LITMIR.BIZ

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me! Has the Morrow any terrors for me, think ye? Did Socrates falter at his poison? Did Seneca blench in his bath? Did Brutus shirk the sword when his great stake was lost? Did even weak Cleopatra shrink from the Serpent's fatal nip? And why should I? My great Hazard hath been played, and I pay my forfeit. Lie sheathed in my heart, thou flashing Blade! Welcome to my Bosom, thou faithful Serpent; I hug thee, peace-bearing Image of the Eternal! Ha, the hemlock cup! Fill high, boy, for my soul is thirsty for the Infinite! Get ready the bath, friends; prepare me for the feast To-morrow--bathe my limbs in odors, and put ointment in my hair."

      "Has for a bath," Snoggin interposed, "they're not to be 'ad in this ward of the prison; but I dussay Hemmy will git you a little hoil for your 'air."

      The Prisoned One laughed loud and merrily. "My guardian understands me not, pretty one--and thou? what sayest thou? From those dear lips methinks--plura sunt oscula quam sententiae--I kiss away thy tears, dove!--they will flow apace when I am gone, then they will dry, and presently these fair eyes will shine on another, as they have beamed on poor George Barnwell. Yet wilt thou not all forget him, sweet one. He was an honest fellow, and had a kindly heart for all the world said--"

      "That, that he had," cried the gaoler and the girl in voices gurgling with emotion. And you who read! you unconvicted Convict--you murderer, though haply you have slain no one--you Felon in posse if not in esse--deal gently with one who has used the Opportunity that has failed thee--and believe that the Truthful and the Beautiful bloom sometimes in the dock and the convict's tawny Gabardine!

      *****

      In the matter for which he suffered, George could never be brought to acknowledge that he was at all in the wrong. "It may be an error of judgment," he said to the Venerable Chaplain of the gaol, "but it is no crime. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. Where there is no remorse, Crime cannot exist. I am not sorry: therefore, I am innocent. Is the proposition a fair one?"

      The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be contested.

      "And wherefore, sir, should I have sorrow," the Boy resumed, "for ridding the world of a sordid worm;* of a man whose very soul was dross, and who never had a feeling for the Truthful and the Beautiful? When I stood before my uncle in the moonlight, in the gardens of the ancestral halls of the De Barnwells, I felt that it was the Nemesis come to overthrow him. 'Dog,' I said to the trembling slave, 'tell me where thy Gold is. THOU hast no use for it. I can spend it in relieving the Poverty on which thou tramplest; in aiding Science, which thou knowest not; in uplifting Art, to which thou art blind. Give Gold, and thou art free.' But he spake not, and I slew him."

      "I would not have this doctrine vulgarly promulgated," said the admirable chaplain, "for its general practice might chance to do harm. Thou, my son, the Refined, the Gentle, the Loving and Beloved, the Poet and Sage, urged by what I cannot but think a grievous error, hast appeared as Avenger. Think what would be the world's condition, were men without any Yearning after the Ideal to attempt to reorganize Society, to redistribute Property, to avenge Wrong."

      "A rabble of pigmies scaling Heaven," said the noble though misguided young Prisoner. "Prometheus was a Giant, and he fell."

      "Yes, indeed, my brave youth!" the benevolent Dr. Fuzwig exclaimed, clasping the Prisoner's marble and manacled hand; "and the Tragedy of To-morrow will teach the World that Homicide is not to be permitted even to the most amiable Genius, and that the lover of the Ideal and the Beautiful, as thou art, my son, must respect the Real likewise."

      "Look! here is supper!" cried Barnwell gayly. "This is the Real, Doctor; let us respect it and fall to." He partook of the meal as joyously as if it had been one of his early festals; but the worthy chaplain could scarcely eat it for tears.

      * This is a gross plagiarism: the above sentiment is expressed much more eloquently in the ingenious romance of Eugene Aram:--"The burning desires I have known--the resplendent visions I have nursed--the sublime aspirings that have lifted me so often from sense and clay: these tell me, that whether for good or ill, I am the thing of an immortality and the creature of a God. . . . I have destroyed a man noxious to the world! with the wealth by which he afflicted society, I have been the means of blessing many."

      CODLINGSBY.

      BY D. SHREWSBERRY, ESQ.

      I.

      "The whole world is bound by one chain. In every city in the globe there is one quarter that certain travellers know and recognize from its likeness to its brother district in all other places where are congregated the habitations of men. In Tehran, or Pekin, or Stamboul, or New York, or Timbuctoo, or London, there is a certain district where a certain man is not a stranger. Where the idols are fed with incense by the streams of Ching-wang-foo; where the minarets soar sparkling above the cypresses, their reflections quivering in the lucid waters of the Golden Horn; where the yellow Tiber flows under broken bridges and over imperial glories; where the huts are squatted by the Niger, under the palm-trees; where the Northern Babel lies, with its warehouses, and its bridges, its graceful factory-chimneys, and its clumsy fanes--hidden in fog and smoke by the dirtiest river in the world--in all the cities of mankind there is One Home whither men of one family may resort. Over the entire world spreads a vast brotherhood, suffering, silent, scattered, sympathizing, WAITING--an immense Free-Masonry. Once this world-spread band was an Arabian clan--a little nation alone and outlying amongst the mighty monarchies of ancient time, the Megatheria of history. The sails of their rare ships might be seen in the Egyptian waters; the camels of their caravans might thread the sands of Baalbec, or wind through the date-groves of Damascus; their flag was raised, not ingloriously, in many wars, against mighty odds; but 'twas a small people, and on one dark night the Lion of Judah went down before Vespasian's Eagles, and in flame, and death, and struggle, Jerusalem agonized and died. . . . Yes, the Jewish city is lost to Jewish men; but have they not taken the world in exchange?"

      Mused thus Godfrey de Bouillon, Marquis of Codlingsby, as he debouched from Wych Street into the Strand. He had been to take a box for Armida at Madame Vestris's theatre. That little Armida was folle of Madame Vestris's theatre; and her little brougham, and her little self, and her enormous eyes, and her prodigious opera-glass, and her miraculous bouquet, which cost Lord Codlingsby twenty guineas every evening at Nathan's in Covent Garden (the children of the gardeners of Sharon have still no rival for flowers), might be seen, three nights in the week at least, in the narrow, charming, comfortable little theatre. Godfrey had the box. He was strolling, listlessly, eastward; and the above thoughts passed through the young noble's mind as he came in sight of Holywell Street.

      The occupants of the London Ghetto sat at their porches basking in the evening sunshine. Children were playing on the steps. Fathers were smoking at the lintel. Smiling faces looked out from the various and darkling draperies with which the warehouses were hung. Ringlets glossy, and curly, and jetty--eyes black as night--midsummer night--when it lightens; haughty noses bending like beaks of eagles--eager quivering nostrils--lips curved like the bow of Love--every man or maiden, every babe or matron in that English Jewry bore in his countenance one or more of these characteristics of his peerless Arab race.

      "How beautiful they are!" mused Codlingsby, as he surveyed these placid groups calmly taking their pleasure in the sunset.

      "D'you vant to look at a nishe coat?" a voice said, which made him start; and then some one behind him began handling a masterpiece of Stultz's with a familiarity which would have made the baron tremble.

      "Rafael Mendoza!" exclaimed Godfrey.

      "The same, Lord Codlingsby," the individual so apostrophized replied. "I told you we should meet again where you would little expect me. Will it please you to enter? this is Friday, and we close at sunset. It rejoices my heart to welcome you home." So saying Rafael laid his hand on his breast, and bowed, an oriental reverence. All traces of the accent with which he first addressed Lord Codlingsby had vanished: it was disguise; half the Hebrew's life is a disguise. He shields himself in craft, since the Norman boors persecuted him.

      They passed under an awning of old clothes, tawdry fripperies, greasy spangles, and battered masks, into a

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