Hamburg since yesterday morning than during the year before. Some women were delivered in the burning houses, some in the streets, some in carts, some in the boats on the canals and the rivers.' It was, indeed, too true, as I afterwards learned; children were born that awful day and night, who should not have seen the light for months. Numbers of women went mad with fright, and numbers of them, as well as my wife and daughter, and newly-born infant, perished in the flames or by the falling houses.

I rushed off to the Jungfernstieg where our friends lived, fearfully excited; water and fire dashing about me in all directions, and hissing in angry contention. The house in which I hoped to find my family was deserted by all but the servants who were rapidly conveying the property it contained into boats moored at the quay in front of it, on the InnerAlster. They knew nothing of my wife, nothing of my daughter-there was no intelligence anywhere to be had. I stamped in impotent rage, and cursed my fate wildly and unreasonably, for my fate was no worse than that of hundreds of others. 'But I saw one of your servants here only a minute ago, Herr Professor,' said one of those whom I had asked.

Why don't you seek her? She must know where her mistress is.' 'Only a minute ago, man?' I cried vehemently. Only a minute ago,' he repeated quickly, as he desisted from his labour now for the first time, and looked round eagerly, shouting out her name-- Mary Luders'— with his utmost strength. Amid the noise and tumult, the shrieks, the groans, the roaring flames, the hissing water and the cries of excited men, Mary Luders' rang distinctly over the water in front of us, and trembled upon the air, making its way fearfully through piles of smoking goods, and hosts of cowering pecple. I shouted, too; but those unaccustomed to a war of elements find it difficult to make their voices heard above the tumult around. A boatman joined us, and then, for the first time, did our servant hear the cries. She was assisting a family in the neighbourhood, only a few doors from where we stood-a helpless, hopeless family, whom the flames

had deprived of their head and their protector.

"Mary Luders had left Bonn with us; she was an honest, upright German peasant girl, with the noblest qualities of her race deeply graven on her heart. Her appearance at that moment was horrible ; SO much so, indeed, that I could scarcely recognise her. A frightful scar, caused by a falling beam of burning timber, seamed her face; her long yellow hair, singed and burnt, hung in wet masses about her head and neck, a fitting counterpart to her torn and drenched habiliments. She covered her face with her hands as she saw me, and sobbed vehemently. The agitation of another often makes one cool and composed. As the servant became excited, I grew calmer; terribly, hopelessly calmer. Her tale was told in disjointed sentences-hoarsely told, and confusedly, as became all around.

"On the 5th the fire had broken out-an ordinary fire in Deich-street. It was not near enough to our house to cause any alarm, and although it spread during the day, the servants did not mention it to my wife, who was excitable and nervous. They retired early to rest, as usual, expecting my return. But scarcely had

darkness set in when the wind howled like a demon; the fire, slumbering before, thrust its huge flames in every direction, like a giant furnace, licking up houses with its forked tongues as a nest of serpents might lick up smaller prey. In the Hopfen Market the alarm was given--bells rang engines rattled shouted. My wife rushed to the windows, sheets of flame flashed before her eyes, and she fell fainting with terror. Gertrude ran to her assistance. The servants urged instant departure; not a moment was to be lost. To lose time was to lose life-but time was lost.

- - men

"The fear, the excitement, the terror brought on the pangs of premature labour, and, as the devouring flames seized the house, a child was born. The servants had fled. Gertrude and Mary Luders alone could not carry the senseless and helpless woman and her new-born babe from the house, now fast filling with smoke and flame. The servant ran forth to get assistance; she returned to find the house a mass of flames; entrance

for her, exit for my daughter, equally impossible. In another moment the roof had fallen in-all was destruction--and the fire striding on, like a destroying angel, attacked the next house similarly, and the next, and the next. 'The Fräulein may have escaped; the Frau, with her little one, could not,' concluded Mary Luders, as she gave me the harrowing recital.

"I was as one stupified by a sudden blow upon the head. I looked up to heaven, and thick masses of smoke, ever rolling on, were alone to be seen. I looked around me, and I saw suffering humanity on every side. I looked upon the city, and I saw fallen houses and streets, foul with cinders and water, with burning goods and fiery destruction. There was no hope anywhere no refuge. I was well nigh putting an end to my existence, but the thought of Gertrude nerved me to fresh exertions, and I rushed off to visit houses and places where she might be, but was not. I sought eagerly, but I sought in vain, and at length my mind settled in the conviction, as indeed it was but too probable from the servant's recital, that she too had perished.

Had I allowed my reason a moment's sway, I could, from the first, have come to no other conclusion. It was not likely, indeed, that she would have left her mother at such a moment; and that her mother had perished was but too certain.

“Plain and simple as the matter appears now, however, it took some time for the conviction to reach my heart then. We will hold on to the threads of hope in the sea of despair, even though those threads be no thicker than the production of the spider.

"All day, and indeed the next too, the flames advanced, until they had reached the gate by which I had entered the city. After raging thus for one hundred hours, the wind changed, and Hamburg was saved from utter destruction-to be given up, however, as a prey to rude rapine and dissipation. The rights of property had long been lost; all was confusion far and near, terror, dismay, horror and despair. The flames ceased, I say, thrown back upon themselves by a lucky change of wind. They ceased after seven mil

lions of pounds' worth of property had been destroyed-after thirty thousand people had been thrown houseless upon the world, without a roof to shelter them. Can you wonder, then, that the awful scene thus enacted before my eyes should leave so deep an impression on my mind; or that I should constantly see, in fancy, those terrible flames to which I owed the loss of my happiness, the death of my wife, my daughter, and my new-born infant, as well as the destruction of my property? Can you wonder that it is only by strong efforts of pure reason I am enabled to stifle the visions of the imagination, and prevent the balance of my mind being overturned?

.

"I remained in Hamburg a fortnight, in vain hopes of recovering my daughter. The ashes of my wife and child-a portion of their unconsumed bones-were discovered in digging amid the ruins of our house, but no traces of Gertrude. She had probably been surrounded by blazing fuel and furniture to such an extent that all traces of her organized structure were lost; and when the workmen were casting shovelful after shovelful of black charcoal and charred carbon about, they were probably disturbing the ashes of my fair daughter. I remained two weeks in Hamburg, as I have said, to advertise and search; to visit friends and public places, hospitals and cemeteries, in vain search after the lost Gertrude, a lonely, helpless, desolate old man-old in a day, old in sorrows, in misery, almost in despair, in the course of twentyfour hours!

66 'A small revenue was still left me-the rent of the ground on which my houses had been built. About a tenth part of the sums for which they had been insured was ultimately awarded from the insurance offices, and with this redeemed revenue I returned to Bonn to resume my accustomed round of duty. But this it was utterly impossible for me to do. The joyless house struck a chill into my soul-the monotonous, solitary life of brooding reverie almost drove me mad. I gave up my professorship, and wandered over the world as a man on whom God had set a mark that could not be effaced. I went to China, to Singapore, to Madras. I came to Calcutta. Strangely enough,

I had scarcely landed here when an old pupil offered me the management of the house of Saltzwedel, Gefer and Co. He gave me credit for general ability, which mercantile men seldom allow in metaphysicians; I was accustomed to commerce in youth, and I felt no reluctance to undertake the charge.

"Such, sir, has been the history of my life-a history I have never before recounted in Calcutta, and which it is not my intention to go over again. The excitement of such a

narrative is neither a healthy nor a pleasing one; and I shall gladly turn from it to our usual metaphysical discussions. You promised me your ideas on the distinction between the noetical and the dianoetical action of the mind-its intuitive and its logical action; and I am anxious to hear how your 'common-sense' philosophy reasons on the subject at ali. Such speculations will be like repose after severe fatigue, to one who has gone over the exciting tale of his own. sorrows and desolation."

AMID the literary wastes of Calcutta, Doctor Gebirgen's conversation was an invaluable solace. Our friendship continued unabated for more than a year—a delicious year of happiness

when he was called away by imperative business to England. He travelled overland, and wrote me a description of his voyage and of his impressions during it. In nothing can a man be so well known as in his letters; I mean of course a genuine, honest man, not a fancifully trickedout, hypocritical form of a man, without nature or honesty, who writes not from the heart and head, but from the whisperings of custom, who echoes merely the sentiments of others, and is in fact the mouth-piece of other men's thoughts. Such a man should be debarred letter-writing altogether. The vainest and most conceited witling that ever put pen to paper, if he only writes what he thinks, is worth a thousand such; as, ridiculous as his effusions may be, they are his own at all events. But

I have much to tell of my hapless friend's subsequent history, and shall therefore give some extracts from his letters without further preface:

:

"One has but to make his way to the ocean to discover that the ideas of the infinite, of eternity, and of immensity are intimately, nay indissolubly, linked with each other in the mind. They are far from being subjective phenomena merely-fictions of the mind, phases of feeling. They are, on the contrary, truly objective. The mind is finite within its own precincts, but let such a scene as pre

sents itself to me now every day and every night be brought before it, and it expands its conceptions to the infinite.

It knows, by a cognition of pure reason, that there is an infinite, an eternal, an immense, out of the mind-far other than the mind-the very negative of the finite. I look around me in the morning, and there, spreading far away on every side, lost in impenetrable immensity, I see the ocean and the sky, suggestive of great thoughts, of wide expansion of ideas. At night, seated on the paddle-box-my favorite position in which to indulge in a contemplative cigar-the stars add a new beauty to the scene, a new element of thought, the very genesis of much that is inspiring and noble-.

Stars silent roll over us, Graves under us silent;

and truly, as we plough up the deep, we are but disturbing the graves of thousands.

"Believe me, no principle enters more largely into the constitution of Iman than this idea of the infinite. Boundless, limitless prospects are always suggestive of it, particularly if accompanied by repose and quiet. Noise, turbulence, commotion, disquiet are opposed to it, will not produce it, nay, rather stifle it. Silence is a very potent power; it is to the soul what opium is to the body. In small quantities, it produces repose, rest, agreeable reflection; in large, destruction or madness. You see me, my dear friend, with your mind's eye

seated on the top of the lofty paddlebox, a little world of moving humanity and machinery below, a heaven of repose and quiet above, a sea black and terrible in its dark vastness around. To me, so seated, so musing, it appears as if I were surveying the future from the minute resting point of the present. The steamer, with its noisy freight, ever moving on, never at rest, is the present; the illimitable heavens, with their dark mysteries, unfathomable and inconceivable perhaps, the future. Many twinkling stars shine in that heaven, to make the surrounding gloom only the more impenetrable, giving no light by which we can discern its mysteries.

"I turn from such a scene with all its grand magnificence and suggestive beauty to enter the saloon. There

little atoms like myself, tricked out externally in fantastic fashions by tailors and milliners, are making noise with loud laughter and inane conversation, as if there were no awful immensity around them, into which each, by himself or herself, must one day plunge. They exhibit a thousand littlenesses--a thousand follies as if the sublimity of the stars, the heavens, and the ocean were not without to check their absurdities. The ocean and the sky are equally silent in their vast grandeur, whilst Mrs. Rumble, Captain Rumble's wife, in her littleness, complains to me that the captain of the steamer offered his arm, a few moments ago, to Mrs. Humble, the lieutenant's ‘lady', in preference in her presence too; she does not mean to stand the indignity;' the very next time the captain offers his arm to her, she means 'to cut him dead,' to pass him with a majestic sweep, as if he were not seen, ' and take some one else's arm!'

Revenge complete.' Mr. Jolly, too, tells me how he and his partner had four by honors twice running whilst playing a rubber with the cranky old general,' and how terribly 'the cranky old general'swore in consequence. Mr. Jolly has not yet done laughing at the incident, it strikes him as being so excessively ludicrous. Such is the scene within! Is it not truly the passage from the infinite to the finite, from the unbounded to the narrow, that short journey from my station on the paddle-box to the saloon?

Sublimest nature, in all her majesty and glory, deserted for little humanity.

"But to leave the contemplation of my fellow-passengers, who are many of them pleasant companions, though for the most part not congenial to me, let me return to myself on the paddlebox and to my own feelings. With this majesty of nature around, and the immensity of the sky and sea pressing upon me like a weight, I feel intense longing to penetrate the mystery of the future life. One plunge in the black waters, and the deed were done, the Gordian knot cut, the mystery a mystery no more. To me who believe in a truly benevolent Deity, but not in the vindictive Deity of your English philosophy, such a plunge has little in it of the horrible. I could resign myself at any moment calmly into the hands of the All-knowing, for, as I have often told you, the tales of infancy have lost their hold on me, and I see nothing in the future but a spiritual life to be earnestly sought by all who have at all cultivated their souls here. You do not agree with me; you are ready now to tell me so, and to point out benevolently my errors; but bear with me, my friend; let me have my convictions if you have yours. It is the sense only that I am in my present position for a good purpose-that I have work to do which ought to be done it is such a conviction as this alone that restrains me. The coward flies from evils he knows to those he knows not of, the brave man encounters them. My isolation in the world, my unhappy fate, lead me to such thoughts; mental cultivation and rational religion yield the antidote. My mental condition since I left Calcutta has indeed been the most striking evidence of that grand truth, that the soul in her essence is a principle of volition, and that it is this fundamental law, this grand reality, that enables man to make the step from æsthetics to ethics-a step otherwise impossible, if not absolutely inconceivable.

"You do not want me, I am sure, to describe to you the taking in of coal at Aden; the passage up the Red Sea; the landing at Suez with all its inconvenience and discomfort; the journey through the desert; the Turkish bath at Cairo, or the sail down the Nile and through the Mahamoody canal to Alexandria. All

these are things that every account of the overland trip dilates upon. For the majority of travellers and the majority of readers, the objective will ever be more interesting than the subjective the history of the body and its senses more desired than that of the soul and its innate powers. There was the usual amount of bustle and annoyance; the usual noise, shouting, scolding, abusing, and commanding; the usual number of patient, silent, unhappy-looking camels awaiting us at Suez, and ready to take our luggage to Cairo. All these things are such as one expects to see who has heard or read anything on the subject. For my part I heeded them little, for my mind was too much taken up with the reveries produced by the countries and their histories through which we passed. Sailing up the Red Sea, one is passing through the very birthplace of religions. Egypt on the left, whence issued Judaism and the classical mythology; Arabia on the right, whence issued the fiery followers of the prophet of Mecca, to thrust their faith down the throats of their fellow-creatures with the sword. Syria right in front of us, whence, most wonderful of all, a few enthusiasts rushed forth to give that faith to the Gentile which the Jew would not have, which has been rejected as a loathsomething by the people to whom it was first offered, but has since been received greedily by other nations as the very whisperings of heaven,-until at length kings and pontiffs were equally anxious to prove themselves its orthodox upholders and the zealous persecutors of all who thought otherwise. Most wonderful of all, truly!

"I feel a strange sympathy for Egypt. Like myself, it has had its day-a day of prosperity, or what was fancied such, and of happiness, surrounded by a long night of gloom, sorrow, repining, destruction, almost of despair. Its various conquerors sweeping over it like devouring flames, feebly opposed by an energy almost dead, a strength not trusted and used, and therefore not forthcoming, believed rather to be nonexisting. Even so is it with the soul that has been struck down by adversity and sorrow, after long years of peace and contentment. It becomes

a prey to feelings and emotions that had no power over it before, which indeed it entirely contemned and despised. Believing itself still the same powerful thing it was or appeared to be, it finds itself crushed, ill-used, trodden under foot by paltry assailants, of all feeble things one of the feeblest, finding no resource from within, and therefore anxious to escape the inner, selfdirective life and fly to an outer life foreign to it, impressed by others, not its own. For nations such as Egypt, long trodden on by a variety of masters, there is no hope in these days. It may become independent for a time, propped up by foreign bayonets, or its independence resting like that of Greece on a compromise between mightier powers. But of the nobler life of independence it can know nothing. Even so is it with the crushed soul. It dreads retiring into itself to find life there. It flies from its own inner life, as if a mental plague rendered it diseased and offensive. It seeks an outer life, outer stays and supports, forms of thought impressed externally, not its own. Of all miserable objects on a miserable earth, one of the most wretched and forlorn!

"You will not wonder then that I sympathize with Egypt and countries of the Egyptian type generally, regarding them as material counterparts of what exists spiritually within myself. You will not wonder that I looked with interest on the monuments of dead antiquity-the evidences of past prosperity- with which it abounds. Its gigantic pyramids and time-honoured catacombs

its vast uncouth statuary and oldworld architecture had for me a high and holy significance, acutely felt but not so easily described. The past is what it lives upon, not the present; the monuments of its mighty dead are the grandest things about it; there is a sublimity in its dreary desolation and hoary ruins which the grandest monuments of the present cannot have. You see then the sympathy which it awakes in such a mind as mine, with a past standing ever vividly forward as its true life, and demanding to be questioned and thought of; with a sickly present, endured but not enjoyed, and no future on this earth, The liveliest emotions