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of fire, and a man on fire at the top, who leaped down; and there immediately appeared a number of globes here and there red-hot, while the man on fire went and came to every part of the circle for a quarter of an hour. At length the devil came forward in the shape of a gray monk, and asked Faustus what he wanted. Faustus adjourned their further conference, and appointed the devil to come to him at his lodging.

He in the mean time busied himself in the necessary preparations. He entered his study at the appointed time, and found the devil waiting for him. Faustus told him that he had prepared certain articles, to which it was necessary that the demon should fully accord, —that he should attend him at all times, when required, for all the days of his life; that he should bring him every thing he wanted; that he should come to him in any shape that Faustus required, or be invisible, and Faustus should be invisible too whenever he desired it; that he should deny him nothing, and answer him with perfect veracity to every thing he demanded. To some of these requisitions the spirit could not consent, without authority from his master, the chief of devils. At length all these concessions were adjusted. The devil on his part also prescribed his conditions. That Faustus should abjure the Christian religion and all reverence for the supreme God; that he should enjoy the entire command of his attendant demon for a certain term of years; and that at the end of that period the devil should dispose of him, body and soul, at his pleasure [the term was fixed for twenty-four years]; that he should at all times steadfastly refuse to listen to any one who should desire to convert him, or convince him of the error of his ways, and lead him to repentance; that Faustus should draw up a writing containing these particulars, and sign it with his blood; that he should deliver this writing to the devil, and keep a duplicate of it himself, that so there might be no misunderstanding. It was further appointed by Faustus, that the devil should usually attend him in the habit of a cordelier, with a pleasing countenance and an insinuating demeanor. Faustus also asked the devil his name, who answered that he was usually called Mephistophiles.

Numerous adventures of Faustus are related in the German histories. It is said that the emperor Charles V. was at Inspruck, at a time when Faustus also resided there. His courtiers informed the emperor that Faustus was in the town, and Charles expressed a desire to see him. He was introduced. Charles asked him whether he could really perform such wondrous feats as were reported of him. Faustus modestly replied, inviting the emperor to make trial of his skill. "Then," said Charles," of all the eminent personages I have ever read of, Alexander the Great is the man who most excites my curiosity, and whom it would most gratify my wishes to see VOL. V.-NO. II.-12

in the very form in which he lived." Faustus rejoined that it was out of his power truly to raise the dead, but that he had spirits at his command who had often seen that great conqueror, and that Faustus would willingly place him before the emperor as he required. IIe conditioned that Charles should not speak to him, nor attempt to touch him. The emperor promised compliance. After a few. ceremonies, therefore, Faustus opened a door, and brought in Alexander exactly in the form in which he had lived, with the same garments, and every circumstance corresponding. Alexander made his obeisance to the emperor, and walked several times round him. The queen of Alexander was then introduced in the same manner. Charles just then recollected he had read that Alexander had a wart on the nape of his neck; and with proper precautions Faustus allowed the emperor to examine the apparition by this test. Alexander then vanished.

As Faustus was approaching the last year of his term, he seemed resolved to pamper his appetite with every species of luxury. He carefully accumulated all the materials of voluptuousness and magnificence. He was particularly anxious in the selection of women who should serve for his pleasures. He had one English woman, one Hungarian, one French, two of Germany, and two from different parts of Italy, all of them eminent for the perfections which characterized their different countries.

At length he arrived at the end of the term for which he had contracted with the devil. For two or three years before it expired his character gradually altered. He became subject to fits of despondency, was no longer susceptible of mirth and amusement, and reflected with bitter agony on the close in which the whole must terminate. He assembled his friends together at a grand entertainment, and when it was over, addressed them, telling them that this was the last day of his life, reminding them of the wonders with which he had frequently astonished them, and informing them of the condition upon which he had held this power. They, one and all, expressed the deepest sorrow at the intelligence. They had had the idea of something unlawful in his proceedings; but their notions had been very far from coming up to the truth. They regretted exceedingly that he had not been unreserved in his communications at an earlier period. They would have had recourse in his behalf, to the means of religion, and have applied to pious men, desiring them to employ their power to intercede with Heaven in his favor. Prayer and penitence might have done much for him; and the mercy of Heaven was unbounded. They advised him to still call upon God, and endeavor to secure an interest in the merits of the Saviour.

Faustus assured them that it was all in vain, and that his tragical fate was inevitable.

He led them to their sleeping apartment, and recommended to them to pass the night as they could, but by no means, whatever they might happen to hear, to come out of it; as their interference could in no way be beneficial to him, and might be attended with the most serious injury to themselves. They lay still, therefore, as he had enjoined them; but not one of them could close his eyes. Between twelve and one in the night they heard first a furious storm of wind round all sides of the house, as if it would have torn away the walls from their foundations.

This no

sooner somewhat abated, than a noise was heard of discordant and violent hissing, as if the house was full of all sorts of venomous reptiles, but which plainly proceeded from Faustus's chamber. Next they heard the doctor's room-door vehemently burst open, and cries for help uttered with dreadful agony, but in a half-suppressed voice, which presently grew fainter and fainter. Then every

thing became still, as if the everlasting motion of the world was suspended.

When at length it became broad day, the students went in a body to the doctor's apartment. But he was nowhere to be seen. Only the walls were found smeared with his blood, and marks as if his brains had been dashed out. His body was finally discovered at some distance from the house, his limbs dismembered, and marks of great violence about the features of his face. The students gathered up the mutilated parts of his body, and afforded them private burial at the temple of Mars, in the village where he died.

SOME SMALL POEMS.

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

WI

BY R. H. STODDARD.

A PROLOGUE.

ITHOUT, the winds of Winter blow; Without, the Winter sifts its snow: Within, the hearths are warm and bright, And all the chambers full of light, And we again are gathered here,

To greet the advent of the year.

Pile on the wood, and stir the fires,
And in our souls the sweet desires;
And let us frame a mingled rhyme,
To suit the singers and the time;
With different stops, and keys of art,
In quaint old measures, got by heart.

BY THE SEA.

By the rolling waves I roam,

And look along the sea,

And dream of the day and the gleaming sail,
That bore my love from me.

His bark now sails the Indian seas,
Far down the summer zone:

But his thoughts, like swallows, fly to me
By the Northern waves alone.

Nor will he delay, when winds are fair,
To waft him back to me;

But haste, my love! or my grave will be made
By the sad and moaning sea!

WHEAT AND SHEAVES.

BEFORE me now the village stands, Its cottages embowered in bloom; Behind me lies the burying ground, Its sepulchres in cypress gloom.

The bells before me ring aloud,

A pan for the live and bold; The bells behind are tolling low, A requiem for the dead and cold. The crowd before me tramp away, And shout until the winds are stirred; The crowd behind no longer move, And never breathe a single word. Before me many moan, and weep:

Behind, there is not one who grieves; For blight but wastes the standing wheat, It cannot touch the garnered sheaves!

FRAGMENT.

THE gray old Earth goes on
At its ancient pace,
Lifting its thunder voice
In the choir of Space;

And the Years, as they go,
Are singing slow,
Solemn dirges, full of woe!

Tears are shed, and hearts are broken,
And many bitter words are spoken,

And many left unsaid;
And many are with the living,
That were better-better dead!

Tyrants sit upon their thrones,
And will not hear the people's moans,
Nor hear their clanking chains;
Or if they do, they add thereto,

And mock, not ease, their pains:
But little liberty remains-
There is but little room for thee,
In this wide world, O Liberty!
But where thou hast once set thy foot,

Thou wilt remain, though oft unseen; And grow like thought, and move like wind, Upon the troubled sea of Mind,

No longer now serene.

Thy life and strength thou dost retain,
Despite the cell, the rack, the pain,
And all the battles won-in vain!
And even now thou seest the hour
That lays in dust the tyrant's power,
When man shall once again be free,
And Earth renewed, and young like thee,
O Liberty! O Liberty!

CERTAIN MERRY STANZAS.

I OFTEN wish that I could know
The life in store for me,
The measure of the joy and woe
Of my futurity.

I do not fear to meet the worst
The gathering years can give;
My life has been a life accurst

From youth, and yet I live;
The Future may be overcast,
But never darker than the Past!
My mind will grow, as years depart
With all the winged hours;

And all my buried seeds of Art

Will bloom again in flowers;

But buried hopes no more will bloom,

As in the days of old;

My youth is lying in its tomb,

My heart is dead and cold!

And certain sad, but nameless cares

Have flecked my locks with silver hairs!

No bitter feeling clouds my grief,
No angry thoughts of thee;
For thou art now a faded leaf
Upon a fading tree.

From day to day I see thee sink,
From deep to deep in shame;

I sigh, but dare not bid thee think
Upon thine ancient fame-

For oh! the thought of what thou art
Must be a hell within thy heart!

My life is full of care and pain-
My heart of old desires;

But living embers yet remain
Below its dying fires:

Nor do I fear what all the years
May have in store for me,

For I have washed away with tears

The blots of Memory:

But thou-despite the love on high-
What is there left thee but to die!

MR. JUSTICE STORY, WITH SOME REMI-| (Heaven knows) "frays" in this city numerous

NISCENT REFLECTIONS.*

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE,

BY A. OAKEY HALL

THE hurrying pedestrian in Wall-street, or

66

a

in some of its bisecting avenues of commercial bustle, if he have time to glance over his shoulder, is sure to observe a freshly-painted piece of tin (its brief rhetoric revelling in the pride and pomp of gold leaf alphabetically shaped), denominated by lawyers shingle"-setting forth that some sanguine gentleman has then and there established himself as an Attorney and Counsellor at Law. The sign is by the front door, shining with self-conceit at the passers by; and its owner is up some weary stairway, yawning over "twice told tales" of legal lore, copying precedents for the sake of practice, or keeping hope alive upon the back benches of the court-rooms in listening to the eloquence of his seniors while he is waiting for clients. Heaven help many a young attorney in this "babel" of money-getting. The race should be prayed for in churches: and it should meet with a consideration as nearly divine as mortals can call up from crowded heart-chambers. Well the sign keeps nailed up: and by and by the sun blisters it, and dries out the pomp of the gilded letters, and perhaps the owner yawns over his one case, or sitting upon a front bench in the court-room while case number thirty is being heard, waits for case nine hundred and thirty, against which on the calendar that is reposing by the side of the complaisant clerk in the corner, his name is placed as counsel-shining there like a pebble on a wide and extended beach.

The Physiology of the Medical Student from facetious pens was reached to us over the Atlantic by friendly booksellers some years ago; and we should have had by this time "the Physiology of the young Attorney." He is a good subject for dissection; there's plenty of venous humor in his composition; and oh! a deal of nerve!

enough for any ambitious surgical eagerness.

But for the aspiring attorney where are the avenues open for gratuitous action? Do merchants nail up promissory notes upon awning posts for attorneys to seize and put in suit? What "old nobs" of Wall-street are willing to put themselves "in chancery" to oblige Hopper Tape, Esq., your humble attendant upon the Where are the courts possessing suits withsteps of the City Hall?

out counsel?

who murder in drunken fits to whom counWe may be told of unfortunate wretches sel are assigned. But what are ten crusts of bread per annum among a thousand hungry dogs?

Thou must face the truth, young college boy, who now and then dost stroll into courtrooms, or who dost lounge away an hour in a friend's law office admiring his books and piles of papers-thinking the while of the time when thou wilt have graduated and obtained permission to hang up thy pomp-gilded "shingle:" thou must face the truth! The counsel who so attracts thy admiration, in thy court-room lounging, has fought weary years with myriad obstacles; there are the ashes of many nights and days of toil and struggle sprinkled upon his hair; he has fought his way (from where thou sittest a listener to where he stands a speaker), as if through an Indian gauntlet file. There were a hundred mouths waiting for the first crumbs which came to his impatient legal digestion; and a hundred envious heads and hearts to worry him if possible into a dyspepsia over those crumbs. He has began with an office in a fifth story, and climbed down towards the street. He commenced to hive his honey near the roof! While out of his office he climbed a professional ladder, the holding on to which tasked all his powers of physical, mental, and pecuniary endurance. Face the truth!

Reach me yonder diary and legal register. Two thousand practising lawyers in the city of New-York! Out of these one hundred are "notables;" fifty are 66 distinguished;" twenty-five are eminent.

Talk of exploring expeditions to the Arctic regions as offering specimens of courage and prowess; or of scientific excursions into the wilds of Africa to the same purport! These A large body of them are instances are trivial compared to the courage growing thin in person and thinner in mind conveyancers" and prowess yearly displayed by hundreds of over deeds and titles; a larger body "attorattorneys who plunge into the ocean of liti-neys"-getters up and supervisors of suitsgation in order to swim towards the distant buoys which the sun of prosperity always cheers with enlivening beams.

Don't waste sympathy in this connection for the young Sawbones. His thirst for action can be slaked at pauper fountains. For him the emigrant's chamber, the cabin of the arriving ship, the dispensary, the asylums, the hospitals, and the poor-houses, are always open; and if his "soul be in arms," there are

Life and Letters of Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Dane professor of law at Harvard University. Edited by his son, William W. Story. Two vols. Boston: Little & Brown, 1851.

providers of ammunition for "distinguished counsel" to discharge with loud reports (the ney obscured in the smoke); many, very said counsel brilliant by the flash: the attormany, chained to "larcenies" at the Sessions, "landlord dispossessions" at the Marine Court, suits on butcher's bills at Ward Courts, or "malicious prosecutions" in the Common Pleas.

Yet there are hundreds of coral reefs and pearls for persevering divers in this ocean of litigation. Three thousand pending cases every month are three thousand nutshells

where the meat is often fresh and oily, even with the weary keeping on the calendar for months and years. There are some counsel who pocket fees and costs to the tune of twenty thousand a year. We know many a Quirk, Gammon and Snap, who realize an undoubted "ten thousand a year," with no Tittlebat Titmouse for a standing annoyance. And we can taper off on the finger many who do not realize five hundred a year, and work like negro slaves at that: they are continually rough hewing, but no divinity shapes their ends.

trail of the valuable fugitive from justice, then he is a happy man, and is in the fair way of soon becoming a monopolist himself.

Any juryman of two years' standing will corroborate our statement as to the openness of the field of legal advocacy. How often has he seen cause after cause "set down," "reserved," or "put off," because counsel are engaged elsewhere? How often has he heard the same advocate in four or five causes in the same week, in the same court, changing positions like the queen of an active chessFive years of "starvation," and five more board; profiting his fame and pocket by years of toil and trouble, constitute the depth means of only a hurried glance at the elaboof a lawyer's slough of despond in New-rate brief which his junior has "got up" for York; to say nothing of the giants' castles to storm upon the way, or the fights with the Apolyons of Envy. Obviously so!

him?

Some one has said that the barrister works hard, lives well, and dies poor. Regarding A man now-a-days will let a young Saw- the first two conditions of his life there is litbones advise ice for his child's croup, or even tle doubt upon the question of truth; the dyexperiment with his own much-abused liver, ing in poverty may be problematical. Yet in when he would not intrust a young attorney a recent print, professing to furnish a list of with the suing a note where ten witnesses wealthy tax-payers, the list contained four saw the note signed and the "consideration lawyers, and only one was a barrister. The money" paid over. And if the public really instance proves little, for a lawyer may be knew how much danger their pockets were very rich and yet pay no taxes. The assesin when the "buttons" were under the control sors may fight shy of his bell-pull as they go of inexperienced lawyers, the number of their rounds, because of his penchant to find "starvers" would be doubled. What "emi-flaws in their actions and bring them official nent" lawyer is there who does not look back to the "practice" of his youth, in perfect terror to witness the mistakes he made, as the helmsman, who has scudded through the breakers to the open sea, glances back at the dangers he escaped?

The young lawyers of a year back are, however, five years-perhaps ten-in advance of the lawyers of this year's growth. The latter have greater rivalry in the hordes of practitioners from the interior whom the new code" have driven from their trespass quare clausum fregit into the city. Many of them, too, were men of mark in their ports of departure, bold and confident in their new

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haven!

One field, however, in the legal township of this city, offers room upon its face for tillers the field of advocacy! It is ploughed by some twenty or thirty, and harrowed by some fifty or sixty. There are a dozen whom the ghosts of Nisi Prius flock to hear upon great occasions. And these will long hold the monopoly. Why?

Because the advocate and barrister must have had vast experience at Nisi Prius (or the court where matters of fact are investigated by judge and jury); have acquired a practised tact; have had opportunities of testing their own calibre to know if they are fitted for emergencies as the gunsmith tests his barrels before he "stocks" them. And the young lawyer has small opportunity afforded him to acquire this tact-to permit this testing. If he can play "devil" for a few years to some barrister of extended practice, or scent "occasions" like a blood-hound on the

discredit in an apparently laborious task, but in reality a sinecure of an employment.

We have often asked ourselves if barristers have stomachs. Bowels of compassion they have not, that is certain; but have they stomachs? Say nine times in a year they dine at the same hour of the day; and then spoon their soup with the blood all drawn from the digestive apparatus to feed the brain. Yet they eat like aldermen and drink like German princes....

This much of idle reverie, as, with pen in hand, we laid down the two bulky and elaborately-published volumes whose title we have taken as text; this much of glance at the condition of the young and old advocate of to-day, before we digest our reflections upon the advocate and jurist of the past.

It was our privilege in our legal novitiate (this is but a phrase; for a lawyer is always in his novitiate) to have been, at the Cambridge Law School, a pupil of Mr. Justice Story; and thus to have drank at the very fountain head of constitutional law-that branch of our national jurisprudence which can least fluctuate. Judges of a day and not of a generation, or crazy legislators with spasmodic wisdom, may alter, and overturn, and mystify by simplification, the laws and usages of every-day life; but it is scarcely to be apprehended that the current of our constitutional law will ever be diverted from original channels. There is danger rather of its being dammed into stagnation.

While fully aware of his faults and foibles as a man, and his idiosyncracies as a judge and a legal writer, we have never wavered in loyalty to his judicial majesty, or found a

flaw in the regard we paid to his memory. | always gave the honor himself to Story; And no book was more welcome to Zimmer- while the latter always declared that the forman in his solitude than these volumes re-mer won the just meed of his genius and garding the illustrious judge, prepared by his scholarship. son, were welcome to our Christmas-holiday leisure.

Their graduation was in the summer of 1798: and immediately upon quitting college Mr. Story commenced the study of the law with Mr. Samuel Sewall, afterwards Chief Justice in the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Fourteen hours a day was over his quantum of study. Although sometimes disheartened, he never surrendered his determination to master the elements and details of his new profession.

Joseph Story was the eldest of eleven children, and lived to be indeed the "Joseph" of mark and renown to his father and brothers. He was born in Marblehead, September 18th, 1779. His father was a physician, and served during a portion of the Revolution as army surgeon. He died when the future judge was twenty-six years of age: yet what the son then was is best told by one sentence Studying law in those days was a far diffrom the father's will-after making his wife ferent thing from its reading now. Then it sole executrix, he recommends her to his son was multum: now it is multa. No copious Joseph, adding, " and although this perhaps indexes and multifarious treatises were countis needless, I do it to mark my special confi-ed by thousands: no digests (directories to dence in his affections, skill, and abilities." From the father, our lawyer thus panegyrized received friendly geniality and broad understanding; from the mother, indomitable will, vigor and enthusiasm.

the streets, the avenues, the fountains and the temples of the science), abounded by scores. Libraries were carried about in wheelbarrows and not in processions of vans, when the inexorable moving day came around. Learned judges were not then compelled to hold courts in remote villages (resorting hereby to a coup de loi), in order to escape the cacoethes loquendi of case lawyers and presuming juniors. Legal lore was builded up like the massive stone and hard grained mortar of the edifices of that olden time-slowly, carefully, but lastingly; not as are builded now the brick and stuccoed mansions of the snob and parvenu. Not that abounding treatises and familiarizing digests forbid the idea of the

the law student in the midst of a large library stands more in need (when thinking of the otium which accompanies certain dignity), to utter the ejaculation, “lead us not into temptation"-the temptation of possessing that knowledge which teaches where to seek for information, and not the kind which is information of itself.

Habit of observation and desire of knowledge were the prominent attributes of his childish character; nevertheless he was ardent in all the sports of boyhood. To the last he maintained a regard for his honor, which induced him while yet a lad, and under promise not to divulge the name of a schoolmate offender, to receive a severe flogging rather than to yield up his knowledge upon the subject. At the age of sixteen, in the midst of a Freshman term at Harvard College, he thought of matriculation; but upon in-perfect lawyer now-a-days: only that to-day quiry learned that he must not only be examined upon the works of ordinary preparatory reading, but that it was necessary for him to expect a call upon the volumes which his class had dispatched during the past half At first he was daunted, but remembering there yet remained six weeks of vacation, he addressed himself to the necessary labor-the severity of which is best evidenced by the fact that in the short time above mentioned he read Sallust, the odes of Horace, two books of Livy, three books of the Anabasis, two books of the Iliad, and certain English treatises. This sounds like the rail-ring his courtship he dabbled (as almost every road instruction now much in vogue; but its effects were permanent in value upon his mind. Few readers of his works will accuse him of a want of proficiency in Latin! But the often reading-the saepe legendo was ever his habit: for he remembered the couplet:

year.

Gutta cavat lapidem non vi sed saepe cadendo Sic homo fit doctus non vi sed saepe legendo. He passed muster with the college tutors in January, 1795. Among his classmates were the (afterwards Reverends) Dr. Tuckerman and Win. E. Channing-to the genius and character of the latter of whom he always bore the most enthusiastic and hearty testimony. Indeed he contested with Channing for the highest honor. Channing won it, but

In 1801 Mr. Story came to the Salem bar while at the age of twenty-two. After being three years at practice he married his first wife, who died within two years afterward, plunging him into the deepest grief. Du

young lawyer does until he finds that clients are severe critics) in poetry, and wrote a didactic poem of two parts in heroic verse, entitled "The Power of Solitude." Adopting the criticism of the biographers-its prominent defects were exaggeration of feeling, confusion of imagery, want of simplicity of expression, stilted and artificial style. But though dull as a poem, it shows facility and talent for versification, breathes a warm aspiration for virtue and truth, and is creditable to the scholarship of its author.

After the loss of his wife he sought relief from painful thoughts in the laborious duties of a large and increasing business. His position at the bar was prominent, and he was engaged in nearly all the cases of importance.

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