I recollect you. We met at the Leopoldstadt. I talked very much. Your good wine heated me.'

Well,' said I, I am glad that we have met again, and I hope we shall become better acquainted. Will you go with me to the opera this evening?-I am anxious to hear Armida.'

• You wish to hear Armida! come with me.'

We passed rapidly through the Prater and into the city. In the Himelfort Strasse he turned into a narrow lateral street, and, at last, stopped before a house of mean, ruinous appearance. The door seemed to open at his touch. I followed him in, and groped my way, in the dark, up the staircase, an immense height, until we reached what would be called in plain English the garret. My guide opened a door, leaving me outside, but soon re-appeared with a light in his hand. We entered the room, and its appearance surprised me not a little. Wainscoted walls, of dark, shining wood, old-fashioned chairs, a clock in a great gilded box, and a large mirror surrounded by a frame carved into massive arabesques, gave to the whole apartment a strange, afflicting look of tarnished splendour. In the midst of the room stood a small piano, and upon it an immense porcelain inkstand, with several quires of ruled music-paper. A second glance at those tools of a composer convinced me that they had been for some time untouched, for the paper was perfectly yellow, and a cobweb covered the entire inkstand.

The stranger walked to an antique cabinet, placed in an angle of the chamber, and, drawing a curtain, discovered it to be filled with large, well-bound books, upon which were stamped in golden letters, Orfeo, Armida, Alceste, Iphigenia; in short, I saw before me all the works of Gluck.

The stranger fixed his looks upon me, and seizing one of the books-it was the Armida-advanced with a solemn step towards the piano. I opened it and pushed up the desk. He appeared to receive my attentions with pleasure. He opened the musicbook-how great was my astonishment when I saw that the ruled paper had not one single note marked upon it!

I am going to play the overture,' said the stranger; I will thank you to turn the leaves over, carefully.'

I promised, and he commenced the majestic Tempo di Marcia. In the allegro he introduced so many original phrases that my astonishment increased more and more. Sometimes his brows contracted, and a fury seemed to possess him-sometimes his eyes suffused with tears, and his countenance expressed the deepest grief-sometimes, as his hands were employed in the most striking modulation and brilliant variations, he sang the thema in a beautiful tenor voice. All the time I observed his looks and assiduously turned the leaves. When the overture was finished, he leaned back in his chair, for a few moments, with closed eyes, and then said, in a stifled voice

All this, Sir, I wrote after returning from the land of dreams. I discovered to the profane what is sacred. For my fault I am condemned to wander among them; but not for ever-come, Sir, let us now sing something from the Armida.'

He then began to sing the last scene of Armida, and all that the passions of love, hatred, rage, despair, could express, was expressed by him. His voice penetrated to the bottom of my soul. I was transported beyond myself, and when he finished I caught him by the arm, exclaiming, Who are you?-tell me, I conjure you!'

The stranger raised himself from his seat, and regarded me with a severe and penetrating look. As I was going to repeat my question, he took up the light and left the room. For about a quarter of an hour I remained alone, in perfect darkness; then despairing of his return, I set about recollecting the position of the piano, that I might obtain egress by the door. At that moment the stranger appeared again, suddenly, with the light. He was habited in a velvet coat, richly embroidered, a waistcoat of satin, and a sword hung at his side. He advanced solemnly towards me, took me by the hand, and smiling in a singular manner, said—' I AM THE CHEVALIER GLUCK.' What more he would have told me I am ignorant of, for just at that moment the waiter at the Leopoldstadt, who had heard me speak of going to the opera, was kind enough to wake me, fearing, as he said, I should be too late.

W. L. T.

AN INVALID'S REVERIE.

'Airy nothings.—Shakspeare.

A DISTRESSING pulmonary affection compelled me to consult a physician: he considered the symptoms premonitory of consumption, and recommended me to leave the murky atmosphere of London without delay. Instanter, as if by the touch of a magician's wand, my aunt, and her pretty little cottage, situated at the bottom of a sylvan vale in Buckinghamshire, started up before my mind's eye.' I had not seen either the lady or her habitation for several years; and yet I felt as firmly resolved to go to Buckinghamshire in that moment, as if my mind had been wrought to it by invitations pressing, and repeated.' We designate ourselves rational beings: what study of psychological science could enable us to trace the ratiocinative process by which Yet rational my mind had been brought to this determination? we are; inasmuch as we always act by reason, but seldom from We have no more control over the operations of our brains, and the impulses which set in motion the delicate machinery of thought, than we have over the functions of our respiratory

it!

organs. We can no more think as we like than we can breathe as we like: and the moral character of our actions is perhaps as necessary as the colour of our blood. However, to Buckinghamshire I was bound. Why there, in particular, I knew not. There were other places, other relatives, to which I could have gone, and to which I had been invited; but no-Buckinghamshire was the place which presented itself; and I could as easily have blotted the county out of the map of England as have changed my determination to go thither.

In two or three hours after the physician had recommended change of air, I was being driven past the Middlesex Asylum for Lunatics, on the Bucks road. What an immense pile for such a purpose! What an amazing number of minds diseased' does it contain! My sympathies were poignantly touched while contemplating this building. In what respect, thought I, am I less mad than many of the inmates of that miserable abode? Here am I in this post-chaise,-the vehicle, the horses, the driver, my person, my volition, all put into motion by a little breath (which would not have turned a weathercock) modulated into three or four distinct sounds by my physician's tongue. How could my situation be referred to rationality any more than theirs? Surely it is hard to define where caprice ends and insanity begins! All imaginations are sometimes morbid. The functions of the brain are in no case so nicely balanced but that a small weight of care may make reason kick the beam. Yet there is a difference between a momentary and a permanent disturbance of the equilibrium of the beam. There is a difference between a healthy and a diseased brain; but the physiologist must define it-the moralist cannot. The politician in his projects, the fanatic in his inspirations, and all men in their respective idiosyncrasies, exhibit madness in their conduct, albeit their brains may be as sound as was Bentham's itself.

I arrived at my aunt's, and was received with a strange commixture of surprise, welcome, and anger. I think the welcome predominated. Scolding being the only recreation in which she ever indulged, of course I was well scolded. I should have thought the old lady was not rejoiced to see me if she had not rated me a little. My cough she attributed to my keeping late hours; and, consequently, I was scolded for not going earlier to bed. She had an asthmatic cough, which she did not prevent, and could not cure; yet she pointed out a thousand means by which I might have prevented my cough, and nostrums in infinity which would infallibly have cured it. And here again I

got scolded for neglecting the precautions, and for not having taken the physic. Refreshments were provided, and my eyes were allowed to gaze on many bonnes bouches which were prohibited from entering my mouth. My aunt was a rigid dietitian; and knew as well what was fit for a sick young man as Mrs. Malaprop

what suited an obstinate young woman. Tea being introduced, a' dish of chat,' the usual concomitant of a cup of that beverage, was superinduced. And here I discovered one fact, namely, that old maiden ladies entertain a notion that their own understandings are in a state of rapid progression, while the understandings of their juvenile relatives remain in statu quo. At least, such was the relative estimate obviously made of our respective understandings by my aunt. She interrogated me respecting my religion,-hoped I went regularly to church, and deprecated any heterodoxy in my creed. She also evinced much chagrin at my admitting that I sometimes dropped asleep without having previously dropped on my knees. She would not go to sleep without saying her prayers for the world!' Saying of prayers! She was quite incensed when I told her that her parrot could pray as well as those who merely said their prayers. She recited numerous conclusive evidences of the efficacy of prayer-quoted Huntingdon's Bank of Faith' for my edification-and I was obliged to succumb, for lack of argument,' to the doctrine that if I prayed in faith my health would certainly be restored. I expressed my doubt, and inquired whether she had ever prayed in faith for the removal of her asthma. But she scouted my scepticism by quoting the mountain-moving power of faith; and when I intimated my inability to muster up the necessary quantum of it, she closed the argument by rather a louder ipse dixit than was usual with her-that I could believe if I liked. On which she was seized with her cough, and I assured her that I should like for both her and myself to be relieved of our coughs. On recovering, she commenced an eulogy on the Bible, scolded me for not making it my study day and night, and was about to enumerate all the remarkable dispensations of Providence (which she regarded as so many caprices of the Almighty) on behalf of the Psalmist David. And yet,' said I, interrupting the narrative, David is not ascended into the heavens.' Whereupon I was denounced an infidel, although I showed her the very words in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. I repented of my journey to Buckinghamshire ere the hour of retiring to bed arrived. At length I was shown to the comfortable little chamber prepared for me to sleep in. The moon shed the magic of its light on the close-grown beechtrees which crowned the summit of a verdant hill, the slope of which was spread before the window of my chamber, and reached to a height at least five times the altitude of my aunt's residence: every shrub and object on the declivity being indistinctly visible, and casting their long shadows down into the vale, furnished ample materials for the imagination to work upon, to render that romantic which was indeed beautiful. I lay musing on the scene till welcome sleep closed my eyelids. The imagination sleeps not. Dreams are assuredly the most inexplicable of

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all psychological phenomena. The eye sleeps, the ear dozes, the brain is relieved from impressions by the immediate agency of the senses; but the reasoning faculty sleeps not, any more than the imaginative. Who has not reasoned in his sleep, linked syllogism to syllogism till the concatenation has terminated in a conclusion strictly logical? Who has not dreamed that his very dream was not a dream? "Tis mystery all.' Ay, from the universe to an atom, all, all is mystery to man, though made but a little lower than the angels, and in form and seeming' it may be said of him, how like a God! Nay, the more profound, the more philosophic are his cogitations, the more he finds himself beset with difficulties. The shallow-minded fanatic sees less mystery in the attributes and providence of God than a deeply reflecting_mind discovers in a blade of grass. However, I dreamed-I dreamed that I was dead. I-that pronoun, that simple letter-represents more mystery than a metaphysician could unravel in an elaborate voluminous disquisition, and revelation has not developed to man the full extent of its signification. For what is man's identity? My mind changes, my body changes, and yet I am that I am, and no other. I dreamed that I was in my coffin; that my fingers and toes melted, that my skin frizzled up, and my muscles and sinews dissolved like wax, and after leaving my skeleton bare, simmered in my coffin, and passed off in a gaseous state to mingle with the atmosphere. My eyes also melted and ran into my brain, and my brain in a ferment evaporated, and left my skull, the palace of the soul,' as Byron has designated it, empty. There I lay my mere bones-and yet conscious. At length my joints separated, the ribs parted from the sternum and spine, and the bones crumbled into dust, and the wind blew it all away. I had thought, thought deeply of death ere I fell asleep. I had endeavoured to grasp the truculent tyrant and hold him up, not for a transient glance, but for the fullgaze of my mental vision. Ithought of death-of my own death. It was possible-it was likelythat a few weeks only would pass away ere I should be his victim. No, not victim; for death is God's messenger of mercy, to take us from this world; and benignant is his providence in weaning us from it by sickness and other means ere he sends his summons. Yes, I had, as it were, anticipated death, and felt as if about to pass the awful, yet measureless line that divides time from eternity, when I sunk into slumber, and dreamed of being thus decomposed. But surely it was not all a dream.' It was but the wonted phenomena of nature exhibited more strikingly my notice. Physiology informs us that this mortal' is incessantly passing away and being renovated,—that a portion of us dies every moment: surely there is, there must be, a portion of us which can never die! When I awakened, the moon was still looking into my window (not peeping-who can look at the full broad face of the smiling moon and talk of its peeping?) The shining orb seemed as

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