horrible mysteries of man's inner body, and that the "living soul" I had just talked to was not to be recognised by the sight as having ever borne the external characteristics of a human being.

'The light was suddenly shut out-and yet so slowly as to inflict upon my sight that which will ever stand between it and the sun. Fragment after fragment rushed furiously from the roof, but yet so thickly intermingled, that I cannot at this moment say whether or not the mass of roof was disunited at all in its descent. Then the bursting of the walls—the grating of the stones and bricks as they were ground into powder-the rending of the planks and wooden partitions-the hissing sound of the lamp and brass-work-the damp crush of human bodies-and the yells of mortal agony from a hundred hearts, which seemed wilder and stronger even than the inanimate sounds that had called them into being-to choke, conquer, and silence them for ever!

'All was dark. A weight was upon my shoulders which an Atlas could not have moved; my left leg was fixed between two planks, and, as I discovered by feeling with my hand before the pain announced it, it was broken and distorted; the side outline of the narrow chamber in which I sat would have nearly described a right-angled triangle, the hypothenuse leaning on my back; above, I could extend my hand to its full length without obstacle, but the aperture could not have admitted anything thicker than the arm; before me, was a wall apparently of solid iron; and below, and at the sides, the surface, consisting of iron, brick, stones, and wood, was broken into narrow interstices.

"When the united sounds I have described had subsided into a distant hum, a single voice rose upon my ear: it was the voice of the lady mentioned above; it was one wild, shrill, unbroken scream. I do not know how long it lasted; I do not even know whether it was a human voice at all; it did not stop for breath; its way was not impeded, like that of the rest, by the intervention of the ruins; minute after minute it continued, and every minute

it became wilder and shriller, piercing like an arrow through my head and heart, till my tortured senses found temporary relief in insensibility.

'My fainting-fit probably lasted a considerable time; for, when I recovered, it was long before I could understand my situation, or recall anything that had happened to my memory. At length, piece by piece, the truth came before me, and I could feel the cold sweat trickling down my brow. The voice I had heard existed probably only in imagination, for it was now silent. A low deep sound was humming in my ears, which I could at length distinguish to be the simultaneous groans of human beings, separated from me either by distance or some thick and deadening barrier. My ear endeavoured in vain to divide it into its component parts, and to recognise the voices of those I knew: and there was something more horrible in this vague mysterious monotony, than if it had been distinctly fraught with the dying accents of the one I loved best on earth. I felt as if my lot must be bitterer than that of the rest. I was alone-I was cut off even from communion of suffering; while they, I imagined, were together, within the sound of one another's voices, and the touch, even, of one another's clothes, received some relief from the idea of total abandonment, of agony unimagined and unshared.

'My senses, I believe, began to totter, for I complained aloud of my lonely fate: I knew that I was behaving absurdly, but I could not help it; I beat the iron walls of my dungeon with my clenched hands till they were wet with blood, and shrieked aloud with a voice rendered terrific by the fury of despair. The voices of the rest appeared to be startled into silence at the sound, or perhaps it fell upon their ears like a cry of comfort and hope-an answer to their groans from the surface of the earth. After a pause, I heard another dull, heavy sound, like that produced by a muffled drum; it was in reality a drum, and probably beat by one of the band, as a more powerful means of awakening attention than his own voice. The sound, in such circumstances, was inexpressibly awful;

and when the hand that smote the instrument in so unaccustomed a scene wandered by habit into a regular tune, my sensations were exaggerated into a species of horror which I can liken only to that which might be supposed to visit a religious mind on witnessing some shocking act of impiety.

It may seem a species of insanity to mention it; but when the roll of the drum, and the sound of human voices had ceased, and after I had been left for a considerable time, as it were, to myself, even in these circumstances of terror, and loneliness, and mystery, I possessed a species of knowledge which the denizens of the surface would have deemed equally useless and unattainable to those underground: I knew the hour of the night. Like the idiot who mimicked, at the proper intervals, the audible measurement of time, after the clock was removed which had taught him the practice, my inclination for drinking, which had been converted by habit into an almost unconquerable passion, returned at the accustomed time of its gratification. In spite of surrounding circumstances, I fancied myself in the midst of my dissolute companions, in the scene of our coarse and vulgar revels. I afterwards sank by degrees into a sort of stupor, from which I was awakened by the light of heaven streaming full in my face, through an aperture made in the ruins by my deliverers. The apparent apathy, or, as some term it, philosophy, which I displayed, has been attributed to wrong causes. The truth is, that although at first my body was awake, my mind was almost wholly insensible; it recovered its consciousness by very slow degrees, and it was not until I was left alone at night, that I became completely sensible of my deliverance.'

[It may be gratifying to our readers to be informed, that the young man, who was thus saved from the ruins of the theatre, afterwards recovered from the injuries he had sustained. His most constant attendant during his confinement in the hospital was the young female whom he alludes to in his narrative, who had been dug out of

the ruins almost unhurt, and who had not been married, as he had been led to suppose at the time that the accident happened.]

ANECDOTES OF THE ORIGIN OF WORDS.

LADY is a word which gives us a most pleasing idea of the customs of our Saxon ancestors. The term is compounded of two Saxon words, leaf or laf, signifying a loaf of bread, and dian, to give or to serve. Now, it must be known, that it was the fashion in times of old for those families whom Heaven had blessed with affluence, to give away regularly a portion of bread to those poor neighbours who might stand in need of assistance, and on such occasions, the mistress of the household herself officiated, distributing with her own hands the daily or weekly dole. Hence was she called the laf-dy, or the bread-giver; and in course of time, the word was abbreviated to its present form. A writer of the last century, in reference to this derivation of lady, observes that 'the meaning is now as little known as the practice which gave rise to it; yet it is from that hospitable custom that, to this day, the ladies, in this kingdom alone, serve the meat at their own tables.' It is to be feared that, in the great manorial families referred to, even this remnant of the old custom is not now very general. It was certainly so, however, in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's time, for we are informed by her late noble editor, that, in her youth, she received regular instructions in the art of carving or serving meat. And Lady Mary was a duke's daughter. But, changed as such fashions may now be, there are still, we are happy to think, many true ladies in this much-abused world of ours-many generous bread-givers-many who feed the hungry and befriend the friendless.

It has always puzzled us very much to tell why the

letter e in certain words should have the sound of o, or rather, why the words in question were not spelt with the last of these letters instead of the first. One of the words to which we refer is sew. Etymology supports us in our suggestion, that this word should properly be spelt with an o, for it is actually derived from the word sow-a swine, a pig, a grunter. The thing came about in this way:-sus (in the second case suis) is the Latin for a sow, and the bristles of this animal being formerly used for sewing instead of needles-as they are by shoemakers in our days-the word suo, to sew, was founded upon sus. Of course, our English sew came from the Roman suo, with which it is identical in meaning. Is it not odd to think that the term designative of the elegant, and not less useful than elegant employment of ladies' fingers, should be derived from the name or rather the bristles of a hog?

We have now to notice two words of very curious etymology, and of very similar meaning. These are, parasite and sycophant-terms descriptive severally of characters of a very contemptible kind. Parasite is compounded of the Greek words para, near, and sitos, corn; and Potter, in his Antiquities of Greece, presents the following account of the way in which the compound term acquired its present signification. After telling us that the name of parasiti at first denoted simply those persons who held the honourable office of collectors of the corn allotted for public sacrifices, the public storehouse,' he continues, where they kept the grain, was called parasition. Diodorus, the Sinopesian, says, that in every village of the Athenians, they maintained at the public charge certain parasiti or grain-collectors, in honour of Hercules; but afterwards, to ease the commonwealth of this burden, the magistrates obliged some of the wealthier inhabitants to take them to their tables, and entertain them at their own cost; whence this word seems in later ages to have signified a trencherman, a flatterer, or one that for the sake of a dinner conforms himself to every man's humour? This is a very rational