the lady's appearance. Something was said about a mock-funeral, and her having withdrawn from his company for awhile; but visitors came as before, and his wife returned to her household affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before; and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great internal thought, than of unhappiness. For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper which he acquired. His fortunes flourished beyond his earliest ambition; the most amiable as well as noble persons of the district were frequent visitors; and people said that to be at Otto's house, must be the next thing to being in heaven. But by degrees his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented impatience on his wife; but he again began to shew, that the disquietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary thing in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, and so he held himself secure if he treated her well; or whether he was at all times rather proud of her than fond; or whatever was the cause which again set his antipathies above his sympathies, certain it was that his old habits returned upon him; not so often indeed, but with greater violence and pride, when they did. These were the only times at which his wife was observed to shew any ordinary symptoms of uneasiness. At length, one day, some strong rebuff which he had received from an alienated neighbour threw him into such a transport of rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying with a loud voice, This treatment to me too! To me! To me, who if the world knew all. At these words, his wife, who had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary earnestness in the face, suddenly glided from the room. He, and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly; but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He made a movement of despair; but they went. There was a short passage, which turned to the right, into her favourite room. They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no answer. At last one of them gently opened it; and looking in, they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather to be in the middle of the room; only the face was towards the fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but received no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still received none. The figure stood dumb and unmoved. At last one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of a face. The clothes were standing upright by themselves. That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might be so, to moulder away. It was called the room of the Lady's Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long uninhabited, and at length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since; and nobody would venture to go near him, but a man who had the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who would accept them; for most of the neighbours held them in horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it; and the matter was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, said one day, that he would have a child of his own on purpose. His employer, however, died in a day or two. They did not believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, looking upon the latter as a sort of ogre, and upon his agent as little better, though a good-natured looking earnest kind of a person. It was said many years after, that this man had been a friend of the Bavarian's when young, and had been deserted by him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might. THE SOUL'S ERRAND. Ascribed to Sir W. Raleigh. GO, Soul, the body's guest, The truth shall be thy warrant ; Go, tell the Court it glows, Tell Potentates they live, Acting by others actions, Not strong but by their factions; Give Potentates the lie. Tell Age it daily wasteth, Tell Wit how much it wrangles Tell Physic of her boldness, So give them still the lie. Tell Fortune of her blindness, Tell Nature of decay, Tell Friendship of unkindness, Tell Justice of delay; And if they will reply, Then give them all the lie. + Tell Arts they have no soundness, Tell Schools they want profoundness, Give arts and schools the lie. Tell Faith 'tis fled the city, Tell how the country erreth, And when thou hast as I ROMAN GLADIATORS. From Valerius." -AT last however, we arrived in safety at the western gate of that proud Amphitheatre-the same around which I had, the night before, witnessed that scene of tumultuous preparation. One of the officers in waiting there, no sooner descried the equipage of Rubellia, than hẹ caused a space to be laid open for her approach, and himself advanced, with great civility, to hand her into the interior of the amphitheatre. Behold me, therefore, in the midst of the Flavian Amphitheatre, and seated, under the wing of this luxurious lady, in one of the best situations which the range of benches set apart for the females and their company, afforded. There was a general silence in the place at the time we entered and seated ourselves, because proclamation had just been made that the gladiators, with whose combats the exhibition of the day was appointed to commence, were about to enter upon the arena, and shew themselves in order to the people. As yet, however, they had not come forth from that place of concealment to which so many of their number were, of necessity, destined never to return; so that I had leisure to collect my thoughts, and to survey for a moment, without disturbance, the mighty and most motley multitude, piled above, below, and on every side around me, from the lordly senators, on their silken couches, along the parapet of the arena, up to the impenetrable mass of plebeian heads which skirted the horizon, above the topmost wall of the amphitheatre itself. Such was the enormous crowd of human beings, high and low, assembled therein, that when any motion went through their assembly, the noise of their rising up or sitting down could be likened to nothing, except, perhaps, the faroff sullen roaring of the illimitable sea, or the rushing of a great nightwind amongst the boughs of a forest. It was the first time that I had ever seen a peopled amphitheatre-nay, it was the first time that I had ever seen any very great multitude of men assembled together, within any fabric of human erection; so that you cannot doubt there was in the scene before me, enough to impress my mind with a very serious feeling of astonishment not to say of veneration. Not less than eighty thousand human beings, (for such they told me was the stupendous capacity of the building,) were here met together. Such a multitude can no where be regarded, without inspiring a certain indefinite indefinable sense of majesty; least of all, when congregated within the wide sweep of such a glorious edifice as this, and surrounded on all sides with every circumstance of ornament and splendour, befitting an everlasting monument of Roman victories, the munificence of Roman princes, and the imperial luxury of universal Rome. Judge, then, with what eyes of wonder all this was surveyed by me, who had but of yesterday, as it were, emerged from the solitary stillness of a British valley-who had been accustomed all my life to consider as among the most impressive of human spectacles, the casual passage of a few scores of legionaries, through some dark alley of a wood, or awestruck village of barbarians. Trajan himself was already present, but in no wise, except from the canopy over his ivory chair, to be distinguished from the other Consul that sat over against him; tall nevertheless, and of a surety very majestic in his demeanour: grave, sedate, and benign in countenance, even according to the likeness which you have seen upon his medals and statues. He was arrayed in a plain gown, and appeared to converse quite familiarly, and without the least affectation of condescension, with such patricians as had their places near him; among whom Sextus and Rubellia pointed out many remarkable personages to my notice; as for example, Adrian, who afterwards became emperor: Pliny, the orator, a man of very courtly presence, and lively, agreeable aspect; and above all the historian Tacitus, the worthy son-in-law of our Agricola, in whose pale countenance I thought I could easily recognize the depth, but sought in vain to discover any traces of the sternness of his genius. Of all the then proud names that were whispered into my ear, could I recollect or repeat them now, how few would awaken any interest in your minds! Those, indeed, which I have mentioned, have an interest that will never die. Would that the greatest and the best of them all were to be remembered only for deeds of greatness and goodness! The proclamation being repeated a second time, a door on the right hand of the arena was laid epen, and a single trumpet sounded, as it seemed to me, mournfully, while the gladiators marched in with slow steps, each man-naked, except being girt with a cloth about his loins -bearing on his left arm a small buckler, and having a short straight sword suspended by a cord around his neck. They marched, as I have said, slowly and steadily; so that the whole assembly had full leisure |