came on, and in brief space the Atlantic was "speaking Dutch" at the bows of An Torc. The two Gaugers awoke skaithless on the wide sea: fear held them mute; Dhomuil treated them kindly, stood across the Bay of Biscay, and giving them five pounds in dollars, landed them at Corunna. By the pilotage of a Highland student going to Salamanca they reached Oporto; thence to London; and there ends the story of "John Rose the Gauger."

THE WANDERING JEW'S TALE.

LIST awhile, and I will tell

Crimes that caus'd a doom so fell

As that which curses me:

Know, then, that as we led afar
The Saviour unto Golgotha,

Where, as the ban of all our race,

The cross was rear'd tow'rds heav'n's face,
(Great God! 'tis agony!)

Spiteful I struck the Lord of lords,
And added then these scornful words :
"King of the Jews, support your tree!
The vengeance of your blood shall be,
If this is crime, repaid on me,
And on my future progeny!"

Oh! that I'd died upon the spot-
My name has since become a blot,
And I a wand'rer lonely;
For I, of all the scatter'd race,
Shall never see my Maker's face,
As I was branded only.

Long will the calm unruffled look
Of Jesus, when my curse he spoke,
Dwell in my tortur'd soul;

A sense of long and lasting care,
Years of unutterable despair,
Prophetic thrill'd the whole
Of my still agonizing heart—
For life and I must never part!
I'd scoff'd him in the judgment-hall,
My voice was loudest of them all,

My words were most severe;

I'd seen him scourg'd until the blood
Well'd from his deep wounds in a flood;

And then to taunt him had I stood

The lowly Saviour near!

'Twas I that urg'd when Pilate's breast
Ideas of mercy once express'd-
'Twas I that urg'd and cried,
Loudest amid ten thousand tongues,
Heaping upon him wrongs on wrongs,
"He must be crucified !"

When I had spoke, a silence dread
Upon the multitude was shed,

And then a murmuring hum,
Like distant thunder, 'gan arise,
Increasing till a thousand cries
Shook the blue canopy of skies,

And struck the Roman dumb!
To mercy still was he inclined-
"Twas then I hardened Pilate's mind,
"Twas then again I cried-

I know not what thus urged me on,
To speak against the Almighty's Son-
"He must be crucified!"

There was a hum when I spoke first,
But now ten thousand voices burst
Upon the deafened ear;
A prince of the Sanhedrim I,
And ruling chief of Nephtali,
How had I cause to fear?

"Twas pressing on towards Calvary,

He, whisp'ring, spoke the words to me

"

'Stay, unbeliever-scoffer-stay,

And tarry till the judgment-day!"

As thunderbolt upon my head,
I felt the sentence Jesus said!

Where could I rest my recreant head?
I sought a place my tears to shed.
"To live for ever-ne'er to die-
To linger-live eternally!"

Such were my thoughts as I madd'ning rov'd
Amid the fair scenes that I once had loved;
A figure passed-it was brother-

Dearer to me there lived no other,

And in his love I thought my grief to smother;
But horror gathered in his eye,

And from his lips escaped a cry
That told the deepest agony!

He cried and sank upon the ground;

I kissed his cheek and bathed his brow;
Methinks I see his horror now:-

Cold dews his paly forehead bound;
I tried to fan his parting breath,
And keep him from the jaws of death;
But when I knew he was no more,

Wretched, my very clothes I tore :

Agonizing, on my head

Ashes I profusely spread;

Though useless-passing vain for me

Would ashes or would sackcloth be,

For I must live eternally!

When morning dawned, I woke to roam,
And hurried to mine ancient home;
There did I pass a mirror gay,
That stood conspicuous in my way;
I looked to see if man might trace
Aught of my sorrow in my face;

If the dread lightning, in its flashes,
Had seared within, or fired to ashes
All that without and visible lay-
Great God! I fainting turned away;
Upon my burning brow is spread
A scorching cross of fiery red!
Not Sinai, when the seer beheld
The face of heaven's high King unveiled,
Shot redder lightnings from its brow
Than are the flames that mark me now!
"Alas! my brother!" was my cry,
"This-this indeed is infamy!
This is the ban of heaven on me,
And this inflicted death to thee!"
Quickly I bound the fatal mark,
And wrapt around this covering dark.
Years passed on years-matters not how-
And ne'er have I unveiled my brow,
Except my vengeance to display
Upon the Roman's darkest day,
When Alaric stirred up the fray,
For hatred did I owe to them-
They stormed and burnt Jerusalem!

Alas! how dimly set the sun,

And murky rose the shades of night O'er Sion, when the day was done,

That told the issue of the fight.
Jerusalem! and had their doom
Already to thy people come?

And were the Roman eagles spread?
Those eagles hovered o'er thine head!
How often would thy slaughtered king
Have gathered thee beneath his wing;
But thou hadst scorned the power that gave
For thee Messiah to the grave!

I marked where meteors hovered high,
And dire portents along the sky;
Then said I to the wretches near,
"Fly to the mountains of Judea,
And bid them fall upon your head;
Seek Herman and Amana's height,
Let Masada veil ye in night,
And spare you sorrows infinite!"
Thus was fulfilled what Jesus said.
There was an universal sound

That echoed all the city round,

Ere it was levelled with the ground—
The murmuring of despair;
For on the welkin's face were seen
Such things as never yet had been,
Whole armies in the air!

And on the sod the wrath of God

Did level and destroy

Those walls once blest, by him loved best, His chosen seat of joy!

Fair city! how thy princely bowers,
Thy temple's gates, and mighty towers,
Thy glittering tribes, and martial powers,
Fell by the Roman hand;

But few were spared to weep thy fall,
And I more wretched than them all,
Outcast of every land!

I have sought danger, but to try
In it a sad variety;

But, oh! I must not-cannot die!
And oft my mind essayed to find

Things ne'er to mortals known;
I toiled by night, and to my sight
Appeared the sophist's stone,
With power to turn to glitt'ring ore
Metals that were as dross before;
Yet was my ardent spirit less

Sated with hardly-earned success

Than wond'ring alchemist would guess.

Where be the friends that once were mine?
Cold-cold within the tomb!
Cropped as the fig-tree and the vine,
They singly met their doom!
Where is the wife that used to play
Upon the harp's wild strings-

The infants frolicsome and gay?

Oh! death has lent them wings;

As falls the stately tree of Lebanon,

Their homes have vanished, and their tents are gone!

He had bound her hands with a strong cord, and she sat passively upon a low wooden chair awaiting her fate: her long black hair hung damp and matted over her shoulders, and shaded the full symmetry of her unclothed bosom. Though her face was livid, and her eye glassy and fixed, with no expression unless that of uttermost despair, her transcendent, her almost unearthly beauty seemed unimpaired. At a short distance from this unmoving helpless human form was Ferdinand, stooping over the fire, and with his breath fanning the embers into a blaze. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his shoulders, and every vein of his large muscular arms was swollen almost to bursting. He was busily engaged in watching the progress of a small iron bar, the end of which was thrust among the coals, and was heating to a red heat. Presently he turned towards the female, and in a calm low tone, frightfully contrasting with the maniac glare of his eye, and livid hue of his face, he said, "Augusta; it is nearly ready. Prepare." Though the victim appeared wrapt in a deathlike stupor the words of Ferdinand reached her sense. Her features collapsed, her eyelids closed as if to shut out some terrible object, and a shiver con

vulsed her frame. But she spake not. The powers of volition, of resistance, of speech, were dead within her, and her body was a mass of still passiveness, of motionless inanity. You might have murdered her father or torn her infant into living fragments before her eyes, and, if even conscious of the deed, she would not have opposed it. The misery with which her soul was enveloped, rendered her insensible to the impression of external objects. Wretchedness was concentrated within herself. She was at the point where human nature cannot be conscious to a higher state of suffering. Never did a form in which lingered a spark of the vital principle wear so completely the semblance of death as that of Augusta, when the low husky tones of Ferdinand struck like a death sentence upon her ear. The man thought her lifeless, for, starting up, he scrutinized her features closely, exclaiming, "Ha!-by hell, she is dead, and has escaped me." He seized her wrist, as if to search for a pulsation, but dropped the limb with a shudder of horror,-" Polluted wretch; Í cannot touch thee." He listened eagerly, but could distinguish no sound of respiration. "Then she is dead!-Yet let me be sure, quite sure. I would not lose my victim: no, no, she is far too precious." A small looking-glass was near; he seized it, applied it to her white lips, and after a while withdrew it. With savage glee he shouted when he saw the polished surface of the mirror faintly dimmed. "Ha, ha! the breath of life is there! right, right, my girl, live on yet longer: I have much need of thee. But how goes on my brave bit of iron?" he continued, as if speaking to himself; and, returning to the fire, he deliberately kneeled down to examine the bar which, for some mysterious purpose, he was heating.

The apartment was illuminated by no other light than that of the embers in the grate. A red glare fell upon the persons of Ferdinand and his victim, leaving the boundaries of the room in deep shadow, and producing that peculiar effect which Rembrandt alone knows how to convey upon canvass. The harsh dark features of Ferdinand, as he bent forward in his unhallowed occupation, seemed to quiver in their outline, and to vary into all kinds of monstrous forms and expressions as the flickering uncertain blaze altered the effects of light and shade. Now his countenance was elongated to preternatural and hideous dimensions; and anon its breadth was distorted into some foul shape of which words cannot give a description. Then, as the flame subsided for a moment, or shot up with renewed vigour, the head would vanish, or diminish, and become undefined, like an optical illusion, or the phantom of a sick man's dream, or would dilate and start into dreadful distinctness with some new and fiendish characteristic which left its image stamped in horror upon the brain. You could have fancied the face to be that of a goule, told of in eastern story as feeding upon the corruption of the grave.

The iron was now glowing. Ferdinand drew it forth with a ghastly smile of exultation, even such as we may image to have sat upon the grim visage of Milton's stupendous incarnation of Death, at the moment when the monster heard "his famine should be filled." He looked at his victim, and at the instrument as if calculating its efficiency for his purpose. "The heat may be too fierce," he muttered.