object of cutting off my retreat. And as to the latter, I could now see that the road, already become a lane between high walls, was blocked up a short way before me by a barrier, I could not see what, behind which glowed the fierce illumination so long my guiding-point.

So I am to be caught at last-clutched, seized, overmastered by this hideous Form, whose malignity may be measured by the desperation of his pursuit, and wrenched out of humanity, perhaps, into some horrible extrava gance of agony, unutterable, inconceivable, but endurable, for the long term of vague hatred entertained for the victim by the monster that hunts it down! There! its hand was close to me that time-has touched me! Ah! I spring forward with supernatural energy under the mesmerism of that terrible contact, and fling myself at the broad black door before me, which opens of its own accord to receive me. Even at that wild moment, I caught at the only ray of hope left. I turned short round to draw the bolt if possible on the Pursuer. Too LATE! There was his face, close to my own — inside. One look was enough I dropped to the earth insensible.

Relief? only a reprieve! The terrible mystery was made plain! I could not believe, or understand, or assent to, the horrors now around me. I refused conviction of my own identity, and abnegated the very existence of what I saw, felt, and heard. It is cu rious how, in extreme circumstances, the soul may thus estrange itself, under a strong and determined disclaimer, from what is that is, from what the bodily senses it stands connected with report to be, and hold aloof, in some high sense of self-subsisting isolation, from contact with the Real and Actual of its lower nature. It is thus that martyrs at the stake have been heard to sing triumphant hymns, and seen with a visible expression of joy upon their countenances-no doubt only the exponent of the real feelings within. In these instances, the relative state of the two portions of our nature, while in its normal condition, is reversed. For whereas, under ordinary circumstances, the body is the conduit of impressions to the soul, which reflects back the feelings, passions, and sensa

tions it has itself conducted in upon its surface, in this case, it is the soul which forces itself from within outwards, and constrains the material body to be the reflex of the immaterial spirit. These reflections are forced from me by the consciousness I felt at that trying moment of possessing the power of detaching self from self, and abandoning one to horrors under which the other would have shrivelled into annihilation. I really do not wish to take the reader by surprise; I am far from inviting him to go on with me; I hardly wish him to do so. It is my duty to pursue the thread of my narrative, and I am determined to proceed; but no corresponding obligation lies upon anybody else. What I am bound to write, no man or woman-is bound to read. Indeed, unless with a determination to believe, the reader had far better stop here. There are things which lose half their terrors by being looked upon and looked into as either psychological or physiological facts, which, if they were hunted into the dark recesses of a mor bid brain, would there put on a startling aspect, and turn round upon us like wild beasts.

The mystery of the conflagration was resolved. A brick floor, spreading out on each side more than a hundred feet, sloped slightly upwards to a series of open furnaces, or grates, rang ing along the wall which faced me, and giving forth to my eyes, and into the surrounding court, and thence to the sky, a glare so intense, that I was oblig ed to look away, after one of those absorbing glances which the nature implanted within us all compels us to direct in the first instance towards any object, however strange or terrific, at whatever cost. While my eyes were thus, as it were, hurled back from what they had been directed to, and seemingly blinded for ever, the image had been so strongly impressed upon the retina, that I was able, in that dark and quivering chamber of vision, to look from an inner position upon the image there imprinted, and could satisfy myself that there were six distinct furnaces, of huge dimensions, at equal distances along the wall. Were this all-had I been, in short, merely a spectator of this conflagration-I might have looked on, or looked away, with some degree of calmness; or rather, with such excitement merely as so wonderful a

spectacle might be expected to produce upon a naturally sensitive and nervous temperament. But, oh! let it not be supposed for a moment that I felt free to consider myself a lounging visitor -come there to book wonders for the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE. There were good reasons for this not being so. I have said nothing of the Follower the Pursuer-the Form-the Featurethe THING. He had me now; he had me bound; he had me powerless; he had me pale, trembling, clammy with cold sweat; he had me, able to walk as he led; he had me, WALKING UP TOWARDS THE FIRE! I could no more now have resisted accompanying him, than a short time previous I could have helped fleeing before him. He had my will in the grasp of his, as the mesmeriser seizes his patient by the hair of the head; and his will was-that I should advance.

Nearer! nearer!—yet nearer! Strange to say, my eyes are able to look straight upon the glow. I can discern objects now. Shapes move toand-fro across the mouth of the furnaces, of far tougher material than Nebuchadnezzar's guards, or they would have shrunk up into tinder. What are the wretches about? Cooking, apparently. Some of them wear nightcaps and aprons, and use ladles. A horizontal shadow, too, crosses the line of fires. It is as impossibe to describe as it is to account for the loathing revulsion of feeling, the secret and horrible misgiving, with which I gazed upon this parallel of combustion-this black equator, stretching across the torrid regions of fire, and swerving and winding ever, so as to present no continuing outline to my eye-for such I soon discovered to be its characteristic. Not only did the shadow bulge out, where it opposed itself to the middle of each furnace, tapering off to each end, but changed its shape by a slow and regular transition, returning, after a certain uniform period, to the original figure; and thence passing through the same cycles, to return to the phase from whence it started. This, I concluded, could only be explained in one manner-namely, by the rotation of an uneven outline upon an axis. The objects, whatever they were, were turning horizontally and slowly round before the fires. There was also, as I soon became conscious, an occasional

click and strain, such as machinery gives, to be heard even over sounds much louder and more continuous. But this evidence of scientific mechanical application, far from lessening the sense of the wild and horrible in the aspect of the whole scene, added another element-that of mystery and design-to the simpler terrors of the raging element of fire.

Up towards this blinding wall of flame was my body led-irresistibly, slowly, continually notwithstanding the desperate protestations of my inner spirit. I could now see. Nothing was too glowing, too scorching for my organs. I could discern particulars. The moving things were men. Some were busy in shovelling fuel in at the roaring throat of the furnace, and these came out in vivid portraiture of vermilion, for the instant that the brawny, naked arm dashed its load inwards; and then darted back into the blackness of spectres the next moment. Some, as I have remarked already, were occupied over the rotating bodies-how, it baffled me for a second to conjecture; but, another step, and I saw

And I was to undergo a similar process! Well, I suppose we have all of us the power to bear what cannot be escaped from. At all events, the fire, which I had expected to have broiled my brain to madness, and shrivelled my skin to tinder, strange to say had an effect of its own very different from what I had anticipated. My sufferings, instead of increasing up to the point of annihilation, arrived at a maximum just where the corporeal substance of the frame became incapable of any longer resisting the mechanical effects of the power of heat. From that point, a sensible reaction began to be experienced, and at the same time as sensible an augmentation in the perceptive and rational faculties, which appeared to undergo a process of sublimation, and expand and purify in an extraordinary degree, by the very means which dislodged them from their fleshly tabernacle, affording a parallel to the case of manuscript on paper, which, when it is cast into the flame, at first is obliterated, but, as the material is reduced to tinder, gradually resumes its legibility, until the whole thing shrivels and disappears; with this (also analogous) peculiarity

that whereas the writing is originally black, on white paper, now it is the paper that is black, while the characters stand out in light upon it! Whether my conviction was philosophy or not, I will not, even now, pretend to decide; but it looked very like it at the time, and I fancied that I understood that all this was in conformity with certain high laws of nature, and recognised the fitness and propriety of the process as a natural one, quite as clearly as I did its delightful relief to myself individually.

Relief I certainly did feel; and this relief proportionate to the proximity of the destroying element:-the consequence of which was, that now, instead of resisting the conducting Genius, I myself pressed forward, and bent with preternatural curiosity over the blackening masses turning in the focus of the flame. If anything was wanting to assure me that a change had taken place, it was supplied by the apathy -was it lighter than apathy?

with which I received the conviction of what these roasting substances Not a thrill of horror not a

were.

spasm of disgust did I feel as I found my eye within six inches of a scorched and blackening HUMAN BODY! Yes! there it was there they were-six of them spitted on the same dismal stake, rolling over and over slowly in the glare; and six demoniac - looking wretches were they demons?-actually basting the six corpses with what seemed to be the blackest pitch that ever oozed from the accursed depths of the Dead Sea! There they were, I say, turning mournfully and monotonously round, losing, at every ladleful, more and more of the semblance of humanity, and growing more and more pitchy and diabolical; while, as arm, or leg, or head fell over, the black kitchen-stuff of this infernal cuisine dripped into vessels prepared with a ghostly economy to receive it! Will it be believed that, in full view of all this, I stood prepared myself to take the turn which I knew was to be mine, and was even able to watch with comparative calmness the moment when one or other of the dishes-the word is irresistibly suggested, though not the most appropriate-being declared done enough, I should be trussed, spitted, and submitted to the action of the furnace, under the correction of a

similar sulphureous basting? Yet so it was—and I actually helped the cook next me to extract the stake from the body of the blackest of the martyrs, and dispose it upon a sort of bier, stretcher, or tressel, to be conveyed by a set of uncouth - looking villains through a door to the left.

Whoever has studied the physiognomy of a roasted hare may realise some conception of what must have gone through my mind during the process of cooking. I took a long time doing. The fellow who had the basting of me let me burn once or twice; besides which, the spit had not been introduced comfortably, and I scarcely felt as easy as I fancied I ought to have done under the circumstances. They had not done me justice I thought. Nevertheless, I contrived to go round like the rest, and to imbibe a tolerable quantity of the bitumen which, by degrees, filled up all cavities, and made me at last much more like a pigskin buoy than a roasted Cockney. The last feature that remained open was my mouth, and with it I was going to remonstrate, when a ladleful, piping hot, was administered with such precision, that it exactly filled it up to the level of the cheek, leaving the face pretty nearly an even surface, like the monkey-end of a cocoa-nut. My eyes had been burnt out and filled in some time previous; and it was during this last operation that another of those unforeseen yet intelligible changes supervened, of which I have already given an instance. The deprivation of my natural vision, and the substitution for the cornea and its humours of the asphaltic compound, wrought a change scarcely less vast in the visual powers of the spirit within me. I lost hold of my particular identity. I felt it go as a ship slips her moorings; and glided gradually into an abstraction-a cosmopolite representative of a species, under which metamorphosis I was able to take in the inner and primitive meaning of things, and to discover in every object presented to me, not only that more is meant than meets the eye, but that that "more" may generally be made pretty much what the observer chooses. How agreeable was this change! Such a vast deal of trouble saved! It was, I saw, a shorthand way to satisfactory conclusions on doubtful subjects, leaving the ima

gination free to take its range through the fields formerly parked and paled up for the exclusive use of Reason, where it might flush up and bring down thoughts of every wing, without so much as a game-certificate from the ci-devant proprietor of the manor. In my glee at the transition, I submitted without a murmur to be unbroached and hurried off on the shoulders of a gang of sulphur-smutched wretches, through the door to the left, into another apartment.

Arrived there, the scene was changed, It was silent, gloomy, and damp, the chamber in which I found my self. A musty antiquity seemed to breathe through it, as if it was charged with the air of another era. This was health and hilarity to my present abstracted spirit, which seemed to gulp the mouldy element with as congenial a relish as the home-sick Swiss inhales the restoring breezes of his native hills. Into this apartment many roasted tenants of the spits had already been brought, and now enabled me to judge, by the operations they were undergoing, what was before me. A circulating process was here again the order of the day, and I was able to satisfy myself that the machinery which set the long and shining broaches of the furnace-room in motion, exercised its functions here, too, making certain frames revolve with similar velocity, and in the same horizontal direction.

These frames and their uses, I will describe more in detail by-and-bye; but in the meantime a particular circumstance, by its effects upon my nerves, served to convince me that I was not so completely absorbed into an adjective as to be altogether independent of the wretched piece of substantive charcoal, once my body. Along the sides of this room (which was lighted from above by dim burners) were ranged rows of upright cases, which might have passed for caryatides, so regularly did they stand, and so perfectly did they resemble those archaic representatives of fallen power and conquered pride; but which I was not long in recognising for the outer envelopes of mummies, not only by their actual configuration, but by the characters and symbols with which they were covered. This was nothing in itself; nor was it much, that I saw in the

process going on before me the connexion existing between the successive arrivals from the furnace-room and these silent receptacles; the se quence was completed in my mind without any extraordinary disturbance; nay, with something which might have been termed a morbid interest, in an archaeological point of view, in the performance. But one thing I was not able to shut my eyes to, in pitch darkness as they were. The flesh I had resigned to its fate long ago. But my bones I had tacitly reserved my right over. They were not in the bond. I felt that I ought to do battle for my own skeleton, against antiquity itself. And here a glance told me that there was not a case in the room into which I could fit ! My tailor had often softened my heart into paying him an instalment of my bill, by informing me that I measured forty-two inches round the chest. Not one of these measured so much, even sight measure; and the process going on before me enabled me to judge how much had to be allowed for besides. That process is described in a word. Endless lengths of coarse, blay linen, let down from rollers in the ceiling, were grasped in the hands of certain personages who, as the well-tarred bodies, once again set a-turning before them, went round, strained the linen with all their might, and passed it up and down, and here and there, and over and over, until the mass took gradually a form corresponding to the inner surface of the cases ranged along the walls. Now and then one of the party advanced and dropped a scarabæus, a bead, or some other trinket, in among the folds, which was instantly secured and concealed in the grasp of the next swathe which passed over the spot. The meaning of the whole thing was plain. we were to be mummies! But still, my chest bone! Was it to be broken down, like a lean turkey's? I here arrived at the climax of my humanity. I determined to resist, should the attempt be made, believing as Í did that there was nothing in my having surrendered my skin to its basting and cooking which should prevent me from standing up for my bones, a point conceded, I knew, to the mummy even of the ibis and ape.

The Feature stood beside mè.

I could have smiled, but for the pitch, as I saw two or three of them go out hastily. By-and-bye (I was let alone in the meantime) they returned, bringing in a cartonage of more extraordinary dimensions than any I had ever seen, and placed it with a look of triumph standing up like a violoncello-case before me. Iinstantly stepped into it, and requested them to do me the favour to shut it up. They did so, and there was a good two inches to spare between my ribs and the pasteboard of its inside surface.

"Content!" I cried, and walked out again.

"This is, however, an anachronism," muttered the Form, as he glanced at the characters on the outside, and passed his hand along it. "We want you to be at least a thousand years older than your envelope. However, we can't help that now; we have only to omit the scarabæi, etcetera, and do you up a little looser, that's all."

I almost cracked my cheeks with the effort to laugh. As it was, I felt something, ooze from my left eye. It really was too good a joke,

Palm trees-a low tent of black

skins

sand.

scorching

fierce sunshine -a blinding dust two camels, one lying down, close to the white bones of one of its own species, and looking patient and scriptural — two bearded and turbaned Orientals, swarthy and profound, as if the secrets of the East lay hid in the depth of their melancholy dignity-and myself, in my gigantic cartonage, with my forty-two inches bandaged down at least three thousand years below the surface of the present, chuckling internally with pride and satisfaction at the idea that the ordinary dimensions of primitive humanity were so far exceeded in my instance, that only an odd giant or so of Memphis or Thebes could be found to supply me with my pasteboard,

Presently a small caravan drew nigh.,

"A compatriot, by Osiris !" I exclaimed, as I descried an alpaca umbrella overshadowing a flaxen-haired, dreamy-looking young man, as he sat gracefully upon a hump. The Arabs bent low, the young Saxon touched his brim.

"Ah, yes!" he exclaimed, with a sort of drowsy enthusiasm, espying me. "A relic of the ancient world! Egypt! abode of more than men ! Land of mystery, wonder, the pyra mids! in which mortals have lived before history, and its very dead have not died! Salam, chiefs; you've a mummy to sell. Quel est le prix ?”

Here his dragoman interposed, and interpreted him into Oriental phraseology, making rather a free and elevated translation of the original. The Bedouins prostrated themselves, and could scarcely be induced to raise their foreheads from the dust. When they did so, they laid their bony hands upon me, and at the same time mentioned a fabulous sum of money. It was fortunate that I was as tightly wrapped up in my antiquity as I was, or I must have burst my hieroglyphics. I never was thought worth one-tenth of the money in my life. Only think of my fetching that much in my shroud! I expected nothing less than the scornful repudiation of a bargain so absurd on the part of my countryman. My astonishment may be imagined, when I heard the Englishman say to his dragoman—

Count out the cash to the fellows,