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-Ethelredha 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. O 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 panels 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 dark tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

DEATH.

BY THOMAS HOOD.

(For biographical sketch, see page 226.)

IT is not death, that some time in a sigh

This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight;
That some time these bright stars, that now reply

In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night,

That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite,
And all life's ruddy springs forget to flow;

That thoughts shall cease, and the immortal sprite

Be lapped in alien clay and laid below;

It is not death to know this; but to know

That pious thoughts, which visit at new graves

In tender pilgrimage, will cease to go

So duly and so oft; and when grass waves

Over the past-away, there may be then

No resurrection in the minds of men.

LADY HESTER STANHOPE.

BY A. W. KINGSLAKE.

(From "Eothen.")

[ALEXANDER WILLIAM KINGSLAKE: An English historian; born at Taunton, Devonshire, August 5, 1809; died in London, January 2, 1891. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge University; was called to the bar in 1837; served in the English army at Algiers in 1845 and during the Crimean War in 1854; and was a member of Parliament for Bridgewater, 1857-1869. His first work, "Eothen, or Traces of Travel brought Home from the East," was published anonymously in 1844 and was immediately successful, reaching its fifth edition in 1846. His greatest work was "The Invasion of the Crimea, its Origin and an Account of its Progress" (8 vols., 1863-1887).]

BEYROUT on its land side is hemmed in by the Druses, who occupy all the neighboring highlands.

Often enough I saw the ghostly images of the women with their exalted horns stalking through the streets, and I saw too in traveling the affrighted groups of the mountaineers as they fled before me, under the fear that my party might be a company of income-tax commissioners, or a press gang enforcing the conscription for Mehemet Ali; but nearly all my knowledge of the people, except in regard of their mere costume and outward appearance, is drawn from books and dispatches, to which I have the honor to refer you.

I received hospitable welcome at Beyrout from the Europeans, as well as from the Syrian Christians, and I soon discovered that their standing topic of interest was the Lady Hester Stanhope, who lived in an old convent on the Lebanon range, at the distance of about a day's journey from the town. The lady's habit of refusing to see Europeans added the charm of mystery to a character which, even without that aid, was sufficiently distinguished to command attention.

Many years of Lady Hester's early womanhood had been passed with Lady Chatham at Burton Pynsent, and during that inglorious period of the heroine's life, her commanding character, and (as they would have called it in the language of those days) her "condescending kindness" towards my mother's family, had increased in them those strong feelings of respect and attachment which her rank and station alone would have easily won from people of the middle class. You may suppose how deeply the quiet women in Somersetshire

must have been interested, when they slowly learned by vague and uncertain tidings that the intrepid girl who had been used to break their vicious horses for them was reigning in sovereignty over the wandering tribes of Western Asia! I know that her name was made almost as familiar to me in my childhood as the name of Robinson Crusoe; both were associated with the spirit of adventure, but whilst the imagined life of the castaway mariner never failed to seem glaringly real, the true story of the Englishwoman ruling over Arabs always sounded to me like fable. I never had heard, nor indeed, I believe, had the rest of the world ever heard, anything like a certain account of the heroine's adventures; all I knew was that in one of the drawers which were the delight of my childhood, along with attar of roses and fragrant wonders from Hindostan, there were letters carefully treasured, and trifling presents which I was taught to think valuable because they had come from the Queen of the Desert, who dwelt in tents, and reigned over wandering Arabs.

The subject, however, died away, and from the ending of my childhood up to the period of my arrival in the Levant, I had seldom ever heard a mentioning of the Lady Hester Stanhope, but now wherever I went I was met by the name so familiar in sound, and yet so full of mystery, from the vague, fairy-tale sort of idea which it brought to my mind; I heard it too connected with fresh wonders, for it was said that the woman was now acknowledged as an inspired being by the people of the mountains, and it was even hinted with horror that she claimed to be more than a prophet.

I felt at once that my mother would be sadly sorry to hear that I had been within a day's ride of her early friend without offering to see her, and I therefore dispatched a letter to the recluse, mentioning the maiden name of my mother (whose marriage was subsequent to Lady Hester's departure), and saying that if there existed on the part of her Ladyship any wish to hear of her old Somersetshire acquaintance, I should make a point of visiting her. My letter was sent by a foot messenger who was to take an unlimited time for his journey, so that it was not, I think, until either the third or the fourth day that the answer arrived. A couple of horsemen covered with mud suddenly dashed into the little court of the "Locanda" in which I was staying, bearing themselves as ostentatiously as though they were carrying a cartel from the

Devil to the Angel Michael. One of these (the other being his attendant) was an Italian by birth (though now completely orientalized), who lived in my Lady's establishment as doctor nominally, but practically as an upper servant; he presented me a very kind and appropriate letter of invitation.

It happened that I was rather unwell at this time, so that I named a more distant day for my visit than I should otherwise have done, and after all, I did not start at the time fixed. Whilst still remaining at Beyrout I received this letter, which certainly betrays no symptom of the pretensions to divine power which were popularly attributed to the writer:

SIR,I hope I shall be disappointed in seeing you on Wednesday, for the late rains have rendered the river Damoor, if not dangerous, at least very unpleasant to pass for a person who has been lately indisposed, for, if the animal swims, you would be immerged in the waters. The weather will probably change after the 21st of the moon, and after a couple of days the roads and the river will be passable; therefore I shall expect you either Saturday or Monday.

It will be a great satisfaction to me to have an opportunity of inquiring after your mother, who was a sweet, lovely girl when I knew her. Believe me, Sir,

Yours sincerely,

HESTER LUCY STANHOPE.

Early one morning I started from Beyrout. There are no regularly established relays of horses in Syria, at least not in the line which I took, and you therefore hire your cattle for the whole journey, or at all events for your journey to some large town. Under these circumstances you have no occasion for a Tartar (whose principal utility consists in his power to compel the supply of horses). In other respects the mode of traveling through Syria differs very little from that which I have described as prevailing in Turkey. I hired my horses and mules (for I had some of both) for the whole of the journey from Beyrout to Jerusalem. The owner of the beasts (who had a couple of fellows under him) was the most dignified member of my party; he was, indeed, a magnificent old man, and was called Shereef, or "holy," a title of honor, which, with the privilege of wearing the green turban, he well deserved, not only from the blood of the Prophet that glowed in his veins, but from the well-known sanctity of his life, and the length of his blessed beard.