing and even anxious to have
it made, and urged me to commence it at once. A male and a female nurse
were in attendance; but I did not feel myself altogether at liberty to engage
in a task of this character with no more reliable witnesses than these people,

in case of sudden accident, might prove. I therefore postponed operations
until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student with
whom I had some acquaintance, (Mr. Theodore L—l,) relieved me from
farther embarrassment. It had been my design, originally, to wait for the
physicians; but I was induced to proceed, first, by the urgent entreaties of
M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my conviction that I had not a moment to
lose, as he was evidently sinking fast.
Mr. L—l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes
of all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what I now have to
relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim.
It wanted about five minutes of eight when, taking the patient’s hand, I
begged him to state, as distinctly as he could, to Mr. L—l, whether he (M.
Valdemar) was entirely willing that I should make the experiment of
mesmerizing him in his then condition.
He replied feebly, yet quite audibly, “Yes, I wish to be. I fear you have
mesmerized”—adding immediately afterwards: “I fear you have deferred it
too long.”
While he spoke thus, I commenced the passes which I had already found
most effectual in subduing him. He was evidently influenced with the first
lateral stroke of my hand across his forehead; but although I exerted all my
powers, no further perceptible effect was induced until some minutes after
ten o’clock, when Doctors D—— and F—— called, according to
appointment. I explained to them, in a few words, what I designed, and as
they opposed no objection, saying that the patient was already in the death
agony, I proceeded without hesitation—exchanging, however, the lateral
passes for downward ones, and directing my gaze entirely into the right eye
of the sufferer.
By this time his pulse was imperceptible and his breathing was
stertorous, and at intervals of half a minute.
This condition was nearly unaltered for a quarter of an hour. At the
expiration of this period, however, a natural although a very deep sigh
escaped the bosom of the dying man, and the stertorous breathing ceased—
that is to say, its stertorousness was no longer apparent; the intervals were
undiminished. The patient’s extremities were of an icy coldness.
At five minutes before eleven I perceived unequivocal signs of the
mesmeric influence. The glassy roll of the eye was changed for that

expression of uneasy inward examination which is never seen except in
cases of sleep-waking, and which it is quite impossible to mistake. With a
few rapid lateral passes I made the lids quiver, as in incipient sleep, and
with a few more I closed them altogether. I was not satisfied, however, with
this, but continued the manipulations vigorously, and with the fullest
exertion of the will, until I had completely stiffened the limbs of the
slumberer, after placing them in a seemingly easy position. The legs were at
full length; the arms were nearly so, and reposed on the bed at a moderate
distance from the loin. The head was very slightly elevated.
When I had accomplished this, it was fully midnight, and I requested the
gentlemen present to examine M. Valdemar’s condition. After a few
experiments, they admitted him to be an unusually perfect state of
mesmeric trance. The curiosity of both the physicians was greatly excited.
Dr. D—— resolved at once to remain with the patient all night, while Dr. F
—— took leave with a promise to return at daybreak. Mr. L—l and the
nurses remained.
We left M. Valdemar entirely undisturbed until about three o’clock in the
morning, when I approached him and found him in precisely the same
condition as when Dr. F—— went away—that is to say, he lay in the same
position; the pulse was imperceptible; the breathing was gentle (scarcely
noticeable, unless through the application of a mirror to the lips); the eyes
were closed naturally; and the limbs were as rigid and as cold as marble.
Still, the general appearance was certainly not that of death.
As I approached M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to influence his
right arm into pursuit of my own, as I passed the latter gently to and fro
above his person. In such experiments with this patient, I had never
perfectly succeeded before, and assuredly I had little thought of succeeding
now; but to my astonishment, his arm very readily, although feebly,
followed every direction I assigned it with mine. I determined to hazard a
few words of conversation.
“M. Valdemar,” I said, “are you asleep?” He made no answer, but I
perceived a tremor about the lips, and was thus induced to repeat the
question, again and again. At its third repetition, his whole frame was
agitated by a very slight shivering; the eyelids unclosed themselves so far as
to display a white line of the ball; the lips moved sluggishly, and from
between them, in a barely audible whisper, issued the words:

“Yes;—asleep now. Do not wake me!—let me die so!”
I here felt the limbs and found them as rigid as ever. The right arm, as
before, obeyed the direction of my hand. I questioned the sleep-waker
again:
“Do you still feel pain in the breast, M. Valdemar?”
The answer now was immediate, but even less audible than before:
“No pain—I am dying.”
I did not think it advisable to disturb him farther just then, and nothing
more was said or done until the arrival of Dr. F——, who came a little
before sunrise, and expressed unbounded astonishment at finding the
patient still alive. After feeling the pulse and applying a mirror to the lips,
he requested me to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so, saying:
“M. Valdemar, do you still sleep?”
As before, some minutes elapsed ere a reply was made; and during the
interval the dying man seemed to be collecting his energies to speak. At my
fourth repetition of the question, he said very faintly, almost inaudibly:
“Yes; still asleep—dying.”
It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the physicians, that M.
Valdemar should be suffered to remain undisturbed in his present apparently
tranquil condition, until death should supervene—and this, it was generally
agreed, must now take place within a few minutes. I concluded, however, to
speak to him once more, and merely repeated my previous question.
While I spoke, there came a marked change over the countenance of the
sleep-waker. The eyes rolled themselves slowly open, the pupils
disappearing upwardly; the skin generally assumed a cadaverous hue,
resembling not so much parchment as white paper; and the circular hectic
spots which, hitherto, had been strongly defined in the centre of each cheek,
went out at once. I use this expression, because the suddenness of their
departure put me in mind of nothing so much as the extinguishment of a
candle by a puff of the breath. The upper lip, at the same time, writhed itself
away from the teeth, which it had previously covered completely; while the
lower jaw fell with an audible jerk, leaving the mouth widely extended, and
disclosing in full view the swollen and blackened tongue. I presume that no
member of the party then present had been unaccustomed to death-bed
horrors; but so hideous beyond conception was the appearance of M.

Valdemar at this moment, that there was a general shrinking back from the
region of the bed.
I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every
reader will be startled into positive disbelief. It is my business, however,
simply to proceed.
There was no longer the faintest sign of vitality in M. Valdemar; and
concluding him to be dead, we were consigning him to the charge of the
nurses, when a strong vibratory motion was observable in the tongue. This
continued for perhaps a minute. At the expiration of this period, there issued
from the distended and motionless jaws a voice—such as it would be
madness in me to attempt describing. There are, indeed, two or three
epithets which might be considered as applicable to it in part; I might say,
for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken and hollow; but the
hideous whole is indescribable, for the simple reason that no similar sounds
have ever jarred upon the ear of humanity. There were two particulars,
nevertheless, which I thought then, and still think, might fairly be stated as
characteristic of the intonation—as well adapted to convey some idea of its
unearthly peculiarity. In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears—
at least mine—from a vast distance, or from some deep cavern within the
earth. In the second place, it impressed me (I fear, indeed, that it will be
impossible to make myself comprehended) as gelatinous or glutinous
matters impress the sense of touch.
I have spoken both of “sound” and of “voice.” I mean to say that the
sound was one of distinct—of even wonderfully, thrillingly distinct—
syllabification. M. Valdemar spoke—obviously in reply to the question I
had propounded to him a few minutes before. I had asked him, it will be
remembered, if he still slept. He now said:
“Yes;—no;—I have been sleeping—and now—now—I am dead.”
No person present even affected to deny, or attempted to repress, the
unutterable, shuddering horror which these few words, thus uttered, were so
well calculated to convey. Mr. L—l (the student) swooned. The nurses
immediately left the chamber, and could not be induced to return. My own
impressions I would not pretend to render intelligible to the reader. For
nearly an hour, we busied ourselves, silently—without the utterance of a
word—in endeavors to revive Mr. L—l. When he came to himself, we
addressed ourselves again to an investigation of M. Valdemar’s condition.

It remained in all respects as I have last described it, with the exception
that the mirror no longer afforded evidence of respiration. An attempt to
draw blood from the arm failed. I should mention, too, that this limb was no
farther subject to my will. I endeavored in vain to make it follow the
direction of my hand. The only real indication, indeed, of the mesmeric
influence, was now found in the vibratory movement of the tongue,
whenever I addressed M. Valdemar a question. He seemed to be making an
effort to reply, but had no longer sufficient volition. To queries put to him
by any other person than myself he seemed utterly insensible—although I
endeavored to place each member of the company in mesmeric rapport with
him. I believe that I have now related all that is necessary to an
understanding of the sleep-waker’s state at this epoch. Other nurses were
procured; and at ten o’clock I left the house in company with the two
physicians and Mr. L—l.
In the afternoon we all called again to see the patient. His condition
remained precisely the same. We had now some discussion as to the
propriety and feasibility of awakening him; but we had little difficulty in
agreeing that no good purpose would be served by so doing. It was evident
that, so far, death (or what is usually termed death) had been arrested by the
mesmeric process. It seemed clear to us all that to awaken M. Valdemar
would be merely to insure his instant, or at least his speedy, dissolution.
From this period until the close of last week—an interval of nearly seven
months—we continued to make daily calls at M. Valdemar’s house,
accompanied, now and then, by medical and other friends. All this time the
sleeper-waker remained exactly as I have last described him. The nurses’
attentions were continual.
It was on Friday last that we finally resolved to make the experiment of
awakening, or attempting to awaken him; and it is the (perhaps) unfortunate
result of this latter experiment which has given rise to so much discussion
in private circles—to so much of what I cannot help thinking unwarranted
popular feeling.
For the purpose of relieving M. Valdemar from the mesmeric trance, I
made use of the customary passes. These, for a time, were unsuccessful.
The first indication of revival was afforded by a partial descent of the iris. It
was observed, as especially remarkable, that this lowering of the pupil was

accompanied by the profuse out-flowing of a yellowish ichor (from beneath
the lids) of a pungent and highly offensive odor.
It was now suggested that I should attempt to influence the patient’s arm,
as heretofore. I made the attempt and failed. Dr. F—— then intimated a
desire to have me put a question. I did so, as follows:
“M. Valdemar, can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes
now?”
There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue
quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips
remained rigid as before), and at length the same hideous voice which I
have already described, broke forth:
“For God’s sake!—quick!—quick!—put me to sleep—or, quick!—waken
me!—quick!—I say to you that I am dead!”
I was thoroughly unnerved, and for an instant remained undecided what
to do. At first I made an endeavor to recompose the patient; but, failing in
this through total abeyance of the will, I retraced my steps and as earnestly
struggled to awaken him. In this attempt I soon saw that I should be
successful—or at least I soon fancied that my success would be complete—
and I am sure that all in the room were prepared to see the patient awaken.
For what really occurred, however, it is quite impossible that any human
being could have been prepared.
As I rapidly made the mesmeric passes, amid ejaculations of “dead!
dead!” absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the
sufferer, his whole frame at once—within the space of a single minute, or
even less, shrunk—crumbled—absolutely rotted away beneath my hands.
Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of
loathsome—of detestable putrescence.

THE BLACK CAT.

For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I
neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a
case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not—
and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would
unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world,
plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household
events. In their consequences, these events have terrified—have tortured—
have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they
have presented little but horror—to many they will seem less terrible than
barroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will
reduce my phantasm to the common-place—some intellect more calm,
more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in
the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary
succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my
disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me
the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was
indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most
of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them.
This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and in my manhood, I
derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have
cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at
the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus
derivable. There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a
brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent
occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not
uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she

lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had
birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black,
and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my
wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent
allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as
witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point—and I
mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now,
to be remembered.
Pluto—this was the cat’s name—was my favorite pet and playmate. I
alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was
even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the
streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my
general temperament and character—through the instrumentality of the
Fiend Intemperance—had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical
alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable,
more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use
intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal
violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my
disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I
still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I
made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog,
when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my
disease grew upon me—for what disease is like Alcohol!—and at length
even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat
peevish—even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts
about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when,
in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with
his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no
longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body
and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of
my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped
the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning—when I had slept off the fumes
of the night’s debauch—I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of
remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a
feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again
plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye
presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to
suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be
expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old
heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a
creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to
irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the
spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am
not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the
primitive impulses of the human heart—one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who
has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action,
for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a
perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which
is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of
perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable
longing of the soul to vex itself—to offer violence to its own nature—to do
wrong for the wrong’s sake only—that urged me to continue and finally to
consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One
morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the
limb of a tree;—hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the
bitterest remorse at my heart;—hung it because I knew that it had loved me,
and because I felt it had given me no reason of offence;—hung it because I
knew that in so doing I was committing a sin—a deadly sin that would so
jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it—if such a thing were possible—
even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most
Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused
from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The
whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my wife, a
servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The

destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and
I resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and
effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am detailing a chain of
facts—and wish not to leave even a possible link imperfect. On the day
succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with one exception, had
fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall, not very thick,
which stood about the middle of the house, and against which had rested the
head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure, resisted the
action of the fire—a fact which I attributed to its having been recently
spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons
seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and
eager attention. The words “strange!” “singular!” and other similar
expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven in bas
relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression
was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the
animal’s neck.
When I first beheld this apparition—for I could scarcely regard it as less
—my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at length reflection came to
my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a garden adjacent to the
house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been immediately filled by
the crowd—by some one of whom the animal must have been cut from the
tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had
probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of
other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of
the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the
ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw
it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not altogether to my
conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not the less fail to make
a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not rid myself of the
phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back into my spirit
a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so far as to regret
the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile haunts which I
now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species, and of
somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.

One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than infamy, my
attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the head
of one of the immense hogsheads of gin, or of rum, which constituted the
chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of
this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the
fact that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it,
and touched it with my hand. It was a black cat—a very large one—fully as
large as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto
had not a white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large,
although indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of
the breast. Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred loudly,
rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then,
was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase
it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it—knew nothing of it—
had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home, the animal
evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so; occasionally
stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house it
domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with
my wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising within me. This was
just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but—I know not how or why it
was—its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and annoyed. By
slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the
bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the
remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically
abusing it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it;
but gradually—very gradually—I came to look upon it with unutterable
loathing, and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of
a pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the discovery, on
the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also had been
deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared it to
my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that
humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the
source of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.

With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for myself seemed to
increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it would be
difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would crouch
beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its loathsome
caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus nearly
throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress, clamber,
in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to destroy it
with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of my
former crime, but chiefly—let me confess it at once—by absolute dread of
the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil—and yet I should be
at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to own—yes,
even in this felon’s cell, I am almost ashamed to own—that the terror and
horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one of
the merest chimaeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called
my attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of
which I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference
between the strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will
remember that this mark, although large, had been originally very
indefinite; but, by slow degrees—degrees nearly imperceptible, and which
for a long time my reason struggled to reject as fanciful—it had, at length,
assumed a rigorous distinctness of outline. It was now the representation of
an object that I shudder to name—and for this, above all, I loathed, and
dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared—it was
now, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!
—oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror and of Crime—of Agony and
of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of mere
Humanity. And a brute beast —whose fellow I had contemptuously
destroyed—a brute beast to work out for me—for me a man, fashioned in
the image of the High God—so much of insufferable woe! Alas! neither by
day nor by night knew I the blessing of rest any more! During the former
the creature left me no moment alone, and in the latter I started hourly from
dreams of unutterable fear to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face,
and its vast weight—an incarnate nightmare that I had no power to shake
off—incumbent eternally upon my heart!

Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the
good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole intimates—the
darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual temper
increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the sudden,
frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly
abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and
the most patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand, into the
cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit. The cat
followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath,
the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the
animal which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended
as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by
the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from
her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot,
without a groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with
entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could
not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of
being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one
period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying
them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the
cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard—about
packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so
getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it
up in the cellar—as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have
walled up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted. Its walls were
loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough
plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from
hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false
chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the red
of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this
point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye

could detect any thing suspicious. And in this calculation I was not
deceived. By means of a crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and, having
carefully deposited the body against the inner wall, I propped it in that
position, while, with little trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it
originally stood. Having procured mortar, sand, and hair, with every
possible precaution, I prepared a plaster which could not be distinguished
from the old, and with this I very carefully went over the new brickwork.
When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all was right. The wall did not
present the slightest appearance of having been disturbed. The rubbish on
the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I looked around
triumphantly, and said to myself: “Here at least, then, my labor has not been
in vain.”
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the cause of so
much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it to death.
Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been no
doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed at
the violence of my previous anger, and forebore to present itself in my
present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the
blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature
occasioned in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night;
and thus for one night at least, since its introduction into the house, I
soundly and tranquilly slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder
upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my tormentor came not.
Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror, had fled the
premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was supreme!
The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had
been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been
instituted—but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my
future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the police came, very
unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make rigorous
investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability of my
place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade
me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner
unexplored. At length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the

cellar. I quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who
slumbers in innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my
arms upon my bosom, and roamed easily to and fro. The police were
thoroughly satisfied and prepared to depart. The glee at my heart was too
strong to be restrained. I burned to say if but one word, by way of triumph,
and to render doubly sure their assurance of my guiltlessness.
“Gentlemen,” I said at last, as the party ascended the steps, “I delight to
have allayed your suspicions. I wish you all health, and a little more
courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this—this is a very well-constructed
house.” (In the rabid desire to say something easily, I scarcely knew what I
uttered at all.)—“I may say an excellently well-constructed house. These
walls—are you going, gentlemen?—these walls are solidly put together;”
and here, through the mere phrenzy of bravado, I rapped heavily, with a
cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of the brick-work
behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the Arch-Fiend! No
sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than I was
answered by a voice from within the tomb!—by a cry, at first muffled and
broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one long,
loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman—a howl—a
wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen
only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the damned in their agony
and of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I staggered to the
opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs remained motionless,
through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a dozen stout arms were
toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already greatly decayed and
clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its
head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast
whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had
consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb!

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
Son cœur est un luth suspendu;
Sitôt qu’on le touche il résonne..

—De Béranger.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the
year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been
passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country;
and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within
view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with
the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my
spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-
pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually
receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked
upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape
features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like
windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of
decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no
earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon
opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the
veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an
unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination
could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—
what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of
Usher? It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy
fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon
the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are
combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus
affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations
beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different

arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture,
would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for
sorrowful impression; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the
precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the
dwelling, and gazed down—but with a shudder even more thrilling than
before—upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and
the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.
Nevertheless, in this mansion of gloom I now proposed to myself a
sojourn of some weeks. Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my
boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last
meeting. A letter, however, had lately reached me in a distant part of the
country—a letter from him—which, in its wildly importunate nature, had
admitted of no other than a personal reply. The MS. gave evidence of
nervous agitation. The writer spoke of acute bodily illness—of a mental
disorder which oppressed him—and of an earnest desire to see me, as his
best, and indeed his only personal friend, with a view of attempting, by the
cheerfulness of my society, some alleviation of his malady. It was the
manner in which all this, and much more, was said—it was the apparent
heart that went with his request—which allowed me no room for hesitation;
and I accordingly obeyed forthwith what I still considered a very singular
summons.
Although, as boys, we had been even intimate associates, yet I really
knew little of my friend. His reserve had been always excessive and
habitual. I was aware, however, that his very ancient family had been noted,
time out of mind, for a peculiar sensibility of temperament, displaying
itself, through long ages, in many works of exalted art, and manifested, of
late, in repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive charity, as well as in a
passionate devotion to the intricacies, perhaps even more than to the
orthodox and easily recognisable beauties, of musical science. I had
learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all
time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in
other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had
always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. It was this
deficiency, I considered, while running over in thought the perfect keeping
of the character of the premises with the accredited character of the people,
and while speculating upon the possible influence which the one, in the
long lapse of centuries, might have exercised upon the other—it was this

deficiency, perhaps, of collateral issue, and the consequent undeviating
transmission, from sire to son, of the patrimony with the name, which had,
at length, so identified the two as to merge the original title of the estate in
the quaint and equivocal appellation of the “House of Usher”—an
appellation which seemed to include, in the minds of the peasantry who
used it, both the family and the family mansion.
I have said that the sole effect of my somewhat childish experiment—that
of looking down within the tarn—had been to deepen the first singular
impression. There can be no doubt that the consciousness of the rapid
increase of my superstition—for why should I not so term it?—served
mainly to accelerate the increase itself. Such, I have long known, is the
paradoxical law of all sentiments having terror as a basis. And it might have
been for this reason only, that, when I again uplifted my eyes to the house
itself, from its image in the pool, there grew in my mind a strange fancy—a
fancy so ridiculous, indeed, that I but mention it to show the vivid force of
the sensations which oppressed me. I had so worked upon my imagination
as really to believe that about the whole mansion and domain there hung an
atmosphere peculiar to themselves and their immediate vicinity—an
atmosphere which had no affinity with the air of heaven, but which had
reeked up from the decayed trees, and the gray wall, and the silent tarn—a
pestilent and mystic vapor, dull, sluggish, faintly discernible, and leaden-
hued.
Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more
narrowly the real aspect of the building. Its principal feature seemed to be
that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great.
Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-
work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary
dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be
a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the
crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that
reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for
long years in some neglected vault, with no disturbance from the breath of
the external air. Beyond this indication of extensive decay, however, the
fabric gave little token of instability. Perhaps the eye of a scrutinizing
observer might have discovered a barely perceptible fissure, which,
extending from the roof of the building in front, made its way down the

wall in a zigzag direction, until it became lost in the sullen waters of the
tarn.
Noticing these things, I rode over a short causeway to the house. A
servant in waiting took my horse, and I entered the Gothic archway of the
hall. A valet, of stealthy step, thence conducted me, in silence, through
many dark and intricate passages in my progress to the studio of his master.
Much that I encountered on the way contributed, I know not how, to
heighten the vague sentiments of which I have already spoken. While the
objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries
of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric
armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to
such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated
not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how
unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up. On one
of the staircases, I met the physician of the family. His countenance, I
thought, wore a mingled expression of low cunning and perplexity. He
accosted me with trepidation and passed on. The valet now threw open a
door and ushered me into the presence of his master.
The room in which I found myself was very large and lofty. The windows
were long, narrow, and pointed, and at so vast a distance from the black
oaken floor as to be altogether inaccessible from within. Feeble gleams of
encrimsoned light made their way through the trellissed panes, and served
to render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye,
however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or
the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the
walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered.
Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give
any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An
air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung over and pervaded all.
Upon my entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying
at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in
it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained effort of
the ennuyé man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance,
convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments,
while he spoke not, I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of
awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as

had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to
admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my
early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times
remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and
luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a
surpassingly beautiful curve; a nose of a delicate Hebrew model, but with a
breadth of nostril unusual in similar formations; a finely moulded chin,
speaking, in its want of prominence, of a want of moral energy; hair of a
more than web-like softness and tenuity; these features, with an inordinate
expansion above the regions of the temple, made up altogether a
countenance not easily to be forgotten. And now in the mere exaggeration
of the prevailing character of these features, and of the expression they were
wont to convey, lay so much of change that I doubted to whom I spoke. The
now ghastly pallor of the skin, and the now miraculous lustre of the eye,
above all things startled and even awed me. The silken hair, too, had been
suffered to grow all unheeded, and as, in its wild gossamer texture, it
floated rather than fell about the face, I could not, even with effort, connect
its Arabesque expression with any idea of simple humanity.
In the manner of my friend I was at once struck with an incoherence—an
inconsistency; and I soon found this to arise from a series of feeble and
futile struggles to overcome an habitual trepidancy—an excessive nervous
agitation. For something of this nature I had indeed been prepared, no less
by his letter, than by reminiscences of certain boyish traits, and by
conclusions deduced from his peculiar physical conformation and
temperament. His action was alternately vivacious and sullen. His voice
varied rapidly from a tremulous indecision (when the animal spirits seemed
utterly in abeyance) to that species of energetic concision—that abrupt,
weighty, unhurried, and hollow-sounding enunciation—that leaden, self-
balanced and perfectly modulated guttural utterance, which may be
observed in the lost drunkard, or the irreclaimable eater of opium, during
the periods of his most intense excitement.
It was thus that he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to
see me, and of the solace he expected me to afford him. He entered, at some
length, into what he conceived to be the nature of his malady. It was, he
said, a constitutional and a family evil, and one for which he despaired to
find a remedy—a mere nervous affection, he immediately added, which
would undoubtedly soon pass off. It displayed itself in a host of unnatural

sensations. Some of these, as he detailed them, interested and bewildered
me; although, perhaps, the terms, and the general manner of the narration
had their weight. He suffered much from a morbid acuteness of the senses;
the most insipid food was alone endurable; he could wear only garments of
certain texture; the odors of all flowers were oppressive; his eyes were
tortured by even a faint light; and there were but peculiar sounds, and these
from stringed instruments, which did not inspire him with horror.
To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave. “I shall
perish,” said he, “I must perish in this deplorable folly. Thus, thus, and not
otherwise, shall I be lost. I dread the events of the future, not in themselves,
but in their results. I shudder at the thought of any, even the most trivial,
incident, which may operate upon this intolerable agitation of soul. I have,
indeed, no abhorrence of danger, except in its absolute effect—in terror. In
this unnerved—in this pitiable condition—I feel that the period will sooner
or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some
struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR.”
I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints,
another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by
certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he
tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth—in
regard to an influence whose supposititious force was conveyed in terms
too shadowy here to be re-stated—an influence which some peculiarities in
the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long
sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit—an effect which the physique
of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked
down, had, at length, brought about upon the morale of his existence.
He admitted, however, although with hesitation, that much of the peculiar
gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far
more palpable origin—to the severe and long-continued illness—indeed to
the evidently approaching dissolution—of a tenderly beloved sister—his
sole companion for long years—his last and only relative on earth. “Her
decease,” he said, with a bitterness which I can never forget, “would leave
him (him the hopeless and the frail) the last of the ancient race of the
Ushers.” While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed
slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having
noticed my presence, disappeared. I regarded her with an utter astonishment

not unmingled with dread—and yet I found it impossible to account for
such feelings. A sensation of stupor oppressed me, as my eyes followed her
retreating steps. When a door, at length, closed upon her, my glance sought
instinctively and eagerly the countenance of the brother—but he had buried
his face in his hands, and I could only perceive that a far more than ordinary
wanness had overspread the emaciated fingers through which trickled many
passionate tears.
The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her
physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and
frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character,
were the unusual diagnosis. Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the
pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but, on
the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed (as
her brother told me at night with inexpressible agitation) to the prostrating
power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her
person would thus probably be the last I should obtain—that the lady, at
least while living, would be seen by me no more.
For several days ensuing, her name was unmentioned by either Usher or
myself; and during this period I was busied in earnest endeavors to alleviate
the melancholy of my friend. We painted and read together; or I listened, as
if in a dream, to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. And thus, as
a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into the
recesses of his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all
attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive
quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe, in
one unceasing radiation of gloom.
I shall ever bear about me a memory of the many solemn hours I thus
spent alone with the master of the House of Usher. Yet I should fail in any
attempt to convey an idea of the exact character of the studies, or of the
occupations, in which he involved me, or led me the way. An excited and
highly distempered ideality threw a sulphureous lustre over all. His long
improvised dirges will ring forever in my ears. Among other things, I hold
painfully in mind a certain singular perversion and amplification of the wild
air of the last waltz of Von Weber. From the paintings over which his
elaborate fancy brooded, and which grew, touch by touch, into vaguenesses
at which I shuddered the more thrillingly, because I shuddered knowing not

why—from these paintings (vivid as their images now are before me) I
would in vain endeavor to educe more than a small portion which should lie
within the compass of merely written words. By the utter simplicity, by the
nakedness of his designs, he arrested and overawed attention. If ever mortal
painted an idea, that mortal was Roderick Usher. For me at least—in the
circumstances then surrounding me—there arose out of the pure
abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvass,
an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the
contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of Fuseli.
One of the phantasmagoric conceptions of my friend, partaking not so
rigidly of the spirit of abstraction, may be shadowed forth, although feebly,
in words. A small picture presented the interior of an immensely long and
rectangular vault or tunnel, with low walls, smooth, white, and without
interruption or device. Certain accessory points of the design served well to
convey the idea that this excavation lay at an exceeding depth below the
surface of the earth. No outlet was observed in any portion of its vast
extent, and no torch, or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a
flood of intense rays rolled throughout, and bathed the whole in a ghastly
and inappropriate splendor.
I have just spoken of that morbid condition of the auditory nerve which
rendered all music intolerable to the sufferer, with the exception of certain
effects of stringed instruments. It was, perhaps, the narrow limits to which
he thus confined himself upon the guitar, which gave birth, in great
measure, to the fantastic character of his performances. But the fervid
facility of his impromptus could not be so accounted for. They must have
been, and were, in the notes, as well as in the words of his wild fantasias
(for he not unfrequently accompanied himself with rhymed verbal
improvisations), the result of that intense mental collectedness and
concentration to which I have previously alluded as observable only in
particular moments of the highest artificial excitement. The words of one of
these rhapsodies I have easily remembered. I was, perhaps, the more
forcibly impressed with it, as he gave it, because, in the under or mystic
current of its meaning, I fancied that I perceived, and for the first time, a
full consciousness on the part of Usher of the tottering of his lofty reason
upon her throne. The verses, which were entitled “The Haunted Palace,” ran
very nearly, if not accurately, thus:

I.
In the greenest of our valleys,
By good angels tenanted,
Once a fair and stately palace—
Radiant palace—reared its head.
In the monarch Thought’s dominion—
It stood there!
Never seraph spread a pinion
Over fabric half so fair.

II.
Banners yellow, glorious, golden,
On its roof did float and flow;
(This—all this—was in the olden
Time long ago)
And every gentle air that dallied,
In that sweet day,
Along the ramparts plumed and pallid,
A winged odor went away.

III.
Wanderers in that happy valley
Through two luminous windows saw
Spirits moving musically
To a lute’s well-tunéd law,
Round about a throne, where sitting
(Porphyrogene!)
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.

IV.
And all with pearl and ruby glowing
Was the fair palace door,
Through which came flowing, flowing, flowing,
And sparkling evermore,
A troop of Echoes whose sweet duty
Was but to sing,
In voices of surpassing beauty,
The wit and wisdom of their king.

V.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch’s high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And, round about his home, the glory
That blushed and bloomed
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.

VI.
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh—but smile no more.

I well remember that suggestions arising from this ballad, led us into a
train of thought wherein there became manifest an opinion of Usher’s
which I mention not so much on account of its novelty, (for other men *
have thought thus,) as on account of the pertinacity with which he
maintained it. This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of
all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a
more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the
kingdom of inorganization. I lack words to express the full extent, or the
earnest abandon of his persuasion. The belief, however, was connected (as I
have previously hinted) with the gray stones of the home of his forefathers.
The conditions of the sentience had been here, he imagined, fulfilled in the
method of collocation of these stones—in the order of their arrangement, as
well as in that of the many fungi which overspread them, and of the decayed
trees which stood around—above all, in the long undisturbed endurance of
this arrangement, and in its reduplication in the still waters of the tarn. Its
evidence—the evidence of the sentience—was to be seen, he said, (and I
here started as he spoke,) in the gradual yet certain condensation of an
atmosphere of their own about the waters and the walls. The result was
discoverable, he added, in that silent, yet importunate and terrible influence
which for centuries had moulded the destinies of his family, and which
made him what I now saw him—what he was. Such opinions need no
comment, and I will make none.
* Watson, Dr. Percival, Spallanzani, and especially the Bishop of
Landaff.—See “Chemical Essays,” vol v.
Our books—the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of
the mental existence of the invalid—were, as might be supposed, in strict
keeping with this character of phantasm. We pored together over such
works as the Ververt et Chartreuse of Gresset; the Belphegor of
Machiavelli; the Heaven and Hell of Swedenborg; the Subterranean Voyage

of Nicholas Klimm by Holberg; the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, of Jean
D’Indaginé, and of De la Chambre; the Journey into the Blue Distance of
Tieck; and the City of the Sun of Campanella. One favorite volume was a
small octavo edition of the Directorium Inquisitorium, by the Dominican
Eymeric de Gironne; and there were passages in Pomponius Mela, about
the old African Satyrs and OEgipans, over which Usher would sit dreaming
for hours. His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an
exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic—the manual of a
forgotten church—the Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae
Maguntinae.
I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its
probable influence upon the hypochondriac, when, one evening, having
informed me abruptly that the lady Madeline was no more, he stated his
intention of preserving her corpse for a fortnight, (previously to its final
interment,) in one of the numerous vaults within the main walls of the
building. The worldly reason, however, assigned for this singular
proceeding, was one which I did not feel at liberty to dispute. The brother
had been led to his resolution (so he told me) by consideration of the
unusual character of the malady of the deceased, of certain obtrusive and
eager inquiries on the part of her medical men, and of the remote and
exposed situation of the burial-ground of the family. I will not deny that
when I called to mind the sinister countenance of the person whom I met
upon the staircase, on the day of my arrival at the house, I had no desire to
oppose what I regarded as at best but a harmless, and by no means an
unnatural, precaution.
At the request of Usher, I personally aided him in the arrangements for
the temporary entombment. The body having been encoffined, we two
alone bore it to its rest. The vault in which we placed it (and which had
been so long unopened that our torches, half smothered in its oppressive
atmosphere, gave us little opportunity for investigation) was small, damp,
and entirely without means of admission for light; lying, at great depth,
immediately beneath that portion of the building in which was my own
sleeping apartment. It had been used, apparently, in remote feudal times, for
the worst purposes of a donjon-keep, and, in later days, as a place of deposit
for powder, or some other highly combustible substance, as a portion of its
floor, and the whole interior of a long archway through which we reached it,
were carefully sheathed with copper. The door, of massive iron, had been,

also, similarly protected. Its immense weight caused an unusually sharp
grating sound, as it moved upon its hinges.
Having deposited our mournful burden upon tressels within this region of
horror, we partially turned aside the yet unscrewed lid of the coffin, and
looked upon the face of the tenant. A striking similitude between the brother
and sister now first arrested my attention; and Usher, divining, perhaps, my
thoughts, murmured out some few words from which I learned that the
deceased and himself had been twins, and that sympathies of a scarcely
intelligible nature had always existed between them. Our glances, however,
rested not long upon the dead—for we could not regard her unawed. The
disease which had thus entombed the lady in the maturity of youth, had left,
as usual in all maladies of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a
faint blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously lingering
smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We replaced and screwed
down the lid, and, having secured the door of iron, made our way, with toil,
into the scarcely less gloomy apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an observable change
came over the features of the mental disorder of my friend. His ordinary
manner had vanished. His ordinary occupations were neglected or
forgotten. He roamed from chamber to chamber with hurried, unequal, and
objectless step. The pallor of his countenance had assumed, if possible, a
more ghastly hue—but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out.
The once occasional huskiness of his tone was heard no more; and a
tremulous quaver, as if of extreme terror, habitually characterized his
utterance. There were times, indeed, when I thought his unceasingly
agitated mind was laboring with some oppressive secret, to divulge which
he struggled for the necessary courage. At times, again, I was obliged to
resolve all into the mere inexplicable vagaries of madness, for I beheld him
gazing upon vacancy for long hours, in an attitude of the profoundest
attention, as if listening to some imaginary sound. It was no wonder that his
condition terrified—that it infected me. I felt creeping upon me, by slow yet
certain degrees, the wild influences of his own fantastic yet impressive
superstitions.
It was, especially, upon retiring to bed late in the night of the seventh or
eighth day after the placing of the lady Madeline within the donjon, that I
experienced the full power of such feelings. Sleep came not near my couch

—while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off the
nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavored to believe that
much, if not all of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the
gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which,
tortured into motion by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and
fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed.
But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded
my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly
causeless alarm. Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted
myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness
of the chamber, harkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit
prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through
the pauses of the storm, at long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered
by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable yet unendurable, I threw
on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep no more during the
night), and endeavored to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into
which I had fallen, by pacing rapidly to and fro through the apartment.
I had taken but few turns in this manner, when a light step on an
adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognised it as that of
Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped, with a gentle touch, at my door,
and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously
wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an
evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me—
but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured,
and I even welcomed his presence as a relief.
“And you have not seen it?” he said abruptly, after having stared about
him for some moments in silence—“you have not then seen it?—but, stay!
you shall.” Thus speaking, and having carefully shaded his lamp, he hurried
to one of the casements, and threw it freely open to the storm.
The impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet. It
was, indeed, a tempestuous yet sternly beautiful night, and one wildly
singular in its terror and its beauty. A whirlwind had apparently collected its
force in our vicinity; for there were frequent and violent alterations in the
direction of the wind; and the exceeding density of the clouds (which hung
so low as to press upon the turrets of the house) did not prevent our
perceiving the life-like velocity with which they flew careering from all

points against each other, without passing away into the distance. I say that
even their exceeding density did not prevent our perceiving this—yet we
had no glimpse of the moon or stars—nor was there any flashing forth of
the lightning. But the under surfaces of the huge masses of agitated vapor,
as well as all terrestrial objects immediately around us, were glowing in the
unnatural light of a faintly luminous and distinctly visible gaseous
exhalation which hung about and enshrouded the mansion.
“You must not—you shall not behold this!” said I, shudderingly, to
Usher, as I led him, with a gentle violence, from the window to a seat.
“These appearances, which bewilder you, are merely electrical phenomena
not uncommon—or it may be that they have their ghastly origin in the rank
miasma of the tarn. Let us close this casement;—the air is chilling and
dangerous to your frame. Here is one of your favorite romances. I will read,
and you shall listen;—and so we will pass away this terrible night together.”
The antique volume which I had taken up was the “Mad Trist” of Sir
Launcelot Canning; but I had called it a favorite of Usher’s more in sad jest
than in earnest; for, in truth, there is little in its uncouth and unimaginative
prolixity which could have had interest for the lofty and spiritual ideality of
my friend. It was, however, the only book immediately at hand; and I
indulged a vague hope that the excitement which now agitated the
hypochondriac, might find relief (for the history of mental disorder is full of
similar anomalies) even in the extremeness of the folly which I should read.
Could I have judged, indeed, by the wild overstrained air of vivacity with
which he harkened, or apparently harkened, to the words of the tale, I might
well have congratulated myself upon the success of my design.
I had arrived at that well-known portion of the story where Ethelred, the
hero of the Trist, having sought in vain for peaceable admission into the
dwelling of the hermit, proceeds to make good an entrance by force. Here,
it will be remembered, the words of the narrative run thus:
“And Ethelred, who was by nature of a doughty heart, and who was now
mighty withal, on account of the powerfulness of the wine which he had
drunken, waited no longer to hold parley with the hermit, who, in sooth,
was of an obstinate and maliceful turn, but, feeling the rain upon his
shoulders, and fearing the rising of the tempest, uplifted his mace outright,
and, with blows, made quickly room in the plankings of the door for his
gauntleted hand; and now pulling therewith sturdily, he so cracked, and

ripped, and tore all asunder, that the noise of the dry and hollow-sounding
wood alarummed and reverberated throughout the forest.”
At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a moment, paused;
for it appeared to me (although I at once concluded that my excited fancy
had deceived me)—it appeared to me that, from some very remote portion
of the mansion, there came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been,
in its exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull one
certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir Launcelot had
so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt, the coincidence alone
which had arrested my attention; for, amid the rattling of the sashes of the
casements, and the ordinary commingled noises of the still increasing
storm, the sound, in itself, had nothing, surely, which should have interested
or disturbed me. I continued the story:
“But the good champion Ethelred, now entering within the door, was sore
enraged and amazed to perceive no signal of the maliceful hermit; but, in
the stead thereof, a dragon of a scaly and prodigious demeanor, and of a
fiery tongue, which sate in guard before a palace of gold, with a floor of
silver; and upon the wall there hung a shield of shining brass with this
legend enwritten—
Who entereth herein, a conqueror hath bin;
Who slayeth the dragon, the shield he shall win;

And Ethelred uplifted his mace, and struck upon the head of the dragon,
which fell before him, and gave up his pesty breath, with a shriek so horrid
and harsh, and withal so piercing, that Ethelred had fain to close his ears
with his hands against the dreadful noise of it, the like whereof was never
before heard.”
Here again I paused abruptly, and now with a feeling of wild amazement
—for there could be no doubt whatever that, in this instance, I did actually
hear (although from what direction it proceeded I found it impossible to
say) a low and apparently distant, but harsh, protracted, and most unusual
screaming or grating sound—the exact counterpart of what my fancy had
already conjured up for the dragon’s unnatural shriek as described by the
romancer.
Oppressed, as I certainly was, upon the occurrence of this second and
most extraordinary coincidence, by a thousand conflicting sensations, in

which wonder and extreme terror were predominant, I still retained
sufficient presence of mind to avoid exciting, by any observation, the
sensitive nervousness of my companion. I was by no means certain that he
had noticed the sounds in question; although, assuredly, a strange alteration
had, during the last few minutes, taken place in his demeanor. From a
position fronting my own, he had gradually brought round his chair, so as to
sit with his face to the door of the chamber; and thus I could but partially
perceive his features, although I saw that his lips trembled as if he were
murmuring inaudibly. His head had dropped upon his breast—yet I knew
that he was not asleep, from the wide and rigid opening of the eye as I
caught a glance of it in profile. The motion of his body, too, was at variance
with this idea—for he rocked from side to side with a gentle yet constant
and uniform sway. Having rapidly taken notice of all this, I resumed the
narrative of Sir Launcelot, which thus proceeded:
“And now, the champion, having escaped from the terrible fury of the
dragon, bethinking himself of the brazen shield, and of the breaking up of
the enchantment which was upon it, removed the carcass from out of the
way before him, and approached valorously over the silver pavement of the
castle to where the shield was upon the wall; which in sooth tarried not for
his full coming, but fell down at his feet upon the silver floor, with a mighty
great and terrible ringing sound.”
No sooner had these syllables passed my lips, than—as if a shield of
brass had indeed, at the moment, fallen heavily upon a floor of silver—I
became aware of a distinct, hollow, metallic, and clangorous, yet apparently
muffled reverberation. Completely unnerved, I leaped to my feet; but the
measured rocking movement of Usher was undisturbed. I rushed to the
chair in which he sat. His eyes were bent fixedly before him, and
throughout his whole countenance there reigned a stony rigidity. But, as I
placed my hand upon his shoulder, there came a strong shudder over his
whole person; a sickly smile quivered about his lips; and I saw that he
spoke in a low, hurried, and gibbering murmur, as if unconscious of my
presence. Bending closely over him, I at length drank in the hideous import
of his words.
“Not hear it?—yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long—long—long—
many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it—yet I dared not—
oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am!—I dared not—I dared not speak!

We have put her living in the tomb! Said I not that my senses were acute? I
now tell you that I heard her first feeble movements in the hollow coffin. I
heard them—many, many days ago—yet I dared not—I dared not speak!
And now—to-night—Ethelred—ha! ha!—the breaking of the hermit’s door,
and the death-cry of the dragon, and the clangor of the shield!—say, rather,
the rending of her coffin, and the grating of the iron hinges of her prison,
and her struggles within the coppered archway of the vault! Oh whither
shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for
my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish
that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!”—here he sprang
furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he
were giving up his soul—“Madman! I tell you that she now stands without
the door!”
As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the
potency of a spell—the huge antique pannels to which the speaker pointed,
threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was
the work of the rushing gust—but then without those doors there did stand
the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was
blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon
every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained
trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold—then, with a low
moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her
violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a
victim to the terrors he had anticipated.
From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was
still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old causeway.
Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned to see whence
a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house and its shadows
were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full, setting, and blood-
red moon, which now shone vividly through that once barely-discernible
fissure, of which I have before spoken as extending from the roof of the
building, in a zigzag direction, to the base. While I gazed, this fissure
rapidly widened—there came a fierce breath of the whirlwind—the entire
orb of the satellite burst at once upon my sight—my brain reeled as I saw
the mighty walls rushing asunder—there was a long tumultuous shouting
sound like the voice of a thousand waters—and the deep and dank tarn at

my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the “House of
Usher.”

SILENCE—A FABLE
“The mountain pinnacles slumber; valleys, crags and caves are silent.”

“Listen to me,” said the Demon as he placed his hand upon my head.
“The region of which I speak is a dreary region in Libya, by the borders of
the river Zaire. And there is no quiet there, nor silence.
“The waters of the river have a saffron and sickly hue; and they flow not
onwards to the sea, but palpitate forever and forever beneath the red eye of
the sun with a tumultuous and convulsive motion. For many miles on either
side of the river’s oozy bed is a pale desert of gigantic water-lilies. They
sigh one unto the other in that solitude, and stretch towards the heaven their
long and ghastly necks, and nod to and fro their everlasting heads. And
there is an indistinct murmur which cometh out from among them like the
rushing of subterrene water. And they sigh one unto the other.
“But there is a boundary to their realm—the boundary of the dark,
horrible, lofty forest. There, like the waves about the Hebrides, the low
underwood is agitated continually. But there is no wind throughout the
heaven. And the tall primeval trees rock eternally hither and thither with a
crashing and mighty sound. And from their high summits, one by one, drop
everlasting dews. And at the roots strange poisonous flowers lie writhing in
perturbed slumber. And overhead, with a rustling and loud noise, the gray
clouds rush westwardly forever, until they roll, a cataract, over the fiery
wall of the horizon. But there is no wind throughout the heaven. And by the
shores of the river Zaire there is neither quiet nor silence.
“It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen,
it was blood. And I stood in the morass among the tall and the rain fell upon
my head—and the lilies sighed one unto the other in the solemnity of their
desolation.
“And, all at once, the moon arose through the thin ghastly mist, and was
crimson in color. And mine eyes fell upon a huge gray rock which stood by

the shore of the river, and was lighted by the light of the moon. And the
rock was gray, and ghastly, and tall,—and the rock was gray. Upon its front
were characters engraven in the stone; and I walked through the morass of
water-lilies, until I came close unto the shore, that I might read the
characters upon the stone. But I could not decypher them. And I was going
back into the morass, when the moon shone with a fuller red, and I turned
and looked again upon the rock, and upon the characters, and the characters
were DESOLATION.
“And I looked upwards, and there stood a man upon the summit of the
rock; and I hid myself among the water-lilies that I might discover the
actions of the man. And the man was tall and stately in form, and was
wrapped up from his shoulders to his feet in the toga of old Rome. And the
outlines of his figure were indistinct—but his features were the features of a
deity; for the mantle of the night, and of the mist, and of the moon, and of
the dew, had left uncovered the features of his face. And his brow was lofty
with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his
cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind,
and a longing after solitude.
“And the man sat upon the rock, and leaned his head upon his hand, and
looked out upon the desolation. He looked down into the low unquiet
shrubbery, and up into the tall primeval trees, and up higher at the rustling
heaven, and into the crimson moon. And I lay close within shelter of the
lilies, and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the
solitude;—but the night waned, and he sat upon the rock.
“And the man turned his attention from the heaven, and looked out upon
the dreary river Zaire, and upon the yellow ghastly waters, and upon the
pale legions of the water-lilies. And the man listened to the sighs of the
water-lilies, and to the murmur that came up from among them. And I lay
close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man
trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
“Then I went down into the recesses of the morass, and waded afar in
among the wilderness of the lilies, and called unto the hippopotami which
dwelt among the fens in the recesses of the morass. And the hippopotami
heard my call, and came, with the behemoth, unto the foot of the rock, and
roared loudly and fearfully beneath the moon. And I lay close within my

covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man trembled in the
solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
“Then I cursed the elements with the curse of tumult; and a frightful
tempest gathered in the heaven where, before, there had been no wind. And
the heaven became livid with the violence of the tempest—and the rain beat
upon the head of the man—and the floods of the river came down—and the
river was tormented into foam—and the water-lilies shrieked within their
beds—and the forest crumbled before the wind—and the thunder rolled—
and the lightning fell—and the rock rocked to its foundation. And I lay
close within my covert and observed the actions of the man. And the man
trembled in the solitude;—but the night waned and he sat upon the rock.
“Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and
the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and
the sighs of the water-lilies. And they became accursed, and were still. And
the moon ceased to totter up its pathway to heaven—and the thunder died
away—and the lightning did not flash—and the clouds hung motionless—
and the waters sunk to their level and remained—and the trees ceased to
rock—and the water-lilies sighed no more—and the murmur was heard no
longer from among them, nor any shadow of sound throughout the vast
illimitable desert. And I looked upon the characters of the rock, and they
were changed; and the characters were SILENCE.
“And mine eyes fell upon the countenance of the man, and his
countenance was wan with terror. And, hurriedly, he raised his head from
his hand, and stood forth upon the rock and listened. But there was no voice
throughout the vast illimitable desert, and the characters upon the rock were
SILENCE. And the man shuddered, and turned his face away, and fled afar
off, in haste, so that I beheld him no more.”

Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound,
melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories of
the Heaven, and of the Earth, and of the mighty sea—and of the Genii that
over-ruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There was much lore
too in the sayings which were said by the Sybils; and holy, holy things were
heard of old by the dim leaves that trembled around Dodona—but, as Allah

liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in the
shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all! And as the
Demon made an end of his story, he fell back within the cavity of the tomb
and laughed. And I could not laugh with the Demon, and he cursed me
because I could not laugh. And the lynx which dwelleth forever in the tomb,
came out therefrom, and lay down at the feet of the Demon, and looked at
him steadily in the face.

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever
been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness
and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and
then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon
the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban
which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men.
And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the
incidents of half an hour.
But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When
his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a
thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames
of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his
castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the
creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty
wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered,
brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved
to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of
despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With
such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external
world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to
think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were
buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were
musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were
within. Without was the “Red Death.”
It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and
while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero
entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual
magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the
rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many
palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the
folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view
of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different;
as might have been expected from the duke’s love of the bizarre. The
apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little
more than one at a time. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty
yards, and at each turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the middle of
each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window looked out upon a closed
corridor which pursued the windings of the suite. These windows were of
stained glass whose color varied in accordance with the prevailing hue of
the decorations of the chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern
extremity was hung, for example, in blue—and vividly blue were its
windows. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries,
and here the panes were purple. The third was green throughout, and so
were the casements. The fourth was furnished and lighted with orange—the
fifth with white—the sixth with violet. The seventh apartment was closely
shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down
the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue.
But in this chamber only, the color of the windows failed to correspond
with the decorations. The panes here were scarlet—a deep blood color. Now
in no one of the seven apartments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid
the profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to and fro or depended
from the roof. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or
candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the
suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a
brazier of fire that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so
glaringly illumined the room. And thus were produced a multitude of gaudy
and fantastic appearances. But in the western or black chamber the effect of
the fire-light that streamed upon the dark hangings through the blood-tinted
panes, was ghastly in the extreme, and produced so wild a look upon the
countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company
bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all.
It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a
gigantic clock of ebony. Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy,
monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face,

and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the
clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical,
but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the
musicians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their
performance, to hearken to the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased
their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay
company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that
the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands
over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation. But when the
echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the
musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness
and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next
chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then,
after the lapse of sixty minutes (which embrace three thousand and six
hundred seconds of the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming of
the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and
meditation as before.
But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel. The
tastes of the duke were peculiar. He had a fine eye for colors and effects. He
disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans were bold and fiery, and
his conceptions glowed with barbaric lustre. There are some who would
have thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. It was necessary
to hear and see and touch him to be sure that he was not.
He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishments of the seven
chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guiding taste
which had given character to the masqueraders. Be sure they were
grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm—
much of what has been since seen in “Hernani.” There were arabesque
figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies
such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the
wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of
that which might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers
there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And these—the dreams—
writhed in and about, taking hue from the rooms, and causing the wild
music of the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, anon, there
strikes the ebony clock which stands in the hall of the velvet. And then, for
a moment, all is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. The

dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the echoes of the chime die away
—they have endured but an instant—and a light, half-subdued laughter
floats after them as they depart. And now again the music swells, and the
dreams live, and writhe to and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from
the many-tinted windows through which stream the rays from the tripods.
But to the chamber which lies most westwardly of the seven, there are now
none of the maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there
flows a ruddier light through the blood-colored panes; and the blackness of
the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the sable carpet,
there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled peal more solemnly
emphatic than any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more remote
gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them beat
feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly on, until at length
there commenced the sounding of midnight upon the clock. And then the
music ceased, as I have told; and the evolutions of the waltzers were
quieted; and there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. But now
there were twelve strokes to be sounded by the bell of the clock; and thus it
happened, perhaps, that more of thought crept, with more of time, into the
meditations of the thoughtful among those who revelled. And thus, too, it
happened, perhaps, that before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly
sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the crowd who had found
leisure to become aware of the presence of a masked figure which had
arrested the attention of no single individual before. And the rumor of this
new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at
length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of
disapprobation and surprise—then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of
disgust.
In an assembly of phantasms such as I have painted, it may well be
supposed that no ordinary appearance could have excited such sensation. In
truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly unlimited; but the
figure in question had out-Heroded Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of
even the prince’s indefinite decorum. There are chords in the hearts of the
most reckless which cannot be touched without emotion. Even with the
utterly lost, to whom life and death are equally jests, there are matters of
which no jest can be made. The whole company, indeed, seemed now
deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor

propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to
foot in the habiliments of the grave. The mask which concealed the visage
was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of a stiffened corpse that
the closest scrutiny must have had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet
all this might have been endured, if not approved, by the mad revellers
around. But the mummer had gone so far as to assume the type of the Red
Death. His vesture was dabbled in blood—and his broad brow, with all the
features of the face, was besprinkled with the scarlet horror.
When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this spectral image (which
with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role,
stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the
first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the
next, his brow reddened with rage.
“Who dares?” he demanded hoarsely of the courtiers who stood near him
—“who dares insult us with this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and
unmask him—that we may know whom we have to hang at sunrise, from
the battlements!”
It was in the eastern or blue chamber in which stood the Prince Prospero
as he uttered these words. They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and
clearly—for the prince was a bold and robust man, and the music had
become hushed at the waving of his hand.
It was in the blue room where stood the prince, with a group of pale
courtiers by his side. At first, as he spoke, there was a slight rushing
movement of this group in the direction of the intruder, who at the moment
was also near at hand, and now, with deliberate and stately step, made
closer approach to the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with which
the mad assumptions of the mummer had inspired the whole party, there
were found none who put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he
passed within a yard of the prince’s person; and, while the vast assembly, as
if with one impulse, shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he
made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same solemn and measured step
which had distinguished him from the first, through the blue chamber to the
purple—through the purple to the green—through the green to the orange—
through this again to the white—and even thence to the violet, ere a decided
movement had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the
Prince Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own

momentary cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while
none followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon all.
He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid impetuosity, to
within three or four feet of the retreating figure, when the latter, having
attained the extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly and
confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry—and the dagger dropped
gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell
prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage
of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black
apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and
motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable
horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they
handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.
And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had
come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the
blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture
of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of
the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay
and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO.

The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could; but when
he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge. You, who so well know the
nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gave utterance to a
threat. At length I would be avenged; this was a point definitively settled—
but the very definitiveness with which it was resolved, precluded the idea of
risk. I must not only punish, but punish with impunity. A wrong is
unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally
unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who
has done the wrong.
It must be understood, that neither by word nor deed had I given
Fortunato cause to doubt my good will. I continued, as was my wont, to
smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the
thought of his immolation.
He had a weak point—this Fortunato—although in other regards he was a
man to be respected and even feared. He prided himself on his
connoisseurship in wine. Few Italians have the true virtuoso spirit. For the
most part their enthusiasm is adopted to suit the time and opportunity—to
practise imposture upon the British and Austrian millionaires. In painting
and gemmary, Fortunato, like his countrymen, was a quack—but in the
matter of old wines he was sincere. In this respect I did not differ from him
materially: I was skilful in the Italian vintages myself, and bought largely
whenever I could.
It was about dusk, one evening during the supreme madness of the
carnival season, that I encountered my friend. He accosted me with
excessive warmth, for he had been drinking much. The man wore motley.
He had on a tight-fitting parti-striped dress, and his head was surmounted
by the conical cap and bells. I was so pleased to see him, that I thought I
should never have done wringing his hand.

I said to him: “My dear Fortunato, you are luckily met. How remarkably
well you are looking to-day! But I have received a pipe of what passes for
Amontillado, and I have my doubts.”
“How?” said he. “Amontillado? A pipe? Impossible! And in the middle
of the carnival!”
“I have my doubts,” I replied; “and I was silly enough to pay the full
Amontillado price without consulting you in the matter. You were not to be
found, and I was fearful of losing a bargain.”
“Amontillado!”
“I have my doubts.”
“Amontillado!”
“And I must satisfy them.”
“Amontillado!”
“As you are engaged, I am on my way to Luchesi. If any one has a
critical turn, it is he. He will tell me—”
“Luchesi cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry.”
“And yet some fools will have it that his taste is a match for your own.”
“Come, let us go.”
“Whither?”
“To your vaults.”
“My friend, no; I will not impose upon your good nature. I perceive you
have an engagement. Luchesi—”
“I have no engagement;—come.”
“My friend, no. It is not the engagement, but the severe cold with which I
perceive you are afflicted. The vaults are insufferably damp. They are
encrusted with nitre.”
“Let us go, nevertheless. The cold is merely nothing. Amontillado! You
have been imposed upon. And as for Luchesi, he cannot distinguish Sherry
from Amontillado.”
Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a
mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I
suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo.

There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in
honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning,
and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house. These orders
were sufficient, I well knew, to insure their immediate disappearance, one
and all, as soon as my back was turned.
I took from their sconces two flambeaux, and giving one to Fortunato,
bowed him through several suites of rooms to the archway that led into the
vaults. I passed down a long and winding staircase, requesting him to be
cautious as he followed. We came at length to the foot of the descent, and
stood together on the damp ground of the catacombs of the Montresors.
The gait of my friend was unsteady, and the bells upon his cap jingled as
he strode.
“The pipe,” said he.
“It is farther on,” said I; “but observe the white web-work which gleams
from these cavern walls.”
He turned towards me, and looked into my eyes with two filmy orbs that
distilled the rheum of intoxication.
“Nitre?” he asked, at length.
“Nitre,” I replied. “How long have you had that cough?”
“Ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—
ugh! ugh! ugh!”
My poor friend found it impossible to reply for many minutes.
“It is nothing,” he said, at last.
“Come,” I said, with decision, “we will go back; your health is precious.
You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was.
You are a man to be missed. For me it is no matter. We will go back; you
will be ill, and I cannot be responsible. Besides, there is Luchesi—”
“Enough,” he said; “the cough is a mere nothing; it will not kill me. I
shall not die of a cough.”
“True—true,” I replied; “and, indeed, I had no intention of alarming you
unnecessarily—but you should use all proper caution. A draught of this
Medoc will defend us from the damps.”
Here I knocked off the neck of a bottle which I drew from a long row of
its fellows that lay upon the mould.

“Drink,” I said, presenting him the wine.
He raised it to his lips with a leer. He paused and nodded to me
familiarly, while his bells jingled.
“I drink,” he said, “to the buried that repose around us.”
“And I to your long life.”
He again took my arm, and we proceeded.
“These vaults,” he said, “are extensive.”
“The Montresors,” I replied, “were a great and numerous family.”
“I forget your arms.”
“A huge human foot d’or, in a field azure; the foot crushes a serpent
rampant whose fangs are imbedded in the heel.”
“And the motto?”
“Nemo me impune lacessit.”
“Good!” he said.
The wine sparkled in his eyes and the bells jingled. My own fancy grew
warm with the Medoc. We had passed through walls of piled bones, with
casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the
catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by
an arm above the elbow.
“The nitre!” I said: “see, it increases. It hangs like moss upon the vaults.
We are below the river’s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the
bones. Come, we will go back ere it is too late. Your cough—”
“It is nothing,” he said; “let us go on. But first, another draught of the
Medoc.”
I broke and reached him a flagon of De Grâve. He emptied it at a breath.
His eyes flashed with a fierce light. He laughed and threw the bottle
upwards with a gesticulation I did not understand.
I looked at him in surprise. He repeated the movement—a grotesque one.
“You do not comprehend?” he said.
“Not I,” I replied.
“Then you are not of the brotherhood.”
“How?”
“You are not of the masons.”

“Yes, yes,” I said, “yes, yes.”
“You? Impossible! A mason?”
“A mason,” I replied.
“A sign,” he said.
“It is this,” I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my
roquelaire.
“You jest,” he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. “But let us proceed to
the Amontillado.”
“Be it so,” I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering
him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily. We continued our route in search of
the Amontillado. We passed through a range of low arches, descended,
passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the
foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.
At the most remote end of the crypt there appeared another less spacious.
Its walls had been lined with human remains, piled to the vault overhead, in
the fashion of the great catacombs of Paris. Three sides of this interior crypt
were still ornamented in this manner. From the fourth the bones had been
thrown down, and lay promiscuously upon the earth, forming at one point a
mound of some size. Within the wall thus exposed by the displacing of the
bones, we perceived a still interior recess, in depth about four feet, in width
three, in height six or seven. It seemed to have been constructed for no
especial use in itself, but formed merely the interval between two of the
colossal supports of the roof of the catacombs, and was backed by one of
their circumscribing walls of solid granite.
It was in vain that Fortunato, uplifting his dull torch, endeavored to pry
into the depths of the recess. Its termination the feeble light did not enable
us to see.
“Proceed,” I said; “herein is the Amontillado. As for Luchesi—”
“He is an ignoramus,” interrupted my friend, as he stepped unsteadily
forward, while I followed immediately at his heels. In an instant he had
reached the extremity of the niche, and finding his progress arrested by the
rock, stood stupidly bewildered. A moment more and I had fettered him to
the granite. In its surface were two iron staples, distant from each other
about two feet, horizontally. From one of these depended a short chain,
from the other a padlock. Throwing the links about his waist, it was but the

work of a few seconds to secure it. He was too much astounded to resist.
Withdrawing the key I stepped back from the recess.
“Pass your hand,” I said, “over the wall; you cannot help feeling the
nitre. Indeed it is very damp. Once more let me implore you to return. No?
Then I must positively leave you. But I must first render you all the little
attentions in my power.”
“The Amontillado!” ejaculated my friend, not yet recovered from his
astonishment.
“True,” I replied; “the Amontillado.”
As I said these words I busied myself among the pile of bones of which I
have before spoken. Throwing them aside, I soon uncovered a quantity of
building stone and mortar. With these materials and with the aid of my
trowel, I began vigorously to wall up the entrance of the niche.
I had scarcely laid the first tier of my masonry when I discovered that the
intoxication of Fortunato had in a great measure worn off. The earliest
indication I had of this was a low moaning cry from the depth of the recess.
It was not the cry of a drunken man. There was then a long and obstinate
silence. I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth; and then I heard
the furious vibrations of the chain. The noise lasted for several minutes,
during which, that I might hearken to it with the more satisfaction, I ceased
my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided,
I resumed the trowel, and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth,
and the seventh tier. The wall was now nearly upon a level with my breast. I
again paused, and holding the flambeaux over the mason-work, threw a few
feeble rays upon the figure within.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the
throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief
moment I hesitated—I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope
with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed
my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I
reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamored. I re-
echoed—I aided—I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this,
and the clamorer grew still.
It was now midnight, and my task was drawing to a close. I had
completed the eighth, the ninth, and the tenth tier. I had finished a portion of
the last and the eleventh; there remained but a single stone to be fitted and

plastered in. I struggled with its weight; I placed it partially in its destined
position. But now there came from out the niche a low laugh that erected
the hairs upon my head. It was succeeded by a sad voice, which I had
difficulty in recognising as that of the noble Fortunato. The voice said—
“Ha! ha! ha!—he! he!—a very good joke indeed—an excellent jest. We
will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo—he! he! he!—over our
wine—he! he! he!”
“The Amontillado!” I said.
“He! he! he!—he! he! he!—yes, the Amontillado. But is it not getting
late? Will not they be awaiting us at the palazzo, the Lady Fortunato and the
rest? Let us be gone.”
“Yes,” I said, “let us be gone.”
“For the love of God, Montressor!”
“Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!”
But to these words I hearkened in vain for a reply. I grew impatient. I
called aloud—
“Fortunato!”
No answer. I called again—
“Fortunato!”
No answer still. I thrust a torch through the remaining aperture and let it
fall within. There came forth in return only a jingling of the bells. My heart
grew sick—on account of the dampness of the catacombs. I hastened to
make an end of my labor. I forced the last stone into its position; I plastered
it up. Against the new masonry I re-erected the old rampart of bones. For
the half of a century no mortal has disturbed them. In pace requiescat!

THE IMP OF THE PERVERSE

In the consideration of the faculties and impulses—of the prima mobilia
of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to make room for a
propensity which, although obviously existing as a radical, primitive,
irreducible sentiment, has been equally overlooked by all the moralists who
have preceded them. In the pure arrogance of the reason, we have all
overlooked it. We have suffered its existence to escape our senses, solely
through want of belief—of faith;—whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith
in the Kabbala. The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply because of
its supererogation. We saw no need of the impulse—for the propensity. We
could not perceive its necessity. We could not understand, that is to say, we
could not have understood, had the notion of this primum mobile ever
obtruded itself;—we could not have understood in what manner it might be
made to further the objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot
be denied that phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism have
been concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man, rather than the
understanding or observant man, set himself to imagine designs—to dictate
purposes to God. Having thus fathomed, to his satisfaction, the intentions of
Jehovah, out of these intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind.
In the matter of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally
enough, that it was the design of the Deity that man should eat. We then
assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the scourge
with which the Deity compels man, will-I nill-I, into eating. Secondly,
having settled it to be God’s will that man should continue his species, we
discovered an organ of amativeness, forthwith. And so with combativeness,
with ideality, with causality, with constructiveness,—so, in short, with every
organ, whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty of
the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the Principia of human
action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or wrong, in part, or upon the
whole, have but followed, in principle, the footsteps of their predecessors;

deducing and establishing every thing from the preconceived destiny of
man, and upon the ground of the objects of his Creator.
It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if classify
we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally did, and was
always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of what we took it for
granted the Deity intended him to do. If we cannot comprehend God in his
visible works, how then in his inconceivable thoughts, that call the works
into being? If we cannot understand him in his objective creatures, how
then in his substantive moods and phases of creation?
Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an
innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something,
which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term. In
the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive not
motivirt. Through its promptings we act without comprehensible object; or,
if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we may so far modify
the proposition as to say, that through its promptings we act, for the reason
that we should not. In theory, no reason can be more unreasonable, but, in
fact, there is none more strong. With certain minds, under certain
conditions, it becomes absolutely irresistible. I am not more certain that I
breathe, than that the assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often
the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its
prosecution. Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the
wrong’s sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements. It is a
radical, a primitive impulse—elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that
when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our
conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the
combativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this
idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of
self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards our
well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its
development. It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited
simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification of
combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term perverseness,
the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a strongly antagonistical
sentiment exists.

An appeal to one’s own heart is, after all, the best reply to the sophistry
just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly questions his
own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness of the propensity
in question. It is not more incomprehensible than distinctive. There lives no
man who at some period has not been tormented, for example, by an earnest
desire to tantalize a listener by circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he
displeases; he has every intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and
clear; the most laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance
upon his tongue; it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from
giving it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he
addresses; yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and
parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough.
The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to an
uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and mortification
of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is indulged.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know
that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life
calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are
consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of
whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be
undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is
no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no
comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more
impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety
arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable,
craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last
hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict
within us,—of the definite with the indefinite—of the substance with the
shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which
prevails,—we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our
welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so
long overawed us. It flies—it disappears—we are free. The old energy
returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!
We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss—we grow
sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.
Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and
horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations, still

more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the
bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this
our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape,
far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a
thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of
our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the
idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a
fall from such a height. And this fall—this rushing annihilation—for the
very reason that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the
most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever
presented themselves to our imagination—for this very cause do we now
the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from
the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no
passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering
upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge. To indulge, for a
moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but
urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no
friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate
ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting
solely from the spirit of the Perverse. We perpetrate them because we feel
that we should not. Beyond or behind this there is no intelligible principle;
and we might, indeed, deem this perverseness a direct instigation of the
Arch-Fiend, were it not occasionally known to operate in furtherance of
good.
I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your question
—that I may explain to you why I am here—that I may assign to you
something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for my wearing
these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell of the condemned. Had I not
been thus prolix, you might either have misunderstood me altogether, or,
with the rabble, have fancied me mad. As it is, you will easily perceive that
I am one of the many uncounted victims of the Imp of the Perverse.
It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more
thorough deliberation. For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means
of the murder. I rejected a thousand schemes, because their accomplishment
involved a chance of detection. At length, in reading some French memoirs,

I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that occurred to Madame Pilau,
through the agency of a candle accidentally poisoned. The idea struck my
fancy at once. I knew my victim’s habit of reading in bed. I knew, too, that
his apartment was narrow and ill-ventilated. But I need not vex you with
impertinent details. I need not describe the easy artifices by which I
substituted, in his bed-room candle-stand, a wax-light of my own making
for the one which I there found. The next morning he was discovered dead
in his bed, and the coroner’s verdict was—“Death by the visitation of God.”
Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years. The idea of
detection never once entered my brain. Of the remains of the fatal taper I
had myself carefully disposed. I had left no shadow of a clew by which it
would be possible to convict, or even to suspect me of the crime. It is
inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose in my bosom as I
reflected upon my absolute security. For a very long period of time I was
accustomed to revel in this sentiment. It afforded me more real delight than
all the mere worldly advantages accruing from my sin. But there arrived at
length an epoch, from which the pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely
perceptible gradations, into a haunting and harassing thought. It harassed
because it haunted. I could scarcely get rid of it for an instant. It is quite a
common thing to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in
our memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive
snatches from an opera. Nor will we be the less tormented if the song in
itself be good, or the opera air meritorious. In this manner, at last, I would
perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and repeating, in a
low undertone, the phrase, “I am safe.”
One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in the act
of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables. In a fit of petulance, I
remodelled them thus: “I am safe—I am safe—yes—if I be not fool enough
to make open confession!”
No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my
heart. I had had some experience in these fits of perversity (whose nature I
have been at some trouble to explain), and I remembered well that in no
instance I had successfully resisted their attacks. And now my own casual
self-suggestion that I might possibly be fool enough to confess the murder
of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the very ghost of him whom
I had murdered—and beckoned me on to death.

At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul. I walked
vigorously—faster—still faster—at length I ran. I felt a maddening desire to
shriek aloud. Every succeeding wave of thought overwhelmed me with new
terror, for, alas! I well, too well understood that to think, in my situation,
was to be lost. I still quickened my pace. I bounded like a madman through
the crowded thoroughfares. At length, the populace took the alarm, and
pursued me. I felt then the consummation of my fate. Could I have torn out
my tongue, I would have done it, but a rough voice resounded in my ears—
a rougher grasp seized me by the shoulder. I turned—I gasped for breath.
For a moment I experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind,
and deaf, and giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me
with his broad palm upon the back. The long imprisoned secret burst forth
from my soul.
They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked
emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before
concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the
hangman and to hell.
Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial conviction, I
fell prostrate in a swoon.
But why shall I say more? To-day I wear these chains, and am here! To-
morrow I shall be fetterless!—but where?

THE ISLAND OF THE FAY
Nullus enim locus sine genio est.—Servius.

“La musique,” says Marmontel, in those “Contes Moraux” (*1) which in
all our translations, we have insisted upon calling “Moral Tales,” as if in
mockery of their spirit—“la musique est le seul des talents qui jouissent de
lui-même; tous les autres veulent des temoins.” He here confounds the
pleasure derivable from sweet sounds with the capacity for creating them.
No more than any other talent, is that for music susceptible of complete
enjoyment, where there is no second party to appreciate its exercise. And it
is only in common with other talents that it produces effects which may be
fully enjoyed in solitude. The idea which the raconteur has either failed to
entertain clearly, or has sacrificed in its expression to his national love of
point, is, doubtless, the very tenable one that the higher order of music is
the most thoroughly estimated when we are exclusively alone. The
proposition, in this form, will be admitted at once by those who love the
lyre for its own sake, and for its spiritual uses. But there is one pleasure still
within the reach of fallen mortality and perhaps only one—which owes
even more than does music to the accessory sentiment of seclusion. I mean
the happiness experienced in the contemplation of natural scenery. In truth,
the man who would behold aright the glory of God upon earth must in
solitude behold that glory. To me, at least, the presence—not of human life
only, but of life in any other form than that of the green things which grow
upon the soil and are voiceless—is a stain upon the landscape—is at war
with the genius of the scene. I love, indeed, to regard the dark valleys, and
the gray rocks, and the waters that silently smile, and the forests that sigh in
uneasy slumbers, and the proud watchful mountains that look down upon
all,—I love to regard these as themselves but the colossal members of one
vast animate and sentient whole—a whole whose form (that of the sphere)
is the most perfect and most inclusive of all; whose path is among associate
planets; whose meek handmaiden is the moon, whose mediate sovereign is

the sun; whose life is eternity, whose thought is that of a God; whose
enjoyment is knowledge; whose destinies are lost in immensity, whose
cognizance of ourselves is akin with our own cognizance of the animalculae
which infest the brain—a being which we, in consequence, regard as purely
inanimate and material much in the same manner as these animalculae must
thus regard us.
Our telescopes and our mathematical investigations assure us on every
hand—notwithstanding the cant of the more ignorant of the priesthood—
that space, and therefore that bulk, is an important consideration in the eyes
of the Almighty. The cycles in which the stars move are those best adapted
for the evolution, without collision, of the greatest possible number of
bodies. The forms of those bodies are accurately such as, within a given
surface, to include the greatest possible amount of matter;—while the
surfaces themselves are so disposed as to accommodate a denser population
than could be accommodated on the same surfaces otherwise arranged. Nor
is it any argument against bulk being an object with God, that space itself is
infinite; for there may be an infinity of matter to fill it. And since we see
clearly that the endowment of matter with vitality is a principle—indeed, as
far as our judgments extend, the leading principle in the operations of Deity,
—it is scarcely logical to imagine it confined to the regions of the minute,
where we daily trace it, and not extending to those of the august. As we find
cycle within cycle without end,—yet all revolving around one far-distant
centre which is the God-head, may we not analogically suppose in the same
manner, life within life, the less within the greater, and all within the Spirit
Divine? In short, we are madly erring, through self-esteem, in believing
man, in either his temporal or future destinies, to be of more moment in the
universe than that vast “clod of the valley” which he tills and contemns, and
to which he denies a soul for no more profound reason than that he does not
behold it in operation. (*2)
These fancies, and such as these, have always given to my meditations
among the mountains and the forests, by the rivers and the ocean, a tinge of
what the everyday world would not fail to term fantastic. My wanderings
amid such scenes have been many, and far-searching, and often solitary;
and the interest with which I have strayed through many a dim, deep valley,
or gazed into the reflected Heaven of many a bright lake, has been an
interest greatly deepened by the thought that I have strayed and gazed
alone. What flippant Frenchman was it who said in allusion to the well-

known work of Zimmerman, that, “la solitude est une belle chose; mais il
faut quelqu’un pour vous dire que la solitude est une belle chose?” The
epigram cannot be gainsayed; but the necessity is a thing that does not exist.
It was during one of my lonely journeyings, amid a far distant region of
mountain locked within mountain, and sad rivers and melancholy tarn
writhing or sleeping within all—that I chanced upon a certain rivulet and
island. I came upon them suddenly in the leafy June, and threw myself upon
the turf, beneath the branches of an unknown odorous shrub, that I might
doze as I contemplated the scene. I felt that thus only should I look upon it
—such was the character of phantasm which it wore.
On all sides—save to the west, where the sun was about sinking—arose
the verdant walls of the forest. The little river which turned sharply in its
course, and was thus immediately lost to sight, seemed to have no exit from
its prison, but to be absorbed by the deep green foliage of the trees to the
east—while in the opposite quarter (so it appeared to me as I lay at length
and glanced upward) there poured down noiselessly and continuously into
the valley, a rich golden and crimson waterfall from the sunset fountains of
the sky.
About midway in the short vista which my dreamy vision took in, one
small circular island, profusely verdured, reposed upon the bosom of the
stream.
So blended bank and shadow there
That each seemed pendulous in air—

so mirror-like was the glassy water, that it was scarcely possible to say at
what point upon the slope of the emerald turf its crystal dominion began.
My position enabled me to include in a single view both the eastern and
western extremities of the islet; and I observed a singularly-marked
difference in their aspects. The latter was all one radiant harem of garden
beauties. It glowed and blushed beneath the eyes of the slant sunlight, and
fairly laughed with flowers. The grass was short, springy, sweet-scented,
and asphodel-interspersed. The trees were lithe, mirthful, erect—bright,
slender, and graceful,—of Eastern figure and foliage, with bark smooth,
glossy, and parti-colored. There seemed a deep sense of life and joy about
all; and although no airs blew from out the heavens, yet every thing had

motion through the gentle sweepings to and fro of innumerable butterflies,
that might have been mistaken for tulips with wings. (*4)
The other or eastern end of the isle was whelmed in the blackest shade. A
sombre, yet beautiful and peaceful gloom here pervaded all things. The
trees were dark in color, and mournful in form and attitude, wreathing
themselves into sad, solemn, and spectral shapes that conveyed ideas of
mortal sorrow and untimely death. The grass wore the deep tint of the
cypress, and the heads of its blades hung droopingly, and hither and thither
among it were many small unsightly hillocks, low and narrow, and not very
long, that had the aspect of graves, but were not; although over and all
about them the rue and the rosemary clambered. The shade of the trees fell
heavily upon the water, and seemed to bury itself therein, impregnating the
depths of the element with darkness. I fancied that each shadow, as the sun
descended lower and lower, separated itself sullenly from the trunk that
gave it birth, and thus became absorbed by the stream; while other shadows
issued momently from the trees, taking the place of their predecessors thus
entombed.
This idea, having once seized upon my fancy, greatly excited it, and I lost
myself forthwith in revery. “If ever island were enchanted,” said I to
myself, “this is it. This is the haunt of the few gentle Fays who remain from
the wreck of the race. Are these green tombs theirs?—or do they yield up
their sweet lives as mankind yield up their own? In dying, do they not rather
waste away mournfully, rendering unto God, little by little, their existence,
as these trees render up shadow after shadow, exhausting their substance
unto dissolution? What the wasting tree is to the water that imbibes its
shade, growing thus blacker by what it preys upon, may not the life of the
Fay be to the death which engulfs it?”
As I thus mused, with half-shut eyes, while the sun sank rapidly to rest,
and eddying currents careered round and round the island, bearing upon
their bosom large, dazzling, white flakes of the bark of the sycamore—
flakes which, in their multiform positions upon the water, a quick
imagination might have converted into anything it pleased—while I thus
mused, it appeared to me that the form of one of those very Fays about
whom I had been pondering made its way slowly into the darkness from out
the light at the western end of the island. She stood erect in a singularly
fragile canoe, and urged it with the mere phantom of an oar. While within

the influence of the lingering sunbeams, her attitude seemed indicative of
joy—but sorrow deformed it as she passed within the shade. Slowly she
glided along, and at length rounded the islet and re-entered the region of
light. “The revolution which has just been made by the Fay,” continued I,
musingly, “is the cycle of the brief year of her life. She has floated through
her winter and through her summer. She is a year nearer unto Death; for I
did not fail to see that, as she came into the shade, her shadow fell from her,
and was swallowed up in the dark water, making its blackness more black.”
And again the boat appeared and the Fay; but about the attitude of the
latter there was more of care and uncertainty and less of elastic joy. She
floated again from out the light and into the gloom (which deepened
momently) and again her shadow fell from her into the ebony water, and
became absorbed into its blackness. And again and again she made the
circuit of the island, (while the sun rushed down to his slumbers), and at
each issuing into the light there was more sorrow about her person, while it
grew feebler and far fainter and more indistinct, and at each passage into
the gloom there fell from her a darker shade, which became whelmed in a
shadow more black. But at length when the sun had utterly departed, the
Fay, now the mere ghost of her former self, went disconsolately with her
boat into the region of the ebony flood—and that she issued thence at all I
cannot say, for darkness fell over all things and I beheld her magical figure
no more.

THE ASSIGNATION
Stay for me there! I will not fail.
To meet thee in that hollow vale.

(Exequy on the death of his wife, by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester.)

Ill-fated and mysterious man!—bewildered in the brilliancy of thine own
imagination, and fallen in the flames of thine own youth! Again in fancy I
behold thee! Once more thy form hath risen before me!—not—oh! not as
thou art—in the cold valley and shadow—but as thou shouldst be—
squandering away a life of magnificent meditation in that city of dim
visions, thine own Venice—which is a star-beloved Elysium of the sea, and
the wide windows of whose Palladian palaces look down with a deep and
bitter meaning upon the secrets of her silent waters. Yes! I repeat it—as
thou shouldst be. There are surely other worlds than this—other thoughts
than the thoughts of the multitude—other speculations than the speculations
of the sophist. Who then shall call thy conduct into question? who blame
thee for thy visionary hours, or denounce those occupations as a wasting
away of life, which were but the overflowings of thine everlasting energies?
It was at Venice, beneath the covered archway there called the Ponte di
Sospiri, that I met for the third or fourth time the person of whom I speak. It
is with a confused recollection that I bring to mind the circumstances of that
meeting. Yet I remember—ah! how should I forget?—the deep midnight,
the Bridge of Sighs, the beauty of woman, and the Genius of Romance that
stalked up and down the narrow canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The great clock of the Piazza had
sounded the fifth hour of the Italian evening. The square of the Campanile
lay silent and deserted, and the lights in the old Ducal Palace were dying
fast away. I was returning home from the Piazetta, by way of the Grand
Canal. But as my gondola arrived opposite the mouth of the canal San
Marco, a female voice from its recesses broke suddenly upon the night, in

one wild, hysterical, and long continued shriek. Startled at the sound, I
sprang upon my feet: while the gondolier, letting slip his single oar, lost it in
the pitchy darkness beyond a chance of recovery, and we were consequently
left to the guidance of the current which here sets from the greater into the
smaller channel. Like some huge and sable-feathered condor, we were
slowly drifting down towards the Bridge of Sighs, when a thousand
flambeaux flashing from the windows, and down the staircases of the Ducal
Palace, turned all at once that deep gloom into a livid and preternatural day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its own mother, had fallen from an
upper window of the lofty structure into the deep and dim canal. The quiet
waters had closed placidly over their victim; and, although my own gondola
was the only one in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in the stream, was
seeking in vain upon the surface, the treasure which was to be found, alas!
only within the abyss. Upon the broad black marble flagstones at the
entrance of the palace, and a few steps above the water, stood a figure
which none who then saw can have ever since forgotten. It was the
Marchesa Aphrodite—the adoration of all Venice—the gayest of the gay—
the most lovely where all were beautiful—but still the young wife of the old
and intriguing Mentoni, and the mother of that fair child, her first and only
one, who now, deep beneath the murky water, was thinking in bitterness of
heart upon her sweet caresses, and exhausting its little life in struggles to
call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare, and silvery feet gleamed in the black
mirror of marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet more than half loosened
for the night from its ball-room array, clustered, amid a shower of
diamonds, round and round her classical head, in curls like those of the
young hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-like drapery seemed to be nearly
the sole covering to her delicate form; but the mid-summer and midnight air
was hot, sullen, and still, and no motion in the statue-like form itself, stirred
even the folds of that raiment of very vapor which hung around it as the
heavy marble hangs around the Niobe. Yet—strange to say!—her large
lustrous eyes were not turned downwards upon that grave wherein her
brightest hope lay buried—but riveted in a widely different direction! The
prison of the Old Republic is, I think, the stateliest building in all Venice—
but how could that lady gaze so fixedly upon it, when beneath her lay
stifling her only child? Yon dark, gloomy niche, too, yawns right opposite
her chamber window—what, then, could there be in its shadows—in its

architecture—in its ivy-wreathed and solemn cornices—that the Marchesa
di Mentoni had not wondered at a thousand times before? Nonsense!—Who
does not remember that, at such a time as this, the eye, like a shattered
mirror, multiplies the images of its sorrow, and sees in innumerable far-off
places, the woe which is close at hand?
Many steps above the Marchesa, and within the arch of the water-gate,
stood, in full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni himself. He was
occasionally occupied in thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to the
very death, as at intervals he gave directions for the recovery of his child.
Stupefied and aghast, I had myself no power to move from the upright
position I had assumed upon first hearing the shriek, and must have
presented to the eyes of the agitated group a spectral and ominous
appearance, as with pale countenance and rigid limbs, I floated down
among them in that funereal gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the most energetic in the search were
relaxing their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy sorrow. There seemed but
little hope for the child; (how much less than for the mother!) but now, from
the interior of that dark niche which has been already mentioned as forming
a part of the Old Republican prison, and as fronting the lattice of the
Marchesa, a figure muffled in a cloak, stepped out within reach of the light,
and, pausing a moment upon the verge of the giddy descent, plunged
headlong into the canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he stood with the still
living and breathing child within his grasp, upon the marble flagstones by
the side of the Marchesa, his cloak, heavy with the drenching water, became
unfastened, and, falling in folds about his feet, discovered to the wonder-
stricken spectators the graceful person of a very young man, with the sound
of whose name the greater part of Europe was then ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the Marchesa! She will now receive her
child—she will press it to her heart—she will cling to its little form, and
smother it with her caresses. Alas! another’s arms have taken it from the
stranger—another’s arms have taken it away, and borne it afar off,
unnoticed, into the palace! And the Marchesa! Her lip—her beautiful lip
trembles; tears are gathering in her eyes—those eyes which, like Pliny’s
acanthus, are “soft and almost liquid.” Yes! tears are gathering in those eyes
—and see! the entire woman thrills throughout the soul, and the statue has
started into life! The pallor of the marble countenance, the swelling of the

marble bosom, the very purity of the marble feet, we behold suddenly
flushed over with a tide of ungovernable crimson; and a slight shudder
quivers about her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napoli about the rich
silver lilies in the grass.
Why should that lady blush! To this demand there is no answer—except
that, having left, in the eager haste and terror of a mother’s heart, the
privacy of her own boudoir, she has neglected to enthral her tiny feet in
their slippers, and utterly forgotten to throw over her Venetian shoulders
that drapery which is their due. What other possible reason could there have
been for her so blushing?—for the glance of those wild appealing eyes?—
for the unusual tumult of that throbbing bosom?—for the convulsive
pressure of that trembling hand?—that hand which fell, as Mentoni turned
into the palace, accidentally, upon the hand of the stranger. What reason
could there have been for the low—the singularly low tone of those
unmeaning words which the lady uttered hurriedly in bidding him adieu?
“Thou hast conquered,” she said, or the murmurs of the water deceived me;
“thou hast conquered—one hour after sunrise—we shall meet—so let it
be!”

The tumult had subsided, the lights had died away within the palace, and
the stranger, whom I now recognized, stood alone upon the flags. He shook
with inconceivable agitation, and his eye glanced around in search of a
gondola. I could not do less than offer him the service of my own; and he
accepted the civility. Having obtained an oar at the water-gate, we
proceeded together to his residence, while he rapidly recovered his self-
possession, and spoke of our former slight acquaintance in terms of great
apparent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon which I take pleasure in being minute. The
person of the stranger—let me call him by this title, who to all the world
was still a stranger—the person of the stranger is one of these subjects. In
height he might have been below rather than above the medium size:
although there were moments of intense passion when his frame actually
expanded and belied the assertion. The light, almost slender symmetry of
his figure, promised more of that ready activity which he evinced at the

Bridge of Sighs, than of that Herculean strength which he has been known
to wield without an effort, upon occasions of more dangerous emergency.
With the mouth and chin of a deity—singular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose
shadows varied from pure hazel to intense and brilliant jet—and a profusion
of curling, black hair, from which a forehead of unusual breadth gleamed
forth at intervals all light and ivory—his were features than which I have
seen none more classically regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones of the
Emperor Commodus. Yet his countenance was, nevertheless, one of those
which all men have seen at some period of their lives, and have never
afterwards seen again. It had no peculiar, it had no settled predominant
expression to be fastened upon the memory; a countenance seen and
instantly forgotten, but forgotten with a vague and never-ceasing desire of
recalling it to mind. Not that the spirit of each rapid passion failed, at any
time, to throw its own distinct image upon the mirror of that face—but that
the mirror, mirror-like, retained no vestige of the passion, when the passion
had departed.
Upon leaving him on the night of our adventure, he solicited me, in what
I thought an urgent manner, to call upon him very early the next morning.
Shortly after sunrise, I found myself accordingly at his Palazzo, one of
those huge structures of gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower above the
waters of the Grand Canal in the vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a
broad winding staircase of mosaics, into an apartment whose unparalleled
splendor burst through the opening door with an actual glare, making me
blind and dizzy with luxuriousness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy. Report had spoken of his
possessions in terms which I had even ventured to call terms of ridiculous
exaggeration. But as I gazed about me, I could not bring myself to believe
that the wealth of any subject in Europe could have supplied the princely
magnificence which burned and blazed around.
Although, as I say, the sun had arisen, yet the room was still brilliantly
lighted up. I judge from this circumstance, as well as from an air of
exhaustion in the countenance of my friend, that he had not retired to bed
during the whole of the preceding night. In the architecture and
embellishments of the chamber, the evident design had been to dazzle and
astound. Little attention had been paid to the decora of what is technically
called keeping, or to the proprieties of nationality. The eye wandered from

object to object, and rested upon none—neither the grotesques of the Greek
painters, nor the sculptures of the best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of
untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every part of the room trembled to the
vibration of low, melancholy music, whose origin was not to be discovered.
The senses were oppressed by mingled and conflicting perfumes, reeking
up from strange convolute censers, together with multitudinous flaring and
flickering tongues of emerald and violet fire. The rays of the newly risen
sun poured in upon the whole, through windows, formed each of a single
pane of crimson-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in a thousand reflections,
from curtains which rolled from their cornices like cataracts of molten
silver, the beams of natural glory mingled at length fitfully with the
artificial light, and lay weltering in subdued masses upon a carpet of rich,
liquid-looking cloth of Chili gold.
“Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!”—laughed the proprietor, motioning me to a
seat as I entered the room, and throwing himself back at full-length upon an
ottoman. “I see,” said he, perceiving that I could not immediately reconcile
myself to the bienseance of so singular a welcome—“I see you are
astonished at my apartment—at my statues—my pictures—my originality
of conception in architecture and upholstery! absolutely drunk, eh, with my
magnificence? But pardon me, my dear sir, (here his tone of voice dropped
to the very spirit of cordiality,) pardon me for my uncharitable laughter. You
appeared so utterly astonished. Besides, some things are so completely
ludicrous, that a man must laugh or die. To die laughing, must be the most
glorious of all glorious deaths! Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was Sir
Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died laughing, you remember. Also in the
Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a long list of characters who came to
the same magnificent end. Do you know, however,” continued he musingly,
“that at Sparta (which is now Palæochori,) at Sparta, I say, to the west of the
citadel, among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is a kind of socle, upon
which are still legible the letters ΛΑΞΜ. They are undoubtedly part of
ΓΕΛΑΞΜΑ. Now, at Sparta were a thousand temples and shrines to a
thousand different divinities. How exceedingly strange that the altar of
Laughter should have survived all the others! But in the present instance,”
he resumed, with a singular alteration of voice and manner, “I have no right
to be merry at your expense. You might well have been amazed. Europe
cannot produce anything so fine as this, my little regal cabinet. My other
apartments are by no means of the same order—mere ultras of fashionable

insipidity. This is better than fashion—is it not? Yet this has but to be seen
to become the rage—that is, with those who could afford it at the cost of
their entire patrimony. I have guarded, however, against any such
profanation. With one exception, you are the only human being besides
myself and my valet, who has been admitted within the mysteries of these
imperial precincts, since they have been bedizened as you see!”
I bowed in acknowledgment—for the overpowering sense of splendor
and perfume, and music, together with the unexpected eccentricity of his
address and manner, prevented me from expressing, in words, my
appreciation of what I might have construed into a compliment.
“Here,” he resumed, arising and leaning on my arm as he sauntered
around the apartment, “here are paintings from the Greeks to Cimabue, and
from Cimabue to the present hour. Many are chosen, as you see, with little
deference to the opinions of Virtu. They are all, however, fitting tapestry for
a chamber such as this. Here, too, are some chefs d’oeuvre of the unknown
great; and here, unfinished designs by men, celebrated in their day, whose
very names the perspicacity of the academies has left to silence and to me.
What think you,” said he, turning abruptly as he spoke—“what think you of
this Madonna della Pieta?”
“It is Guido’s own!” I said, with all the enthusiasm of my nature, for I
had been poring intently over its surpassing loveliness. “It is Guido’s own!
—how could you have obtained it?—she is undoubtedly in painting what
the Venus is in sculpture.”
“Ha!” said he thoughtfully, “the Venus—the beautiful Venus?—the Venus
of the Medici?—she of the diminutive head and the gilded hair? Part of the
left arm (here his voice dropped so as to be heard with difficulty,) and all
the right, are restorations; and in the coquetry of that right arm lies, I think,
the quintessence of all affectation. Give me the Canova! The Apollo, too, is
a copy—there can be no doubt of it—blind fool that I am, who cannot
behold the boasted inspiration of the Apollo! I cannot help—pity me!—I
cannot help preferring the Antinous. Was it not Socrates who said that the
statuary found his statue in the block of marble? Then Michael Angelo was
by no means original in his couplet—
‘Non ha l’ottimo artista alcun concetto
Che un marmo solo in se non circunscriva.’”

It has been, or should be remarked, that, in the manner of the true
gentleman, we are always aware of a difference from the bearing of the
vulgar, without being at once precisely able to determine in what such
difference consists. Allowing the remark to have applied in its full force to
the outward demeanor of my acquaintance, I felt it, on that eventful
morning, still more fully applicable to his moral temperament and character.
Nor can I better define that peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place him
so essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of
intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions—
intruding upon his moments of dalliance—and interweaving itself with his
very flashes of merriment—like adders which writhe from out the eyes of
the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples of Persepolis.
I could not help, however, repeatedly observing, through the mingled
tone of levity and solemnity with which he rapidly descanted upon matters
of little importance, a certain air of trepidation—a degree of nervous
unction in action and in speech—an unquiet excitability of manner which
appeared to me at all times unaccountable, and upon some occasions even
filled me with alarm. Frequently, too, pausing in the middle of a sentence
whose commencement he had apparently forgotten, he seemed to be
listening in the deepest attention, as if either in momentary expectation of a
visitor, or to sounds which must have had existence in his imagination
alone.
It was during one of these reveries or pauses of apparent abstraction, that,
in turning over a page of the poet and scholar Politian’s beautiful tragedy
“The Orfeo,” (the first native Italian tragedy,) which lay near me upon an
ottoman, I discovered a passage underlined in pencil. It was a passage
towards the end of the third act—a passage of the most heart-stirring
excitement—a passage which, although tainted with impurity, no man shall
read without a thrill of novel emotion—no woman without a sigh. The
whole page was blotted with fresh tears; and, upon the opposite interleaf,
were the following English lines, written in a hand so very different from
the peculiar characters of my acquaintance, that I had some difficulty in
recognising it as his own:—
Thou wast that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers;
And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope, that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“Onward!”—but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies,
Mute—motionless—aghast!

For alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o’er.
“No more—no more—no more,”
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore,)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!

Now all my hours are trances;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where the dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams,
In what ethereal dances,
By what Italian streams.

Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o’er the billow,
From Love to titled age and crime,
And an unholy pillow!—
From me, and from our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!

That these lines were written in English—a language with which I had
not believed their author acquainted—afforded me little matter for surprise.
I was too well aware of the extent of his acquirements, and of the singular
pleasure he took in concealing them from observation, to be astonished at
any similar discovery; but the place of date, I must confess, occasioned me
no little amazement. It had been originally written London, and afterwards
carefully overscored—not, however, so effectually as to conceal the word
from a scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned me no little amazement; for I
well remember that, in a former conversation with a friend, I particularly
inquired if he had at any time met in London the Marchesa di Mentoni,
(who for some years previous to her marriage had resided in that city,)
when his answer, if I mistake not, gave me to understand that he had never
visited the metropolis of Great Britain. I might as well here mention, that I

have more than once heard, (without, of course, giving credit to a report
involving so many improbabilities,) that the person of whom I speak, was
not only by birth, but in education, an Englishman.

“There is one painting,” said he, without being aware of my notice of the
tragedy—“there is still one painting which you have not seen.” And
throwing aside a drapery, he discovered a full-length portrait of the
Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more in the delineation of her
superhuman beauty. The same ethereal figure which stood before me the
preceding night upon the steps of the Ducal Palace, stood before me once
again. But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all
over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomaly!) that fitful
stain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the
perfection of the beautiful. Her right arm lay folded over her bosom. With
her left she pointed downward to a curiously fashioned vase. One small,
fairy foot, alone visible, barely touched the earth; and, scarcely discernible
in the brilliant atmosphere which seemed to encircle and enshrine her
loveliness, floated a pair of the most delicately imagined wings. My glance
fell from the painting to the figure of my friend, and the vigorous words of
Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois, quivered instinctively upon my lips:
“He is up
There like a Roman statue! He will stand
Till Death hath made him marble!”

“Come,” he said at length, turning towards a table of richly enamelled
and massive silver, upon which were a few goblets fantastically stained,
together with two large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the same extraordinary
model as that in the foreground of the portrait, and filled with what I
supposed to be Johannisberger. “Come,” he said, abruptly, “let us drink! It
is early—but let us drink. It is indeed early,” he continued, musingly, as a
cherub with a heavy golden hammer made the apartment ring with the first
hour after sunrise: “It is indeed early—but what matters it? let us drink! Let
us pour out an offering to yon solemn sun which these gaudy lamps and

censers are so eager to subdue!” And, having made me pledge him in a
bumper, he swallowed in rapid succession several goblets of the wine.
“To dream,” he continued, resuming the tone of his desultory
conversation, as he held up to the rich light of a censer one of the
magnificent vases—“to dream has been the business of my life. I have
therefore framed for myself, as you see, a bower of dreams. In the heart of
Venice could I have erected a better? You behold around you, it is true, a
medley of architectural embellishments. The chastity of Ionia is offended
by antediluvian devices, and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretched upon
carpets of gold. Yet the effect is incongruous to the timid alone. Proprieties
of place, and especially of time, are the bugbears which terrify mankind
from the contemplation of the magnificent. Once I was myself a decorist;
but that sublimation of folly has palled upon my soul. All this is now the
fitter for my purpose. Like these arabesque censers, my spirit is writhing in
fire, and the delirium of this scene is fashioning me for the wilder visions of
that land of real dreams whither I am now rapidly departing.” He here
paused abruptly, bent his head to his bosom, and seemed to listen to a sound
which I could not hear. At length, erecting his frame, he looked upwards,
and ejaculated the lines of the Bishop of Chichester:
“Stay for me there! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale.”

In the next instant, confessing the power of the wine, he threw himself at
full-length upon an ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the staircase, and a loud knock at the
door rapidly succeeded. I was hastening to anticipate a second disturbance,
when a page of Mentoni’s household burst into the room, and faltered out,
in a voice choking with emotion, the incoherent words, “My mistress!—my
mistress!—Poisoned!—poisoned! Oh, beautiful—oh, beautiful Aphrodite!”
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and endeavored to arouse the sleeper
to a sense of the startling intelligence. But his limbs were rigid—his lips
were livid—his lately beaming eyes were riveted in death. I staggered back
towards the table—my hand fell upon a cracked and blackened goblet—and
a consciousness of the entire and terrible truth flashed suddenly over my
soul.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores
Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit.
Sospite nunc patria, fracto nunc funeris antro,
Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.

[Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of
the Jacobin Club House at Paris.]

I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at
length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were
leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of
distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the
inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It
conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution—perhaps from its association in
fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a brief period, for
presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw—but with how terrible an
exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me
white—whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words—and thin
even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness
—of immoveable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture. I saw
that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I
saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of
my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a
few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving
of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And
then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they
wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would
save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my
spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of
a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with
heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then

there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what
sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and
stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as
my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the
judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into
nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness
supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent
as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night were the
universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost.
What of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe;
yet all was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In delirium—no! In a
swoon—no! In death—no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no
immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we
break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail
may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the
return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of
mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It
seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the
impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in
memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is—what? How at least shall we
distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of
what I have termed the first stage are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long
interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come?
He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly
familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air
the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the
perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered
with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested
his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavors to remember; amid earnest
struggles to regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into
which my soul had lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed
of success; there have been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured
up remembrances which the lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could
have had reference only to that condition of seeming unconsciousness.
These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and

bore me in silence down—down—still down—till a hideous dizziness
oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They
tell also of a vague horror at my heart, on account of that heart’s unnatural
stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all
things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their
descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of
their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is
madness—the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden
things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound—the
tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating.
Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and
touch—a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere
consciousness of existence, without thought—a condition which lasted
long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest
endeavor to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into
insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to move.
And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of
the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all
that followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavor have
enabled me vaguely to recall.
So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back, unbound.
I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard.
There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine
where and what I could be. I longed, yet dared not to employ my vision. I
dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look
upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to
see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes.
My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night
encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness
seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I
still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind
the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my
real condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very
long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose
myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in
fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence;—but where and in

what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the
autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of
my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice,
which would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not
be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my dungeon, as well
as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not
altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart,
and for a brief period, I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon
recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every
fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt
nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls
of a tomb. Perspiration burst from every pore, and stood in cold big beads
upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I
cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining
from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I
proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy. I
breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most
hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came
thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of
Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated—fables I
had always deemed them—but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save
in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of
darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? That the
result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I
knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour
were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It
was a wall, seemingly of stone masonry—very smooth, slimy, and cold. I
followed it up; stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain
antique narratives had inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no
means of ascertaining the dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its
circuit, and return to the point whence I set out, without being aware of the
fact; so perfectly uniform seemed the wall. I therefore sought the knife
which had been in my pocket, when led into the inquisitorial chamber; but

it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a wrapper of coarse serge. I
had thought of forcing the blade in some minute crevice of the masonry, so
as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty, nevertheless, was but
trivial; although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at first insuperable.
I tore a part of the hem from the robe and placed the fragment at full length,
and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could
not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least I
thought: but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my
own weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for
some time, when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to
remain prostrate; and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and
a pitcher with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this
circumstance, but ate and drank with avidity. Shortly afterward, I resumed
my tour around the prison, and with much toil came at last upon the
fragment of the serge. Up to the period when I fell I had counted fifty-two
paces, and upon resuming my walk, I had counted forty-eight more—when
I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred paces; and, admitting
two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty yards in circuit. I
had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could form no
guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to be.
I had little object—certainly no hope—in these researches; but a vague
curiosity prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to
cross the area of the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution,
for the floor, although seemingly of solid material, was treacherous with
slime. At length, however, I took courage, and did not hesitate to step
firmly; endeavoring to cross in as direct a line as possible. I had advanced
some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when the remnant of the torn hem
of my robe became entangled between my legs. I stepped on it, and fell
violently on my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a
somewhat startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward,
and while I still lay prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin
rested upon the floor of the prison, but my lips and the upper portion of my
head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing.
At the same time my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the

peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils. I put forward my
arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very brink of a circular
pit, whose extent, of course, I had no means of ascertaining at the moment.
Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in
dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds
I hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm
in its descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by
loud echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick
opening, and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of
light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and
congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped.
Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more. And the
death just avoided, was of that very character which I had regarded as
fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims
of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies,
or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the
latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at
the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting
subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall—resolving
there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my
imagination now pictured many in various positions about the dungeon. In
other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at
once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of
cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits—that the
sudden extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours, but at length I
again slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a
pitcher of water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at
a draught. It must have been drugged—for scarcely had I drunk, before I
became irresistibly drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me—a sleep like that of
death. How long it lasted of course, I know not; but when, once again, I
unclosed my eyes, the objects around me were visible. By a wild
sulphurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first determine, I was
enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.

In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did
not exceed twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a
world of vain trouble; vain indeed! for what could be of less importance,
under the terrible circumstances which environed me, then the mere
dimensions of my dungeon? But my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I
busied myself in endeavors to account for the error I had committed in my
measurement. The truth at length flashed upon me. In my first attempt at
exploration I had counted fifty-two paces, up to the period when I fell; I
must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in fact, I
had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept—and, upon
awaking, I must have returned upon my steps—thus supposing the circuit
nearly double what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me
from observing that I began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it
with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived, too, in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In
feeling my way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great
irregularity; so potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from
lethargy or sleep! The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions,
or niches, at odd intervals. The general shape of the prison was square.
What I had taken for masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal,
in huge plates, whose sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire
surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and
repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given
rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms, and
other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls. I
observed that the outlines of these monstrosities were sufficiently distinct,
but that the colors seemed faded and blurred, as if from the effects of a
damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too, which was of stone. In the
centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had escaped; but it was
the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort—for my personal condition
had been greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at
full length, on a species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely
bound by a long strap resembling a surcingle. It passed in many
convolutions about my limbs and body, leaving at liberty only my head, and
my left arm to such extent that I could, by dint of much exertion, supply
myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my side on the floor. I

saw, to my horror, that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my horror—
for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the
design of my persecutors to stimulate—for the food in the dish was meat
pungently seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty
or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its
panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted
figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe,
he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a
huge pendulum such as we see on antique clocks. There was something,
however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it
more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its position was
immediately over my own) I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant
afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and of course slow.
I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear, but more in wonder.
Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes upon
the other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and, looking to the floor, I saw several
enormous rats traversing it. They had issued from the well, which lay just
within view to my right. Even then, while I gazed, they came up in troops,
hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it
required much effort and attention to scare them away.
It might have been half an hour, perhaps even an hour, (for I could take
but imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then
saw confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased
in extent by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also
much greater. But what mainly disturbed me was the idea that had
perceptibly descended. I now observed—with what horror it is needless to
say—that its nether extremity was formed of a crescent of glittering steel,
about a foot in length from horn to horn; the horns upward, and the under
edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a razor also, it seemed massy
and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and broad structure above. It
was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole hissed as it swung
through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity
in torture. My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial

agents—the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as
myself—the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule
of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the
merest of accidents, I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment,
formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths.
Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the
abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder
destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought of
such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than mortal,
during which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel! Inch by inch—
line by line—with a descent only appreciable at intervals that seemed ages
—down and still down it came! Days passed—it might have been that many
days passed—ere it swept so closely over me as to fan me with its acrid
breath. The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed—I
wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew
frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of
the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the
glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief; for, upon
again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible descent in the
pendulum. But it might have been long; for I knew there were demons who
took note of my swoon, and who could have arrested the vibration at
pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I felt very—oh! inexpressibly—sick and
weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid the agonies of that period, the
human nature craved food. With painful effort I outstretched my left arm as
far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the small remnant which
had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within my lips, there
rushed to my mind a half formed thought of joy—of hope. Yet what
business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half formed thought—man has
many such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy—of hope;
but felt also that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to
perfect—to regain it. Long suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary
powers of mind. I was an imbecile—an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw
that the crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray

the serge of my robe—it would return and repeat its operations—again—
and again. Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or
more) and the hissing vigor of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very
walls of iron, still the fraying of my robe would be all that, for several
minutes, it would accomplish. And at this thought I paused. I dared not go
farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it with a pertinacity of attention—
as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest here the descent of the steel. I forced
myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should pass across the
garment—upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of cloth
produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth
were on edge.
Down—steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting
its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right—to the left—far and
wide—with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart with the stealthy pace
of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled as the one or the other idea
grew predominant.
Down—certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of
my bosom! I struggled violently, furiously, to free my left arm. This was
free only from the elbow to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the
platter beside me, to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. Could I
have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and
attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest
an avalanche!
Down—still unceasingly—still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled
at each vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its every sweep. My eyes
followed its outward or upward whirls with the eagerness of the most
unmeaning despair; they closed themselves spasmodically at the descent,
although death would have been a relief, oh, how unspeakable! Still I
quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery
would precipitate that keen, glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that
prompted the nerve to quiver—the frame to shrink. It was hope—the hope
that triumphs on the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned even in
the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual
contact with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over
my spirit all the keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time

during many hours—or perhaps days—I thought. It now occurred to me
that the bandage, or surcingle, which enveloped me, was unique. I was tied
by no separate cord. The first stroke of the razorlike crescent athwart any
portion of the band, would so detach it that it might be unwound from my
person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in that case, the
proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle how deadly! Was
it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and
provided for this possibility? Was it probable that the bandage crossed my
bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it
seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a
distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body
close in all directions—save in the path of the destroying crescent.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position, when
there flashed upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the
unformed half of that idea of deliverance to which I have previously
alluded, and of which a moiety only floated indeterminately through my
brain when I raised food to my burning lips. The whole thought was now
present—feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite,—but still entire. I
proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its
execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which
I lay had been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous
—their red eyes glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on
my part to make me their prey. “To what food,” I thought, “have they been
accustomed in the well?”
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a
small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-
saw, or wave of the hand about the platter; and, at length, the unconscious
uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the
vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the
particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I thoroughly
rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising my hand from
the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change—at
the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the
well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their

voracity. Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the
boldest leaped upon the frame-work, and smelt at the surcingle. This
seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the well they hurried in
fresh troops. They clung to the wood—they overran it, and leaped in
hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the pendulum
disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes they busied themselves with
the anointed bandage. They pressed—they swarmed upon me in ever
accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought
my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which
the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy
clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be
over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew that in more
than one place it must be already severed. With a more than human
resolution I lay still.
Nor had I erred in my calculations—nor had I endured in vain. I at length
felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body. But the
stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the
serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it
swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every nerve. But the moment
of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my deliverers hurried
tumultuously away. With a steady movement—cautious, sidelong,
shrinking, and slow—I slid from the embrace of the bandage and beyond
the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was free.
Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from
my wooden bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the
motion of the hellish machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up, by some
invisible force, through the ceiling. This was a lesson which I took
desperately to heart. My every motion was undoubtedly watched. Free!—I
had but escaped death in one form of agony, to be delivered unto worse than
death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eves nervously around on
the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual—some change
which, at first, I could not appreciate distinctly—it was obvious, had taken
place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling
abstraction, I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this
period, I became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulphurous
light which illumined the cell. It proceeded from a fissure, about half an
inch in width, extending entirely around the prison at the base of the walls,

which thus appeared, and were, completely separated from the floor. I
endeavored, but of course in vain, to look through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber
broke at once upon my understanding. I have observed that, although the
outlines of the figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the
colors seemed blurred and indefinite. These colors had now assumed, and
were momentarily assuming, a startling and most intense brilliancy, that
gave to the spectral and fiendish portraitures an aspect that might have
thrilled even firmer nerves than my own. Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly
vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand directions, where none had been
visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre of a fire that I could not
force my imagination to regard as unreal.
Unreal!—Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of
the vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A
deeper glow settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A
richer tint of crimson diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I
panted! I gasped for breath! There could be no doubt of the design of my
tormentors—oh! most unrelenting! oh! most demoniac of men! I shrank
from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell. Amid the thought of the
fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness of the well came
over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my straining
vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost
recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the
meaning of what I saw. At length it forced—it wrestled its way into my soul
—it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason. Oh! for a voice to speak!
—oh! horror!—oh! any horror but this! With a shriek, I rushed from the
margin, and buried my face in my hands—weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as
with a fit of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell—and now
the change was obviously in the form. As before, it was in vain that I, at
first, endeavoured to appreciate or understand what was taking place. But
not long was I left in doubt. The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried
by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King
of Terrors. The room had been square. I saw that two of its iron angles were
now acute—two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly
increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an instant the

apartment had shifted its form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration
stopped not here—I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have
clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. “Death,” I
said, “any death but that of the pit!” Fool! might I have not known that into
the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its
glow? or, if even that, could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and
flatter grew the lozenge, with a rapidity that left me no time for
contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its greatest width, came just over
the yawning gulf. I shrank back—but the closing walls pressed me
resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there was no
longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no
more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final
scream of despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink—I averted my eyes—
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as
of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The
fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell,
fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had
entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies.

THE PREMATURE BURIAL

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which
are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction. These the
mere romanticist must eschew, if he do not wish to offend or to disgust.
They are with propriety handled only when the severity and majesty of
Truth sanctify and sustain them. We thrill, for example, with the most
intense of “pleasurable pain” over the accounts of the Passage of the
Beresina, of the Earthquake at Lisbon, of the Plague at London, of the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the hundred and twenty-
three prisoners in the Black Hole at Calcutta. But in these accounts it is the
fact——it is the reality——it is the history which excites. As inventions,
we should regard them with simple abhorrence.
I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and august calamities
on record; but in these it is the extent, not less than the character of the
calamity, which so vividly impresses the fancy. I need not remind the reader
that, from the long and weird catalogue of human miseries, I might have
selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering
than any of these vast generalities of disaster. The true wretchedness, indeed
—the ultimate woe——is particular, not diffuse. That the ghastly extremes
of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the mass——for
this let us thank a merciful God!
To be buried while alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these
extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality. That it has
frequently, very frequently, so fallen will scarcely be denied by those who
think. The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy
and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of all the
apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely
suspensions, properly so called. They are only temporary pauses in the
incomprehensible mechanism. A certain period elapses, and some unseen

mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard
wheels. The silver cord was not for ever loosed, nor the golden bowl
irreparably broken. But where, meantime, was the soul?
Apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priori that such causes
must produce such effects——that the well-known occurrence of such
cases of suspended animation must naturally give rise, now and then, to
premature interments—apart from this consideration, we have the direct
testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number
of such interments have actually taken place. I might refer at once, if
necessary, to a hundred well-authenticated instances. One of very
remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the
memory of some of my readers, occurred, not very long ago, in the
neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and
widely-extended excitement. The wife of one of the most respectable
citizens—a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress—was seized
with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill
of her physicians. After much suffering she died, or was supposed to die.
No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not
actually dead. She presented all the ordinary appearances of death. The face
assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual
marble pallor. The eyes were lustreless. There was no warmth. Pulsation
had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which
it had acquired a stony rigidity. The funeral, in short, was hastened, on
account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.
The lady was deposited in her family vault, which, for three subsequent
years, was undisturbed. At the expiration of this term it was opened for the
reception of a sarcophagus; but, alas! how fearful a shock awaited the
husband, who, personally, threw open the door! As its portals swung
outwardly back, some white-apparelled object fell rattling within his arms.
It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmoulded shroud.
A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within
two days after her entombment; that her struggles within the coffin had
caused it to fall from a ledge, or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as
to permit her escape. A lamp which had been accidentally left, full of oil,
within the tomb, was found empty; it might have been exhausted, however,
by evaporation. On the uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread

chamber was a large fragment of the coffin, with which, it seemed, that she
had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door. While thus
occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died, through sheer terror;
and, in failing, her shroud became entangled in some iron-work which
projected interiorly. Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.
In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France,
attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth
is, indeed, stranger than fiction. The heroine of the story was a
Mademoiselle Victorine Lafourcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of
wealth, and of great personal beauty. Among her numerous suitors was
Julien Bossuet, a poor litterateur, or journalist of Paris. His talents and
general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by
whom he seems to have been truly beloved; but her pride of birth decided
her, finally, to reject him, and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a
diplomatist of some eminence. After marriage, however, this gentleman
neglected, and, perhaps, even more positively ill-treated her. Having passed
with him some wretched years, she died—at least her condition so closely
resembled death as to deceive every one who saw her. She was buried——
not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity. Filled
with despair, and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment,
the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the
village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse, and
possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses. He reaches the grave. At
midnight he unearths the coffin, opens it, and is in the act of detaching the
hair, when he is arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes. In fact, the
lady had been buried alive. Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was
aroused by the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had been
mistaken for death. He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village. He
employed certain powerful restoratives suggested by no little medical
learning. In fine, she revived. She recognized her preserver. She remained
with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health. Her
woman’s heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to
soften it. She bestowed it upon Bossuet. She returned no more to her
husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to
America. Twenty years afterward, the two returned to France, in the
persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady’s appearance that her
friends would be unable to recognize her. They were mistaken, however,

for, at the first meeting, Monsieur Renelle did actually recognize and make
claim to his wife. This claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained
her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long
lapse of years, had extinguished, not only equitably, but legally, the
authority of the husband.
The “Chirurgical Journal” of Leipsic, a periodical of high authority and
merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and
republish, records in a late number a very distressing event of the character
in question.
An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health,
being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe
contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible at once; the skull
was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended.
Trepanning was accomplished successfully. He was bled, and many other of
the ordinary means of relief were adopted. Gradually, however, he fell into
a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and, finally, it was thought that he
died.
The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of
the public cemeteries. His funeral took place on Thursday. On the Sunday
following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with
visitors, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the
declaration of a peasant that, while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he
had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by some one
struggling beneath. At first little attention was paid to the man’s
asseveration; but his evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he
persisted in his story, had at length their natural effect upon the crowd.
Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully
shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its
occupant appeared. He was then seemingly dead; but he sat nearly erect
within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially
uplifted.
He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced
to be still living, although in an asphytic condition. After some hours he
revived, recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and, in broken
sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave.

From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of
life for more than an hour, while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility.
The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil;
and thus some air was necessarily admitted. He heard the footsteps of the
crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn. It was the
tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to
awaken him from a deep sleep, but no sooner was he awake than he became
fully aware of the awful horrors of his position.
This patient, it is recorded, was doing well and seemed to be in a fair way
of ultimate recovery, but fell a victim to the quackeries of medical
experiment. The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in
one of those ecstatic paroxysms which, occasionally, it superinduces.
The mention of the galvanic battery, nevertheless, recalls to my memory
a well known and very extraordinary case in point, where its action proved
the means of restoring to animation a young attorney of London, who had
been interred for two days. This occurred in 1831, and created, at the time, a
very profound sensation wherever it was made the subject of converse.
The patient, Mr. Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever,
accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the
curiosity of his medical attendants. Upon his seeming decease, his friends
were requested to sanction a post-mortem examination, but declined to
permit it. As often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners
resolved to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure, in private.
Arrangements were easily effected with some of the numerous corps of
body-snatchers, with which London abounds; and, upon the third night after
the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave eight feet
deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals.
An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen, when
the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application
of the battery. One experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects
supervened, with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except, upon
one or two occasions, a more than ordinary degree of life-likeness in the
convulsive action.
It grew late. The day was about to dawn; and it was thought expedient, at
length, to proceed at once to the dissection. A student, however, was
especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon

applying the battery to one of the pectoral muscles. A rough gash was made,
and a wire hastily brought in contact, when the patient, with a hurried but
quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle
of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then—spoke.
What he said was unintelligible, but words were uttered; the syllabification
was distinct. Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.
For some moments all were paralyzed with awe—but the urgency of the
case soon restored them their presence of mind. It was seen that Mr.
Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon. Upon exhibition of ether he
revived and was rapidly restored to health, and to the society of his friends
—from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld,
until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended. Their wonder—their
rapturous astonishment—may be conceived.
The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in
what Mr. S. himself asserts. He declares that at no period was he altogether
insensible—that, dully and confusedly, he was aware of everything which
happened to him, from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by
his physicians, to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital.
“I am alive,” were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the
locality of the dissecting-room, he had endeavored, in his extremity, to utter.
It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these—but I forbear
—for, indeed, we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature
interments occur. When we reflect how very rarely, from the nature of the
case, we have it in our power to detect them, we must admit that they may
frequently occur without our cognizance. Scarcely, in truth, is a graveyard
ever encroached upon, for any purpose, to any great extent, that skeletons
are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.
Fearful indeed the suspicion—but more fearful the doom! It may be
asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to
inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before
death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs—the stifling fumes from
the damp earth—the clinging to the death garments—the rigid embrace of
the narrow house—the blackness of the absolute Night—the silence like a
sea that overwhelms—the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror
Worm—these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with
memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our

fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed—
that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead—these considerations, I
say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and
intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We
know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth—we can dream of nothing half so
hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. And thus all narratives upon
this topic have an interest profound; an interest, nevertheless, which,
through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly
depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated. What I have
now to tell is of my own actual knowledge—of my own positive and
personal experience.
For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder
which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy, in default of a more
definitive title. Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes,
and even the actual diagnosis, of this disease are still mysterious, its
obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood. Its variations
seem to be chiefly of degree. Sometimes the patient lies, for a day only, or
even for a shorter period, in a species of exaggerated lethargy. He is
senseless and externally motionless; but the pulsation of the heart is still
faintly perceptible; some traces of warmth remain; a slight color lingers
within the centre of the cheek; and, upon application of a mirror to the lips,
we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs. Then
again the duration of the trance is for weeks—even for months; while the
closest scrutiny, and the most rigorous medical tests, fail to establish any
material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive
of absolute death. Very usually he is saved from premature interment solely
by the knowledge of his friends that he has been previously subject to
catalepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and, above all, by the non-
appearance of decay. The advances of the malady are, luckily, gradual. The
first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal. The fits grow
successively more and more distinctive, and endure each for a longer term
than the preceding. In this lies the principal security from inhumation. The
unfortunate whose first attack should be of the extreme character which is
occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.
My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in
medical books. Sometimes, without any apparent cause, I sank, little by
little, into a condition of semi-syncope, or half swoon; and, in this

condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think,
but with a dull lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those
who surrounded my bed, I remained, until the crisis of the disease restored
me, suddenly, to perfect sensation. At other times I was quickly and
impetuously smitten. I grew sick, and numb, and chilly, and dizzy, and so
fell prostrate at once. Then, for weeks, all was void, and black, and silent,
and Nothing became the universe. Total annihilation could be no more.
From these latter attacks I awoke, however, with a gradation slow in
proportion to the suddenness of the seizure. Just as the day dawns to the
friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long
desolate winter night—just so tardily—just so wearily—just so cheerily
came back the light of the Soul to me.
Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared
to be good; nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one
prevalent malady—unless, indeed, an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep
may be looked upon as superinduced. Upon awaking from slumber, I could
never gain, at once, thorough possession of my senses, and always
remained, for many minutes, in much bewilderment and perplexity—the
mental faculties in general, but the memory in especial, being in a condition
of absolute abeyance.
In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress
an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked “of worms, of tombs, and
epitaphs.” I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial
held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was
subjected haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation
was excessive—in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread
the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I shook—shook as the
quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness
no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep—for I shuddered
to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And
when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of
phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered,
predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
From the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in
dreams, I select for record but a solitary vision. Methought I was immersed
in a cataleptic trance of more than usual duration and profundity. Suddenly

there came an icy hand upon my forehead, and an impatient, gibbering
voice whispered the word “Arise!” within my ear.
I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who
had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen
into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained
motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand
grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering
voice said again:
“Arise! did I not bid thee arise?”
“And who,” I demanded, “art thou?”
“I have no name in the regions which I inhabit,” replied the voice,
mournfully; “I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful.
Thou dost feel that I shudder. My teeth chatter as I speak, yet it is not with
the chilliness of the night—of the night without end. But this hideousness is
insufferable. How canst thou tranquilly sleep? I cannot rest for the cry of
these great agonies. These sights are more than I can bear. Get thee up!
Come with me into the outer Night, and let me unfold to thee the graves. Is
not this a spectacle of woe?—Behold!”
I looked; and the unseen figure, which still grasped me by the wrist, had
caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind; and from each issued
the faint phosphoric radiance of decay; so that I could see into the
innermost recesses, and there view the shrouded bodies in their sad and
solemn slumbers with the worm. But alas! the real sleepers were fewer, by
many millions, than those who slumbered not at all; and there was a feeble
struggling; and there was a general sad unrest; and from out the depths of
the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling from the garments of
the buried. And of those who seemed tranquilly to repose, I saw that a vast
number had changed, in a greater or less degree, the rigid and uneasy
position in which they had originally been entombed. And the voice again
said to me as I gazed:
“Is it not—oh! is it not a pitiful sight?” But, before I could find words to
reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist, the phosphoric lights
expired, and the graves were closed with a sudden violence, while from out
them arose a tumult of despairing cries, saying again: “Is it not—O, God, is
it not a very pitiful sight?”

Phantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night, extended their
terrific influence far into my waking hours. My nerves became thoroughly
unstrung, and I fell a prey to perpetual horror. I hesitated to ride, or to walk,
or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home. In fact, I no
longer dared trust myself out of the immediate presence of those who were
aware of my proneness to catalepsy, lest, falling into one of my usual fits, I
should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained. I doubted
the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends. I dreaded that, in some trance of
more than customary duration, they might be prevailed upon to regard me
as irrecoverable. I even went so far as to fear that, as I occasioned much
trouble, they might be glad to consider any very protracted attack as
sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether. It was in vain they
endeavored to reassure me by the most solemn promises. I exacted the most
sacred oaths, that under no circumstances they would bury me until
decomposition had so materially advanced as to render farther preservation
impossible. And, even then, my mortal terrors would listen to no reason—
would accept no consolation. I entered into a series of elaborate
precautions. Among other things, I had the family vault so remodelled as to
admit of being readily opened from within. The slightest pressure upon a
long lever that extended far into the tomb would cause the iron portal to fly
back. There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light,
and convenient receptacles for food and water, within immediate reach of
the coffin intended for my reception. This coffin was warmly and softly
padded, and was provided with a lid, fashioned upon the principle of the
vault-door, with the addition of springs so contrived that the feeblest
movement of the body would be sufficient to set it at liberty. Besides all
this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb, a large bell, the rope of
which, it was designed, should extend through a hole in the coffin, and so
be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse. But, alas? what avails the
vigilance against the Destiny of man? Not even these well-contrived
securities sufficed to save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation,
a wretch to these agonies foredoomed!
There arrived an epoch—as often before there had arrived—in which I
found myself emerging from total unconsciousness into the first feeble and
indefinite sense of existence. Slowly—with a tortoise gradation—
approached the faint gray dawn of the psychal day. A torpid uneasiness. An
apathetic endurance of dull pain. No care—no hope—no effort. Then, after

a long interval, a ringing in the ears; then, after a lapse still longer, a
prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities; then a seemingly eternal
period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are
struggling into thought; then a brief re-sinking into non-entity; then a
sudden recovery. At length the slight quivering of an eyelid, and
immediately thereupon, an electric shock of a terror, deadly and indefinite,
which sends the blood in torrents from the temples to the heart. And now
the first positive effort to think. And now the first endeavor to remember.
And now a partial and evanescent success. And now the memory has so far
regained its dominion, that, in some measure, I am cognizant of my state. I
feel that I am not awaking from ordinary sleep. I recollect that I have been
subject to catalepsy. And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my
shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim Danger—by the one
spectral and ever-prevalent idea.
For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without
motion. And why? I could not summon courage to move. I dared not make
the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate—and yet there was something
at my heart which whispered me it was sure. Despair—such as no other
species of wretchedness ever calls into being—despair alone urged me,
after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes. I uplifted them. It
was dark—all dark. I knew that the fit was over. I knew that the crisis of my
disorder had long passed. I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of
my visual faculties—and yet it was dark—all dark—the intense and utter
raylessness of the Night that endureth for evermore.
I endeavored to shriek; and my lips and my parched tongue moved
convulsively together in the attempt—but no voice issued from the
cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent
mountain, gasped and palpitated, with the heart, at every elaborate and
struggling inspiration.
The movement of the jaws, in this effort to cry aloud, showed me that
they were bound up, as is usual with the dead. I felt, too, that I lay upon
some hard substance; and by something similar my sides were, also, closely
compressed. So far, I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs—but now I
violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length, with the wrists
crossed. They struck a solid wooden substance, which extended above my

person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face. I could no
longer doubt that I reposed within a coffin at last.
And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub Hope—
for I thought of my precautions. I writhed, and made spasmodic exertions to
force open the lid: it would not move. I felt my wrists for the bell-rope: it
was not to be found. And now the Comforter fled for ever, and a still sterner
Despair reigned triumphant; for I could not help perceiving the absence of
the paddings which I had so carefully prepared—and then, too, there came
suddenly to my nostrils the strong peculiar odor of moist earth. The
conclusion was irresistible. I was not within the vault. I had fallen into a
trance while absent from home—while among strangers—when, or how, I
could not remember—and it was they who had buried me as a dog—nailed
up in some common coffin—and thrust deep, deep, and for ever, into some
ordinary and nameless grave.
As this awful conviction forced itself, thus, into the innermost chambers
of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud. And in this second endeavor
I succeeded. A long, wild, and continuous shriek, or yell of agony,
resounded through the realms of the subterranean Night.
“Hillo! hillo, there!” said a gruff voice, in reply.
“What the devil’s the matter now!” said a second.
“Get out o’ that!” said a third.
“What do you mean by yowling in that ere kind of style, like a
cattymount?” said a fourth; and hereupon I was seized and shaken without
ceremony, for several minutes, by a junto of very rough-looking
individuals. They did not arouse me from my slumber—for I was wide
awake when I screamed—but they restored me to the full possession of my
memory.
This adventure occurred near Richmond, in Virginia. Accompanied by a
friend, I had proceeded, upon a gunning expedition, some miles down the
banks of the James River. Night approached, and we were overtaken by a
storm. The cabin of a small sloop lying at anchor in the stream, and laden
with garden mould, afforded us the only available shelter. We made the best
of it, and passed the night on board. I slept in one of the only two berths in
the vessel—and the berths of a sloop of sixty or twenty tons need scarcely
be described. That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind. Its
extreme width was eighteen inches. The distance of its bottom from the

deck overhead was precisely the same. I found it a matter of exceeding
difficulty to squeeze myself in. Nevertheless, I slept soundly, and the whole
of my vision—for it was no dream, and no nightmare—arose naturally from
the circumstances of my position—from my ordinary bias of thought—and
from the difficulty, to which I have alluded, of collecting my senses, and
especially of regaining my memory, for a long time after awaking from
slumber. The men who shook me were the crew of the sloop, and some
laborers engaged to unload it. From the load itself came the earthly smell.
The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound
up my head, in default of my customary nightcap.
The tortures endured, however, were indubitably quite equal for the time,
to those of actual sepulture. They were fearfully—they were inconceivably
hideous; but out of Evil proceeded Good; for their very excess wrought in
my spirit an inevitable revulsion. My soul acquired tone—acquired temper.
I went abroad. I took vigorous exercise. I breathed the free air of Heaven. I
thought upon other subjects than Death. I discarded my medical books.
“Buchan” I burned. I read no “Night Thoughts”—no fustian about
churchyards—no bugaboo tales—such as this. In short, I became a new
man, and lived a man’s life. From that memorable night, I dismissed forever
my charnel apprehensions, and with them vanished the cataleptic disorder,
of which, perhaps, they had been less the consequence than the cause.
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of
our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but the
imagination of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every
cavern. Alas! the grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as
altogether fanciful—but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made
his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us—they
must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.

THE DOMAIN OF ARNHEIM
The garden like a lady fair was cut,
That lay as if she slumbered in delight,
And to the open skies her eyes did shut.
The azure fields of Heaven were ’sembled right
In a large round, set with the flowers of light.
The flowers de luce, and the round sparks of dew
That hung upon their azure leaves did shew
Like twinkling stars that sparkle in the evening blue.
—Giles Fletcher.

From his cradle to his grave a gale of prosperity bore my friend Ellison
along. Nor do I use the word prosperity in its mere worldly sense. I mean it
as synonymous with happiness. The person of whom I speak seemed born
for the purpose of foreshadowing the doctrines of Turgot, Price, Priestley,
and Condorcet—of exemplifying by individual instance what has been
deemed the chimera of the perfectionists. In the brief existence of Ellison I
fancy that I have seen refuted the dogma, that in man’s very nature lies
some hidden principle, the antagonist of bliss. An anxious examination of
his career has given me to understand that in general, from the violation of a
few simple laws of humanity arises the wretchedness of mankind—that as a
species we have in our possession the as yet unwrought elements of content
—and that, even now, in the present darkness and madness of all thought on
the great question of the social condition, it is not impossible that man, the
individual, under certain unusual and highly fortuitous conditions, may be
happy.
With opinions such as these my young friend, too, was fully imbued, and
thus it is worthy of observation that the uninterrupted enjoyment which
distinguished his life was, in great measure, the result of preconcert. It is
indeed evident that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and
then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have
found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary success of his life,
into the common vortex of unhappiness which yawns for those of pre-

eminent endowments. But it is by no means my object to pen an essay on
happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He
admitted but four elementary principles, or more strictly, conditions of bliss.
That which he considered chief was (strange to say!) the simple and purely
physical one of free exercise in the open air. “The health,” he said,
“attainable by other means is scarcely worth the name.” He instanced the
ecstasies of the fox-hunter, and pointed to the tillers of the earth, the only
people who, as a class, can be fairly considered happier than others. His
second condition was the love of woman. His third, and most difficult of
realization, was the contempt of ambition. His fourth was an object of
unceasing pursuit; and he held that, other things being equal, the extent of
attainable happiness was in proportion to the spirituality of this object.
Ellison was remarkable in the continuous profusion of good gifts
lavished upon him by fortune. In personal grace and beauty he exceeded all
men. His intellect was of that order to which the acquisition of knowledge
is less a labor than an intuition and a necessity. His family was one of the
most illustrious of the empire. His bride was the loveliest and most devoted
of women. His possessions had been always ample; but on the attainment of
his majority, it was discovered that one of those extraordinary freaks of fate
had been played in his behalf which startle the whole social world amid
which they occur, and seldom fail radically to alter the moral constitution of
those who are their objects.
It appears that about a hundred years before Mr. Ellison’s coming of age,
there had died, in a remote province, one Mr. Seabright Ellison. This
gentleman had amassed a princely fortune, and, having no immediate
connections, conceived the whim of suffering his wealth to accumulate for a
century after his decease. Minutely and sagaciously directing the various
modes of investment, he bequeathed the aggregate amount to the nearest of
blood, bearing the name of Ellison, who should be alive at the end of the
hundred years. Many attempts had been made to set aside this singular
bequest; their ex post facto character rendered them abortive; but the
attention of a jealous government was aroused, and a legislative act finally
obtained, forbidding all similar accumulations. This act, however, did not
prevent young Ellison from entering into possession, on his twenty-first
birthday, as the heir of his ancestor Seabright, of a fortune of four hundred
and fifty millions of dollars. (*1)

When it had become known that such was the enormous wealth inherited,
there were, of course, many speculations as to the mode of its disposal. The
magnitude and the immediate availability of the sum bewildered all who
thought on the topic. The possessor of any appreciable amount of money
might have been imagined to perform any one of a thousand things. With
riches merely surpassing those of any citizen, it would have been easy to
suppose him engaging to supreme excess in the fashionable extravagances
of his time—or busying himself with political intrigue—or aiming at
ministerial power—or purchasing increase of nobility—or collecting large
museums of virtu—or playing the munificent patron of letters, of science,
of art—or endowing, and bestowing his name upon extensive institutions of
charity. But for the inconceivable wealth in the actual possession of the heir,
these objects and all ordinary objects were felt to afford too limited a field.
Recourse was had to figures, and these but sufficed to confound. It was seen
that, even at three per cent., the annual income of the inheritance amounted
to no less than thirteen millions and five hundred thousand dollars; which
was one million and one hundred and twenty-five thousand per month; or
thirty-six thousand nine hundred and eighty-six per day; or one thousand
five hundred and forty-one per hour; or six and twenty dollars for every
minute that flew. Thus the usual track of supposition was thoroughly broken
up. Men knew not what to imagine. There were some who even conceived
that Mr. Ellison would divest himself of at least one-half of his fortune, as
of utterly superfluous opulence—enriching whole troops of his relatives by
division of his superabundance. To the nearest of these he did, in fact,
abandon the very unusual wealth which was his own before the inheritance.
I was not surprised, however, to perceive that he had long made up his
mind on a point which had occasioned so much discussion to his friends.
Nor was I greatly astonished at the nature of his decision. In regard to
individual charities he had satisfied his conscience. In the possibility of any
improvement, properly so called, being effected by man himself in the
general condition of man, he had (I am sorry to confess it) little faith. Upon
the whole, whether happily or unhappily, he was thrown back, in very great
measure, upon self.
In the widest and noblest sense he was a poet. He comprehended,
moreover, the true character, the august aims, the supreme majesty and
dignity of the poetic sentiment. The fullest, if not the sole proper
satisfaction of this sentiment he instinctively felt to lie in the creation of

novel forms of beauty. Some peculiarities, either in his early education, or
in the nature of his intellect, had tinged with what is termed materialism all
his ethical speculations; and it was this bias, perhaps, which led him to
believe that the most advantageous at least, if not the sole legitimate field
for the poetic exercise, lies in the creation of novel moods of purely
physical loveliness. Thus it happened he became neither musician nor poet
—if we use this latter term in its every-day acceptation. Or it might have
been that he neglected to become either, merely in pursuance of his idea
that in contempt of ambition is to be found one of the essential principles of
happiness on earth. Is it not indeed, possible that, while a high order of
genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is above that which is termed
ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton
have contentedly remained “mute and inglorious?” I believe that the world
has never seen—and that, unless through some series of accidents goading
the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never see
—that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer domains of art, of
which the human nature is absolutely capable.
Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man lived more
profoundly enamored of music and poetry. Under other circumstances than
those which invested him, it is not impossible that he would have become a
painter. Sculpture, although in its nature rigorously poetical was too limited
in its extent and consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his
attention. And I have now mentioned all the provinces in which the
common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it capable of
expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, the truest, and most
natural, if not altogether the most extensive province, had been
unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-
gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the
landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of
opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display of
imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty; the
elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority, the most
glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and multicolor of
the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most direct and energetic efforts
of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the direction or concentration of
this effort—or, more properly, in its adaptation to the eyes which were to
behold it on earth—he perceived that he should be employing the best

means—laboring to the greatest advantage—in the fulfilment, not only of
his own destiny as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had
implanted the poetic sentiment in man.
“Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth.” In his
explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solving what
has always seemed to me an enigma:—I mean the fact (which none but the
ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists in nature as the
painter of genius may produce. No such paradises are to be found in reality
as have glowed on the canvas of Claude. In the most enchanting of natural
landscapes, there will always be found a defect or an excess—many
excesses and defects. While the component parts may defy, individually, the
highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of these parts will always be
susceptible of improvement. In short, no position can be attained on the
wide surface of the natural earth, from which an artistical eye, looking
steadily, will not find matter of offence in what is termed the “composition”
of the landscape. And yet how unintelligible is this! In all other matters we
are justly instructed to regard nature as supreme. With her details we shrink
from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the tulip, or to
improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The criticism which says,
of sculpture or portraiture, that here nature is to be exalted or idealized
rather than imitated, is in error. No pictorial or sculptural combinations of
points of human liveliness do more than approach the living and breathing
beauty. In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having felt
its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization which has led
him to pronounce it true throughout all the domains of art. Having, I say,
felt its truth here; for the feeling is no affectation or chimera. The
mathematics afford no more absolute demonstrations than the sentiments of
his art yields the artist. He not only believes, but positively knows, that such
and such apparently arbitrary arrangements of matter constitute and alone
constitute the true beauty. His reasons, however, have not yet been matured
into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the world has
yet seen, fully to investigate and express them. Nevertheless he is
confirmed in his instinctive opinions by the voice of all his brethren. Let a
“composition” be defective; let an emendation be wrought in its mere
arrangement of form; let this emendation be submitted to every artist in the
world; by each will its necessity be admitted. And even far more than this;

in remedy of the defective composition, each insulated member of the
fraternity would have suggested the identical emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements alone is the physical nature
susceptible of exaltation, and that, therefore, her susceptibility of
improvement at this one point, was a mystery I had been unable to solve.
My own thoughts on the subject had rested in the idea that the primitive
intention of nature would have so arranged the earth’s surface as to have
fulfilled at all points man’s sense of perfection in the beautiful, the sublime,
or the picturesque; but that this primitive intention had been frustrated by
the known geological disturbances—disturbances of form and color—
grouping, in the correction or allaying of which lies the soul of art. The
force of this idea was much weakened, however, by the necessity which it
involved of considering the disturbances abnormal and unadapted to any
purpose. It was Ellison who suggested that they were prognostic of death.
He thus explained:—Admit the earthly immortality of man to have been the
first intention. We have then the primitive arrangement of the earth’s
surface adapted to his blissful estate, as not existent but designed. The
disturbances were the preparations for his subsequently conceived deathful
condition.
“Now,” said my friend, “what we regard as exaltation of the landscape
may be really such, as respects only the moral or human point of view. Each
alteration of the natural scenery may possibly effect a blemish in the
picture, if we can suppose this picture viewed at large—in mass—from
some point distant from the earth’s surface, although not beyond the limits
of its atmosphere. It is easily understood that what might improve a closely
scrutinized detail, may at the same time injure a general or more distantly
observed effect. There may be a class of beings, human once, but now
invisible to humanity, to whom, from afar, our disorder may seem order—
our unpicturesqueness picturesque; in a word, the earth-angels, for whose
scrutiny more especially than our own, and for whose death-refined
appreciation of the beautiful, may have been set in array by God the wide
landscape-gardens of the hemispheres.”
In the course of discussion, my friend quoted some passages from a
writer on landscape-gardening who has been supposed to have well treated
his theme:

“There are properly but two styles of landscape-gardening, the natural
and the artificial. One seeks to recall the original beauty of the country, by
adapting its means to the surrounding scenery, cultivating trees in harmony
with the hills or plain of the neighboring land; detecting and bringing into
practice those nice relations of size, proportion, and color which, hid from
the common observer, are revealed everywhere to the experienced student
of nature. The result of the natural style of gardening, is seen rather in the
absence of all defects and incongruities—in the prevalence of a healthy
harmony and order—than in the creation of any special wonders or
miracles. The artificial style has as many varieties as there are different
tastes to gratify. It has a certain general relation to the various styles of
building. There are the stately avenues and retirements of Versailles; Italian
terraces; and a various mixed old English style, which bears some relation
to the domestic Gothic or English Elizabethan architecture. Whatever may
be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of
pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty. This is partly pleasing to
the eye, by the show of order and design, and partly moral. A terrace, with
an old moss-covered balustrade, calls up at once to the eye the fair forms
that have passed there in other days. The slightest exhibition of art is an
evidence of care and human interest.”
“From what I have already observed,” said Ellison, “you will understand
that I reject the idea, here expressed, of recalling the original beauty of the
country. The original beauty is never so great as that which may be
introduced. Of course, every thing depends on the selection of a spot with
capabilities. What is said about detecting and bringing into practice nice
relations of size, proportion, and color, is one of those mere vaguenesses of
speech which serve to veil inaccuracy of thought. The phrase quoted may
mean any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result of
the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and
incongruities than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles, is a
proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to
the fervid dreams of the man of genius. The negative merit suggested
appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate
Addison into apotheosis. In truth, while that virtue which consists in the
mere avoidance of vice appeals directly to the understanding, and can thus
be circumscribed in rule, the loftier virtue, which flames in creation, can be
apprehended in its results alone. Rule applies but to the merits of denial—to

the excellencies which refrain. Beyond these, the critical art can but
suggest. We may be instructed to build a “Cato,” but we are in vain told
how to conceive a Parthenon or an “Inferno.” The thing done, however; the
wonder accomplished; and the capacity for apprehension becomes
universal. The sophists of the negative school who, through inability to
create, have scoffed at creation, are now found the loudest in applause.
What, in its chrysalis condition of principle, affronted their demure reason,
never fails, in its maturity of accomplishment, to extort admiration from
their instinct of beauty.
“The author’s observations on the artificial style,” continued Ellison, “are
less objectionable. A mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great
beauty. This is just; as also is the reference to the sense of human interest.
The principle expressed is incontrovertible—but there may be something
beyond it. There may be an object in keeping with the principle—an object
unattainable by the means ordinarily possessed by individuals, yet which, if
attained, would lend a charm to the landscape-garden far surpassing that
which a sense of merely human interest could bestow. A poet, having very
unusual pecuniary resources, might, while retaining the necessary idea of
art or culture, or, as our author expresses it, of interest, so imbue his designs
at once with extent and novelty of beauty, as to convey the sentiment of
spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he
secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of
the harshness or technicality of the worldly art. In the most rugged of
wildernesses—in the most savage of the scenes of pure nature—there is
apparent the art of a creator; yet this art is apparent to reflection only; in no
respect has it the obvious force of a feeling. Now let us suppose this sense
of the Almighty design to be one step depressed—to be brought into
something like harmony or consistency with the sense of human art—to
form an intermedium between the two:—let us imagine, for example, a
landscape whose combined vastness and definitiveness—whose united
beauty, magnificence, and strangeness, shall convey the idea of care, or
culture, or superintendence, on the part of beings superior, yet akin to
humanity—then the sentiment of interest is preserved, while the art
intervolved is made to assume the air of an intermediate or secondary
nature—a nature which is not God, nor an emanation from God, but which
still is nature in the sense of the handiwork of the angels that hover between
man and God.”

It was in devoting his enormous wealth to the embodiment of a vision
such as this—in the free exercise in the open air ensured by the personal
superintendence of his plans—in the unceasing object which these plans
afforded—in the high spirituality of the object—in the contempt of
ambition which it enabled him truly to feel—in the perennial springs with
which it gratified, without possibility of satiating, that one master passion of
his soul, the thirst for beauty, above all, it was in the sympathy of a woman,
not unwomanly, whose loveliness and love enveloped his existence in the
purple atmosphere of Paradise, that Ellison thought to find, and found,
exemption from the ordinary cares of humanity, with a far greater amount
of positive happiness than ever glowed in the rapt day-dreams of De Staël.
I despair of conveying to the reader any distinct conception of the
marvels which my friend did actually accomplish. I wish to describe, but
am disheartened by the difficulty of description, and hesitate between detail
and generality. Perhaps the better course will be to unite the two in their
extremes.
Mr. Ellison’s first step regarded, of course, the choice of a locality, and
scarcely had he commenced thinking on this point, when the luxuriant
nature of the Pacific Islands arrested his attention. In fact, he had made up
his mind for a voyage to the South Seas, when a night’s reflection induced
him to abandon the idea. “Were I misanthropic,” he said, “such a locale
would suit me. The thoroughness of its insulation and seclusion, and the
difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such case be the charm of charms;
but as yet I am not Timon. I wish the composure but not the depression of
solitude. There must remain with me a certain control over the extent and
duration of my repose. There will be frequent hours in which I shall need,
too, the sympathy of the poetic in what I have done. Let me seek, then, a
spot not far from a populous city—whose vicinity, also, will best enable me
to execute my plans.”
In search of a suitable place so situated, Ellison travelled for several
years, and I was permitted to accompany him. A thousand spots with which
I was enraptured he rejected without hesitation, for reasons which satisfied
me, in the end, that he was right. We came at length to an elevated table-
land of wonderful fertility and beauty, affording a panoramic prospect very
little less in extent than that of Aetna, and, in Ellison’s opinion as well as

my own, surpassing the far-famed view from that mountain in all the true
elements of the picturesque.
“I am aware,” said the traveller, as he drew a sigh of deep delight after
gazing on this scene, entranced, for nearly an hour, “I know that here, in my
circumstances, nine-tenths of the most fastidious of men would rest content.
This panorama is indeed glorious, and I should rejoice in it but for the
excess of its glory. The taste of all the architects I have ever known leads
them, for the sake of ‘prospect,’ to put up buildings on hill-tops. The error is
obvious. Grandeur in any of its moods, but especially in that of extent,
startles, excites—and then fatigues, depresses. For the occasional scene
nothing can be better—for the constant view nothing worse. And, in the
constant view, the most objectionable phase of grandeur is that of extent;
the worst phase of extent, that of distance. It is at war with the sentiment
and with the sense of seclusion—the sentiment and sense which we seek to
humor in ‘retiring to the country.’ In looking from the summit of a mountain
we cannot help feeling abroad in the world. The heart-sick avoid distant
prospects as a pestilence.”
It was not until toward the close of the fourth year of our search that we
found a locality with which Ellison professed himself satisfied. It is, of
course, needless to say where was the locality. The late death of my friend,
in causing his domain to be thrown open to certain classes of visitors, has
given to Arnheim a species of secret and subdued if not solemn celebrity,
similar in kind, although infinitely superior in degree, to that which so long
distinguished Fonthill.
The usual approach to Arnheim was by the river. The visitor left the city
in the early morning. During the forenoon he passed between shores of a
tranquil and domestic beauty, on which grazed innumerable sheep, their
white fleeces spotting the vivid green of rolling meadows. By degrees the
idea of cultivation subsided into that of merely pastoral care. This slowly
became merged in a sense of retirement—this again in a consciousness of
solitude. As the evening approached, the channel grew more narrow; the
banks more and more precipitous; and these latter were clothed in rich,
more profuse, and more sombre foliage. The water increased in
transparency. The stream took a thousand turns, so that at no moment could
its gleaming surface be seen for a greater distance than a furlong. At every
instant the vessel seemed imprisoned within an enchanted circle, having

insuperable and impenetrable walls of foliage, a roof of ultramarine satin,
and no floor—the keel balancing itself with admirable nicety on that of a
phantom bark which, by some accident having been turned upside down,
floated in constant company with the substantial one, for the purpose of
sustaining it. The channel now became a gorge—although the term is
somewhat inapplicable, and I employ it merely because the language has no
word which better represents the most striking—not the most distinctive—
feature of the scene. The character of gorge was maintained only in the
height and parallelism of the shores; it was lost altogether in their other
traits. The walls of the ravine (through which the clear water still tranquilly
flowed) arose to an elevation of a hundred and occasionally of a hundred
and fifty feet, and inclined so much toward each other as, in a great
measure, to shut out the light of day; while the long plume-like moss which
depended densely from the intertwining shrubberies overhead, gave the
whole chasm an air of funereal gloom. The windings became more frequent
and intricate, and seemed often as if returning in upon themselves, so that
the voyager had long lost all idea of direction. He was, moreover, enwrapt
in an exquisite sense of the strange. The thought of nature still remained,
but her character seemed to have undergone modification, there was a weird
symmetry, a thrilling uniformity, a wizard propriety in these her works. Not
a dead branch—not a withered leaf—not a stray pebble—not a patch of the
brown earth was anywhere visible. The crystal water welled up against the
clean granite, or the unblemished moss, with a sharpness of outline that
delighted while it bewildered the eye.
Having threaded the mazes of this channel for some hours, the gloom
deepening every moment, a sharp and unexpected turn of the vessel brought
it suddenly, as if dropped from heaven, into a circular basin of very
considerable extent when compared with the width of the gorge. It was
about two hundred yards in diameter, and girt in at all points but one—that
immediately fronting the vessel as it entered—by hills equal in general
height to the walls of the chasm, although of a thoroughly different
character. Their sides sloped from the water’s edge at an angle of some
forty-five degrees, and they were clothed from base to summit—not a
perceptible point escaping—in a drapery of the most gorgeous flower-
blossoms; scarcely a green leaf being visible among the sea of odorous and
fluctuating color. This basin was of great depth, but so transparent was the
water that the bottom, which seemed to consist of a thick mass of small

round alabaster pebbles, was distinctly visible by glimpses—that is to say,
whenever the eye could permit itself not to see, far down in the inverted
heaven, the duplicate blooming of the hills. On these latter there were no
trees, nor even shrubs of any size. The impressions wrought on the observer
were those of richness, warmth, color, quietude, uniformity, softness,
delicacy, daintiness, voluptuousness, and a miraculous extremeness of
culture that suggested dreams of a new race of fairies, laborious, tasteful,
magnificent, and fastidious; but as the eye traced upward the myriad-tinted
slope, from its sharp junction with the water to its vague termination amid
the folds of overhanging cloud, it became, indeed, difficult not to fancy a
panoramic cataract of rubies, sapphires, opals, and golden onyxes, rolling
silently out of the sky.
The visitor, shooting suddenly into this bay from out the gloom of the
ravine, is delighted but astounded by the full orb of the declining sun, which
he had supposed to be already far below the horizon, but which now
confronts him, and forms the sole termination of an otherwise limitless vista
seen through another chasm-like rift in the hills.
But here the voyager quits the vessel which has borne him so far, and
descends into a light canoe of ivory, stained with arabesque devices in vivid
scarlet, both within and without. The poop and beak of this boat arise high
above the water, with sharp points, so that the general form is that of an
irregular crescent. It lies on the surface of the bay with the proud grace of a
swan. On its ermined floor reposes a single feathery paddle of satin-wood;
but no oarsmen or attendant is to be seen. The guest is bidden to be of good
cheer—that the fates will take care of him. The larger vessel disappears, and
he is left alone in the canoe, which lies apparently motionless in the middle
of the lake. While he considers what course to pursue, however, he becomes
aware of a gentle movement in the fairy bark. It slowly swings itself around
until its prow points toward the sun. It advances with a gentle but gradually
accelerated velocity, while the slight ripples it creates seem to break about
the ivory side in divinest melody—seem to offer the only possible
explanation of the soothing yet melancholy music for whose unseen origin
the bewildered voyager looks around him in vain.
The canoe steadily proceeds, and the rocky gate of the vista is
approached, so that its depths can be more distinctly seen. To the right arise
a chain of lofty hills rudely and luxuriantly wooded. It is observed,

however, that the trait of exquisite cleanness where the bank dips into the
water, still prevails. There is not one token of the usual river débris. To the
left the character of the scene is softer and more obviously artificial. Here
the bank slopes upward from the stream in a very gentle ascent, forming a
broad sward of grass of a texture resembling nothing so much as velvet, and
of a brilliancy of green which would bear comparison with the tint of the
purest emerald. This plateau varies in width from ten to three hundred
yards; reaching from the river-bank to a wall, fifty feet high, which extends,
in an infinity of curves, but following the general direction of the river, until
lost in the distance to the westward. This wall is of one continuous rock,
and has been formed by cutting perpendicularly the once rugged precipice
of the stream’s southern bank, but no trace of the labor has been suffered to
remain. The chiselled stone has the hue of ages, and is profusely overhung
and overspread with the ivy, the coral honeysuckle, the eglantine, and the
clematis. The uniformity of the top and bottom lines of the wall is fully
relieved by occasional trees of gigantic height, growing singly or in small
groups, both along the plateau and in the domain behind the wall, but in
close proximity to it; so that frequent limbs (of the black walnut especially)
reach over and dip their pendent extremities into the water. Farther back
within the domain, the vision is impeded by an impenetrable screen of
foliage.
These things are observed during the canoe’s gradual approach to what I
have called the gate of the vista. On drawing nearer to this, however, its
chasm-like appearance vanishes; a new outlet from the bay is discovered to
the left—in which direction the wall is also seen to sweep, still following
the general course of the stream. Down this new opening the eye cannot
penetrate very far; for the stream, accompanied by the wall, still bends to
the left, until both are swallowed up by the leaves.
The boat, nevertheless, glides magically into the winding channel; and
here the shore opposite the wall is found to resemble that opposite the wall
in the straight vista. Lofty hills, rising occasionally into mountains, and
covered with vegetation in wild luxuriance, still shut in the scene.
Floating gently onward, but with a velocity slightly augmented, the
voyager, after many short turns, finds his progress apparently barred by a
gigantic gate or rather door of burnished gold, elaborately carved and
fretted, and reflecting the direct rays of the now fast-sinking sun with an

effulgence that seems to wreath the whole surrounding forest in flames.
This gate is inserted in the lofty wall; which here appears to cross the river
at right angles. In a few moments, however, it is seen that the main body of
the water still sweeps in a gentle and extensive curve to the left, the wall
following it as before, while a stream of considerable volume, diverging
from the principal one, makes its way, with a slight ripple, under the door,
and is thus hidden from sight. The canoe falls into the lesser channel and
approaches the gate. Its ponderous wings are slowly and musically
expanded. The boat glides between them, and commences a rapid descent
into a vast amphitheatre entirely begirt with purple mountains, whose bases
are laved by a gleaming river throughout the full extent of their circuit.
Meantime the whole Paradise of Arnheim bursts upon the view. There is a
gush of entrancing melody; there is an oppressive sense of strange sweet
odor;—there is a dream-like intermingling to the eye of tall slender Eastern
trees—bosky shrubberies—flocks of golden and crimson birds—lily-
fringed lakes—meadows of violets, tulips, poppies, hyacinths, and
tuberoses—long intertangled lines of silver streamlets—and, upspringing
confusedly from amid all, a mass of semi-Gothic, semi-Saracenic
architecture sustaining itself by miracle in mid-air, glittering in the red
sunlight with a hundred oriels, minarets, and pinnacles; and seeming the
phantom handiwork, conjointly, of the Sylphs, of the Fairies, of the Genii
and of the Gnomes.

LANDOR’S COTTAGE

A Pendant to “The Domain of Arnheim”

During A pedestrian trip last summer, through one or two of the river
counties of New York, I found myself, as the day declined, somewhat
embarrassed about the road I was pursuing. The land undulated very
remarkably; and my path, for the last hour, had wound about and about so
confusedly, in its effort to keep in the valleys, that I no longer knew in what
direction lay the sweet village of B——, where I had determined to stop for
the night. The sun had scarcely shone—strictly speaking—during the day,
which nevertheless, had been unpleasantly warm. A smoky mist, resembling
that of the Indian summer, enveloped all things, and of course, added to my
uncertainty. Not that I cared much about the matter. If I did not hit upon the
village before sunset, or even before dark, it was more than possible that a
little Dutch farmhouse, or something of that kind, would soon make its
appearance—although, in fact, the neighborhood (perhaps on account of
being more picturesque than fertile) was very sparsely inhabited. At all
events, with my knapsack for a pillow, and my hound as a sentry, a bivouac
in the open air was just the thing which would have amused me. I sauntered
on, therefore, quite at ease—Ponto taking charge of my gun—until at
length, just as I had begun to consider whether the numerous little glades
that led hither and thither, were intended to be paths at all, I was conducted
by one of them into an unquestionable carriage track. There could be no
mistaking it. The traces of light wheels were evident; and although the tall
shrubberies and overgrown undergrowth met overhead, there was no
obstruction whatever below, even to the passage of a Virginian mountain
wagon—the most aspiring vehicle, I take it, of its kind. The road, however,
except in being open through the wood—if wood be not too weighty a name
for such an assemblage of light trees—and except in the particulars of
evident wheel-tracks—bore no resemblance to any road I had before seen.

The tracks of which I speak were but faintly perceptible—having been
impressed upon the firm, yet pleasantly moist surface of—what looked
more like green Genoese velvet than any thing else. It was grass, clearly—
but grass such as we seldom see out of England—so short, so thick, so
even, and so vivid in color. Not a single impediment lay in the wheel-route
—not even a chip or dead twig. The stones that once obstructed the way had
been carefully placed—not thrown—along the sides of the lane, so as to
define its boundaries at bottom with a kind of half-precise, half-negligent,
and wholly picturesque definition. Clumps of wild flowers grew
everywhere, luxuriantly, in the interspaces.
What to make of all this, of course I knew not. Here was art undoubtedly
—that did not surprise me—all roads, in the ordinary sense, are works of
art; nor can I say that there was much to wonder at in the mere excess of art
manifested; all that seemed to have been done, might have been done here
—with such natural “capabilities” (as they have it in the books on
Landscape Gardening)—with very little labor and expense. No; it was not
the amount but the character of the art which caused me to take a seat on
one of the blossomy stones and gaze up and down this fairy-like avenue for
half an hour or more in bewildered admiration. One thing became more and
more evident the longer I gazed: an artist, and one with a most scrupulous
eye for form, had superintended all these arrangements. The greatest care
had been taken to preserve a due medium between the neat and graceful on
the one hand, and the pittoresque, in the true sense of the Italian term, on
the other. There were few straight, and no long uninterrupted lines. The
same effect of curvature or of color appeared twice, usually, but not oftener,
at any one point of view. Everywhere was variety in uniformity. It was a
piece of “composition,” in which the most fastidiously critical taste could
scarcely have suggested an emendation.
I had turned to the right as I entered this road, and now, arising, I
continued in the same direction. The path was so serpentine, that at no
moment could I trace its course for more than two or three paces in
advance. Its character did not undergo any material change.
Presently the murmur of water fell gently upon my ear—and in a few
moments afterward, as I turned with the road somewhat more abruptly than
hitherto, I became aware that a building of some kind lay at the foot of a
gentle declivity just before me. I could see nothing distinctly on account of

the mist which occupied all the little valley below. A gentle breeze,
however, now arose, as the sun was about descending; and while I remained
standing on the brow of the slope, the fog gradually became dissipated into
wreaths, and so floated over the scene.
As it came fully into view—thus gradually as I describe it—piece by
piece, here a tree, there a glimpse of water, and here again the summit of a
chimney, I could scarcely help fancying that the whole was one of the
ingenious illusions sometimes exhibited under the name of “vanishing
pictures.”
By the time, however, that the fog had thoroughly disappeared, the sun
had made its way down behind the gentle hills, and thence, as if with a
slight chassez to the south, had come again fully into sight, glaring with a
purplish lustre through a chasm that entered the valley from the west.
Suddenly, therefore—and as if by the hand of magic—this whole valley and
every thing in it became brilliantly visible.
The first coup d’œil, as the sun slid into the position described, impressed
me very much as I have been impressed, when a boy, by the concluding
scene of some well-arranged theatrical spectacle or melodrama. Not even
the monstrosity of color was wanting; for the sunlight came out through the
chasm, tinted all orange and purple; while the vivid green of the grass in the
valley was reflected more or less upon all objects from the curtain of vapor
that still hung overhead, as if loth to take its total departure from a scene so
enchantingly beautiful.
The little vale into which I thus peered down from under the fog canopy
could not have been more than four hundred yards long; while in breadth it
varied from fifty to one hundred and fifty or perhaps two hundred. It was
most narrow at its northern extremity, opening out as it tended southwardly,
but with no very precise regularity. The widest portion was within eighty
yards of the southern extreme. The slopes which encompassed the vale
could not fairly be called hills, unless at their northern face. Here a
precipitous ledge of granite arose to a height of some ninety feet; and, as I
have mentioned, the valley at this point was not more than fifty feet wide;
but as the visitor proceeded southwardly from the cliff, he found on his
right hand and on his left, declivities at once less high, less precipitous, and
less rocky. All, in a word, sloped and softened to the south; and yet the
whole vale was engirdled by eminences, more or less high, except at two

points. One of these I have already spoken of. It lay considerably to the
north of west, and was where the setting sun made its way, as I have before
described, into the amphitheatre, through a cleanly cut natural cleft in the
granite embankment; this fissure might have been ten yards wide at its
widest point, so far as the eye could trace it. It seemed to lead up, up like a
natural causeway, into the recesses of unexplored mountains and forests.
The other opening was directly at the southern end of the vale. Here,
generally, the slopes were nothing more than gentle inclinations, extending
from east to west about one hundred and fifty yards. In the middle of this
extent was a depression, level with the ordinary floor of the valley. As
regards vegetation, as well as in respect to every thing else, the scene
softened and sloped to the south. To the north—on the craggy precipice—a
few paces from the verge—up sprang the magnificent trunks of numerous
hickories, black walnuts, and chestnuts, interspersed with occasional oak;
and the strong lateral branches thrown out by the walnuts especially, spread
far over the edge of the cliff. Proceeding southwardly, the explorer saw, at
first, the same class of trees, but less and less lofty and Salvatorish in
character; then he saw the gentler elm, succeeded by the sassafras and
locust—these again by the softer linden, red-bud, catalpa, and maple—these
yet again by still more graceful and more modest varieties. The whole face
of the southern declivity was covered with wild shrubbery alone—an
occasional silver willow or white poplar excepted. In the bottom of the
valley itself—(for it must be borne in mind that the vegetation hitherto
mentioned grew only on the cliffs or hillsides)—were to be seen three
insulated trees. One was an elm of fine size and exquisite form: it stood
guard over the southern gate of the vale. Another was a hickory, much
larger than the elm, and altogether a much finer tree, although both were
exceedingly beautiful: it seemed to have taken charge of the northwestern
entrance, springing from a group of rocks in the very jaws of the ravine, and
throwing its graceful body, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, far out
into the sunshine of the amphitheatre. About thirty yards east of this tree
stood, however, the pride of the valley, and beyond all question the most
magnificent tree I have ever seen, unless, perhaps, among the cypresses of
the Itchiatuckanee. It was a triple-stemmed tulip-tree—the Liriodendron
Tulipiferum—one of the natural order of magnolias. Its three trunks
separated from the parent at about three feet from the soil, and diverging
very slightly and gradually, were not more than four feet apart at the point

where the largest stem shot out into foliage: this was at an elevation of
about eighty feet. The whole height of the principal division was one
hundred and twenty feet. Nothing can surpass in beauty the form, or the
glossy, vivid green of the leaves of the tulip-tree. In the present instance
they were fully eight inches wide; but their glory was altogether eclipsed by
the gorgeous splendor of the profuse blossoms. Conceive, closely
congregated, a million of the largest and most resplendent tulips! Only thus
can the reader get any idea of the picture I would convey. And then the
stately grace of the clean, delicately-granulated columnar stems, the largest
four feet in diameter, at twenty from the ground. The innumerable
blossoms, mingling with those of other trees scarcely less beautiful,
although infinitely less majestic, filled the valley with more than Arabian
perfumes.
The general floor of the amphitheatre was grass of the same character as
that I had found in the road; if anything, more deliciously soft, thick,
velvety, and miraculously green. It was hard to conceive how all this beauty
had been attained.
I have spoken of two openings into the vale. From the one to the
northwest issued a rivulet, which came, gently murmuring and slightly
foaming, down the ravine, until it dashed against the group of rocks out of
which sprang the insulated hickory. Here, after encircling the tree, it passed
on a little to the north of east, leaving the tulip tree some twenty feet to the
south, and making no decided alteration in its course until it came near the
midway between the eastern and western boundaries of the valley. At this
point, after a series of sweeps, it turned off at right angles and pursued a
generally southern direction meandering as it went—until it became lost in
a small lake of irregular figure (although roughly oval), that lay gleaming
near the lower extremity of the vale. This lakelet was, perhaps, a hundred
yards in diameter at its widest part. No crystal could be clearer than its
waters. Its bottom, which could be distinctly seen, consisted altogether, of
pebbles brilliantly white. Its banks, of the emerald grass already described,
rounded, rather than sloped, off into the clear heaven below; and so clear
was this heaven, so perfectly, at times, did it reflect all objects above it, that
where the true bank ended and where the mimic one commenced, it was a
point of no little difficulty to determine. The trout, and some other varieties
of fish, with which this pond seemed to be almost inconveniently crowded,
had all the appearance of veritable flying-fish. It was almost impossible to

believe that they were not absolutely suspended in the air. A light birch
canoe that lay placidly on the water, was reflected in its minutest fibres with
a fidelity unsurpassed by the most exquisitely polished mirror. A small
island, fairly laughing with flowers in full bloom, and affording little more
space than just enough for a picturesque little building, seemingly a fowl-
house—arose from the lake not far from its northern shore—to which it was
connected by means of an inconceivably light-looking and yet very
primitive bridge. It was formed of a single, broad and thick plank of the
tulip wood. This was forty feet long, and spanned the interval between
shore and shore with a slight but very perceptible arch, preventing all
oscillation. From the southern extreme of the lake issued a continuation of
the rivulet, which, after meandering for, perhaps, thirty yards, finally passed
through the “depression” (already described) in the middle of the southern
declivity, and tumbling down a sheer precipice of a hundred feet, made its
devious and unnoticed way to the Hudson.
The lake was deep—at some points thirty feet—but the rivulet seldom
exceeded three, while its greatest width was about eight. Its bottom and
banks were as those of the pond—if a defect could have been attributed, in
point of picturesqueness, it was that of excessive neatness.
The expanse of the green turf was relieved, here and there, by an
occasional showy shrub, such as the hydrangea, or the common snowball,
or the aromatic seringa; or, more frequently, by a clump of geraniums
blossoming gorgeously in great varieties. These latter grew in pots which
were carefully buried in the soil, so as to give the plants the appearance of
being indigenous. Besides all this, the lawn’s velvet was exquisitely spotted
with sheep—a considerable flock of which roamed about the vale, in
company with three tamed deer, and a vast number of brilliantly-plumed
ducks. A very large mastiff seemed to be in vigilant attendance upon these
animals, each and all.
Along the eastern and western cliffs—where, toward the upper portion of
the amphitheatre, the boundaries were more or less precipitous—grew ivy
in great profusion—so that only here and there could even a glimpse of the
naked rock be obtained. The northern precipice, in like manner, was almost
entirely clothed by grape-vines of rare luxuriance; some springing from the
soil at the base of the cliff, and others from ledges on its face.

The slight elevation which formed the lower boundary of this little
domain, was crowned by a neat stone wall, of sufficient height to prevent
the escape of the deer. Nothing of the fence kind was observable elsewhere;
for nowhere else was an artificial enclosure needed:—any stray sheep, for
example, which should attempt to make its way out of the vale by means of
the ravine, would find its progress arrested, after a few yards’ advance, by
the precipitous ledge of rock over which tumbled the cascade that had
arrested my attention as I first drew near the domain. In short, the only
ingress or egress was through a gate occupying a rocky pass in the road, a
few paces below the point at which I stopped to reconnoitre the scene.
I have described the brook as meandering very irregularly through the
whole of its course. Its two general directions, as I have said, were first
from west to east, and then from north to south. At the turn, the stream,
sweeping backward, made an almost circular loop, so as to form a peninsula
which was very nearly an island, and which included about the sixteenth of
an acre. On this peninsula stood a dwelling-house—and when I say that this
house, like the infernal terrace seen by Vathek, “etait d’une architecture
inconnue dans les annales de la terre,” I mean, merely, that its tout ensemble
struck me with the keenest sense of combined novelty and propriety—in a
word, of poetry—(for, than in the words just employed, I could scarcely
give, of poetry in the abstract, a more rigorous definition)—and I do not
mean that merely outre was perceptible in any respect.
In fact nothing could well be more simple—more utterly unpretending
than this cottage. Its marvellous effect lay altogether in its artistic
arrangement as a picture. I could have fancied, while I looked at it, that
some eminent landscape-painter had built it with his brush.
The point of view from which I first saw the valley, was not altogether,
although it was nearly, the best point from which to survey the house. I will
therefore describe it as I afterwards saw it—from a position on the stone
wall at the southern extreme of the amphitheatre.
The main building was about twenty-four feet long and sixteen broad—
certainly not more. Its total height, from the ground to the apex of the roof,
could not have exceeded eighteen feet. To the west end of this structure was
attached one about a third smaller in all its proportions:—the line of its
front standing back about two yards from that of the larger house, and the
line of its roof, of course, being considerably depressed below that of the

roof adjoining. At right angles to these buildings, and from the rear of the
main one—not exactly in the middle—extended a third compartment, very
small—being, in general, one-third less than the western wing. The roofs of
the two larger were very steep—sweeping down from the ridge-beam with a
long concave curve, and extending at least four feet beyond the walls in
front, so as to form the roofs of two piazzas. These latter roofs, of course,
needed no support; but as they had the air of needing it, slight and perfectly
plain pillars were inserted at the corners alone. The roof of the northern
wing was merely an extension of a portion of the main roof. Between the
chief building and western wing arose a very tall and rather slender square
chimney of hard Dutch bricks, alternately black and red:—a slight cornice
of projecting bricks at the top. Over the gables the roofs also projected very
much:—in the main building about four feet to the east and two to the west.
The principal door was not exactly in the main division, being a little to the
east—while the two windows were to the west. These latter did not extend
to the floor, but were much longer and narrower than usual—they had
single shutters like doors—the panes were of lozenge form, but quite large.
The door itself had its upper half of glass, also in lozenge panes—a
movable shutter secured it at night. The door to the west wing was in its
gable, and quite simple—a single window looked out to the south. There
was no external door to the north wing, and it also had only one window to
the east.
The blank wall of the eastern gable was relieved by stairs (with a
balustrade) running diagonally across it—the ascent being from the south.
Under cover of the widely projecting eave these steps gave access to a door
leading to the garret, or rather loft—for it was lighted only by a single
window to the north, and seemed to have been intended as a store-room.
The piazzas of the main building and western wing had no floors, as is
usual; but at the doors and at each window, large, flat irregular slabs of
granite lay imbedded in the delicious turf, affording comfortable footing in
all weather. Excellent paths of the same material—not nicely adapted, but
with the velvety sod filling frequent intervals between the stones, led hither
and thither from the house, to a crystal spring about five paces off, to the
road, or to one or two out-houses that lay to the north, beyond the brook,
and were thoroughly concealed by a few locusts and catalpas.

Not more than six steps from the main door of the cottage stood the dead
trunk of a fantastic pear-tree, so clothed from head to foot in the gorgeous
bignonia blossoms that one required no little scrutiny to determine what
manner of sweet thing it could be. From various arms of this tree hung
cages of different kinds. In one, a large wicker cylinder with a ring at top,
revelled a mocking bird; in another an oriole; in a third the impudent
bobolink—while three or four more delicate prisons were loudly vocal with
canaries.
The pillars of the piazza were enwreathed in jasmine and sweet
honeysuckle; while from the angle formed by the main structure and its
west wing, in front, sprang a grape-vine of unexampled luxuriance.
Scorning all restraint, it had clambered first to the lower roof—then to the
higher; and along the ridge of this latter it continued to writhe on, throwing
out tendrils to the right and left, until at length it fairly attained the east
gable, and fell trailing over the stairs.
The whole house, with its wings, was constructed of the old-fashioned
Dutch shingles—broad, and with unrounded corners. It is a peculiarity of
this material to give houses built of it the appearance of being wider at
bottom than at top—after the manner of Egyptian architecture; and in the
present instance, this exceedingly picturesque effect was aided by numerous
pots of gorgeous flowers that almost encompassed the base of the buildings.
The shingles were painted a dull gray; and the happiness with which this
neutral tint melted into the vivid green of the tulip tree leaves that partially
overshadowed the cottage, can readily be conceived by an artist.
From the position near the stone wall, as described, the buildings were
seen at great advantage—for the southeastern angle was thrown forward—
so that the eye took in at once the whole of the two fronts, with the
picturesque eastern gable, and at the same time obtained just a sufficient
glimpse of the northern wing, with parts of a pretty roof to the spring-house,
and nearly half of a light bridge that spanned the brook in the near vicinity
of the main buildings.
I did not remain very long on the brow of the hill, although long enough
to make a thorough survey of the scene at my feet. It was clear that I had
wandered from the road to the village, and I had thus good traveller’s
excuse to open the gate before me, and inquire my way, at all events; so,
without more ado, I proceeded.

The road, after passing the gate, seemed to lie upon a natural ledge,
sloping gradually down along the face of the north-eastern cliffs. It led me
on to the foot of the northern precipice, and thence over the bridge, round
by the eastern gable to the front door. In this progress, I took notice that no
sight of the out-houses could be obtained.
As I turned the corner of the gable, the mastiff bounded towards me in
stern silence, but with the eye and the whole air of a tiger. I held him out my
hand, however, in token of amity—and I never yet knew the dog who was
proof against such an appeal to his courtesy. He not only shut his mouth and
wagged his tail, but absolutely offered me his paw—afterward extending
his civilities to Ponto.
As no bell was discernible, I rapped with my stick against the door,
which stood half open. Instantly a figure advanced to the threshold—that of
a young woman about twenty-eight years of age—slender, or rather slight,
and somewhat above the medium height. As she approached, with a certain
modest decision of step altogether indescribable. I said to myself, “Surely
here I have found the perfection of natural, in contradistinction from
artificial grace.” The second impression which she made on me, but by far
the more vivid of the two, was that of enthusiasm. So intense an expression
of romance, perhaps I should call it, or of unworldliness, as that which
gleamed from her deep-set eyes, had never so sunk into my heart of hearts
before. I know not how it is, but this peculiar expression of the eye,
wreathing itself occasionally into the lips, is the most powerful, if not
absolutely the sole spell, which rivets my interest in woman. “Romance,”
provided my readers fully comprehended what I would here imply by the
word—“romance” and “womanliness” seem to me convertible terms: and,
after all, what man truly loves in woman, is simply her womanhood. The
eyes of Annie (I heard some one from the interior call her “Annie,
darling!”) were “spiritual grey;” her hair, a light chestnut: this is all I had
time to observe of her.
At her most courteous of invitations, I entered—passing first into a
tolerably wide vestibule. Having come mainly to observe, I took notice that
to my right as I stepped in, was a window, such as those in front of the
house; to the left, a door leading into the principal room; while, opposite
me, an open door enabled me to see a small apartment, just the size of the

vestibule, arranged as a study, and having a large bow window looking out
to the north.
Passing into the parlor, I found myself with Mr. Landor—for this, I
afterwards found, was his name. He was civil, even cordial in his manner,
but just then, I was more intent on observing the arrangements of the
dwelling which had so much interested me, than the personal appearance of
the tenant.
The north wing, I now saw, was a bed-chamber, its door opened into the
parlor. West of this door was a single window, looking toward the brook. At
the west end of the parlor, were a fireplace, and a door leading into the west
wing—probably a kitchen.
Nothing could be more rigorously simple than the furniture of the parlor.
On the floor was an ingrain carpet, of excellent texture—a white ground,
spotted with small circular green figures. At the windows were curtains of
snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively,
perhaps rather formally in sharp, parallel plaits to the floor—just to the
floor. The walls were prepared with a French paper of great delicacy, a
silver ground, with a faint green cord running zig-zag throughout. Its
expanse was relieved merely by three of Julien’s exquisite lithographs a
trois crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. One of these drawings
was a scene of Oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was a
“carnival piece,” spirited beyond compare; the third was a Greek female
head—a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression so provokingly
indeterminate, never before arrested my attention.
The more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few chairs
(including a large rocking-chair), and a sofa, or rather “settee;” its material
was plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly interstriped with green;
the seat of cane. The chairs and table were “to match,” but the forms of all
had evidently been designed by the same brain which planned “the
grounds;” it is impossible to conceive anything more graceful.
On the table were a few books; a large, square, crystal bottle of some
novel perfume; a plain ground glass astral (not solar) lamp with an Italian
shade; and a large vase of resplendently-blooming flowers. Flowers, indeed,
of gorgeous colours and delicate odour formed the sole mere decoration of
the apartment. The fire-place was nearly filled with a vase of brilliant
geranium. On a triangular shelf in each angle of the room stood also a

similar vase, varied only as to its lovely contents. One or two smaller
bouquets adorned the mantel, and late violets clustered about the open
windows.
It is not the purpose of this work to do more than give in detail, a picture
of Mr. Landor’s residence—as I found it. How he made it what it was—and
why—with some particulars of Mr. Landor himself—may, possibly form
the subject of another article.

WILLIAM WILSON

What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim,
That spectre in my path?
—Chamberlayne’s Pharronida.

Let me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now
lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation. This has been
already too much an object for the scorn—for the horror—for the
detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the
indignant winds bruited its unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts
most abandoned!—to the earth art thou not forever dead? to its honors, to
its flowers, to its golden aspirations?—and a cloud, dense, dismal, and
limitless, does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years
of unspeakable misery, and unpardonable crime. This epoch—these later
years—took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude, whose origin
alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees.
From me, in an instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From
comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride of a giant, into
more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance—what one
event brought this evil thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death
approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a softening
influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the
sympathy—I had nearly said for the pity—of my fellow men. I would fain
have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the slave of
circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for
me, in the details I am about to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a
wilderness of error. I would have them allow—what they cannot refrain
from allowing—that, although temptation may have erewhile existed as
great, man was never thus, at least, tempted before—certainly, never thus

fell. And is it therefore that he has never thus suffered? Have I not indeed
been living in a dream? And am I not now dying a victim to the horror and
the mystery of the wildest of all sublunary visions?
I am the descendant of a race whose imaginative and easily excitable
temperament has at all times rendered them remarkable; and, in my earliest
infancy, I gave evidence of having fully inherited the family character. As I
advanced in years it was more strongly developed; becoming, for many
reasons, a cause of serious disquietude to my friends, and of positive injury
to myself. I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to
the most ungovernable passions. Weak-minded, and beset with
constitutional infirmities akin to my own, my parents could do but little to
check the evil propensities which distinguished me. Some feeble and ill-
directed efforts resulted in complete failure on their part, and, of course, in
total triumph on mine. Thenceforward my voice was a household law; and
at an age when few children have abandoned their leading-strings, I was left
to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of
my own actions.
My earliest recollections of a school-life, are connected with a large,
rambling, Elizabethan house, in a misty-looking village of England, where
were a vast number of gigantic and gnarled trees, and where all the houses
were excessively ancient. In truth, it was a dream-like and spirit-soothing
place, that venerable old town. At this moment, in fancy, I feel the
refreshing chilliness of its deeply-shadowed avenues, inhale the fragrance
of its thousand shrubberies, and thrill anew with undefinable delight, at the
deep hollow note of the church-bell, breaking, each hour, with sullen and
sudden roar, upon the stillness of the dusky atmosphere in which the fretted
Gothic steeple lay imbedded and asleep.
It gives me, perhaps, as much of pleasure as I can now in any manner
experience, to dwell upon minute recollections of the school and its
concerns. Steeped in misery as I am—misery, alas! only too real—I shall be
pardoned for seeking relief, however slight and temporary, in the weakness
of a few rambling details. These, moreover, utterly trivial, and even
ridiculous in themselves, assume, to my fancy, adventitious importance, as
connected with a period and a locality when and where I recognise the first
ambiguous monitions of the destiny which afterwards so fully
overshadowed me. Let me then remember.

The house, I have said, was old and irregular. The grounds were
extensive, and a high and solid brick wall, topped with a bed of mortar and
broken glass, encompassed the whole. This prison-like rampart formed the
limit of our domain; beyond it we saw but thrice a week—once every
Saturday afternoon, when, attended by two ushers, we were permitted to
take brief walks in a body through some of the neighbouring fields—and
twice during Sunday, when we were paraded in the same formal manner to
the morning and evening service in the one church of the village. Of this
church the principal of our school was pastor. With how deep a spirit of
wonder and perplexity was I wont to regard him from our remote pew in the
gallery, as, with step solemn and slow, he ascended the pulpit! This
reverend man, with countenance so demurely benign, with robes so glossy
and so clerically flowing, with wig so minutely powdered, so rigid and so
vast,—-could this be he who, of late, with sour visage, and in snuffy
habiliments, administered, ferule in hand, the Draconian laws of the
academy? Oh, gigantic paradox, too utterly monstrous for solution!
At an angle of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was
riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron
spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened
save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned;
then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery
—a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation.
The extensive enclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious
recesses. Of these, three or four of the largest constituted the play-ground. It
was level, and covered with fine hard gravel. I well remember it had no
trees, nor benches, nor anything similar within it. Of course it was in the
rear of the house. In front lay a small parterre, planted with box and other
shrubs, but through this sacred division we passed only upon rare occasions
indeed—such as a first advent to school or final departure thence, or
perhaps, when a parent or friend having called for us, we joyfully took our
way home for the Christmas or Midsummer holidays.
But the house!—how quaint an old building was this!—to me how
veritably a palace of enchantment! There was really no end to its windings
—to its incomprehensible subdivisions. It was difficult, at any given time,
to say with certainty upon which of its two stories one happened to be.
From each room to every other there were sure to be found three or four

steps either in ascent or descent. Then the lateral branches were
innumerable—inconceivable—and so returning in upon themselves, that
our most exact ideas in regard to the whole mansion were not very far
different from those with which we pondered upon infinity. During the five
years of my residence here, I was never able to ascertain with precision, in
what remote locality lay the little sleeping apartment assigned to myself and
some eighteen or twenty other scholars.
The school-room was the largest in the house—I could not help thinking,
in the world. It was very long, narrow, and dismally low, with pointed
Gothic windows and a ceiling of oak. In a remote and terror-inspiring angle
was a square enclosure of eight or ten feet, comprising the sanctum, “during
hours,” of our principal, the Reverend Dr. Bransby. It was a solid structure,
with massy door, sooner than open which in the absence of the “Dominie,”
we would all have willingly perished by the peine forte et dure. In other
angles were two other similar boxes, far less reverenced, indeed, but still
greatly matters of awe. One of these was the pulpit of the “classical” usher,
one of the “English and mathematical.” Interspersed about the room,
crossing and recrossing in endless irregularity, were innumerable benches
and desks, black, ancient, and time-worn, piled desperately with much-
bethumbed books, and so beseamed with initial letters, names at full length,
grotesque figures, and other multiplied efforts of the knife, as to have
entirely lost what little of original form might have been their portion in
days long departed. A huge bucket with water stood at one extremity of the
room, and a clock of stupendous dimensions at the other.
Encompassed by the massy walls of this venerable academy, I passed, yet
not in tedium or disgust, the years of the third lustrum of my life. The
teeming brain of childhood requires no external world of incident to occupy
or amuse it; and the apparently dismal monotony of a school was replete
with more intense excitement than my riper youth has derived from luxury,
or my full manhood from crime. Yet I must believe that my first mental
development had in it much of the uncommon—even much of the outré.
Upon mankind at large the events of very early existence rarely leave in
mature age any definite impression. All is gray shadow—a weak and
irregular remembrance—an indistinct regathering of feeble pleasures and
phantasmagoric pains. With me this is not so. In childhood I must have felt
with the energy of a man what I now find stamped upon memory in lines as
vivid, as deep, and as durable as the exergues of the Carthaginian medals.

Yet in fact—in the fact of the world’s view—how little was there to
remember! The morning’s awakening, the nightly summons to bed; the
connings, the recitations; the periodical half-holidays, and perambulations;
the play-ground, with its broils, its pastimes, its intrigues;—these, by a
mental sorcery long forgotten, were made to involve a wilderness of
sensation, a world of rich incident, an universe of varied emotion, of
excitement the most passionate and spirit-stirring. “Oh, le bon temps, que ce
siècle de fer!”
In truth, the ardor, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness of my
disposition, soon rendered me a marked character among my schoolmates,
and by slow, but natural gradations, gave me an ascendancy over all not
greatly older than myself;—over all with a single exception. This exception
was found in the person of a scholar, who, although no relation, bore the
same Christian and surname as myself;—a circumstance, in fact, little
remarkable; for, notwithstanding a noble descent, mine was one of those
everyday appellations which seem, by prescriptive right, to have been, time
out of mind, the common property of the mob. In this narrative I have
therefore designated myself as William Wilson,—a fictitious title not very
dissimilar to the real. My namesake alone, of those who in school
phraseology constituted “our set,” presumed to compete with me in the
studies of the class—in the sports and broils of the play-ground—to refuse
implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will—indeed, to
interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on
earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master-
mind in boyhood over the less energetic spirits of its companions.
Wilson’s rebellion was to me a source of the greatest embarrassment; the
more so as, in spite of the bravado with which in public I made a point of
treating him and his pretensions, I secretly felt that I feared him, and could
not help thinking the equality which he maintained so easily with myself, a
proof of his true superiority; since not to be overcome cost me a perpetual
struggle. Yet this superiority—even this equality—was in truth
acknowledged by no one but myself; our associates, by some unaccountable
blindness, seemed not even to suspect it. Indeed, his competition, his
resistance, and especially his impertinent and dogged interference with my
purposes, were not more pointed than private. He appeared to be destitute
alike of the ambition which urged, and of the passionate energy of mind
which enabled me to excel. In his rivalry he might have been supposed

actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself;
although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling
made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries,
his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly
most unwelcome affectionateness of manner. I could only conceive this
singular behavior to arise from a consummate self-conceit assuming the
vulgar airs of patronage and protection.
Perhaps it was this latter trait in Wilson’s conduct, conjoined with our
identity of name, and the mere accident of our having entered the school
upon the same day, which set afloat the notion that we were brothers,
among the senior classes in the academy. These do not usually inquire with
much strictness into the affairs of their juniors. I have before said, or should
have said, that Wilson was not, in the most remote degree, connected with
my family. But assuredly if we had been brothers we must have been twins;
for, after leaving Dr. Bransby’s, I casually learned that my namesake was
born on the nineteenth of January, 1813—and this is a somewhat
remarkable coincidence; for the day is precisely that of my own nativity.
It may seem strange that in spite of the continual anxiety occasioned me
by the rivalry of Wilson, and his intolerable spirit of contradiction, I could
not bring myself to hate him altogether. We had, to be sure, nearly every
day a quarrel in which, yielding me publicly the palm of victory, he, in
some manner, contrived to make me feel that it was he who had deserved it;
yet a sense of pride on my part, and a veritable dignity on his own, kept us
always upon what are called “speaking terms,” while there were many
points of strong congeniality in our tempers, operating to awake me in a
sentiment which our position alone, perhaps, prevented from ripening into
friendship. It is difficult, indeed, to define, or even to describe, my real
feelings towards him. They formed a motley and heterogeneous admixture;
—some petulant animosity, which was not yet hatred, some esteem, more
respect, much fear, with a world of uneasy curiosity. To the moralist it will
be unnecessary to say, in addition, that Wilson and myself were the most
inseparable of companions.
It was no doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us, which
turned all my attacks upon him, (and they were many, either open or covert)
into the channel of banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the
aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined hostility.

But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful,
even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had
much about him, in character, of that unassuming and quiet austerity which,
while enjoying the poignancy of its own jokes, has no heel of Achilles in
itself, and absolutely refuses to be laughed at. I could find, indeed, but one
vulnerable point, and that, lying in a personal peculiarity, arising, perhaps,
from constitutional disease, would have been spared by any antagonist less
at his wit’s end than myself;—my rival had a weakness in the faucal or
guttural organs, which precluded him from raising his voice at any time
above a very low whisper. Of this defect I did not fail to take what poor
advantage lay in my power.
Wilson’s retaliations in kind were many; and there was one form of his
practical wit that disturbed me beyond measure. How his sagacity first
discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question I never
could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance.
I had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very
common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in my ears;
and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson came also
to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly
disgusted with the name because a stranger bore it, who would be the cause
of its twofold repetition, who would be constantly in my presence, and
whose concerns, in the ordinary routine of the school business, must
inevitably, on account of the detestable coincidence, be often confounded
with my own.
The feeling of vexation thus engendered grew stronger with every
circumstance tending to show resemblance, moral or physical, between my
rival and myself. I had not then discovered the remarkable fact that we were
of the same age; but I saw that we were of the same height, and I perceived
that we were even singularly alike in general contour of person and outline
of feature. I was galled, too, by the rumor touching a relationship, which
had grown current in the upper forms. In a word, nothing could more
seriously disturb me, (although I scrupulously concealed such disturbance,)
than any allusion to a similarity of mind, person, or condition existing
between us. But, in truth, I had no reason to believe that (with the exception
of the matter of relationship, and in the case of Wilson himself,) this
similarity had ever been made a subject of comment, or even observed at all
by our schoolfellows. That he observed it in all its bearings, and as fixedly

as I, was apparent; but that he could discover in such circumstances so
fruitful a field of annoyance, can only be attributed, as I said before, to his
more than ordinary penetration.
His cue, which was to perfect an imitation of myself, lay both in words
and in actions; and most admirably did he play his part. My dress it was an
easy matter to copy; my gait and general manner were, without difficulty,
appropriated; in spite of his constitutional defect, even my voice did not
escape him. My louder tones were, of course, unattempted, but then the key
—it was identical; and his singular whisper, it grew the very echo of my
own.
How greatly this most exquisite portraiture harassed me, (for it could not
justly be termed a caricature,) I will not now venture to describe. I had but
one consolation—in the fact that the imitation, apparently, was noticed by
myself alone, and that I had to endure only the knowing and strangely
sarcastic smiles of my namesake himself. Satisfied with having produced in
my bosom the intended effect, he seemed to chuckle in secret over the sting
he had inflicted, and was characteristically disregardful of the public
applause which the success of his witty endeavours might have so easily
elicited. That the school, indeed, did not feel his design, perceive its
accomplishment, and participate in his sneer, was, for many anxious
months, a riddle I could not resolve. Perhaps the gradation of his copy
rendered it not so readily perceptible; or, more possibly, I owed my security
to the master air of the copyist, who, disdaining the letter, (which in a
painting is all the obtuse can see,) gave but the full spirit of his original for
my individual contemplation and chagrin.
I have already more than once spoken of the disgusting air of patronage
which he assumed toward me, and of his frequent officious interference
with my will. This interference often took the ungracious character of
advice; advice not openly given, but hinted or insinuated. I received it with
a repugnance which gained strength as I grew in years. Yet, at this distant
day, let me do him the simple justice to acknowledge that I can recall no
occasion when the suggestions of my rival were on the side of those errors
or follies so usual to his immature age and seeming inexperience; that his
moral sense, at least, if not his general talents and worldly wisdom, was far
keener than my own; and that I might, to-day, have been a better, and thus a
happier man, had I less frequently rejected the counsels embodied in those

meaning whispers which I then but too cordially hated and too bitterly
despised.
As it was, I at length grew restive in the extreme under his distasteful
supervision, and daily resented more and more openly what I considered his
intolerable arrogance. I have said that, in the first years of our connexion as
schoolmates, my feelings in regard to him might have been easily ripened
into friendship; but, in the latter months of my residence at the academy,
although the intrusion of his ordinary manner had, beyond doubt, in some
measure, abated, my sentiments, in nearly similar proportion, partook very
much of positive hatred. Upon one occasion he saw this, I think, and
afterwards avoided, or made a show of avoiding me.
It was about the same period, if I remember aright, that, in an altercation
of violence with him, in which he was more than usually thrown off his
guard, and spoke and acted with an openness of demeanor rather foreign to
his nature, I discovered, or fancied I discovered, in his accent, his air, and
general appearance, a something which first startled, and then deeply
interested me, by bringing to mind dim visions of my earliest infancy—
wild, confused and thronging memories of a time when memory herself was
yet unborn. I cannot better describe the sensation which oppressed me than
by saying that I could with difficulty shake off the belief of my having been
acquainted with the being who stood before me, at some epoch very long
ago—some point of the past even infinitely remote. The delusion, however,
faded rapidly as it came; and I mention it at all but to define the day of the
last conversation I there held with my singular namesake.
The huge old house, with its countless subdivisions, had several large
chambers communicating with each other, where slept the greater number
of the students. There were, however, (as must necessarily happen in a
building so awkwardly planned,) many little nooks or recesses, the odds and
ends of the structure; and these the economic ingenuity of Dr. Bransby had
also fitted up as dormitories; although, being the merest closets, they were
capable of accommodating but a single individual. One of these small
apartments was occupied by Wilson.
One night, about the close of my fifth year at the school, and immediately
after the altercation just mentioned, finding every one wrapped in sleep, I
arose from bed, and, lamp in hand, stole through a wilderness of narrow
passages from my own bedroom to that of my rival. I had long been plotting

one of those ill-natured pieces of practical wit at his expense in which I had
hitherto been so uniformly unsuccessful. It was my intention, now, to put
my scheme in operation, and I resolved to make him feel the whole extent
of the malice with which I was imbued. Having reached his closet, I
noiselessly entered, leaving the lamp, with a shade over it, on the outside. I
advanced a step, and listened to the sound of his tranquil breathing. Assured
of his being asleep, I returned, took the light, and with it again approached
the bed. Close curtains were around it, which, in the prosecution of my
plan, I slowly and quietly withdrew, when the bright rays fell vividly upon
the sleeper, and my eyes, at the same moment, upon his countenance. I
looked;—and a numbness, an iciness of feeling instantly pervaded my
frame. My breast heaved, my knees tottered, my whole spirit became
possessed with an objectless yet intolerable horror. Gasping for breath, I
lowered the lamp in still nearer proximity to the face. Were these—these the
lineaments of William Wilson? I saw, indeed, that they were his, but I shook
as if with a fit of the ague in fancying they were not. What was there about
them to confound me in this manner? I gazed;—while my brain reeled with
a multitude of incoherent thoughts. Not thus he appeared—assuredly not
thus—in the vivacity of his waking hours. The same name! the same
contour of person! the same day of arrival at the academy! And then his
dogged and meaningless imitation of my gait, my voice, my habits, and my
manner! Was it, in truth, within the bounds of human possibility, that what I
now saw was the result, merely, of the habitual practice of this sarcastic
imitation? Awe-stricken, and with a creeping shudder, I extinguished the
lamp, passed silently from the chamber, and left, at once, the halls of that
old academy, never to enter them again.
After a lapse of some months, spent at home in mere idleness, I found
myself a student at Eton. The brief interval had been sufficient to enfeeble
my remembrance of the events at Dr. Bransby’s, or at least to effect a
material change in the nature of the feelings with which I remembered
them. The truth—the tragedy—of the drama was no more. I could now find
room to doubt the evidence of my senses; and seldom called up the subject
at all but with wonder at extent of human credulity, and a smile at the vivid
force of the imagination which I hereditarily possessed. Neither was this
species of scepticism likely to be diminished by the character of the life I
led at Eton. The vortex of thoughtless folly into which I there so
immediately and so recklessly plunged, washed away all but the froth of my

past hours, engulfed at once every solid or serious impression, and left to
memory only the veriest levities of a former existence.
I do not wish, however, to trace the course of my miserable profligacy
here—a profligacy which set at defiance the laws, while it eluded the
vigilance of the institution. Three years of folly, passed without profit, had
but given me rooted habits of vice, and added, in a somewhat unusual
degree, to my bodily stature, when, after a week of soulless dissipation, I
invited a small party of the most dissolute students to a secret carousal in
my chambers. We met at a late hour of the night; for our debaucheries were
to be faithfully protracted until morning. The wine flowed freely, and there
were not wanting other and perhaps more dangerous seductions; so that the
gray dawn had already faintly appeared in the east, while our delirious
extravagance was at its height. Madly flushed with cards and intoxication, I
was in the act of insisting upon a toast of more than wonted profanity, when
my attention was suddenly diverted by the violent, although partial
unclosing of the door of the apartment, and by the eager voice of a servant
from without. He said that some person, apparently in great haste,
demanded to speak with me in the hall.
Wildly excited with wine, the unexpected interruption rather delighted
than surprised me. I staggered forward at once, and a few steps brought me
to the vestibule of the building. In this low and small room there hung no
lamp; and now no light at all was admitted, save that of the exceedingly
feeble dawn which made its way through the semi-circular window. As I put
my foot over the threshold, I became aware of the figure of a youth about
my own height, and habited in a white kerseymere morning frock, cut in the
novel fashion of the one I myself wore at the moment. This the faint light
enabled me to perceive; but the features of his face I could not distinguish.
Upon my entering he strode hurriedly up to me, and, seizing me by the arm
with a gesture of petulant impatience, whispered the words “William
Wilson!” in my ear.
I grew perfectly sober in an instant.
There was that in the manner of the stranger, and in the tremulous shake
of his uplifted finger, as he held it between my eyes and the light, which
filled me with unqualified amazement; but it was not this which had so
violently moved me. It was the pregnancy of solemn admonition in the
singular, low, hissing utterance; and, above all, it was the character, the

tone, the key, of those few, simple, and familiar, yet whispered syllables,
which came with a thousand thronging memories of bygone days, and
struck upon my soul with the shock of a galvanic battery. Ere I could
recover the use of my senses he was gone.
Although this event failed not of a vivid effect upon my disordered
imagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid. For some weeks, indeed, I
busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped in a cloud of morbid
speculation. I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of
the singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs,
and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. But who and what was this
Wilson?—and whence came he?—and what were his purposes? Upon
neither of these points could I be satisfied; merely ascertaining, in regard to
him, that a sudden accident in his family had caused his removal from Dr.
Bransby’s academy on the afternoon of the day in which I myself had
eloped. But in a brief period I ceased to think upon the subject; my attention
being all absorbed in a contemplated departure for Oxford. Thither I soon
went; the uncalculating vanity of my parents furnishing me with an outfit
and annual establishment, which would enable me to indulge at will in the
luxury already so dear to my heart,—to vie in profuseness of expenditure
with the haughtiest heirs of the wealthiest earldoms in Great Britain.
Excited by such appliances to vice, my constitutional temperament broke
forth with redoubled ardor, and I spurned even the common restraints of
decency in the mad infatuation of my revels. But it were absurd to pause in
the detail of my extravagance. Let it suffice, that among spendthrifts I out-
Heroded Herod, and that, giving name to a multitude of novel follies, I
added no brief appendix to the long catalogue of vices then usual in the
most dissolute university of Europe.
It could hardly be credited, however, that I had, even here, so utterly
fallen from the gentlemanly estate, as to seek acquaintance with the vilest
arts of the gambler by profession, and, having become an adept in his
despicable science, to practise it habitually as a means of increasing my
already enormous income at the expense of the weak-minded among my
fellow-collegians. Such, nevertheless, was the fact. And the very enormity
of this offence against all manly and honourable sentiment proved, beyond
doubt, the main if not the sole reason of the impunity with which it was
committed. Who, indeed, among my most abandoned associates, would not

rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected
of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wilson—the
noblest and most liberal commoner at Oxford—him whose follies (said his
parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy—whose errors
but inimitable whim—whose darkest vice but a careless and dashing
extravagance?
I had been now two years successfully busied in this way, when there
came to the university a young parvenu nobleman, Glendinning—rich, said
report, as Herodes Atticus—his riches, too, as easily acquired. I soon found
him of weak intellect, and, of course, marked him as a fitting subject for my
skill. I frequently engaged him in play, and contrived, with the gambler’s
usual art, to let him win considerable sums, the more effectually to entangle
him in my snares. At length, my schemes being ripe, I met him (with the
full intention that this meeting should be final and decisive) at the chambers
of a fellow-commoner, (Mr. Preston,) equally intimate with both, but who,
to do him justice, entertained not even a remote suspicion of my design. To
give to this a better coloring, I had contrived to have assembled a party of
some eight or ten, and was solicitously careful that the introduction of cards
should appear accidental, and originate in the proposal of my contemplated
dupe himself. To be brief upon a vile topic, none of the low finesse was
omitted, so customary upon similar occasions that it is a just matter for
wonder how any are still found so besotted as to fall its victim.
We had protracted our sitting far into the night, and I had at length
effected the manoeuvre of getting Glendinning as my sole antagonist. The
game, too, was my favorite écarté! The rest of the company, interested in
the extent of our play, had abandoned their own cards, and were standing
around us as spectators. The parvenu, who had been induced by my artifices
in the early part of the evening, to drink deeply, now shuffled, dealt, or
played, with a wild nervousness of manner for which his intoxication, I
thought, might partially, but could not altogether account. In a very short
period he had become my debtor to a large amount, when, having taken a
long draught of port, he did precisely what I had been coolly anticipating—
he proposed to double our already extravagant stakes. With a well-feigned
show of reluctance, and not until after my repeated refusal had seduced him
into some angry words which gave a color of pique to my compliance, did I
finally comply. The result, of course, did but prove how entirely the prey
was in my toils: in less than an hour he had quadrupled his debt. For some

time his countenance had been losing the florid tinge lent it by the wine; but
now, to my astonishment, I perceived that it had grown to a pallor truly
fearful. I say to my astonishment. Glendinning had been represented to my
eager inquiries as immeasurably wealthy; and the sums which he had as yet
lost, although in themselves vast, could not, I supposed, very seriously
annoy, much less so violently affect him. That he was overcome by the wine
just swallowed, was the idea which most readily presented itself; and, rather
with a view to the preservation of my own character in the eyes of my
associates, than from any less interested motive, I was about to insist,
peremptorily, upon a discontinuance of the play, when some expressions at
my elbow from among the company, and an ejaculation evincing utter
despair on the part of Glendinning, gave me to understand that I had
effected his total ruin under circumstances which, rendering him an object
for the pity of all, should have protected him from the ill offices even of a
fiend.
What now might have been my conduct it is difficult to say. The pitiable
condition of my dupe had thrown an air of embarrassed gloom over all; and,
for some moments, a profound silence was maintained, during which I
could not help feeling my cheeks tingle with the many burning glances of
scorn or reproach cast upon me by the less abandoned of the party. I will
even own that an intolerable weight of anxiety was for a brief instant lifted
from my bosom by the sudden and extraordinary interruption which ensued.
The wide, heavy folding doors of the apartment were all at once thrown
open, to their full extent, with a vigorous and rushing impetuosity that
extinguished, as if by magic, every candle in the room. Their light, in dying,
enabled us just to perceive that a stranger had entered, about my own
height, and closely muffled in a cloak. The darkness, however, was now
total; and we could only feel that he was standing in our midst. Before any
one of us could recover from the extreme astonishment into which this
rudeness had thrown all, we heard the voice of the intruder.
“Gentlemen,” he said, in a low, distinct, and never-to-be-forgotten
whisper which thrilled to the very marrow of my bones, “Gentlemen, I
make no apology for this behaviour, because in thus behaving, I am but
fulfilling a duty. You are, beyond doubt, uninformed of the true character of
the person who has to-night won at écarté a large sum of money from Lord
Glendinning. I will therefore put you upon an expeditious and decisive plan
of obtaining this very necessary information. Please to examine, at your

leisure, the inner linings of the cuff of his left sleeve, and the several little
packages which may be found in the somewhat capacious pockets of his
embroidered morning wrapper.”
While he spoke, so profound was the stillness that one might have heard
a pin drop upon the floor. In ceasing, he departed at once, and as abruptly as
he had entered. Can I—shall I describe my sensations? Must I say that I felt
all the horrors of the damned? Most assuredly I had little time given for
reflection. Many hands roughly seized me upon the spot, and lights were
immediately reprocured. A search ensued. In the lining of my sleeve were
found all the court cards essential in écarté, and, in the pockets of my
wrapper, a number of packs, facsimiles of those used at our sittings, with
the single exception that mine were of the species called, technically,
arrondees; the honours being slightly convex at the ends, the lower cards
slightly convex at the sides. In this disposition, the dupe who cuts, as
customary, at the length of the pack, will invariably find that he cuts his
antagonist an honor; while the gambler, cutting at the breadth, will, as
certainly, cut nothing for his victim which may count in the records of the
game.
Any burst of indignation upon this discovery would have affected me less
than the silent contempt, or the sarcastic composure, with which it was
received.
“Mr. Wilson,” said our host, stooping to remove from beneath his feet an
exceedingly luxurious cloak of rare furs, “Mr. Wilson, this is your
property.” (The weather was cold; and, upon quitting my own room, I had
thrown a cloak over my dressing wrapper, putting it off upon reaching the
scene of play.) “I presume it is supererogatory to seek here (eyeing the folds
of the garment with a bitter smile) for any farther evidence of your skill.
Indeed, we have had enough. You will see the necessity, I hope, of quitting
Oxford—at all events, of quitting instantly my chambers.”
Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I should
have resented this galling language by immediate personal violence, had not
my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the most
startling character. The cloak which I had worn was of a rare description of
fur; how rare, how extravagantly costly, I shall not venture to say. Its
fashion, too, was of my own fantastic invention; for I was fastidious to an
absurd degree of coxcombry, in matters of this frivolous nature. When,

therefore, Mr. Preston reached me that which he had picked up upon the
floor, and near the folding doors of the apartment, it was with an
astonishment nearly bordering upon terror, that I perceived my own already
hanging on my arm, (where I had no doubt unwittingly placed it,) and that
the one presented me was but its exact counterpart in every, in even the
minutest possible particular. The singular being who had so disastrously
exposed me, had been muffled, I remembered, in a cloak; and none had
been worn at all by any of the members of our party with the exception of
myself. Retaining some presence of mind, I took the one offered me by
Preston; placed it, unnoticed, over my own; left the apartment with a
resolute scowl of defiance; and, next morning ere dawn of day, commenced
a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror
and of shame.
I fled in vain. My evil destiny pursued me as if in exultation, and proved,
indeed, that the exercise of its mysterious dominion had as yet only begun.
Scarcely had I set foot in Paris ere I had fresh evidence of the detestable
interest taken by this Wilson in my concerns. Years flew, while I
experienced no relief. Villain!—at Rome, with how untimely, yet with how
spectral an officiousness, stepped he in between me and my ambition! At
Vienna, too—at Berlin—and at Moscow! Where, in truth, had I not bitter
cause to curse him within my heart? From his inscrutable tyranny did I at
length flee, panic-stricken, as from a pestilence; and to the very ends of the
earth I fled in vain.
And again, and again, in secret communion with my own spirit, would I
demand the questions “Who is he?—whence came he?—and what are his
objects?” But no answer was there found. And then I scrutinized, with a
minute scrutiny, the forms, and the methods, and the leading traits of his
impertinent supervision. But even here there was very little upon which to
base a conjecture. It was noticeable, indeed, that, in no one of the multiplied
instances in which he had of late crossed my path, had he so crossed it
except to frustrate those schemes, or to disturb those actions, which, if fully
carried out, might have resulted in bitter mischief. Poor justification this, in
truth, for an authority so imperiously assumed! Poor indemnity for natural
rights of self-agency so pertinaciously, so insultingly denied!
I had also been forced to notice that my tormentor, for a very long period
of time, (while scrupulously and with miraculous dexterity maintaining his

whim of an identity of apparel with myself,) had so contrived it, in the
execution of his varied interference with my will, that I saw not, at any
moment, the features of his face. Be Wilson what he might, this, at least,
was but the veriest of affectation, or of folly. Could he, for an instant, have
supposed that, in my admonisher at Eton—in the destroyer of my honor at
Oxford,—in him who thwarted my ambition at Rome, my revenge at Paris,
my passionate love at Naples, or what he falsely termed my avarice in
Egypt,—that in this, my arch-enemy and evil genius, could fail to recognise
the William Wilson of my school boy days,—the namesake, the companion,
the rival,—the hated and dreaded rival at Dr. Bransby’s? Impossible!—But
let me hasten to the last eventful scene of the drama.
Thus far I had succumbed supinely to this imperious domination. The
sentiment of deep awe with which I habitually regarded the elevated
character, the majestic wisdom, the apparent omnipresence and
omnipotence of Wilson, added to a feeling of even terror, with which
certain other traits in his nature and assumptions inspired me, had operated,
hitherto, to impress me with an idea of my own utter weakness and
helplessness, and to suggest an implicit, although bitterly reluctant
submission to his arbitrary will. But, of late days, I had given myself up
entirely to wine; and its maddening influence upon my hereditary temper
rendered me more and more impatient of control. I began to murmur,—to
hesitate,—to resist. And was it only fancy which induced me to believe that,
with the increase of my own firmness, that of my tormentor underwent a
proportional diminution? Be this as it may, I now began to feel the
inspiration of a burning hope, and at length nurtured in my secret thoughts a
stern and desperate resolution that I would submit no longer to be enslaved.
It was at Rome, during the Carnival of 18—, that I attended a
masquerade in the palazzo of the Neapolitan Duke Di Broglio. I had
indulged more freely than usual in the excesses of the wine-table; and now
the suffocating atmosphere of the crowded rooms irritated me beyond
endurance. The difficulty, too, of forcing my way through the mazes of the
company contributed not a little to the ruffling of my temper; for I was
anxiously seeking, (let me not say with what unworthy motive) the young,
the gay, the beautiful wife of the aged and doting Di Broglio. With a too
unscrupulous confidence she had previously communicated to me the secret
of the costume in which she would be habited, and now, having caught a
glimpse of her person, I was hurrying to make my way into her presence. At

this moment I felt a light hand placed upon my shoulder, and that ever-
remembered, low, damnable whisper within my ear.
In an absolute phrenzy of wrath, I turned at once upon him who had thus
interrupted me, and seized him violently by the collar. He was attired, as I
had expected, in a costume altogether similar to my own; wearing a Spanish
cloak of blue velvet, begirt about the waist with a crimson belt sustaining a
rapier. A mask of black silk entirely covered his face.
“Scoundrel!” I said, in a voice husky with rage, while every syllable I
uttered seemed as new fuel to my fury, “scoundrel! impostor! accursed
villain! you shall not—you shall not dog me unto death! Follow me, or I
stab you where you stand!”—and I broke my way from the ball-room into a
small ante-chamber adjoining, dragging him unresistingly with me as I
went.
Upon entering, I thrust him furiously from me. He staggered against the
wall, while I closed the door with an oath, and commanded him to draw. He
hesitated but for an instant; then, with a slight sigh, drew in silence, and put
himself upon his defence.
The contest was brief indeed. I was frantic with every species of wild
excitement, and felt within my single arm the energy and power of a
multitude. In a few seconds I forced him by sheer strength against the
wainscoting, and thus, getting him at mercy, plunged my sword, with brute
ferocity, repeatedly through and through his bosom.
At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I hastened to
prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dying antagonist.
But what human language can adequately portray that astonishment, that
horror which possessed me at the spectacle then presented to view? The
brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient to produce,
apparently, a material change in the arrangements at the upper or farther end
of the room. A large mirror,—so at first it seemed to me in my confusion—
now stood where none had been perceptible before; and, as I stepped up to
it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all pale and
dabbled in blood, advanced to meet me with a feeble and tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist—it was
Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution. His
mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not a thread

in all his raiment—not a line in all the marked and singular lineaments of
his face which was not, even in the most absolute identity, mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have
fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
“You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead—
dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist—and, in
my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast
murdered thyself.”

THE TELL-TALE HEART.

True!—nervous—very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but
why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses—
not destroyed—not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I
heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.
How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily—how calmly I
can tell you the whole story.
It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once
conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object there was none. Passion
there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me. He had
never given me insult. For his gold I had no desire. I think it was his eye!
yes, it was this! He had the eye of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film
over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold; and so by degrees—
very gradually—I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and
thus rid myself of the eye forever.
Now this is the point. You fancy me mad. Madmen know nothing. But
you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—
with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation I went to
work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before
I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door
and opened it—oh, so gently! And then, when I had made an opening
sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern, all closed, closed, that no
light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed
to see how cunningly I thrust it in! I moved it slowly—very, very slowly, so
that I might not disturb the old man’s sleep. It took me an hour to place my
whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his
bed. Ha!—would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my
head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously
—cautiously (for the hinges creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single
thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights—

every night just at midnight—but I found the eye always closed; and so it
was impossible to do the work; for it was not the old man who vexed me,
but his Evil Eye. And every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly
into the chamber, and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name in a
hearty tone, and inquiring how he has passed the night. So you see he
would have been a very profound old man, indeed, to suspect that every
night, just at twelve, I looked in upon him while he slept.
Upon the eighth night I was more than usually cautious in opening the
door. A watch’s minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never
before that night had I felt the extent of my own powers—of my sagacity. I
could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph. To think that there I was,
opening the door, little by little, and he not even to dream of my secret
deeds or thoughts. I fairly chuckled at the idea; and perhaps he heard me;
for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled. Now you may think that I
drew back—but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness,
(for the shutters were close fastened, through fear of robbers,) and so I
knew that he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on
steadily, steadily.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb
slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out
—“Who’s there?”
I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a
muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still
sitting up in the bed listening;—just as I have done, night after night,
hearkening to the death watches in the wall.
Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal
terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief—oh, no!—it was the low stifled
sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I
knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world
slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful
echo, the terrors that distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old
man felt, and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had
been lying awake ever since the first slight noise, when he had turned in the
bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to
fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself—“It is
nothing but the wind in the chimney—it is only a mouse crossing the floor,”

or “It is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp.” Yes, he had been
trying to comfort himself with these suppositions: but he had found all in
vain. All in vain; because Death, in approaching him had stalked with his
black shadow before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the
mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel—
although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within
the room.
When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie
down, I resolved to open a little—a very, very little crevice in the lantern.
So I opened it—you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily—until, at
length a single dim ray, like the thread of the spider, shot from out the
crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye.
It was open—wide, wide open—and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I
saw it with perfect distinctness—all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it
that chilled the very marrow in my bones; but I could see nothing else of the
old man’s face or person: for I had directed the ray as if by instinct,
precisely upon the damned spot.
And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-
acuteness of the sense?—now, I say, there came to my ears a low, dull,
quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that
sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man’s heart. It increased my
fury, as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage.
But even yet I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the
lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the
eye. Meantime the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and
quicker, and louder and louder every instant. The old man’s terror must
have been extreme! It grew louder, I say, louder every moment!—do you
mark me well? I have told you that I am nervous: so I am. And now at the
dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so
strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet, for some
minutes longer I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder,
louder! I thought the heart must burst. And now a new anxiety seized me—
the sound would be heard by a neighbour! The old man’s hour had come!
With a loud yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He
shrieked once—once only. In an instant I dragged him to the floor, and
pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily, to find the deed so far

done. But, for many minutes, the heart beat on with a muffled sound. This,
however, did not vex me; it would not be heard through the wall. At length
it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the
corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and
held it there many minutes. There was no pulsation. He was stone dead. His
eye would trouble me no more.
If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the
wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned,
and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all I dismembered the corpse. I
cut off the head and the arms and the legs.
I then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber, and
deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly,
so cunningly, that no human eye—not even his—could have detected any
thing wrong. There was nothing to wash out—no stain of any kind—no
blood-spot whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all—ha!
ha!
When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock—still dark
as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the
street door. I went down to open it with a light heart,—for what had I now
to fear? There entered three men, who introduced themselves, with perfect
suavity, as officers of the police. A shriek had been heard by a neighbour
during the night; suspicion of foul play had been aroused; information had
been lodged at the police office, and they (the officers) had been deputed to
search the premises.
I smiled,—for what had I to fear? I bade the gentlemen welcome. The
shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was
absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house. I bade them
search—search well. I led them, at length, to his chamber. I showed them
his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I
brought chairs into the room, and desired them here to rest from their
fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed
my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the
victim.
The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was
singularly at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of
familiar things. But, ere long, I felt myself getting pale and wished them

gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears: but still they sat
and still chatted. The ringing became more distinct:—it continued and
became more distinct: I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling: but it
continued and gained definiteness—until, at length, I found that the noise
was not within my ears.
No doubt I now grew very pale;—but I talked more fluently, and with a
heightened voice. Yet the sound increased—and what could I do? It was a
low, dull, quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when
enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath—and yet the officers heard it not. I
talked more quickly—more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased. I
arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations;
but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the
floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations
of the men—but the noise steadily increased. Oh God! what could I do? I
foamed—I raved—I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been
sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and
continually increased. It grew louder—louder—louder! And still the men
chatted pleasantly, and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty
God!—no, no! They heard!—they suspected!—they knew!—they were
making a mockery of my horror!—this I thought, and this I think. But
anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this
derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must
scream or die! and now—again!—hark! louder! louder! louder! louder!
“Villains!” I shrieked, “dissemble no more! I admit the deed!—tear up
the planks!—here, here!—It is the beating of his hideous heart!”

BERENICE

Dicebant mihi sodales, si sepulchrum amicae visitarem,
curas meas aliquar tulum fore levatas.—Ebn Zaiat.

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform.
Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the
hues of that arch—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching
the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived
a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow?
But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is
sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the
agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been.
My baptismal name is Egaeus; that of my family I will not mention. Yet
there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, gray,
hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries; and in many
striking particulars—in the character of the family mansion—in the frescos
of the chief saloon—in the tapestries of the dormitories—in the chiselling
of some buttresses in the armory—but more especially in the gallery of
antique paintings—in the fashion of the library chamber—and, lastly, in the
very peculiar nature of the library’s contents—there is more than sufficient
evidence to warrant the belief.
The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber,
and with its volumes—of which latter I will say no more. Here died my
mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived
before—that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it?—let us not
argue the matter. Convinced myself, I seek not to convince. There is,
however, a remembrance of aerial forms—of spiritual and meaning eyes—
of sounds, musical yet sad—a remembrance which will not be excluded; a
memory like a shadow—vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady; and like a

shadow, too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it while the sunlight of
my reason shall exist.
In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking from the long night of what
seemed, but was not, nonentity, at once into the very regions of fairy land—
into a palace of imagination—into the wild dominions of monastic thought
and erudition—it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and
ardent eye—that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my
youth in reverie; but it is singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of
manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers—it is wonderful what
stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life—wonderful how total an
inversion took place in the character of my commonest thought. The
realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the
wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn, not the material of my
every-day existence, but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in
itself.

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal
halls. Yet differently we grew—I, ill of health, and buried in gloom—she,
agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy; hers, the ramble on the hill-
side—mine the studies of the cloister; I, living within my own heart, and
addicted, body and soul, to the most intense and painful meditation—she,
roaming carelessly through life, with no thought of the shadows in her path,
or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice!—I call upon her
name—Berenice!—and from the gray ruins of memory a thousand
tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah, vividly is her image
before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh,
gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh, sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim!
Oh, Naiad among its fountains! And then—then all is mystery and terror,
and a tale which should not be told. Disease—a fatal disease, fell like the
simoon upon her frame; and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of
change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character,
and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the identity of
her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went!—and the victim—where is
she? I knew her not—or knew her no longer as Berenice.

Among the numerous train of maladies superinduced by that fatal and
primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral
and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing
and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently
terminating in trance itself—trance very nearly resembling positive
dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was in most instances,
startlingly abrupt. In the mean time my own disease—for I have been told
that I should call it by no other appellation—my own disease, then, grew
rapidly upon me, and assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel
and extraordinary form—hourly and momently gaining vigor—and at
length obtaining over me the most incomprehensible ascendancy. This
monomania, if I must so term it, consisted in a morbid irritability of those
properties of the mind in metaphysical science termed the attentive. It is
more than probable that I am not understood; but I fear, indeed, that it is in
no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an
adequate idea of that nervous intensity of interest with which, in my case,
the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied and buried
themselves, in the contemplation of even the most ordinary objects of the
universe.
To muse for long unwearied hours, with my attention riveted to some
frivolous device on the margin, or in the typography of a book; to become
absorbed, for the better part of a summer’s day, in a quaint shadow falling
aslant upon the tapestry or upon the floor; to lose myself, for an entire
night, in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire; to
dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower; to repeat,
monotonously, some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent
repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind; to lose all sense
of motion or physical existence, by means of absolute bodily quiescence
long and obstinately persevered in: such were a few of the most common
and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties,
not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to
anything like analysis or explanation.
Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, earnest, and morbid
attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be
confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all
mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination.
It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or

exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and
different. In the one instance, the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by
an object usually not frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a
wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the
conclusion of a day-dream often replete with luxury, he finds the
incitamentum, or first cause of his musings, entirely vanished and forgotten.
In my case, the primary object was invariably frivolous, although assuming,
through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal
importance. Few deductions, if any, were made; and those few
pertinaciously returning in upon the original object as a centre. The
meditations were never pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie,
the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that
supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the
disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were,
with me, as I have said before, the attentive, and are, with the day-dreamer,
the speculative.
My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the
disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative and
inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I
well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian, Coelius
Secundus Curio, “De Amplitudine Beati Regni Dei;” St. Austin’s great
work, the “City of God;” and Tertullian’s “De Carne Christi,” in which the
paradoxical sentence “Mortuus est Dei filius; credible est quia ineptum est:
et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est,” occupied my
undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.
Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things,
my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy
Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the
fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the
flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear
a matter beyond doubt, that the alteration produced by her unhappy malady,
in the moral condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the
exercise of that intense and abnormal meditation whose nature I have been
at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not in any degree the case. In
the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity, indeed, gave me pain, and,
taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not
fail to ponder, frequently and bitterly, upon the wonder-working means by