unlocked the door of what seemed a small boudoir, in which were several open caskets filled with ladies' trinkets, and two or three sets of gold and silver dressing-plate, elegantly packed as if ready for gifts. A long covered passage led the astonished judge into a hall which he remembered to be the place of the midnight lectures given by the cabalist. And the count completed his amazement by the taking up the garment of the lecturer, which lay in a corner, and throwing it over himself. Lobenstein stood silent, unable to express his confusion of ideas, and the count laughed heartily. "My loyal and learned friend, you have seen the whole secret of that tremendous cabalism which is now an engine of state-affairs. Did you expect to find this place really contrived for the invention of aurum potabile or elixir vite?—No, my dear lord :-those who enter it imagine they shall be initiated into some powerful and unknown society, but the only secret power is that which their curiosity or vanity supplies. For vapourish Englishmen, who must have bugbears, we have the wonders of the Gnostics and the dreams of their own Lilly and Dr. Dee clothed in modern jargon. For Frenchmen, whose theatrical existence is governed by spectacles, who know no greater men than Vestris and Voltaire, we keep that library of useless books, into which we usher them with great mystery, as into the temple of the illuminati; and, by studying their ambition discov. er their secrets. You expected, perhaps, to see iron wheels, phosphoric flames, and all the phantasmagoria of imposture: but we conjure up no de mous except those that follow the surfeit of our suppers, and need no surer machinery than those trinkets which you saw prepared as bribes for the vain women who imagine themselves initiated among a secret sect of omnipotent philosophers. "My lord, it was no reproach to the chamber of Wetzlar that they misjudged the fate of their chancellor. How much eloquence was wasted to prove that he provoked his death, and that the assassin rather deserved fame than punishment! How little could those young philosophers, who believe all actions justified by their motive, judge either of the motive or the fact!-The chancelwas not murdered, nor did any one compass his death. He fell dead in apoplexy at the house of a friend to whom he went to communicate the scene in the alchymist's academy; and that friend, secretly purposing to ruin the emperor's favourite Otto, placed the body with a sash twisted round the neck in such a place as to fix suspicion on him. The Austrian Jew, who amused the emperor by his pretended alchymy, fell into the hands of our po lice by offering himself to me as the agent of a society, devised only to detect such impostors by seeming their confederates. If ancient sages had, as it is pretended, the pyramids of Egypt to conceal their secret chambers, we politicians have the still broader pyramid of human folly to conceal our's." V. ing this creature, which I have recently witnessed. One evening, about eight or nine o'clock, my attention was called to an unusual clicking, which, even at the distance of eight or nine feet, resembled exactly the noise made in a watchmaker's window, excepting that the time was from 10 to 15 minutes faster than the beats of a well regulated watch. I soon found that the scene of this burry, was on a screen of stretched silk paper, stiffened with glue water. My approach with the candle, a little disturbed the performers; and some of them desisted entirely. On a close inspection, I saw one or two of them running house, an active depredator, and sometimes, through superstitious fear, the terror of the family. ROME BY MOONLIGHT. from the light, and found them to be of The sensibility, eloquence, pervading truth and the species of little white worms or insects, which we sometimes call bookworms, thousands of which we have constantly preying upon the wood work of our furniture, about the size of a louse, and uncommonly nimble and sby. Towards the close of the last summer, after a removal to a new situation, I was again repeatedly amused with similar performances at various hours of the day. They were assembled on a blue paper lining to a perforated door of a book case. Prior to these observations, I always considered thern to be solitary disturbers of the wakeful hours of repose, only one of which I had heard without dismay, in the course of fifty years, and that was when I was a boy. One of our learned cyclopedists says, that this watch-like ticking is a signal between the sexes. If this be correct, the circumstances I have witnessed might have been some great festival or merry-making amongst them. As our ideas are frequently involuntary, the sometimes accumulated and confused ticking of many of them at once, put me forcibly in mind of one of our poetic or prose writers on the battle of Waterloo, when describing the last great charge of cavalry, that it resembled to a by-stander the noise of a thousand tinkers, hammering their utensils. In what way such mites as these can effect so great a sound, and by what anatomical mechanism that sound shall so exactly imitate the beating of a watch in quick time, may be equally difficult to resolve, if not more so than the hitherto mysterious performance of the automaton chess-player; but as the former belongs to those works of the almighty, which are sought out by all those who have pleasure therein, some of your learned correspondents may be able to add to our scanty information on this insect; which contemptible as it may seem, is an inmate in almost every 2G ATHENEUM VOL. 7. grandeur of imagination, in these beautiful passages, will be only obscured by any comment. The evenings here are often so extremely beautiful, that we have occasionally been tempted to visit the magnificent antiquities by moon-light. The column of Trajan, that glorious memorial of Roman dignity, appeared when viewed thus, to great advantage. The contrast of the light of the passing flambeaux, glowing on the enriched basement, while the beautiful embossed shaft reflected the silver moon, had an effect indescribably fine. Part of the sculpture was distinctly seen, while other parts, as time obliterates names and facts, were lost in oblivion. From various situations, the column was opposed to dark and shaded buildings, which gave it a point and character, and reminded us of the diamond on the sable hair of beauty. The temples of Nerva and Pallas were greatly improved by Cynthia's beams; and the shadows and fine touches of light upon the entablature and columns-the mysterious and solemn aspect of the whole, united, in one sentiment, the past and the present, and impressed us with a deep, yet pleasing melancholy. The Temple of Peace was impressive in the silence of night. As we approached the Coliseum, the moon pointed out innumerable columns of marble and granite, some of them entire, and others broken by brutal violence. When we entered the Coliseum itself, the moon was in full splendour; but, in attempting to describe this mighty work, I feel how utterly inadequate my powers are to my subject. The innumerable open arches, with the moon-beams shining through them, were like the eyes of past ages looking upon us. The very masses of huge square blocks, though inconsiderable accessories, were in their effect extremely grand; we could only move, without enquiring why we were impressed with at the the cross below, of the connection between this and another world. The triumphal arches, the remains of palaces and temples, addressing the mind through every stain and every dye of crumbling and dejected ruin, their last shadows recalling to our contemplation Roman glory, Roman honour, Roman virtue, Roman genius, Roman cruelty and folly, formed a spectacle that spoke to the heart, and bade the eye obey its sad emotion. such solemn awe. We walked by the pale beams through all the witchery of the place; silence and uncertainty prevailed; and a single drop of water, falling from the vaulted roof, was heard at a great distance. We a-cended the first and second corridors, where successive generations of Romans, from the emperor to the meanest slave, had crowded to witness the mutual butchery of gladiators, and the conflicts of human beings with furious wild beasts. Sometimes we wandered in the dark; at other times we were led by the glimmering light of scattered moon-beamis ed. While we stood in the ancient Roseen from afar, and casting shadows man Forum, with the Capitol before us, which appeared like the phantoms of the beauteous moon seemed doubly inthe departed. As we advanced, the teresting; and while we contrasted light became stronger, and we perceiv- her with the affecting edifices around, ed that we were yet among the living, she and her train of stars appeared like -a circumstance which mystery, un- tears in the scutcheon of Roman grancertainty, and the impression of ancient deur. times, had made us almost forget. Ascending higher among the ruins, we took our station where the whole magnitude of the Coliseum was visible: what a fulness of mind the first glance excited! yet how inexpressible at the same time were our feelings! The awful silence of this dread ruin still appealed to our hearts. The single sentinel's tread, and the ticking of our watches, were the only sounds we heard, while the moon was marching in the vault of night, and the stars were peeping through the various openings; the shadows of the flying clouds being all that reminded us of motion and of life. We were tempted to exclaim: Where are the five thousand wild beasts that tore each other to pieces, on the day on which this mighty pile was opened? Silent now are those unnatural shouts of applause called forth by the murderous fights of the gladiators; what a contrast to this death of sound! On taking our last look, and giving our farewell sighs to the night, the grand effect of the whole was striking to the last degree. While one part was in shadow against the light of the sky, other parts were mingled in the deepened indigo, and seemed, as it were, blended with the heavens,— strongly reminding us, while we looked Objects often derive a character from the state of mind in which they are view MACBETH AND THE WITCHES. A new Picture, by John Martin; the subject, Macbeth upon his return from the Highlands, after the defeat of Macdonald, meets the Weird Sisters on the blasted heath before Sun-set." Macb.-Stay, you imperfect speakers, tell me more. The artist has not depended altogether breaks into meteoric coruscations on the foreground. The withered unworldly look of these agents of darkness is finely imagined and their spectral eyeballs are turned with ominous ghastliness upon Macbeth. Just beneath the place where they are mounted upon the wind, and melting into dense air, a dark glen appears, and, in the side of its further. steep, the yawning depths of a hoary cavern are dimly discernible in shadowy obscurity. The painter, in the true spirit of Shakspeare, has indicated this fearful opening, as their means of descent to another world. They are bloodless, gray, and visionary; but the red flare of the flashing fires in the heavens, is reflected on the brows of the rocky eminences, above, below, and near them on each side; while a dun yellow, and dismal blueish light gleams darkly on the eddying circles of the cloud, in which they rise. The array of Macbeth's army 3 grandly conceived, and its gradual expansion from rear to front, admirably delineated. The rear, composed of the baggage train, is diminished, by remote distance, almost to an attenuated line of sparkling points. It is first descried near the right side of the prospect, moving in a horizontal direction to the left, from the far-off lake at the foot of The idea of its unbroken march, in all its windings through an immense country, is not interrupted by a nearer part of the column being concealed, for a short space, in a hollow behind the rocky eminence, on which Macbeth and Banquo stand. We see its united force, like a mighty river, deepening and widening in its progress nearer to the eye. the hills. "Under their valiant leaders, on they move Indissolubly firm; nor long fatigue, Roused the broad front, and led the battle on."" We behold the most minute and distant files of Macbeth's army, and its whole line of march, in all its windings, to where the leading ranks are wheeling round the hollow way, and the broad van is seen, with martial step and glittering arms and banners, advancing up the foot of the front steep, amidst the flashes of supernatural light in the heavens, the clangor of warlike instruments, and the sound of thunder. One of the Captains, who leads the march, casts a look of anxious scrutiny towards Macbeth and Banquo; and another has turned round on tiptoe, with voice and arms raised, and every muscle on the stretch, to quicken their steps after their General. There is so much greatness in the conception of this warrior, and so much fire in his action, that his figure has a colossal effect upon the mind, and we cannot see his target and spear thrown up above his head, and his whole stature dilated in shouting to the army, without thinking of Achilles on the rampart, raising his voice to the conflicting armies of Greece and Troy "Thrice from the trench his dreadful vice he And thrice they fled confounded and amazed." Nor chance, nor straitning vale, nor stream divides beheld with a single glance. We conTheir perfect ranks.” Titian, whose landscapes afford more instances of true grandeur than those of any other landscape painter, has frequently produced a wonderful effect, by introducing a city, on a distant elevation, with all its lofty towers and steeples, thrown into shade as one object, which the mind ever associates with ceive it as distinctly as a traveller from mous serpent in the desert regions of a height, beholds the motion of an enorthe Andes, rolling and winding its glittering spires in the sun. army is as sublimely one in the mind's The whole eye,' as the sky with all its radiant night-fires; the sea with all its dread magnificence of waves. The dreary sterility of those huge er as he rides along, and must turn out hills, which spread in desert loneliness of his way if he wishes to examine it, around, partakes of the same sublime which will occupy a longer time than unity, and produces similar impressions. travellers generally have leisure for, as No flower, no plant, no tree is seen, appears from their own acknowledgeexcepting the dark, brown, and empur- ments, not to notice their dread of being pled heath on the rocky foreground, surprised by the wandering Arabs. and some distant spots. This token of As to the other travellers who have visbarrenness is the only sign of vegetation. ited this celebrated spot, it would be No trace of human habitation, of pres- carrying complaisance too far to place ent or former human being, or of any implicit confidence on their relations, living thing dwelling thereon, is in view. as they appear merely to have passed The accidental march of Macbeth and over the ground, and sometimes not his army through these immeasurable even to know that they were amidst the wilds, does not change the idea of their ruins, until their guides told them it solitude. Even the Weird Sisters ap- was Babel they were riding over. They pear as beings not of this earth, and are of course had no time to examine the vanishing from it. It is as if neither heaps of rubbish. bird nor beast could dwell in a place, blasted by the haunt of beings, who held communion with fiends, and goblins, and the unquiet spirits of the dead. The rocky ridges of those stupendous mountains appear as if the surges of the great deluge had been suddenly petrified and left, with their thin after-covering of heath, as an eternal monument of that tremendous desolation. "In such a place as this, so wild, so drear, RUINS OF BABYLON. All information relative to the once powerful and mighty city of Babylon. must excite the most pleasing emotions in the mind of the traveller and histori Even its very site deeply impresses the imagination with an awful sense of its former greatness. It is with infinite pleasure we extract a few remarks from a communication made by Capt. Edward Frederick to the Literary Society of Bombay. After adding some general observations on the ancient condition of that once flourishing city, he proceeds to describe the existing state of the ruins, and introduces many interesting remarks on the present appearance of the country. He says, "that the ruins of the mound lie on the left a short distance off the direct road from Hillah; and a traveller merely sees Belus's tow "Other travellers visited only one bank of the Euphrates, not caring to risk meeting with the Arabs while gratifying their curiosity on the other. From Belus's tower (which is four miles from Hillah in a direct line) there are no more mounds on the bank of the river for the distance of twelve miles above the tower, when you are shown a small heap of white and red furnacebaked bricks, called by the Arabs the hummum or bath. I strongly suspect this to be the remains of a modern building, from the size, colour, and general appearance of the bricks, which, in my opinion, bear not the slightest resemblance to those I had previously seen. This spot, I should imagine, had not been visited by any traveller, as it lies at a great distance from the main road from Hillah to Bagdad; indeed, no one mentions ever having seen it. These are all the mounds, or ruins, as they are called, of Babylon, that are generally shown to travellers under the general denomination of Babel. however discovered, after much inquiry, that there were some heaps on the right bank, at the distance of some miles from Hillah, between thege of Karakoolee and the river. "I accordingly rode to them, and perceived that, for the space of about half a mile square, the country was covered with fragments of different kinds of bricks, but none of them led me to conclude that they were of the I |