Newspaper Page Text
1 ‘’
terms, $2 Per Annum, in Adrance. Second Year, :% 40-Whole No, 90.
% wwmm fiffiiLi ioimiui. —mmm m Mwmw&, m .aits irb scehcis, mb to cmml ffiMsma
■[ £2: £ i-2 1 -’ •; •-.;, I -j
■ For Richards’ Weekly Gazette.
I THE STRANGER’S REQUIEM.
■ U;ir wanderer from thy boyhood's hearth,
I To homes that made thee native there. —
■ Since Love, vouchsafed thee at thy birth,
■ Still came to bless thee everywhere;
■ Alas ! that Love, who welcomed fond.
I Sliuuld still not find the strength to save,
H Denied to keep, —all power—beyond
■ Thy couch to watch —to deck thy grave.
■ T'vcre vain to say that thou wert dear,
V Where Worth and Virtue proudly shone;
P| More vain, if wo could keep thee here,
I To say thou haJ’st not from us gone ;
I What l fe, and b*ve, and ait could do,
K Were minister'd, alas! in vain—
I With la tering hearts, we could but view,
■ Not share, or soothe, or stay thy pair .
■ I So calm and placid, sweet and clear,
■ Thine ey s last gentle meanings shone,
I We kne%somc higher, happier sphere,
■ Already claimed thee for its own,
II Vet Lit those sorrows fill each breast,
■ That still our selfish loss deplore,
11 And grieved to see the being bless'd,
■ That ever bless and our hearts before.
I lllan.
B| Charleston , S’ C.
■ For Richards’ Weekly Gazette.
I MEMORY.
| Ah! do not grieve that we forget!
B Far happier, since, when all is known,
B Memory is but a long regret,
B That only t. 11s us we are lone;
B A raour. ful wat her, day by day,
B And hour by hour, that teacher wo ;
B Unknown, till Hope has scar'd away—
I Unlov’d, till Love himself is low !
this mni&miz a*
&. -fev i ‘ 5 >^ : tv. . ■">-,&
THE ASSIGNATION.
BY EDGAR A. POE.
“ Stay for mo ther'-! I will not f til
To meet thee in that hollow vale ”
[Extquy on the (tenth of his Wife, by Henry
Kins. Bishop of Chiehester.
111-fated ami mysterious n an !—bewil
dered in the brilliancy of thine own imagi
nation, and fallen in the flames of thine
own youth! Again in fancy I behold
thee! Once more thy form hath risen be
fore me—not—oh, not as thou art—in the
cold valley and shadow, but as thou shouldst
be —squandering away a life of magnifi
cent meditation in that city of dim visions,
thine own Venice, which is a star-beloved
Elysium of the sea, and the wide windows
of whose Palladian palaces look down with
a deep and bitter meaning upon the secrets
of her silent waters. Yes! 1 repeat it—as
thou shouldst be. There arc surely other
worlds than this —other thoughts than the
thoughts of the multitude—other specula
tions than the speculations of the sophist.
Who, then, shull call thy conduct into
question ! who blame thee for thy vision
ary hours, or denounce those occupations
as a wasting away of life, which were but
the overflowings of thine everlasting ener
gies?
!t was at Venice, beneath the covered
archway there called the Ponte di Sospiri,
‘bat I met for the third or fourth tune the
person of whom 1 speak. It is with a
confused recollection that I bring to mind
the circumstances of that meeting. Yet I
remember—ah ! how should I foiget ?—the
•Jeep midnight, the Bridge of Sighs, the
beauty of woman, and the Genius of Ro
mance that stalked up and down the nar
row canal.
It was a night of unusual gloom. The
great clock of the Piazza had sounded the
fifth hour of the Italian evening. The
square of the Campanile lay silent and de
serted, a.id the lights ih the old Ducal I’al
-3ce were dying fast away. I was return
ing home from the Piazetta, by way of the
Grand Canal. But as my gondola arrived
opposite the mouth of the canal San Mar
co, a female voice from its recesses broke
suddenly upon the night, in one wild, hys-
terical, and long-continued shriek. Start
led at the sound, l sprang upon my feet;
while the gondolier, letting slip his single
oar, lost it in the pitchy darkness, beyond
a chance of recovery, and we were conse
quently left to the guidance of the current,
which here sets from the greater into the
smaller channel. Like some huge and sa
ble-leathered condor, we were slowly drift
ing down towards the Bridge of Sighs,
when a thousand flambeaux flashing from
the windows, and down the staircases, of
the Ducal Palace, turned, all at once, that
deep gloom into a livid and preternatural
day.
A child, slipping from the arms of its
own mother, had fallen from an upper
window of the lofty structure into the deep
and dim canal. The quiet waters had clo
sed placidly over their victim ; and, al
though my own gondola was the only one
in sight, many a stout swimmer, already in
the stream, was seeking in vain upon the
surface, the treasure which was to be found,
9-las ! only within the abyss. Upon the
broad black marble flagstones at the en
trance of the palace, and a few steps above
the water, stood a figure, which none who
then saw, can have ever since forgotten.—
It was the Marchesa Aphrodite, the adora
tion of all Venice, the gayest of the gay,
the most iovely where all were beautiful,
but still the young wife of the old and in
triguing Mentoni, and the mother of that
fair chill, her fitst and only one, who now,
deep beneath the murky water, was think
ing in bitterness of heart upon her sweet
caresses, and exhausting its little life in
sti uggles to call upon her name.
She stood alone. Her small, bare and
silvery feet gleamed in the black mirror of
marble beneath her. Her hair, not as yet
more than half loosened for the night from
its ball-room array, clustered, amid a show
er of diamonds, round and round her clas
sical head, in curls like those of the young
hyacinth. A snowy-white and gauze-lute
drapery seemed to be nearly the sole cover
ing to her delicate form ; but the mid-sum
mer and midnight air was hot, suUen, and
still, and no motion in the statue-like form
itself, stirred even the folds of that raiment
of very vapor which hung around it as the
heavy marble hangs around the Niobe.—
Vet—strange to say ! —her large lustrous
eyes were not turned downwards upon that
grave wherein her brightest hope lay bu
ried, but riveted in a widely different direc
tion ! The prison of the Old Republic is,
1 think, the stateliest building in all Ve
nice—but how could that lady gaze so fix
edly upon it, when beneath her lay stifling
her own child ? Yon dark, gloomy niche,
too, yawns right opposite her chamber
window—what, then, could there be in it>
shadows, in its architecture, in its ivy
wreathed and solemn cornices, that the
Marchesa di Mentoni had not wondered at
a thousand times before 1 ! Nonsense! who
does not remember that, at such a lime as
this, the eye, like a shattered mirror, mul
tiplies the images of its sorrow', and sees
in innumerable far-off places, the wo which
is close at hand !
Many steps above the Marchesa, and
within the arch of the water-gate, stood, in
full dress, the Satyr-like figure of Mentoni
himself. He was occasionally occupied in
thrumming a guitar, and seemed ennuye to
the very death, as at intervals he gave di
rections for the recovery of his child.—
Stupified and aghast, I had myself no
power to move from the upright position I
had assumed upon first hearing the shriek,
and must have presented to the eyes of the
group a spectial and ominous appearance,
as with pale countenance and rigid limbs!
floated down among them in that funeral
gondola.
All efforts proved in vain. Many of the
most energetic in the search were relaxing
their exertions, and yielding to a gloomy
sorrow. There seemed but little hope for
the child; (how much less than for the
mother!) but now, from the interior of that
dark niche which has been already men
tioned as forming a part of the Old Repub
lican prison, and as fronting the lattice of
the Marchesa, a figure, muffled in a cloak,
stepped out within reach of the light, and,
pausing a moment upon the verge of the
giddy descent, plunged headlong into the
canal. As, in an instant afterwards, he
stood with the still living and breathing
child within his grasp, upon the marble
flagstones by the side of the Marchesa, his
cloak, heavy with the drenching water,
became unfastened, and, falling in folds
about his feet, discovered to the wonder
stricken spectators the graceful person of a
very young man, with the sound of whose
name the greater part of Europe was then
ringing.
No word spoke the deliverer. But the
Marchesa! She will now receive her
child she will press it to her heart—she
will cling to its little form, and smother it
with her caresses. Alas! another's arms
have taken it from the stranger— another's
arms have taken it away, and borne it
afar off, unnoticed, into the palace ! And
the Marchesa ! Her lip, her beautiful lip
trembles : tears are gathering in her eyes
—those eyes which, like Pliny’s acanthus,
are “soft and almost liquid.’’ Yes! tears
are gathering in those eyes—and see ! the
entire woman thrills throughout the soul,
and the statue has started into life! The
pallor of the marble countenance, the swell
ing of the marble bosom, the very purity of
the marbleffeet, we behold suddenly flush
ed over with a tide of ungovernable crim
son ; and a slight shudder quivers about
her delicate frame, as a gentle air at Napo
li about the rich silver lilies in the grass.
Why should this lady blush ! To this
demand there is no answer, except that,
having left, in the eager haste and terror of
a mother’s heart, the privacy of her own
boudoir, she has neglected to enthral her
tiny feet in their slippers, and utterly for
gotten to throw over her Venitian shoul
ders that drapery which is their due.—
What other possible reason could there
have been for her so blushing! for the
glance of those wild, appealing eyes! for
the unusual tumult of that throbbing bo
som! for the convulsive pressure of that
trembling hand!—that hand which fell, as
Mentoni turned into the palace, accident
ally, upon the hand of the stranger.—
What reason could there have been for
the low, the singularly low, tone of those
unmeaning w'ords which the lady uttered
hurriedly in bidding him adieu! “Thou
hast conquered,” she said, or the murmurs
of the water deceived me ; “ thou hast con- j
quered ; one hour after sunrise; we shall
meet; so let it be!”
The tumult had subsided, the lights had
died away within the palace, and the stran
ger, whom I now recognised, stood alone
upon the flags. He shook with inconceiv
ble agitation, and his eye glanced around
in search of a gondola. [ could not do
less than ofler him the service of my own;
and he accepted the civility. Having ob
tained an oar at the water-gate, we pro
ceeded together to his residence, while he
rapidly recovered his self-possession, and
spoke of our former slight acquaintance
in terms of great apparent cordiality.
There are some subjects upon w hich 1
take pleasure in being minute. The per
son of the stranger—let me call him by
this title, who to all the world w'as still a
stranger —the person of the stranger is one
of these subjects. In height, he might have
been below rather than above the medium
ri/.e : allhough there were moments of in
tense passion, when his frame actually ex
panded and belied the assertion. The light,
almost slender symme'ry of his figure,
promised more of that ready activity which
he evinced at the Bridge of Sighs, than of
that Herculean strength which he has been
known to wield without an effort, upon oc
casions of more dangerous emergency.
With the mouth and chin of a deity—sin
gular, wild, full, liquid eyes, whose shad
ows varied from pure hazel to intense and
brilliant jet—and a profusion of curling
black hair, from which a forehead of unu
sual breadth gleamed forth at intervals, all
light and ivory—his were features, than
which, 1 have seen none more classically
regular, except, perhaps, the marble ones
of the Emperor Commodus. Yet his coun
tenance was, nevertheless, one of those
which all men have seen at some period of
their lives, and have never afterwards seen
again. It had no peculiar, it had no set
tled, predominant expression, to be fasten
ed upon the memory ; a countenance seen
and instantly forgotten—but forgotten with
a vague and never-ceasing desire of recall
ing it to mind. Not that the spirit of each
rapid passion failed, at any time, to throw
its own distinct image upon the mirror of
that face, but that the mirror, mirror-like,
retained no vestige of the passion, when
the passion had departed.
Upon leaving him on the night of our
adventure, he solicited me. in what I thought
an urgent manner, to call upon him very
early the next morning. Shortly after sun
rise, 1 found myself, accordingly, at his
Palazzo, one of those huge structures of
gloomy, yet fantastic pomp, which tower
above the waters of the Grand Canal in the
vicinity of the Rialto. I was shown up a
broad, winding staircase of mosaics, into
an apartment whose unparalleled splendor
burst through the opening door with an ac
tual glare, making me blind and dizzy with
luxurionsness.
I knew my acquaintance to be wealthy.
Report had spoken of his possessions in
terms which I had even ventured to call
terms of ridiculous exaggeration. But as
f gazed about me, l could not bring myself
to believe that the wealth of any subject
in Europe could have supplied the prince
; ly magnificence which burned and blazed
around.
Although, as I say. the sun had arisen,
I yet the room was still brilliantly lighted
up. I judge from this circumstance, as
well as from an air of exhaustion in the
countenance of mv friend, that he had not
retired to bed during the whole of the pre
ceding night. In the architecture and em
bellishments of the chamber, the evident
design had been to dazzle and astound.—-
Little attention had been .paid to the decora
of what is technically called keeping, orto
the proprieties of nationality. The ye
wandered from object to object, and rested
upon none—neither the grotesques of the
Greek painters, nor the sculptures cf the
best Italian days, nor the huge carvings of
untutored Egypt. Rich draperies in every
’ part of the room trembled to the vibration
! of low, melancholy music, whose origin
was not to be discovered. The senses were
oppressed by mingled and conflicting per
-1 fumes, reeking up from strange convolute
! censors, together with multitudinous flaring
and flickering tongues of emerald and vio
let fire. The rays of the newly-risen sun
poured in upon the whole, through win
dows formed each of a single pane of crim
son-tinted glass. Glancing to and fro, in
a thousand reflections, from curtains which
rolled from their cornices like cataracts of
molten silver, the beams of natural glory
mingled at length fitfully with the artificial
light, and lay weltering in subdued masses
upon a carpet of rich, liquid-looking cloth
of Chili gold.
“Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!” laughed
the proprietor, motioning me to a seat as I
entered the room, and throwing himself
back at full length upon an ottoman. “I
see,” said he, perceiving that I could not
immediately reconcile myself to the bien
seance of so singular a welcome—“l see
you are astonished at my apartment, at
my statues, my pictures, my originality of
conception in architecture and upholstery !
absolutely drunk, eh, wijh my magnifi
cence ! But pardon me, my dear sir, (here
his tone of voice dropped to the very spirit
of cordiality,) pardon me for my unchari
table laughter. You appeared so utterly
astonished. Besides, some things are so
completely ludicious, that a man must
laugh, or die. To die laughing, must be
the most glorious of all glorious deaths !
Sir Thomas More—a very fine man was
Sir Thomas More—Sir Thomas More died
laughing, you remember. Also, in the
Absurdities of Ravisius Textor, there is a
long list of characters who came to the
same magnificent end. Do you know,
however.” continued he, musingly, “that
at Sparta, (which is now l’alaeochori,) at
Sparta, I say. to the west of the citadel,
among a chaos of scarcely visible ruins, is
a kind of socle , upon which are still legible
the letters AHMA. They are undoubtedly
part of TEAASMa. Now, at Sparta were
a thousand temples and shrines to a thou
sand diflerent divinities. How exceeding
ly strange that the altar of Laughter should
have survived all the oihers! But in the
present instance,” he resumed, with a sin
gular alteration of voice and manner, “I
have no right to be merry at your expense.
You might well haye been amazed. Eu
rope cannot produce anything so fine as
this, my little regal cabinet. My other
apartments are by no means of the same
order—mere ultras of fashionable insipidi
ty. This is better than fashion—is it not!
Yet this has but to be seen to become the
rage—that is, with those who could aftbrd
it at the cost of their entire patrimony. I
have guarded, however, against any such
profanation. With one exception, you aie
the only human being besides tnyself and
my valet, who has been admitted within
the mysteries of these imperial precincts,
since they have been bedtz/.ened as you
see!”
I bowed in acknowledgment—for the
overpowering sense of splendor and per
fume, and music, together with the unex
pected eccentricity of his address and man
ner, prevented me from expressing, in
words, my appreciation of what I might
have construed into a compliment.
“Here,” he resumed,arising and leaning
on my arm as he sauntered around the
apartment, “ here are paintings from the
Greeks to Cimabue, and from Cimabue to
the present hour. Many are chosen, as
you see. with little deference to the opin
ions of Virtu. They are all, however, fit
ting tapestry for a chamber such as this.—
Here, too, are some chef d'auvres of the
unknown great; and here, unfinished de
signs by men, celebrated in their day, whose
very names the perspicacity of the acade
mies has left to silence and to me. What
think you,” said he, turning abruptly as he
spoke, “ what think you of this Madonna
della Pieta !”
•• It is Guido's own !” 1 said, with all
the enthusiasm of my nature, for I had
been poring intently over its surpassing
loveliness. “It is Guido’s own! How
could you have obtained it! She is un
doubtedly in painting what the Venus is
in sculpture.”
“Ha!” said he thoughtfully, “the Ve
nus, the beautiful Venus! the Venus of
the Medici! she of the diminutive head
and the gilded hair! Part of the left arm
(here his voice dropped so as to be heard
with difficulty,) and all the right, are resto
rations; and in the coquetry of that right
arm lies, I think, the quintessence of all
affectation. Give me the Canova! The
Apollo, too, is a copy—there can be no
doubt of it—blind fool that 1 am, who can
not behold the boasted inspiration of the
Apollo! I cannot help—pity me! —I can
not help preferring the Antinous. Was it
not Socrates who said that the statuary
found his statue in the block of marble!
Then Michael Angelo was by no means
original in his couplet—
“ Non lial’ottimo arti.-ta alcun concetto
Clie un lnarmo solo in se non circun criva ’ ”
It has been, or should be, remarked,
that, in the manner of the true gentleman,
we are always aware of a difference from
the.bearing of the vulgar, without being at
once precisely able to determine in what
such difference conists. Allowing the re
mark to have applied in its full force to the
outward demeanor of tny acquaintance, I
felt it, on that eventful morning, still more
fully applicable to his moral temperament
and character. Nor can I better define that
peculiarity of spirit which seemed to place
him so essentially apart from all other hu
man beings, than by calling it a habit of
intense and continual thought, pervading
even his most trivial actions—intruding
upon his moments of dalliance, and inter
weaving itself with his very flashes of
merriment, like adders which writhe from
out the eyes of the grinning masks in the
cornices around the temples of Persepolis
l could ni t help, however, repeatedly
observing, through the mingled tone of
levity and si rmnity with which he rapid
ly descanted ipon matters of little impor
tance, a cert:i ll air of trepidation—a de
gree of nerve is unction in action and in
speech—an i tquiet excitability of manner,
which appeared to me at all times unac
countahie, an I upon some occasions even
filled me with alarm. Frequently, too,
pausing in the middle of a sentence whose
commencement he had apparently forgot
ten, he seemed to be listening in the deep
est attention, as if either in momentary ex
pectation of a visiter, or to sounds which
must have had existence in his imagina
tion alone.
It was during one of these reveries or
pauses of apparent abstraction, that, in
turning over a page of the poet and schol
ar Politan’s beautiful tragedy, “The Or
feo,” (the flrst native Italian tragedy,)
which lay near me upon an ottoman, 1
discovered a passage underlined in pencil.
It was a passage towards ttie end of the
third act —a passage of the most heart-stir
ring excitement —a passage w hich, although
tainted with impurity, no man shall read
without a thrill of novel emotion —no wo
man without a sigh The whole page
was blotted with fresh tears; and, upon
the opposite interleaf, were the following
English lines, written in a hand so very
different from the peculiar characters of
my acquaintance, that I had some difficul
ty in recognising it as his own :
Thou w as! that all to me, love,
For which my soul did pine—
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreathed w.th fairy Iruits and flowers ;
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last 1
Ah .Marry Hope, that didst arise,
But to he overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“ Onward !”—but o'er the Past
(Dim gulf ) my spir t hovering lies,
Mute—motionless —aghast!
For nlas ! alas! with me
The light of life is o'er
“ No more —no more—no more,”
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore.)
Shull bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
Now all my hours arc trances ;
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And whore thy footsteps gleams,
In what ethereal danees,
By what Italian streams.
Alas! for that accursed time
They bore thee o’er the billow.
From Love to titled ago und crime,
And an unholy pillow!—
From m •, and t orn our misty clime,
Where weeps the silver willow!
That these lines were written in English
—a language with which I had not be-
lieved their author acquainted—aflorded
me little matter for surprise. 1 was too
well aware of the extent of his acquire
ments, and of the singular pleasure he took
in concealing them from observation, to be
astonished at any similar discovery ; hut
the place of date, I must confess, occasion
ed me no little amazement. It had been
originally written London, and afterwards
carefully overscored —not, however, so ef
fectually as to conceal the word from a
scrutinizing eye. I say, this occasioned
me no little amazement, for I well remem
ber that, in a former conversation with my
friend, I particularly inquiied if he had, at
any time, met in London the Marchesa di
Mentoni, (who for some years previous to
her marriage had resided in that city,)
when his answer, if I mistake not, gave
me to understand that he had never visited
the metropolis of Great Britain. I might
as well here mention, that I have more
than once heard, (without, of course, giv
ing credit to a report involving so many im
probabilities,) that the person of whom I
speak, was, not only by birth, hut in edu
cation, an Englishman.
* * * * *
“Theie is one painting,” said he, with
out being aware of my notice of tile trage
dy, “there is still one painting which you
have not seen.” And throwing aside a
drapery, he discovered a full-length por
tiait of the Marchesa Aphrodite.
Human art could have done no more ir.
the delineation of her superhuman beauty.
The same ethereal figure which stood be
fore me the preceding night, upon the steps
of the Ducal I’alace, stood before me once
again. But in the expression of the coun
tenance, which was beaming all over with
smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible
anomaly!) that fitful stain of melancholy
which will ever be found inseparable from
the perfection of the beautiful. Her right
arm lay folded over her bosom. With her
left she pointed downward to a curiously
fashioned vase. One small, fairy foot,
alone visible, barely touched the earth;
and, scarcely discernible in the brilliant
atmosphere which seemed to encircle and
enshrine her loveliness, floated a pair of
the most delicately-imagined wings. My
glance fell from the painting to the ligu r e
of my friend, and the vigorous words of
Chapman’s Hussy D’ Ambois, quivered in
stinctively upon my lips :
“ He is up
There like a Homan statue ! He will staml
Till Death hath inmle him marble!”
“Come'” he said at length, turning to
wards a table of richly enamelled and mas
sive silver, upon which were a few goblets
fantastically stained, together with two
large Etruscan vases, fashioned in the
same extraordinary model as that in the
foreground of the portrait, and filled with
what 1 supposed to be Johannisberget.—
“Come,” he said abruptly, “ let us drink !
It is early—but let us drink. It is indeed
early,” he continued musingly,as a cherub
with a heavy golden hammer made the
apartment ring with the first hour after
sunrise: “it is indeed early—but what
matters it? let us drink! Let us pour out
an offering to yon solemn sun, which these
gaudy lamps and censers are so eager to
subdue!” And, having made me pledge
him in a bumper, he swallowed in rapid
succession several goblets of the wine.
“To dream,” he continued, resuming
the tone of his desultory conversation, as
he held up to the rich light of a censer one
of the magnificent vases, “to dream has
been the businessof my life. I have there
fore framed for myself, as you see, a bow
er of dreams. In the heart of Venice could
I have erected a better ? You behold
around you, it is true, a medley of archi
tectural embellishments. The chastity of
Foma is offended by antedeluvian devices,
and the sphynxes of Egypt are outstretch
ed upon carpets of gold. Yet the effect is
incongruous to the timid alone. Proprie
ties of space, and especially of time, are the
bugbears which terrify mankind from the
contemplation of the magnificent. Once 1
was myself a decorist; hut that sublima
tion of folly has palled upon my soul.—
All this is now the fitter for my purpose.
Like these arabesque censers,*my spirit is
writhing in fire, and the delirium of this
scene is fashioning me for the wilder vi
sions of that land of real dreams whither I
am now rapidly departing.” He here
paused abruptly, bent Ms head to his bo
som, and seemed to listen to a sound which
I could not hear. At length, erecting his
frame, he looked upwards, and ejaculated
the lines of the Bishop of Chichester :
“ Stay for me there ! I will not fail
To meet thee in that hollow vale “
In the next instant, confessing the power
of the wine, he threw himself at full-length
upon an ottoman.
A quick step was now heard upon the
staircase, and a loud knock at the door
rapully £iiecee;led. t was hasiening to an
ticipate a second disturbance, when a page
of Menloni’s household burst into the
room, and faltered out ,in a voice choking
with emotion, the incoherent words. “ My
mistress! —my mistress! Poisoned!—poi
soned! Oh, beautiful—oh, beautiful Aph
rodite!”
Bewildered, I flew to the ottoman, and
endeavored to arouse the sleeper to a sense
of the startling intelligence. But his limbs
were rigid—his lips were livid--his lately
beaming eyes were riveted in death. I
staggered back towards the table—my
hand fell upon a cracked and blackened
goblet—and a consciousness of the entire
and terrible truth flashed suddenly over
my soul.
flail !L a ® !B A IB TG
MAIIOMET.
[From Washington Irving’s “ Mahomet and his
Successors.”
PRODIGIES AT HIS BIRTH.
At the moment of his coming into the
world, a celestial light illumed the sur
rounding country, and the new-born child,
raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed—
“ God is great! There is no God but God,
and I am his prophet.”
Heaven and earth, we are assured, were
agitated at his advent The Lake Sawa
shrank back to its secret springs, leaving
its borders dry ; while the Tigris, bursting
its bounds, overflowed the neighboring
lands. The palace of Khosru, the king of
Persia, shook to its foundations, and seve
ral of its towers were toppled to the earth.
In that troubled night, the Kadhi, or Judge
of Persia, beheld, in a dream, a ferocious
camel conquered by an Arabian coarser. —
He related his dream in the morning to the
Persian monarch, and interpreted it to por
tend danger from the quarter of Arabia.
In the same eventful night, the sacred
fire of Zoroaster, which, guarded by the
Magi, had burned without interruption for
upwards of a thousand years, was sudden
ly extinguished, and all the idols in the
world fell down. The demons, or evil
genii, which lurk in the stars and signs of
the zodiac, and exert a malignant influence
over the children of men, were cast forth
by the pure angels, and hurled, with their
arch leaJer, Eblis, or Lucifer, into the
depths of the sea.
The relatives of the new-born child, say
the like authorities, were filled with awe
and wonder. His mother’s brother, an as
trologer, cast his nativity, and predicted
that he would rise to vast power, found an
empire, ami establish anew faith among
men. His grandfather, Abd al Motalleb,
gave a feast to the principal Koreishites,
the seventh day after his birth, at which he
presented this child, as the dawning glory
of their race, and gave him the name of
Mahomet (or Muhamed,) indicative of his
future renown.
HIS MIRACLES.
It is recorded by Al Maalem, an Arabian
writer, that some of Mahomet's disciples
at one time joined with the multitude in
this cry for miracles, and besought him to
prove, at once, the divinity of his mission,
by turning the hill of Safa into gold. Be
ing thus closely urged, he betook himself
to prayer, and having finished, assured his
followers that the angel Gabriel had ap
peared to him, and informed him that, should
God grant his prayer, and work the desiied
miracle, all who disbelieved it would be ex
terminated. In pity to the multitude, there
fore, who appeared to be a stiff-necked gen
eration,” he would not expose them to de
struction : so the hill of Safa was permit
ted to remain in its pristine state.
Other Moslem writers assert that Ma
homet departed from his self-prescribed
rule, and wrought occasional miracles,
when he found his hearers unusually slow
of belief. Thus we are told that, at one
time, in presence of a multitude, he called
to him a bull, and look from his horns a
scroll containing a chapter of the Koran,
just sent down from Heaven. At another
lime, while discoursing in public, a white
dove hovered over him, and, alighting on
his shoulder, appeared to whisper in his
ear—being, as Ire said, a messenger from
the Deity. On another occasion, he order-