recall the departing soul from Paradise! Haste to my son, and instantly; it is not yet too late."

"Oh, King," urged Mithridata, "how could this countenance do thy son any good? Is he not suffering from the effects of seventy-two poisons?"

"I am not aware of that?" said the King.

"Are not his entrails burned up with fire? Is not his flesh in a state of deliquescence? Has not his skin already peeled off his body? Is he not tormented by incessant gripes and vomitings?"

"Not to my knowledge," said the King. "The symptoms, as I understand, are not unlike those which I remember to have experienced myself, in a milder form, certainly. He lies in bed, eats and drinks nothing, and incessantly calls upon thee." "This is most incomprehensible," said Mithridata. "There was no drug in my father's laboratory that could have produced such an effect."

"The sum of the matter is," continued the King, "that either thou wilt repair forthwith to my son's chamber, and subsequently to church; or else unto the scaffold."

"If it must be so, I choose the scaffold," said Mithridata, resolutely. "Believe me, O King, my appearance in thy son's chamber would but destroy whatever feeble hope of recovery may remain. I love him beyond everything on earth, and not for worlds would I have his blood on my soul."

"Chamberlain," cried the monarch, "bring me a strait

waistcoat."

Driven into a corner, Mithridata flung herself at the King's feet, taking care, however, not to touch him, and confided to him all her wretched history.

The venerable monarch burst into a peal of laughter. “À bon chat, bon rat !" he exclaimed, as soon as he had recovered himself. "So thou art the daughter of my old friend, the magician Locusto! I fathomed his craft, and, as he fed his child upon poisons, I fed mine upon antidotes. Never did any child in the world take an equal quantity of physic: but there is now no poison on earth can harm him. Ye are clearly made for each other: haste to his bedside, and, as the spell requires, rid thyself of thy venefic properties in his arms as expeditiously as possible. Thy father shall be bidden to the wedding, and an honoured guest he shall be, for having taught us that the kiss of Love is the remedy for every poison."

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD.

BY CHARLES LAMB.

[CHARLES LAMB: An English essayist; born in London, February 10, 1775; died at Edmonton, December, 1834. He was a fellow-pupil with Coleridge at the school of Christ's Hospital; in 1789 obtained a clerkship in the South Sea House; from 1792 to 1825 was an accountant in the East India Company, then retiring on a pension. His "Tales from Shakespeare" and "Poetry for Children," with his sister Mary Lamb, are permanently popular; but his fame rests on a series of essays contributed to the London Magazine, appearing in collected form as the "Essays of Elia" (1823) and "Last Essays of Elia" (1833), and on his delightful letters.]

DEHORTATIONS from the use of strong liquors have been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, and have been received with abundance of applause by water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, the remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a man to raise the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies.

Alas! the hand to pilfer and the tongue to bear false witness have no constitutional tendency. These are actions indifferent to them. At the first instance of the reformed will they can be brought off without a murmur. The itching finger is but a figure in speech, and the tongue of the liar can with the same natural delight give forth useful truths with which it has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious contraries. But when a man has commenced sot

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily untouched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I had written, first learn what the thing is; how much of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou mayest virtuously mingle with thy disapprobation. Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not, under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation from a state of death almost as real as that from which Lazarus rose not but by a miracle.

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. But what if the beginning be dreadful, the first steps not like climbing a mountain but going through fire? what if the whole system must undergo a change violent as that which we con

ceive of the mutation of form in some insects? what if a process comparable to flaying alive be to be gone through? is the weakness that sinks under such struggles to be confounded with the pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of the whole victim, body and soul?

I have known one in that state, when he has tried to abstain but for one evening — though the poisonous potion had long ceased to bring back its first enchantments, though he was sure it would rather deepen his gloom than brighten it—in the violence of the struggle, and the necessity he had felt of getting rid of the present sensation at any rate, I have known him to scream out, to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of the strife within him.

Why should I hesitate to declare that the man of whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to make to mankind. I see them in one way or another deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have brought upon it.

I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads, and iron insides whom scarce any excesses can hurt; whom brandy (I have seen them drink it like wine), at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a measure, can do no worse injury to than just to muddle their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On them this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh at a weak brother who, trying his strength with them, and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain persuade them that such agonistic exercises are dangerous. It is to a very different description of persons I speak. It is to the weak the nervous; to those who feel the want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in society to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all around them without it. This is the secret of our drinking. Such must fly the convivial board in the first instance, if they do not mean to sell themselves for their term of life.

Twelve years ago I had completed my six and twentieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving school to that time pretty much in solitude. My companions were chiefly books, or at most one or two living ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. I rose early, went to bed betimes, and the faculties which God had given me, I have reason to think, did not rust in me unused.