exultation arising from this, joined with the which a canopy of red hung over something feeling of safety, made me forget for an instant of deeper red, like a curtain over a corpse the sorry, sad plight I was in; and that as I murdered in bed. But a minute before, I approached the haunts and paths of men I had recoiled from exposure. Now, the idea should become an object of wonder, perhaps of there being crowds congregated, fire-enof suspicion, perhaps of ridicule-of all gines, police, a furious mob seeking for things the hardest to bear. Those who have plunder, was a relief. Among them might dreamt (not a very uncommon sequel of indi-be safety must be bewilderment. I made gestion) that, by some strange, whimsical straight for the glare, the fatal footfall echoing misadventure, they must commit themselves my own all the way. to public exposure, either partially or wholly Fleet-fleet was my footstep! The things undressed, and felt all the agonizing acuteness I passed by seemed to pass me by in a swift of an exaggerated moral and personal modesty procession; those nearest me flashing across penetrating their entranced nature, and quiv-me like projectiles. With my eye upon the ering in the vitals of their morbid over-con- ruddy sky before me, I sped for its centre, sciousness, may understand what my sensations observing such turns, where they occurred, must have been when I had time, as yet in as would conduce to that point. For intricate safety and solitude, to reflect upon what was ways did now offer obstacles to a direct course, inevitably before me, even before I could dash and I was obliged to exercise a prompt but myself into a reluctant cab, and get, for an firm discretion at the several corners I enimmensely-augmented fare, driven home to countered. Here and there, too, a human my sofa, cigars, and astonished own people. figure might be seen passing, at one side or Even my cloak was gone. I could not assume the other; but not near enough either to an incognito. I had flung it away early in obstruct or assist me. Indeed, I could not my career. Besides, it was peculiar. I bring myself to wish a closer proximity to could not have hidden myself in it. There any of these single and unknown wayfarers. was something of the monk about it. It had Rather did I experience an undefined dread of a hood, and sleeves hanging outside. league and collusion, perhaps, with the Enemy in pursuit, under which impression I gave single figures a wide berth whenever I could. When I could not, my passage was so instantaneous that I recognized nothing more than a startled turn of the head, or a hasty withdrawal from my path, before the individual, whoever it was, was gathered up with the great mass of things I had swept behind me. Just then I found a path crossing mine at right angles, which caused a break in the continuity of wall. This path led into the one I was traversing, by a turn-stile. I glanced for the instant I took in passing it through the opening to the right, behind which lights, many, though distant, gleamed. An instant sense of suffocation seized me. Some object remained photographed upon my eye, fixed there during its momentary transit. A figure was approaching the turn-stile, within three yards of it; and on this figure was my cloak! Once again! Forward, forward, forward! On, on! Into or out- to anything, so that that Form, that Thing, be escaped from! A hundredth part of the glimpse it got of me in passing would have been enough for it. For me, its identity would have been revealed by the lightning's flash. It needed not mine inky cloak to recognize it. I saw how it The bodily Shadow was up with me by the time I had reached the first verge of light. was. On, on! Heavens! I hear it breathing! Short and hurried respirations come from over my shoulders, at but a few yards' distance. We are now more in the country. Strips of hedges alternate with walls; the foot-path is edged with grass; there is a freshness of smell, and less of noise. The region lies black about me, save under the glow. 0! for the heart of the city again! Walls again. The road, too, is narrower -the light, growing fiercer, right ahead. Very fierce must that light be, to throw up such a reflection. It cannot be far off, I thought; yet I hear no sound, no roaring multitude, no congregating crowds, no chargA great forge, a distillery - a foundry-ing engines, no stroke of the pumps. What a house on fire, perhaps! A light before can it be, after all? Can it be is it is me glowed high into the murky heavens, in it? In short, I began to suspect that my moth-like flight might in the end prove not vague hatred entertained for the victim by only unavailing but disastrous. Suppose an the monster that haunts it down! There: actual furnace reached. I enter, face the fire, and am either recognized as a bedlamite, or devoured by the grim Feature at my heels. I was strongly inclined to take a new line, and make for another point; and with this idea made some observations on the bearings. It may be believed that by this time I was tolerably well breathed. I have said nothing of this; but I suppose human lungs and muscles were never more desperately and fearfully tasked than were mine at that moment. One by one, every encumbrance was flung off; every garment went, until I was left with scarcely more than my shirt and drawers upon me, streaming with perspiration, my veins swelled to bursting, my face all of a glow, my hair hanging in tangled mats about my ears, or floating on the dew of my forehead, and gasping sobs issuing convulsively from my over-labored breast. It was as I turned to examine my chance of escape by some other avenue than that which led straight to the fire, that I percieved the Pursuer had insensibly gained upon me, and was now almost in contact with me! I felt his breath hot upon my shoulder, and upon the exposed part of the throat just behind the ear; and -0, horror! just at the same instant there came upon me the conviction that escape there was really none; that I was caught in a cul-de-sac; in short, that the way was not open before me! I was confirmed in the former dread suspicion by distinctly perceiving that on my essaying once or twice to draw across to one side of the road or to the other, with a view to doubling, so as to return by the path I had travelled, the Thing seemed conscious of my intention, and swerved to the right or left, as the case might be, with the manifest 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. 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 curious 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 sensations 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 So I am to be caught at last-clutched, annihilation. I really do not wish to take seized, overmastered by this hideous Form, the reader by surprise; I am far from inviting whose malignity may be measured by the him to go on with me; I hardly wish him desperation of his pursuit, and wrenched to do so. It is my duty to pursue the thread out of humanity, perhaps, into some horrible of my narrative, and I am determined to proextravagance of agony, unutterable, incon- ceed; but no corresponding obligation lies ceivable, but endurable, for the long term of upon anybody else. What I am bound to hair of the head; and his will was that I write, no man—or woman - is bound to read. Indeed, unless with a determination to believe, the reader had far better stop here. Nearer! nearer! —yet nearer! Strange There are things which lose half their terrors to say, my eyes are able to look straight by being looked upon and looked into as upon the glow. I can discern objects now. either psychological or physiological facts, Shapes move to-and-fro across the mouth of which, if they were hunted into the dark re- the furnaces, of far tougher material than cesses of a morbid brain, would there put on Nebuchadnezzar's guards, or they would a startling aspect, and turn round upon us have shrunk up into tinder. like, wild beasts. What are upon an the wretches about? Cooking, apparently. The mystery of the conflagration was re- Some of them wear nightcaps and aprons, solved. A brick floor, spreading out on each and use ladles. A horizontal shadow, too, side more than a hundred feet, sloped slightly crosses the line of fires. It is as impossible upwards to a series of open furnaces, or grates, to describe as it is to account for the loathranging along the wall which faced me, and ing revulsion of feeling, the secret and horgiving forth to my eyes, and into the sur-rible misgiving, with which I gazed upon rounding court, and thence to the sky, a this parallel of combustion this black equaglare so intense, that I was obliged to look tor, stretching across the torrid regions of fire, away, after one of those absorbing glances and swerving and winding ever, so as to prewhich the nature implanted within us all sent no continuing outline to my eye-for compels us to direct in the first instance such I soon discovered to be its characteristic. towards any object, however strange or ter- Not only did the shadow bulge out, where it rific, at whatever cost. While my eyes were opposed itself to the middle of each furnace, thus, as it were, hurled back from what they tapering off to each end, but changed its had been directed to, and seemingly blinded shape by a slow and regular transition, reforever, the image had been so strongly im- turning, after a certain uniform period, to the pressed upon the retina, that I was able, in original figure, and thence passing through that dark and quivering chamber of vision, the same cycles, to return to the phase from to look from an inner position upon the image whence it started. This, I concluded, could there imprinted, and could satisfy myself that only be explained in one manner- namely, there were six distinct furnaces, of huge di- by the rotation of an uneven outline mensions, at equal distances along the wall. axis. The objects, whatever they were, were Were this all-had I been, in short, merely turning horizontally and slowly round before a spectator of this conflagration-I might the fires. There was also, as I soon became have looked on, or looked away, with some conscious, an occasional click and strain, such degree of calmness; or rather, with such ex- as machinery gives, to be heard even over citment merely as so wonderful a spectacle sounds much louder and more continuous. might be expected to produce upon a naturally But this evidence of scientific mechanical apsensitive and nervous temperament. But O! plication, far from lessening the sense of the let it not be supposed for a moment that I wild and horrible in the aspect of the whole felt free to consider myself a lounging visitor scene, added another element-that of myscome there to book wonders for the Dub-tery and design-to the simpler terrors of the lin University Magazine. There were good raging element of fire. reasons for this not being so. I have said nothing of the Follower-the Pursuer-the Form-the Feature - the THING. He had me Dow; 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 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 THE 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. saw Some, as I have of what these roasting substances were. Not a thrill of horror-not a 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 — sir of them spitted on the same disinal 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 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 of the dishes - the word is irresistibly sugfrom 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; I actually helped the cook next me to extract 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 yery like it at the time, and I fancied that I understood that all this was in conformity with certain high laws of nature, and recognized the fitness and propriety of the process as a natural one, quite as clearly as I did its delightful relief to myself individually. gested, 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 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 realize 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 circumThey had not done me justice, I Relief I certainly did feel; and this relief proportionate to the proximity of the destroy-stances. ing element: the consequence of which thought. Nevertheless, I contrived to go 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 round like the rest, and to imbibe a tolerable quantity of tho 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 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-by; but in the meantime a particular circumstance, by its effects on 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 iny 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 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 humors 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; so perfectly did they resemble those archaie and glided gradually into an abstraction a representatives of fallen power and conquered cosmopolite representative of a species, under pride; but which I was not long in recognizwhich metamorphosis I was able to take in ing for the outer envelopes of mummies, not the inner and primitive meaning of things, only by their actual configuration, but by the and to discover in every object presented to characters and symbols with which they were me, not only that more is meant than meets covered. This was nothing in itself; nor the eye, but that that "more" may gener- was it much, that I saw in the process going ally be made pretty much what the observer on before me the connection existing between chooses. How agreeable was this change! the successive arrivals from the furnace-room Such a vast deal of trouble saved! It was, and these silent receptacles; the sequence I saw, a short-hand way to satisfactory con- was completed in my mind without any clusions on doubtful subjects, leaving the extraordinary disturbance; nay, with someimagination free to take its range through thing which might have been termed a morbid the fields formerly parked and paled up for interest, in an archæological point of view, the exclusive use of Reason, where it might in the performance. But one thing I was flush up and bring down thoughts of every not able to shut my eyes to, in pitch darkwing, without so much as a game-certificate ness as they were. The flesh I had resigned from the ci-devant proprietor of the manor. to its fate long ago. But my bones I had In my glee at the transition, I submitted tacitly reserved my right over. They were without a murmur to be unbroached and hur- not in the bond. I felt that I ought to do ried off on the shoulders of a gang of sulphur- battle for my own skeleton, against antiquity smutched wretches, through the door to the itself. And here a glance told me that there left, into another apartment. 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 Arrived there, the scene was changed. It was silent, gloomy, and damp, the chamber in which I found myself. A musty antiquity seemed to breathe through it, as if it was harged 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 homesick 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, |