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CALEB WILLIAMS.

precipitation has obliged me to say. Do with me as you please! I ask no favour. Death would be a kindness compared to what I feel!" Such were the accents dictated by my remorse. I poured them out with uncontrollable impetuosity; for my heart was pierced, and I was compelled to give vent to its anguish. Every one that heard me, was petrified with astonishment. Every one that heard me, was melted into tears. They could not resist the ardour with which I praised the great qualities of Falkland; they manifested their sympathy in the tokens of my penitence.

How shall I describe the feelings of this unfortunate man? Before I began, he seemed sunk and debilitated, incapable of any strenuous impression. When I mentioned the murder, I could perceive in him an involuntary shuddering, though it was counteracted partly by the feebleness of his frame, and partly by the energy of his mind. This was an allegation he expected, and he had endeavoured to prepare imself for it. But there was much of what I said, of which he had had no previous conception. When I expressed the anguish of my mind, he seemed at first startled and alarmed, lest this should be a new expedient to gain credit to my tale. His indignation against me was great for having retained all my resentment towards him, thus, as it might be, to the last hour of his existence. It was increased when he discovered me, as he supposed, using a pretence of liberality and sentiment to give new edge to my hostility. But as I went on he could no longer resist. He saw my sincerity; he was penetrated with my grief and compunction. He rose from his seat, supported by the attendants, and-to my infinite astonishmentthrew himself into my arms!

"Williams," said he, "you have conquered! I see too late the greatness and elevation of your mind. I confess it is my fault and not yours, that it is to the excess of jealousy that was ever burning in my bosom, that I owe my ruin. I could have resisted any plan of malicious accusation you might have brought against me. But I see that the artless and manly story you have told, has carried conviction to every hearer. All my prospects are concluded. All that I most ardently desired is for ever frustrated. I have spent a life of the basest cruelty, to cover one act of momentary vice, and to protect myself against the prejudices of my species. I stand now completely detected. My name will be consecrated to infamy, while your heroism, your patience, and your virtues will be for ever admired. You have inflicted on me the most fatal of all mischiefs; but I bless the hand that wounds me. And now," -turning to the magistrate-" and now, do with me as you please. I am prepared to suffer all the vengeance of the law. You cannot inflict on me more than I deserve. You cannot hate me more than I hate myself. I am the most execrable of all villains. I have for many years (I know not how long) dragged on a

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miserable existence in insupportable pain. I am at last, in recompense for all my labours and my crimes, dismissed from it with the disappointment of my only remaining hope, the destruction of that for the sake of which alone I consented to exist. It was worthy of such a life, that it should continue just long enough to witness this final overthrow. If, however, you wish to punish me, you must be speedy in your justice; for, as reputation was the blood that warmed my heart, so I feel that death and infamy must seize me together."

I record the praises bestowed on me by Falkland, not because I deserved them, but because they serve to aggravate the baseness of my cruelty. He survived this dreadful scene but three days. I have been his murderer. It was fit that he should praise my patience, who has fallen a victim, life and fame, to my precipitation ! It would have been merciful, in comparison, if I had planted a dagger in his heart. He would have thanked me for my kindness. But, atrocious, execrable wretch that I have been! I wantonly inflicted on him an anguish a thousand times worse than death. Meanwhile endure the penalty of my crime. His figure is ever in imagination before me. Waking or sleeping, I still behold him. He seems mildly to expostulate with me for my unfeeling behaviour. I live the devoted victim of conscious reproach. Alas! I am the same Caleb Williams that, so short a time ago, boasted that, however great were the calamities I endured, I was still innocent.

Such has been the result of a project I formed for delivering myself from the evil that had so long attended me. I thought that, if Falkland were dead, I should return once again to all that makes life worth possessing. I thought that, if the guilt of Falkland were established, fortune and the world would smile upon my efforts. Both these events are accomplished; and it is now only that I am truly miserable.

Why should my reflections perpetually centre upon myself!-self, an overweening regard to which has been the source of my errors! Falkland, I will think only of thee, and from that thought will draw ever-fresh nourishment for my sorrows! One generous, one disinterested tear I will consecrate to thy ashes! A nobler spirit lived not among the sons of men. Thy intellectual powers were truly sublime, and thy bosom burned with a godlike ambition. But of what use are talents and sentiments in the corrupt wilderness of human society? It is a rank and rotten soil, from which every finer shrub draws poison as it grows. All that, in a happier field and purer air, would expand into virtue and germinate into usefulness, is thus converted into henbane and deadly nightshade.

Falkland thou enteredst upon thy career with the purest and most laudable intentions. But thou imbibedst the poison of chivalry with thy earliest youth; and the base and lowminded envy that met thee on thy return to thy native seats, operated with this poison to

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THE NOVEL hurry thee into madness. Soon, too soon, by this fatal coincidence, were the blooming hopes From that moof thy youth blasted for ever. ment thou only continuedst to live to the phantom of departed honour. From that moment thy benevolence was, in a great part, turned into rankling jealousy and inexorable precaution. Year after year didst thou spend in this miserable project of imposture; and only at last continuedst to live long enough to see, by my misjudging and abhorred intervention, thy closing

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END OF CALEB WILLIAMS.

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THE BIVOUAC.

BY J. MALCOLM.

"Our bugles sang truce, for the night cloud had lower'd,
And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Captain Howard, | when, at the close of a long day's march, our corps received orders to halt. The words were echoed by Lieutenant Douglas and myself; for we were much fatigued, and had tasted nothing since the morning. The period of which speak was shortly after the battle of Waterloo, and we were then on full march to Paris. We had got the start of our baggage so far that there was no hope of its overtaking us that night; but, as the weather was extremely fine, the prospect of a bivouac was rather pleasant than otherwise.

We halted on the skirts of a forest, where the sound of the billhook soon announced that the hewers of wood were at work; and in a short time afterwards innumerable little sparks began to spring up through the camp, like glowworm lights, then broke forth into blazing fires, which were speedily crowned with camp. kettles, and the operations of cooking commenced with a zeal, activity, and earnestness, unknown to civilised life at home.

Notwithstanding the many hardships and privations incident to the camp, there is a charm about it which more than compensates for these, and a romance rather to be felt than defined. To see large bodies of men without any fixed habitation, and with no covering but the sky, sitting beneath the stars of night, grouped around their forest fires, and "telling old tales beneath a tree," reminds us of the wild freedom of the patriarchal state, and the picturesque modes of life which we associate with antedi

CAMPBELL.

luvian times and oriental lauds. We seated ourselves on the ground, and dispatched our dinner, or rather our supper, by the light of a blazing fire which our servants had kindled for us, and began to drown our cares in some light but exhilarating country wines, with which our canteens were pretty well supplied.

The fatigues of the day soon passed away from us, as they seemed also to have done from those around us; which appeared from their frequent and careless laugh, as they sat around their little fires, with their arms piled beside them. As our party consisted of three, a number alike confidential and conversational, we felt no inclination to sleep; and general and common-place topics being discussed, the conversa. tion became of a more particular and persona nature, and began to take a retrospective cast. Then came reminiscences of strange adventures which had happened to ourselves, or which we had heard related by others. This vein is infectious; and, after I had contributed to the amusements of the night by the narrations of the most striking incidents with which the life of a soldier supplied me, Douglas, the earlier parts of whose life had been passed at sea, began a follows:

"I shall not trouble you with the monotonous variety, if I may so express myself, of a sealife, with its storms, and calms, and shipwrecks, &c., but shall merely relate to you two scenes which I witnessed on the deep, the impressions of which no time or circumstances will ever erase from my mind.

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"In returning home from a voyage to the polar seas, our ship was in danger of being shut up among the ice, or crushed by its large masses floating around us. Our escape. I think, was owing to a smart gale of wind, which, springing up in the right quarter, enabled us to thread our way through the dreary labyrinths of icebergs, and to gain the open sea, when suddenly a large ship hove in sight from among the ice, from the perils of which she seemed, like ourselves, to have just escaped.

"The sight of a vessel in such circumstances is always hailed with delight, as it takes away, in part at least, that load of loneliness from the heart produced by a long voyage, for there is nothing so lonely as the sea. The desert hath its green spot and its solitary palm; but on the blue and boundless ocean there is no fixed object on which the eye can rest, or the spirit repose, but an endless undulating plain, without rock or hill, or tower or tree, to break its solitude or to brighten its desolation.

"In hopes of having her company on the homeward voyage, we bore away towards the vessel, and came up with her in a few hours, but were much surprised at not seeing any of her crew upon deck, except the man at the helm. It seemed as if, overcome with their toils and struggles among the ice, they had all gone to sleep. Upon approaching nearer we hailed her repeatedly, but none replied, not even the steersman, who was lashed to his post; and it was not until we came close alongside that we beheld the fearful phenomenon of a ship under full sail without a crew, and with a dead man at the helm. He seemed to have been frozen to death, and glued to his post; but the fate of the crew was veiled in the shadow of mystery, over which conjecture hovered in vain. It was among the secrets of the great deep, not to be revealed until time and tide shall cease to flow, and until the sea give up its dead!

"The other event to which I alluded took place while I was on a homeward voyage from the West Indies. We sailed from Kingston in company with another vessel bound for Liverpool, and for several days kept close together. We were proceeding on our voyage with a fair and moderate breeze, which, however, gradually began to increase, and towards evening blew a heavy gale. The sea was running very high, and the other vessel might be two or three miles ahead, but we still had glimpses of her amidst the waves, as she bounded away into darkness, which at length concealed her from our view.

"About the middle-watch of the night, a light suddenly sprang up upon the sea, some miles ahead, which every moment became larger and more vivid, and at length burst forth into vast and sheeted flames, by which we discovered the form of the ill fated ship enveloped in the devouring element. We crowded all sail in order to come up with her, and, if possible, to save her crew, thus hanging betwixt

fire and flood. Meanwhile the flames ascended along the mast, and, quickly extending to the sails, showed her scudding before the wind on wings of fire. We had now come so near that we could discover the forms of her crew, hurrying to and fro in distraction, and flitting like spectres amid the wild and blood-red gleams; when all at once, and with a tremendous explosion, and a flash that made the whole horizon leap into light, she shot up through the sky, in a tree of fire, whose branches spread over the heavens, and whose burning leaves were strewed over the stars, from which they gradually melted away in a fiery shower, leaving us in tenfold darkness. For some moments I stood spell-bound in silent horror, musing upon the fearful sight I had just beheld - a fragment of the world of life, a crowd of human beings in one instant scathed into ashes, and scattered on the winds. Next morning the storm had died away, and the sea had subsided into a calm, but the ship and her crew had passed away like the fabric of a vision, and left not a wreck behind.'"

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"After the short peace of 1814," continued he, "when the battle of Toulouse had opened a path into France so long shut against the English, I obtained leave of absence, and returned home by the way of Paris, then the centre of attraction, the theme of tourists, the topic of general conversation, and the wonder of the world. I arrived in the great city, whirled about in its vortex, and mingled with its crowds, who appeared to be eagerly engaged in affairs of moment-all hurrying to and fro with bustling anxiety, indicative of important pursuits. I soon discovered, however, that all this earnestness of purpose and goading on of hope were exerted in the feverish pursuit of mere bubbles, of pompous trifles, exhibiting a specimen of the practical bathos, the furious tame; making Shakspeare's description of human life more literally true there than elsewhere,, as being 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'

"Having seen the show, I began to tire of Paris, as of a 'populous solitude,' which disturbed without interesting me. One evening I had sauntered across the Pont-Neuf, and strolled about till I found myself at the Palace of the Luxembourg. I entered its gardens, and continued to perambulate its walks until dusk, when I again passed into the streets, and insensibly wandered into the more ancient parts of the city. While passing along its dark and narrow defiles, I gradually fell into a reverie on the antiquity of the things around me, contrasted with the ever-varying aspects and evanescence of human life. I sighed to think how long these fabrics of clay, frail as they

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THE NOVEL were, had continued to exist after the hands that reared them had crumbled into dust. I began to reflect how often that part of the city had changed its inhabitants, and from age to age had emptied its short-lived generations into the great receptacle of the grave. This train of thought reminded me of the Catacombs, over part of which I was even then treading; and it immediately occurred to me that I would go and explore their long-extended realms and rueful wastes. Upon arriving at the place of descent, I found several strangers assembled there for the same purpose with myself; and having procured a guide, and lighted our tapers, we descended into the 'silent city of the dead.' The cold earthy blasts of mortality met us as we entered its dread abodes, and proceeded, by the glimmering light.' along the low-browed vaults, which stretched away on every side into the dark and seemingly interminable labyrinths of the grave.

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"In a fit of abstraction I insensibly strayed from the party along one of the subterraneous passages, where the bones of the dead are piled up to the roof in pillars, and stretch along the aisles of this temple of mortality,-pale, glimmering, and ghastly. Absorbed in melancholy reverie, Behold,' sighed I, as I gazed upon the columns of cross-bones, crowned with skulls, extending in dark and endless vistas through this valley of the shadow of death, the final consummation of human affairs, and all that remains of the once busy and countless generations of a great city, here hushed in eternal silence! Yet each of these mouldering frameworks piled around me once enclosed within its frail tenement a brain to think and a heart to feel, an eye that beamed with love and that sparkled with joy, and an ear that drank in the harmony of sweet sounds; but where now are those countless perceptions, and that world of thoughts and feelings? Have they only passed from the earth, or are they lost for ever? And do we hope and fear, and toil and sweat, and groan through the weary pilgrimage of life, for no better end at last than to lie down and moulder away into the cold earth, and be as if we had never been ?'

"While I stood bewildered in these melancholy reflections, the taper suddenly dropt from my hand, and was extinguished, leaving me in

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utter darkness. Instinctively 1 uttered a loud shriek, which a moment's reflection prompted me to repeat, in hopes that it might reach the ears of some of the party from whom I had strayed; but it called back no reply but the deep and sullen echoes of the tomb, for my companions had speedily satisfied their curiosity, and had ascended from the vaults.

"To guard against the possibility of accidents, when a party returns from the Catacombs, they are not allowed to separate until it be ascertained that their number is complete; and if any are missing, the vaults are immediately searched; but of this circumstance I was not then aware, and consequently believed that I A cold perspiration broke was lost for ever. over my whole body; I stood fixed to the spot in a trance of horror and despair. A thousand hideous forms of darkness seemed to flit past me-the skulls, with their eyeless sockets. seemed to scowl upon me-my head became dizzy-the vaults, with their skeleton pillars, spun round me in the dance of death-my brain reeled, and I fell against a crashing pile of mortality, where I swooned away.

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My return to sensibility was accompanied by the usual horrors attendant in such cases upon the struggles of nature; but just as the lights had ceased to flash in my eyes, and the strange unearthly sounds to ring in my ears, I became conscious of the faint echo of distant voices. A gleam of hope came over me, and starting to my feet, I uttered a wild cry, which rung like a death-knell through the vaults. Terrified at the sound of my own voice, I listened a moment, and heard my call answered from far away. In a short time the voices became more audible, and faint streaks of light began to stream through the gloom. I had been missed upon the ascent of the party, who had returned in search of me, and by whom I was thus rescued from one of the most horrible situations to which human nature can be exposed."

When Howard had concluded the narration of his adventure, our watch-fires began to pale in the dawn, and never were the returning light and the fresh breath of the morning more welcome to me, as they chased away the horrors of these wild tales, which pressed like an incubus on my breast.

END OF THE BIVOUAC.

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