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French traders are said to have a proverb about English luck," and to believe that in commerce we are specially fortunate; nay, some of the more pious among them have been quoted as going so far as to say that, since we renounced the pope, the devil has made us exceptionally lucky,' he being the prince of this world. "But our hard-working long-sighted merchants know much better: their theory of chance is, that the best ship takes merchandise the most safely and most quickly, and that the best seamanship saves the ship from being wrecked much more than 'luck' does." Harapha, the giant of Gath, in Samson Agonistes, twits the blinded hero with having gained his miraculous strength by "black enchantments, some magician's art," and is thus answered:

"I know no spells, use no forbidden arts;

My trust is in the living God, who gave me

At my nativity this strength."

One

Urbain Grandier, as the shrewd soldier says in Vingt Ans après, was not a sorcerer; he was a savant, and that is quite another thing. "Urbain Grandier did not foretell the future; he was acquainted with the past, which is sometimes much worse." of the nuns who were implicated in the dismal Grandier procès, on avowing solemnly the innocence of the condemned priest, was taunted by M. de Laubordemont with speaking at the instigation of the devil. But, remorseful at her share in bringing about Grandier's condemnation, she answered that she had never been possessed of any demon—as all the nuns of Loudun on their own showing were -excepting the demon of revenge, and that it was no magical compact, but her own evil thoughts, which had led to at least her demoniacal possession.

Fiction must not be altogether left out in this cold collation of scraps and sundries. The admiring Parisians, in Victor Hugo's masterpiece, see absolute magic in the miraculous tricks of Esmeralda's goat-one of those learned animals which, in the Middle Ages, brought their instructors in peril of the stake. The sorceries of poor golden-hoofed Djali, however, are explained to be very innocent tricks, it being sufficient, in most cases, to hold the tambourine to the animal in such or such a way, to make it do what you wished.

Rebecca the Jewess, in Iranhoe, is tried for unlawful correspondence with mystical powers, and divers weighty charges are preferred against her, supported by circumstances either altogether fictitious or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant with suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they are told, and the sinister commentaries which the witnesses add to the facts. She has bewitched the Templar, and the credulity of the assembly greedily swallows every allegation in proof, however incredible. But when Rebecca, at the grand master's command, unveils, and looks

on her judges with a countenance in which bashfulness contends with dignity, her exceeding beauty excites a murmur of surprise ; and the younger knights tell each other, by significant glances, silently interchanged, that Sir Brian's "best apology was in the power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft." As another example from Scott, take the ballad-history whence he derived the plot of The Bride of Lammermoor, and portions of which he quotes in the Introduction to that tragedy of doom; remarking at the same time that it was "needless to point out to the intelligent reader that the witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a powerful mind over a weak and melancholy one" that is, in his version, of Lady Ashton over Lucy.

What says Luigi Pulci, as cited by Nello in Romola, as to the magic ascribed to a certain trenchant blade? "Dombruno's sharpcutting scimitar had the fame of being enchanted; but," says Luigi, "I am rather of opinion that it cut sharp because it was of strongly-tempered steel." It is in the same historical novel that, discussing with Tito the pledge of Fra Domenico to face the ordeal by fire, Spini exclaims, with a grimace intended to hide a certain shyness in trenching on this speculative ground, "But suppose he did get magic and the devil to help him, and walk through the fire, after all? how do you know there's nothing in these things? Plenty of scholars believe in them, and this Frate is bad enough for anything." Tito answers, with a shrug, that of course there are such things, but he has particular reasons for knowing that the Frate is not on such terms with the devil as can give him any confidence in this affair. "The only magic he relies on is his own ability." We may apply to the like purpose the changed conviction of the Hebrew outcasts, pestilent-stricken pariahs, to whose service Romola so nobly devotes herself: "The suspicion that Romola was a supernatural form was dissipated, but their minds were filled instead with the more effective sense that she was a human being whom God had sent over the sea to command them."

The Brown Woman in Hood's Tylney Hall, an accepted fortune-teller, owes her repute to a shrewd and subtle foresight as to the probable course of human affairs, the conscious result simply of her sagacity, experience, and knowledge of the world. Her dominion is but "the power of a strong mind over weak ones;" but her reputation invests her with respect and awe in the eyes of the vulgar, "while from servants and retainers it procured private goodwill and unbounded confidence, furnishing her with a circumstantial history of the past and present in exchange for the glimmerings she chose to give of the future." And these domestic confidences may be said, as in so many other such cases, to have constituted her working capital. Trust her, and such as her, to put it out at good interest.

FRANCIS JACOX.

THE HAUNTED BARONET

BY J. S. LE FANU,

AUTHOR OF UNCLE SILAS,' ETC.

CHAPTER XIII. THE MIST ON THE MOUNTAIN.

DOCTOR TORVEY was sent for early next morning, and came full of wonder, learning, and scepticism. Seeing is believing, however; and there was Philip Feltram living, and soon to be, in all bodily functions, just as usual.

Upon my soul, Sir Bale, I couldn't have believed it, if I had not seen it with my eyes,' said the Doctor impressively, while sipping a glass of sherry in the breakfast-parlour,' as the great panelled and pictured room next the dining-room was called. 'I don't think there is any similar case on record-no pulse, no more than the poker; no respiration, by Jove, no more than the chimneypiece; as cold as a lead image in the garden there. Well, you'll say all that might possibly be fallacious; but what will you say to the cadaveric stiffness? Old Judy Wale can tell you; and my friend Marcella-Monocula would be nearer the mark-Mrs. Bligh, she knows all those common, and I may say up to this, infallible, signs of death, as well as I do. There is no mystery about them; they'll depose to the literality of the symptoms. You heard how they gave tongue. Upon my honour, I'll send the whole case up to my old chief, Sir Hervey Hansard, to London. You'll hear what a noise it will make among the profession. There never was-and it ain't too much to say there never will be—another case like it.'

During this lecture, and a great deal more, Sir Bale leaned back in his chair, with his legs extended, his heels on the ground, and his arms folded, looking sourly up in the face of a tall lady in white satin, in a ruff, and with a bird on her hand, who smiled down superciliously from her frame upon the Baronet. Sir Bale seemed a little bit high and dry with the Doctor.

You physicians are unquestionably,' he said, 'a very learned profession.'

The Doctor bowed.

'But there's just one thing you know nothing about-'
Eh? What's that?' inquired Doctor Torvey.

'Medicine,' answered Sir Bale. 'I was aware you never knew what was the matter with a sick man; but I didn't know, till now, that you couldn't tell when he was dead.'

SECOND SERIES, VOL. II. F.S. VOL. XII.

AA

Ha, ha!—well-ha, ha!-yes-well, you see, you-ha, ha! -you certainly have me there. But it's a case without a parallel— it is, upon my honour. You'll find it will not only be talked about, but written about; and, whatever papers appear upon it, will come to me; and I'll take care, Sir Bale, you shall have an opportunity of reading them.'

Of which I sha'n't avail myself,' answered Sir Bale. Take another glass of sherry, Doctor.'

The Doctor made his acknowledgments and filled his glass, and looked through the wine between him and the window.

Ha, ha!-see there, your port, Sir Bale, gives a fellow such habits-looking for the beeswing, by Jove. It isn't easy, in one sense at least, to get your port out of a fellow's head when once he has tasted it.'

But if the honest Doctor meant a hint for a glass of that admirable bin, it fell pointless; and Sir Bale had no notion of making another libation of that precious liquor in honour of Doctor Torvey.

And I take it for granted,' said Sir Bale, that Feltram will do very well; and, should anything go wrong, I can send for youunless he should die again; and in that case I think I shall take my own opinion.'

So he and the Doctor parted.

Sir Bale, although he did not consult the Doctor on his own case, was not particularly well. That lonely place, those frightful mountains, and that damp black lake'-which features in the landscape he cursed all round-are enough to give any man blue devils; and when a fellow's spirits go, he's all gone. That's why I'm dyspeptic-that and those d-d debts-and the post, with its flight of croaking and screaming letters from London. I wish there was no post here. I wish it was like Sir Amerald's time, when they shot the York mercer that came to dun him, and no one ever took him to task about it; and now they can pelt you at any distance they please through the post; and fellows lose their spirits and their appetite and any sort of miserable comfort that is possible in this odious abyss.'

Was there gout in Sir Bale's case, or 'vapours'? I know not what the faculty would have called it; but Sir Bale's mode of treatment was simply to work off the attack by long and laborious walking.

This evening his walk was upon the Fells of Golden Friarslong after the landscape below was in the eclipse of twilight, the broad bare sides and angles of these gigantic uplands still lighted by the misty western sun.

There is no such sense of solitude as that which we experience upon the silent and vast elevations of great mountains. Lifted high

above the level of human sounds and habitations, among the wild expanses and colossal features of Nature, we are thrilled in our loneliness with a strange fear and elation- -an ascent above the reach of life's vexations or companionship, and the tremblings of a wild and undefined misgiving. The filmy disc of the moon had risen in the east, and was already faintly silvering the shadowy scenery below, while yet Sir Bale stood in the mellow light of the western sun, which still touched also the summits of the opposite peaks of Morvyn Fells.

Sir Bale Mardykes did not, as a stranger might, in prudence, hasten his descent from the heights at which he stood while yet a gleam of daylight remained to him. For he was, from his boyhood, familiar with those solitary regions; and, beside this, the thin circle of the moon, hung in the eastern sky, would brighten as the sunlight sank, and hang like a lamp above his steps.

There was in the bronzed and resolute face of the Baronet, lighted now in the parting beams of sunset, a resemblance to that of Charles the Second-not our merry' ideal, but the more energetic and saturnine face which the portraits have preserved to us.

He stood with folded arms on the side of the slope, admiring, in spite of his prejudice, the unusual effects of a view so strangely lighted the sunset tints on the opposite peaks, lost in the misty twilight, now deepening lower down into a darker shade, through which the outlines of the stone gables and tower of Golden Friars and the light of fire or candle in their windows were dimly visible.

As he stood and looked, his more distant sunset went down, and sudden twilight was upon him, and he began to remember the beautiful Homeric picture of a landscape coming out, rock and headland, in the moonlight.

There had hung upon the higher summits, at his right, a heavy fold of white cloud, which on a sudden broke, and, like the smoke of artillery, came rolling down the slopes towards him. Its principal volume, however, unfolded itself in a mighty flood down the side of the mountain towards the lake; and that which spread towards and soon enveloped the ground on which he stood was by no means so dense a fog. A thick mist enough it was; but still, to a distance of twenty or thirty yards, he could discern the outline of a rock or scaur, but not beyond it.

There are few sensations more intimidating than that of being thus enveloped on a lonely mountain-side, which, like this one, here and there breaks into precipice.

There is another sensation, too, which affects the imagination. Overtaken thus on the solitary expanse, there comes a new chill and tremour as this treacherous medium surrounds us, through which unperceived those shapes which fancy conjures up might approach so near and bar our path.