and weight of a double ducat. He could hardly believe his eyes, and even seemed to doubt whether it was gold, until Olivier told him to fetch his scales and tests. Having convinced himself of the purity of the metal, he prostrated himself at the feet of Olivier, and with the most fervent entreaties, besought him to impart to him the means by which he wrought this marvel.

'This,' replied Olivier solemnly, 'is nothing. I can do a million times as much: mine art enables me to change the ordinary metal into gold, by merely placing them in juxta-position with each other.' Nicholas stared. Yes,' continued the Frenchman, 'it is only necessary for me to lay a purse of gold near to a purse of lead, and I can instantly extend, by the power of sympathy, the virtue of one to the other. Nay, let me sit but for a quarter of an hour upon a chest filled with gold, and bring an equal weight of lead into the room, and both shall be gold; and this power, too, I am sure, you possess. All that is wanting is the knowledge how to exercise it.'

Nicholas renewed his entreaties, and urged so vehemently, that Olivier, with a great show of reluctance, at length promised to make him the master of his secret. The following night, at twelve, (the only hour at which the spell would work,) was fixed for the proof; and Olivier took his leave.

At midnight, on the next night, Olivier was introduced by Nicholas, with abundant caution, to the chamber in which his treasure was locked. The Frenchman first began to explain to the merchant that it was by sitting on the gold that the charm worked; and this he accounted for by telling him that it was one of the secrets of nature, known only to adepts, that the vital principle of humanity, which had a near resemblance in its nature to the essential spirit of which gold was composed, was seated in that part of the human body which thus came in contact with the metal.‡ • Have you plenty of lead in the room?' asked Olivier.

This notion, which prevailed among the quacks who pre

Nicholas pointed out to him certain bags, filled with it, which he said corresponded in weight with the bags of gold he had in the chest.

Open your chest, then,' said Olivier.

Nicholas obeyed, and it was found filled to the brim with bags of coin, the contents of which were marked on the outside of each.

Olivier seated himself on the gold, and, with the usual contortions and grimaces, began to utter the incantations which were to effect the change. Nicholas stood opposite to him, with a candle in his hand, and his eyes and mouth open in dumb astonishment.

On a sudden a sound of soft music was heard; a light blue vapour began to fill the room, Nicholas began to sneeze, the vapour grew thicker and darker, the candle went out, and the old miser, throwing himself upon the floor, began to roar with all his might, 'Thieves! Murder!" His house was too well barricadoed for any one to hear his cries, which alone broke the silence. As soon as he could command himself so far, he went down stairs to get another light, and having found it, he called his daughter. No answer was returned, nor could he see her in any part of the house. With the courage which despair inspires, he hastened back to the room, and, to his amazement and horror, discovered that his chest, its contents, and the Armenian, had wholly disappeared. To account for it was impossible: the windows and doors were fastened, and the only rational conclusion he could come to was that the devil had carried away his gold tended to be philosophers, is finely touched upon by the author of "Hudibras ;'

The learned Rabbins of the Jews

Write, there's a bone, which they call Luez,
1' th' rump of man, of such a virtue,
No force in nature can do hurt to;
And therefore, at the last great day,
All th' other members shall, they say,
Spring out from this, as from a seed
All sorts of vegetals proceed.

From whence the learned sons of art,
Os sacrum justly style that part.'

Hudibras, Part iii. Canto 2.

and the adept in the same blue vapour which had nearly choked Flunk himself. But his daughter was missing too; and as he did not believe that she could have shared the same fate, the poor man was in a sea of wild and desperate thoughts.

On the following day he received a visit from a man who was as different as possible in appearance from the Armenian. He wore a clerical habit, and was a fat, jolly-looking, beardless person. He told him he had heard that his daughter had quitted his house.

‹ Yes, mynheer,' replied the disconsolate Flunk, ' and my gold too.'

I am a man of few words,' said the stranger, and can point out a method by which you may regain both.' Name them, for the love of Heaven!' rejoined Nicholas.

'Consent to your daughter's marriage with an họnest painter who lives next door, and give her a moderate dowry now; and assure her a share of your fortune when you die.'

And on these terms shall I have my chest again?'
You shall.'

'Then I consent.'

Come then with me,' said the stranger. He led the old man to a notary's, where the contract of marriage between Clement and Barbara was prepared: the church was at the next door; the young couple were at the altar; they signed the contract, the priest gave them his benediction, which Nicholas (not with the best grace in the world) sanctioned.

They returned towards his house, and when they had reached the door, he said, 'But where is my chest?'

'Where it has always been, my good sir,' said Olivier; in your own garret.'

Nicholas ran up stairs faster than ever fat man ran before; and in his garret, in the very spot where he had last seen it, his chest was standing. He opened it, and found it still as full as ever. He was thunderstruck. 'But how is all this?' he asked.

'It is thus,' said Olivier. Through a small hole in the wall, Clement and I made our way into this your treasury. We contrived to fit up a screen, which COvered that recess in which your chest stands, and which we painted so as to resemble the wall behind it. Yonder it stands, on the other side of the room; and you cannot deny but that it is well painted, and ingeniously devised. When you came hither with that Armenian adept, whom I had the honour to personate, the blue vapour which issued from the hole in the wall, prevented your seeing me lift up the screen which hid your chest, and also from seeing your daughter and myself pass through into Clement's room, by an aperture, which the art of painting has also sufficed to conceal. The rest you know. It is impossible to deny that you have been most notably deceived, but not so much as you deserve, since you got your gold back safe. And for myself, by way of apology for the share I have had in this affair, all that I can say, is, I would do twice as much, at any time, to serve as honest a lad as Clement, and to take in so ill-natured a father as you proved yourself before this adventure, but as I trust you will be no more. For one thing, at least, I'll answer :-you won't be cheated, by a trick of common juggling, to believe that lead may be made into gold.'

Nicholas was half disposed to be angry, but the recovery of his money had made him so happy, that he could not keep up his resentment. He performed his promise to the young couple. Clement got into practice as a painter, and, perhaps because he could then do without it, had all the old man's wealth at his death. Olivier, when he had seen them quite comfortable, returned to the vagabond life he most delighted in; and although his friends saw him not often, they never forgot the adept, to whom they were indebted for their good fortune.

THE OPENING OF THE SECOND SEAL.

And there went out another horse that was red, and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and there was given unto him a great sword.' Revelations.

No sound arises from the silent earth,

No billows murmur from the pathless deep,
A calm like that before the thunder's birth–
A stillness-as the summer's noontide sleep-
Subdued to silence rests the forest's mirth;

And welling fountains unmelodious weep;
And sinks the thronged and stately city's hum;
And guarded tower and battlement are dumb.
Nor day-nor darkness-but that paly light,

Which rests upon the distant mountain yet,
When flits the bat before the shortened sight,
And eve's bright watch along the heaven is set;
Or, like that beam, amidst the noontide night,

When warring planets, in their courses met,
Have frowned eclipse, and half-seen stars arise,
With signs malific in the saddening skies.
Then looked I on the boundless ocean's space,

A liquid mirror seemed its waveless breast,
Nor gleamed one wing above its water's face,
Nor broke one passing keel its sullen rest;
I looked on morn's ethereal dwelling place,
And where the night-star shakes its dazzling crest,
But not a beam amidst those clouds of grey,
Announced the rising or the sinking day.

But, where from sight the northern heaven withdrew,
At intervals a streaming brightness played,
Such, as when rising on the wanderer's view,

The ore-fraught furnace glimmers through the shade;
And still more near that ruddy lustre grew,
And brighter yet its glancing rays displayed,
Till earth shone bright with one reflected red,
And ocean's waters laved a sanguine bed.
Anon, as if its mournful warning spoke

Of death, and woes, and murderous rapine nigh, A single trumpet through the silence broke,

With notes re-echoed from the mist-clad sky;