fully up to an easy-chair of tarnished brocade, with a hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in a ghostly minuet about the floor.

The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and bobbed his head and his night-cap about like mad. By degrees, the dancing mania seemed to seize upon all other pieces of furniture. The antique, long-bodied chairs, paired off in couples, and led down a country-dance; a three-legged stool danced a hornpipe, though horribly puzzled by its supernumerary leg; while the amorous tongs seized the shovel round the waist, and whirled it about the room in a German waltz. In short, all the moveables got in motion; pirouetting, hands across, right and left, like so many devils; all except a great clothes-press, which kept curtsying in a corner, like a dowager, in exquisite time to the music, being rather too corpulent to dance, or, perhaps, at a loss for a partner.

My grandfather concluded the latter to be the reason; so being, like a true Irishman, devoted to the sex, and at all times ready for a frolic, he bounced into the room, called to the musician to strike up Paddy O'Rafferty, capered up to the clothes-press, and seized upon two handles to lead her out-when-whirr! the whole revel was at an end. The chairs, tables, tongs, and shovel, slunk in an instant as quietly into their places as if nothing had happened, and the musician vanished up the chimney, leaving the bellows behind him, in his hurry. My grandfather found himself seated in the middle of the floor, with the clothes-press sprawling before him, and the two handles jerked off, and in his hands.

"Then, after all, this was a mere dream!" said the inquisitive gentleman.

"The devil a bit of a dream!" replied the Irishman. "There never was a truer fact in this world. Faith I should have liked to see any man tell my grandfather it was a dream."

Well, gentlemen, as the clothes-press was a mighty heavy body, and my grandfather likewise, particularly in rear, you may easily suppose that two such heavy bodies coming to the ground would make a bit of a noise. Faith the old mansion shook as though it had mistaken it for an earthquake. The whole garrison was alarmed. The landlord, who slept below, hurried up with a candle, to inquire the cause, but, with all his haste, his daughter had hurried to the scene of uproar before him. The landlord was followed by the landlady, who was followed by the bouncing bar-maid, who was followed by the simpering chamber-maids, all holding together, as well as they could, such garments as they had first laid hands on; but all in a terrible hurry to see what the deuce was to pay in the chamber of the bold Dragoon.

My grandfather related the marvellous scene he had witnessed, and the broken handles of the prostrate clothes-press bore testimony to the fact. There was no contesting such evidence, particularly with a lad of my grandfather's complexion, who seemed able to make good every word, either with sword or shillelah. So the landlord scratched his head and looked silly, as he was apt to do when puzzled. The landlady scratched-no, she did not scratch her head, but she knit her brow, and did not seem half pleased with the explanation. But the landlady's daughter corroborated it, by recollecting that the last person who had dwelt in that chamber was a famous juggler, who had died of St. Vitus's dance, and had no doubt infected all the furniture. This set all things to rights, particularly when the chamber-maids declared that they had all witnessed strange carryings on in that room; and as they declared this "upon their honours," there could not remain a doubt upon the subject.

"And did your grandfather go to bed again in that room ?" said the inquisitive gentleman.

"That's more than I can tell. Where he passed the rest of the night was a secret he never disclosed. In fact, though he had seen much service, he was but indifferently acquainted with geography, and apt to make blunders in his travels about inns at night, which it would have puzzled him sadly to account for in the morning."

"Was he ever apt to walk in his sleep ?" said the knowing old gentleman. "Never, that I heard of."

After an evening spent in the narration of these marvellous stories, the party retire to bed. The landlord, in answer to a question, whether he could not accommodate any of his guests with a haunted chamber? informs them that he has such a thing in the house, but that none of them should know which had got the haunted apartment until circumstances should reveal it. The nervous gentleman falls asleep in his chair, while staring into the fire, and has a fit of the night-mare. Nothing can be more exquisite than the description of his torment, and the state of fretfulness and restlessSs

VOL. XV.

ness in which it leaves him; the whole, in fact, is so graphical, that we fear our unfortunate friend Geoffrey is himself an occasional sufferer from the nocturnal visits of Ephialtes.

We now separated for the night, and each went to his allotted room. Mine was in one wing of the building, and I could not but smile at the resemblance in style to those eventful apartments described in the tales of the supper-table. It was spacious and gloomy, decorated with lamp-black portraits; a bed of ancient damask, with a tester sufficiently lofty to grace a couch of state, and a number of massive pieces of old-fashioned furniture. I drew a great claw-footed arm-chair before the wide fireplace; stirred up the fire; sat looking into it, and musing upon the odd stories I had heard, until, partly overcome by the fatigue of the day's hunting, and partly by the wine and wassail of mine host, I fell asleep in my chair.

The uneasiness of my position made my slumber troubled, and laid me at the mercy of all kinds of wild and fearful dreams. Now it was that my perfidious dinner and supper rose in rebellion against my peace. I was hag-ridden by a fat saddle of mutton; a plum-pudding weighed like lead upon my conscience; the merry-thought of a capon filled me with horrible suggestions; and a deviled-leg of a turkey stalked in all kinds of diabolical shapes through my imagination. In short, I had a violent fit of the night-mare. Some strange indefinite evil seemed hanging over me, that I could not avert; something terrible and loathsome oppressed me that I could not shake off. I was conscious of being asleep, and strove to rouse myself, but every effort redoubled the evil; until gasping, struggling, almost strangling, I suddenly sprang bolt up-right in my chair, and awoke.

The light on the mantel-piece had burnt low, and the wick was divided; there was a great winding-sheet made by the dripping wax, on the side towards me. The disordered taper emitted a broad flaring flame, and threw a strong light on a painting over the fire-place, which I had not hitherto observed. It consisted merely of a head, or rather a face, that appcared to be staring full upon me, and with an expression that was startling. It was without a frame, and at the first glance I could hardly persuade myself that it was not a real face thrusting itself out of the dark oaken pannel. I sat in my chair gazing at it, and the more I gazed the more it disquieted me. I had never before been affected in the same way by any painting. The emotions it caused were strange and indefinite. They were something like what I have heard ascribed to the eyes of the basilisk, or like that mysterious influence in reptiles, termed fascination. I passed my hand over my eyes several times, as if seeking instinctively to brush away the illusion-in vain. They instantly reverted to the picture, and its chilling, creeping influence over my flesh and blood was redoubled. I looked round the room on other pictures, either to divert my attention, or to see whether the same effect would be produced by them. Some of them were grim enough to produce the effect, if the mere grimness of the painting produced it.-No such thingmy eye passed over them all with perfect indifference, but the moment it reverted to this visage over the fire-place, it was as if an electric shock darted through me. The other pictures were dim and faded, but this one protruded from a plain black ground in the strongest relief, and with wonderful truth of colouring. The expression was that of agony-the agony of intense bodily pain; but a menace scowled upon the brow, and a few sprinklings of blood added to its ghastliness. Yet it was not all these characteristics; it was some horror of the mind, some inscrutable antipathy awakened by this picture, which harrowed up my feelings.

I tried to persuade myself that this was chimerical,—that my brain was confused by the fumes of mine host's good cheer, and in some measure by the old stories about paintings which had been told at supper. I determined to shake off these vapours of the mind; rose from my chair; walked about the room; snapped my fingers; rallied myself; laughed aloud. It was a forced laugh, and the echo of it in the old chamber jarred upon my ear. I walked to the window, and tried to discern the landscape through the glass. It was pitch darkness, and howling storm without; and as I heard the wind moan among the trees, I caught a reflection of this accursed visage in the pane of glass, as though it were staring through the window at me. Even the reflection of it was thrilling.

How was this vile nervous fit, for such I now persuaded myself it was, to be conquered? I determined to force myself not to look at the painting, but to undress quickly and get into bed. I began to undress, but in spite of every effort, I could not keep myself from stealing a glance every now and then at the picture; and a glance was now sufficient to distress me. Even when my back was turned to it, the idea of this strange face behind me, peeping over my shoulder, was insupportable.

I

What,

I threw off my clothes and hurried into bed, but still this visage gazed upon me. had a full view of it from my bed, and for some time could not take my eyes from it. I had grown nervous to a dismal degree. I put out the light, and tried to force myself to sleep-all in vain. The fire gleaming up a little, threw an uncertain light about the room, leaving, however, the region of the picture in deep shadow. thought I, if this be the chamber about which mine host spoke as having a mystery reigning over it? I had taken his words merely as spoken in jest; might they have a real import? I looked around. The faintly-lighted apartment had all the qualifications requisite for a haunted chamber. It began, in my infected imagination, to assume strange appearances,—the old portraits turned paler and paler, and blacker and blacker; the streaks of light and shadow thrown among the quaint articles of furni ture gave them more singular shapes and characters. There was a huge dark clothespress of antique form, gorgeous in brass, and lustrous with wax, that began to grow oppressive to me.

"Am I then," thought I," indeed the hero of the haunted room? Is there really a spell laid upon me, or is this all some contrivance of mine host to raise a laugh at my expense ?" The idea of being hag-ridden by my own fancy all night, and then bantered on my haggard looks the next day, was intolerable; but the very idea was sufficient to produce the effect, and to render me still more nervous. "Pish," said 1, "it can be no such thing. How could my worthy hot imagine that I, or any man, would be so worried by a mere picture? It is my own diseased imagination that tor. ments me."

I turned in bed, and shifted from side to side, to try to fall asleep, but all in vain ; when one cannot get asleep by lying quiet, it is seldom that tossing about will effect the purpose. The fire gradually went out, and left the room in darkness. Still I had the idea of that inexplicable countenance gazing and keeping watch upon me through the gloom,-nay, what was worse, the very darkness seemed to magnify its terrors. It was like having an unseen enemy hanging about one in the night. Instead of having one picture now to worry me, I had a hundred. I fancied it in every direction," And there it is," thought I," and there! and there! with its horrible and mysterious expressions still gazing and gazing on me! No, if I must suffer this strange and dismal influence, it were better face a single foe than thus be haunted by a thousand images of it."

Whoever has been in a state of nervous agitation must know, that the longer it continues the more uncontrollable it grows. The very air of the chamber seemed at length infected by the baleful presence of this picture. I fancied it hovering over me. I almost felt the fearful visage from the wall approaching my face-it seemed breathing upon me. "This is not to be borne," said I, at length, springing out of bed: "I can stand this no longer,—I shall only tumble and toss about here all night; make a very spectre of myself, and become the hero of the haunted chamber in good earnest. Whatever be the ill consequence, I'll quit this cursed room, and seek a night's rest elsewhere,-they can but laugh at me, at all events, and they'll be sure to have the laugh upon me if I pass a sleepless night, and show them a haggard and wo-begone visage in the morning.”

All this was half-muttered to myself, as I hastily slipped on my clothes, which having done, I groped my way out of the room, and down stairs to the drawingroom. Here, after tumbling over two or three pieces of furniture, I made out to reach a sofa, and stretching myself upon it, determined to bivouac there for the night. The moment I found myself out of the neighbourhood of that strange picture, it seemed as if the charm were broken. All its influence was at an end. I felt assured that it was confined to its own dreary chamber, for I had, with a sort of instinctive caution, turned the key when I closed the door. I soon calmed down, therefore, into a state of tranquillity; from that into a drowsiness, and, finally, into a deep sleep; out of which I did not awake until the housemaid, with her besom and her mattin song, came to put the room in order. She started at finding me stretched upon the sofa, but I presume circumstances of the kind were not uncommon after hunting-dinners in her master's bachelor establishment, for she went on with her song and her work, and took no further heed of me.

The mystery of the picture is explained (very lamely, we think) in the story of the young Italian.

The second series of these tales consists principally of sketches connected with literary life in London; and considering the author's extensive acquaintance with "that many headed-beast, the Town," we confess we think he might have turned his knowledge to more account. Here, again, the

introductory part-a bookseller's dinner-is the most spirited, and the descriptions of the laughing partner, and the carving partner, will probably occasion some amusement in the Row. On the whole, however, this series of tales is flat, and unsuited to the genius of the author.

Nor do we much admire the Italian Banditti. The anecdotes from which the tales have been expanded are already familiar to the public, many of them being to be found in the Annual Register for 1821 and 1822, and in Maria Graham's Three Months in the Mountains near Rome. There is a want of variety about them; and, except in the Painter's Adventure, little that is calculated to excite any interest. We therefore gladly escape to the fourth series, the Money-Diggers,-Extracts from the Papers of Diedrich Knickerbocker, the historian of New York, where the author regains something of the freshness and brilliancy of former times. In fact, he seems to move with a more firm and confident step the instant he approaches Mannahatta, and seems never to feel himself so much at home as amidst the sleepy tranquillity of the old Dutch cities, conjuring up visions of departed Burgomasters and Fraus,-indulging in endless jokes on pipes and pantaloons,— sketching those rude and magnificent scenes which form such a piquant contrast to the stiffness and listlessness of their inhabitants,—or colouring with his own inimitable ironical playfulness the wild traditions which linger in those lonely recesses. Tales of pirates, and hidden treasure, form the subject of the present series:-and as we dislike the system of mutilating a story by short extracts, we shall quote nearly the whole of the legend entitled the Devil and Tom Walker. Tom is a miser, and has the misfortune to be married to a termagant as avaricious as himself,

One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short cut homewards, through the swamp. Like most short cuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them ninety feet high, which made it dark at noonday, and a retreat for all the owls of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black, smothering mud; there were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bull-frog, and the water-snake; where the trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned, half rotting, looking like alligators sleeping in the mire.

Tom had long been picking his way cautiously through this treacherous forest; stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots, which afforded precarious foot-holds among deep sloughs; or pacing carefully, like a cat, along the prostrate trunks of trees; startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild-duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground, which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strong holds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they had thrown up a kind of fort, which they had looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the old Indian fort but a few embankments, gradually sinking to the level of the surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp.

It was late in the dusk of evening when Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused, therefore, awhile to rest himself. Any one but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely, melancholy place, for the common people had a bad opinion of it, from the stories handed down from the time of the Indian wars, when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here, and made sacrifices to the evil spirit. Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of the kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree toad, and delving with his walking staff into a mound of black mould at his feet. As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould, and, lo! a cloven scull, with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it, lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death-blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foot-hold of the Indian warriors.

"Humph!" said Tom Walker, as he gave the scull a kick, to shake the dirt from it.

"Let that scull alone!" said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes, and beheld a great black man seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree. He was exceedingly surprised, having neither heard nor seen any one approach; and he was still more perplexed on observing, as well as the gathering gloom would permit, that the stranger was neither negro nor Indian. It is true, he was dressed in a rude halfIndian garb, and had a red belt, or sash, swathed round his body; but his face was neither black nor copper-colour, but swarthy and dingy, and begrimmed with soot, as if he had been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair, that stood out from his head in all directions, and bore an axe on his shoulder.

He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes.

"What are you doing on my grounds?" said the black man, with a hoarse growl. ing voice.

"Your grounds!" said Tom, with a sneer, "no more your grounds than mine; they belong to Deacon Peabody."

Look

"Deacon Peabody be dd," said the stranger," as I flatter myself he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins, and less to those of his neighbours. yonder, and see how Deacon Peabody is faring."

Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewn through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody, an eminent man, who had waxed wealthy by driving shrewd bargains with the Indians. He now looked round, and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great man of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe. The one on which he had been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of Crowninshield; and he recollected a mighty rich man of that name, who made a vulgar display of wealth, which it was whispered he had acquired by buccaneering.

"He's just ready for burning!" said the black man, with a growl of triumph. "You see I am likely to have a good stock of fire-wood for winter."

"But what right have you," said Tom, "to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber ?" "The right of a prior claim," said the other. "This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon the soil."

And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold ?" said Tom.

"Oh, I go by various names. I am the wild huntsman in some countries; the black miner in others. In this neighbourhood I am known by the name of the black woodsman. I am he to whom the red men consecrated this spot, and in honour of whom they now and then roasted a white man, by way of sweet-smelling sacrifice. Since the red men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists: I am the great patron and prompter of slave-dealers, and the grand master of the Salem witches."

"The upshot of all which is, that, if I mistake not," said Tom, sturdily, are he commonly called Old Scratch."

"The same, at your service!" replied the black man, with a half civil nod.

you

Old Scratch endeavours to drive a bargain with Tom for the discovery of a large treasure concealed by the pirates,-on the usual conditions; but Tom, who has taken some time to consult on the subject, declines the offer, principally because his wife urges him to comply with it. The lady then sets out to conclude an arrangement for herself, taking with her her silver. spoons, and never returns.

Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property, that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place, but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly, but she was nowhere to be heard. The bittern alone responded to his voice, as he flew screaming by, or the bull-frog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring pool. At length, it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot, and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the cla mour of carrion crows, that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked up, and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron, and hanging in the branches of the tree, with a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. He leaped with joy; for he recognized his wife's apron, and supposed it to contain the household valuables. "Let us get hold of the property," said he, consolingly to himself," and we will endeavour to do without the woman."