dered rather dizzy by the height: however, feeling some unusual sensations on reaching the summit, he immediately took it for granted that he was "going suddenly;" accordingly, deliberately preparing himself for his departure, first by sitting and then by lying down, he "composed his decent head to breathe his last." His calmness and business-like manner, I suppose, gave him an appearance of wilful premeditation to the act; for, according to Nuncle's account, he had no sooner intimated to his companion what was about to happen, than the other, falling into one of those suicidal fits of exaltation, so prevalent in Germany, burst out with," It is one sublime tort! and here is one sublime place for it! I shall die too!" Whereupon, without more ceremony, he pulled a little vial of Prussic acid, or some other mortal compound, from his waistcoat pocket, and was proceeding to swallow the contents, when the dying man, jumping up, knocked down the bottle with one hand, and Mr. Schwärmer himself with the other, and then, totally forgetting his own extremity, walked off in double quick time, nor ever stopped till he reached his own door. Two full hours had elapsed since the occurrence, but between the walk home and his moral indignation, he had hardly cooled down when we arrived. "I'll tell you what, Frank," he said, on ending his story, "I never liked the four crossroads, and the stake through a suicide's body, in England; but when I saw Mr. Swarmer going to drink the deadly poison, hang me if I was n't tempted to drive my own walking-stick into his stomach ! Perhaps, sir," said Markham, you are not aware that there was formerly a Club of Suicides in this very country. They were bound by a vow not only to kill themselves, but to induce as many persons as they could to follow their example. I have not heard that they made any proselytes, but they all died by their own hands, the last blew out his brains, if he had any, in 1817." They ought to have been hung in effigy," said my uncle. "A great many suicides," continued Markham, were attributable to Werther, who brought felode-se quite into vogue." "That Vairter," said my uncle, "ought to have been ducked in a horsepond." "He was a mere fiction, sir, a creature of Goethe's," said Markham. "Then I would have had Gooty ducked himself," said my "Even at this day," said Markham, "there is Bet uncle. 66 No, tine, an authoress, who proclaims that one of her earliest wishes was to read much, to learn much, and to die young." "And did she kill herself, sir?" inquired my aunt. madam, she married instead; but her bosom-friend, dressed in white with a crimson stomacher, stabbed herself, in such a position as to fall into the Rhine. Then again there was Louisa Brachmann, alias Sappho, so inclined to die young, that at fourteen years of age she threw herself from a gallery, two stories high." "And was killed on the spot, of course?' said my aunt, with a gesture of horror. No, madam, she lived to throw herself, five-and-twenty years afterwards, into the Saale." "How very dreadful!" shuddered out my aunt. "Yes, madam, to English notions; but her German biographer, or rather apologist, says, that her first flight in her fourteenth year was only a lively poetical presentiment of that which weighed her down in her fortieth, namely, the beggarliness of all human pursuits compared with the yearnings of the soul.” "She must have been a forward child of her age," remarked my uncle, "to have seen and known the world so soon." "Now I think of it," said my aunt, “I remember reading in the work of a female traveller in America, that on describing to a lady her emotions at the sight of Niagara, the other asked her if she did not feel a longing to throw herself down, and mingle with her mother earth?” "That was a German lady, you may be sure," said Markham, or at least of German origin. The fact is, these people kill themselves for anything or nothing: for instance, I should be loath to trust a sentimental Prussian with himself, with his pipe out and an empty tobacco-bag. Young or old, 't is all one. Only the other day there was a reward offered in the Rheinund-Mosel-Zeitung for the body of an aged, gray-haired man, describing his cap, his suit of hoddan gray, his blue woollen stockings, and buckled shoes. One would have thought that such a John Anderson might have had patience to toddle down' the hill of life like a Christian; but no, at the end of the advertisement there was an intimation that he was supposed to have thrown himself into a neighboring river! Talking of drowning, the same element is fatally used, as I have been well informed, in a very different manner. As ball-cartridge is not always to be got at, a common soldier inclined to self-murder, after loading his musket with powder, 66 pours a quantity of water into the barrel; by which his head, provided it be held close to the muzzle, is frightfully blown to atoms. One fact more and I have done, for it literally outHerods Herod. A doctor, whose name I forget, but it was given in the newspapers, not only determined to kill himself, but to bury himself into the bargain! With this view he dug a grave, in which he shot himself; the pistol, at the same time, firing a sort of mine filled with gunpowder, by the explosion of which, though the experiment only partially succeeded, he expected to be covered with earth and sand.” And, for my part," began my uncle, "if I had been the coroner for Germany "In Germany, my good sir, there is no coroner." Egad! I thought as much," cried my uncle; “and, as it seems to me, no schoolmaster or clergyman either, or the people would know that, as Shakespeare says, the Almighty has fixed a canon against self-slaughter." "Seriously," said Markham, "this propensity to suicide is a reproach which the Germans have to wipe away before they can justly claim the character of a moral, religious, or intellectual people. The more so, as it is not the vulgar and ignorant, but the educated and enlightened, scholars, doctors, literati, men that would be offended to be denied the title of Philosophers, women that would be shocked not to be called Christians, who are thus apt to quench the lamp of life in unholy waters, or to shatter with a profane bullet 'the dome of thought, the palace of the soul.' And now, Gerard, as a sermon concludes the service, these grave strictures shall end my letter. My best love to Emily and yourself. Yours ever truly, F. SOMERVille. P.S. We kept Markham to dine with us, after which he and I took a stroll to the other side of the Moselle Bridge, where the sight of a little chapel, brilliantly lighted up, led to a conversation on the religious characteristics of the natives. According to our friend, there is a good deal of bigotry extant in Coblentz, and a very active Propaganda, with a professional layman or two at its head, who aim at conversions wholesale and retail. "As an instance,” said he, "there was an English family residing here, all Protestants. The head of it was occasionally absent on his travels, and one fine day at his return home, hey, presto! - he found his wife, her aunt, and all his children, Roman Catholics!" By a whimsical coincidence, the anecdote had scarcely left his lips, when, turning a corner into the high road, who should we come upon plump, trudging up the hill at her best pace, with a huge, unlighted wax-taper in her hand, but Martha, my aunt's maid! The surprise pulled us all up short; but before I could utter a word, she pitched her candle into the hedge, wheeled rightabout with the alacrity of a Prussian soldier, fairly took to her heels, like a mad cow, and, aided by the descent, was out of sight in " no time at all." Markham, who understood the matter, burst into a loud laugh, and then explained to me the whole mystery; for which, if you are curious on the subject, you may consult the enclosed verses. OUR LADY'S CHAPEL. A LEGEND OF COBLENTZ. WHOE'ER has crossed the Mósel Bridge, Just on the summit of St. Peter's ridge, By night, or at high noon, you see it shine, Yet, when you please, at morn or eve, go by But on Saint Peter's Hill The lights are burning, burning, burning still. To furnish forth the candles ready-made; And sells, both long and short, the waxen tapers, To give of the mysterious truth an inkling, How kind of blessed saints in heaven, Where none in marriage, we are told, are given, To interfere below in making matches, And help old maidens to connubial catches! The truth is, that instead of looking smugly (At least, so whisper wags satirical) The votaries are all so old and ugly, No man could fall in love but by a miracle! However, that such waxen gifts and vows Is vouched for by a story most veracious. A certain Woman, though in name a wife, Her truant husband having been away Nine years, two months, a week, and half a day, Sick, single-handed with the world to grapple, |