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I started up, and walked hastily away to escape from it; but it pursued me, and to evade it by action, I loosed the goat, and endeavoured to drive it But it was too much fatigued; it sank again on the ground. I had `now, however, fulfilled my mission-I might return; but the view of the dreary boundlessness of the desert depressed my heart:-I despaired of ever recrossing it, and, with a fond fatality, lingered near the goat. I endeavoured to fill my mind with a vivid sense of the enormity of the suggested crime; but, in spite of myself, my sense of the guilt grew less, and less, and my appetite became furious. What avails!' I exclaimed, at the price of my own existence, to spare a life which must soon be terminated!' and drawing the knife from my girdle, I rushed on the goat; and plunged it into its neck. The blood spouted freely; I thought not of Moses or his laws; to me it was the stream of life-and pressing my parched lips to the wound, I drank with ravenous avidity. I was instantly seized with a delirious joy. I waited not for the life to depart; but kneeling down, I feasted on the flesh. A spirit of triumphant intoxication, a whirl of extravagant transport possessed me ;-my vigour seemed restored tenfold;-I sat and laughed over my victim. But the wickedness of thousands,—the inspiration and madness of all crime and outrage, had passed into me from the dedicated animal, and I rushed away in its strength.

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'At length 1 fell, and slept-I know not how long;

but when I awoke the intoxication was past, and the darkness and despair of inexpiable guilt was upon me. The depth of my fall—its utterness—its hopelessness— my eternal separation from the house of Israel,— all rushed upon my soul, and my first impulse was that of self-destruction. For this purpose I arose and sought for the place of my crime; for there were left the knife and the cord which had bound the goat. The spot I found; but they and the remains of the animal were gone. The demoniac spirit which possessed me, now boiled up in furious anger. Now it was evident man was near-he had robbed me of my prey; and my murderous passion turned from myself upon him.

A fierce and malignant desire of human destruction fastened upon me; I stalked along with the ravenous heart of a beast of prey; and it was not long before I descried, at the foot of a rocky range, a small Ishmaelitish encampment. Like the tiger, I lurked in the crevices of the crags till nightfall; and when I deemed sleep was upon the inhabitants, I rushed into the nearest tent. But the inmates were awake; at the sight of my wild visage, they fled shrieking; the alarm was communicated to the neighbouring tents, and I soon found myself in solitary possession of them all. At the sight of their soft couches, and various comforts, I was seized with envy and hatred intolerable. My first impulse was to set fire to the whole; but the wealth, the gold, the pearls, the rich robes,-treasures of these merchants, caught my

eye, and a grasping avarice instantly took hold of me. Thoughtless of danger-forgetting, for the time, my thirst after human life,-I immediately set about digging a pit at the foot of a rock to bury a kingly spoil, when the people recovering from their surprise, returned. At the sight of their numbers I fled-fled upwards to the rocks. They pursued me, accustomed as they were to follow the wild goat and the chamois ;-but I too had, from my youth, scaled the cliffs of the desert; and now a spell was on me which gave me supernatural power and speed, that annihilated all fear:-they pursued me in vain. I leaped from point to point, I swung by the pliant tree from ledge to ledge, and was gone. From that hour the terrors of my name spread through the wilderness-a thousand marvellous acts were attributed to me round the evening fires, and I became known as the "Demon of the Desert." For months I ranged from place to place, driven by the unquenchable spirit of the murderer, but unable to gratify my fiendish desires. My fame went before me, and I found myself for ever in solitude.

"Exasperated with fruitless endeavours, my wrath turned from man to God: I became filled, at once, with a spirit of blasphemy and of idolatrous fear. I knelt to the sun at his rising, and kissed my hand to the moon and stars nightly; to the Great Being who made them, I was full of hatred and defiance. In the vehemence of my impious rage, I traversed the deserts, and climbed by night to the lonely summits of Horeb and Sinai. There

no longer rested the dark and threatening clouds; no thunders shook the hills to their foundations; above, the clear sky, and the myriad stars shone silently, -around, all was one waste sea of bare and splintered peaks. It is awful to think of the madness of impiety which there possessed me. I defied the Eternal on the very mountain of his power; and called on him, if he lived, to reveal himself once more in his thunders! I listened,but a vast silence was around; the breeze only sighed carelessly on its way, as in mockery of my insignificance. I descended-my heart devoured with the most venomous feelings against God, and against Moses, whom I cursed as a juggling impostor.

"But if the sacred hills were quiet, not so was the earth beneath them. A sound of rushing wings swept by me; dark whispers were in my ears; shadowy shapes went to and fro, turning upon me their eyes gleaming with strange fires; and dusky forms arose out of the very ground before me. I had dared to challenge God; but I shrunk trembling from these dismal spirits! I fled to my cave for refuge; but where is the refuge for him who has surrendered the guardianship of the Author of Nature? Thunders shook the rocks over my head; crags fell crashing and echoing into the dell below; lightnings gleamed through the more than midnight darkness of my stronghold; and finally, a purple light issuing from the wall of solid granite, preceded the terrible Gods of the heathen, who passed slowly athwart the cavern.

They gazed silently upon me, but spoke not; as if their only purpose were to receive my homage. I beheld the colossal majesty of Baal; the imperial form, and lofty, yet smiling countenance of Ashtaroth, the queen of heaven-diademed with the horned moon, and a constellation of intensely beaming stars floating around her. Her steps were followed by the soft, voluptuous figure of Semel, the queen of love; and by Pibeseth, the blushing and shame-faced goddess, with her eyes on the ground. Then came the hideous Dagon rolling on his fishy rear; followed by the aged and stony-featured Chiun; the stern and savage gloom of Moloch, enveloped in the furnaceglow of his own flames; and lastly, Nehushtan, the haughty serpent, walking rather than gliding on his undulating volumes; lifting aloft his crowned head and human countenance; and clad in vivid scales, of scarlet, blue, and yellow, from beneath which streamed the radiance of internal fires. They passed; but I was not the more alone. The bottom of the cave swarmed with the pygmy forms of the Gemedim; and from every nook and chink of wall and roof, gleamed down the green eyes and goatish visages of the Shoirim, grotesque but hideous.

"The idolatrous passion was extinguished. It was impossible to worship these fearful things ;-it was terrible to be conscious of their presence. This vision rekindled my longing after human society, and human sympathies; but where were they to be found? Far around I was to the inhabitants what these beings were to me. I determined,

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