Delmé was pursued by the echo's elucidator, who being duly remunerated, allowed Sir Henry to accompany the guide towards the boat. George was not standing where he had left him. Delmé stepped forward, and nearly fell over a prostrate body.

It was the motionless one of his brother.

He gave a shriek of anguish; flew towards the house, and in a moment, was again on the spot, bearing the priest's torch. He raised his brother's head. One hand was extended over the body, and fell to the earth like a clod of clay as it was.

He gazed on that loved face. In that gaze, how much was there to arrest his attention.

On those features, death had stamped his seal. But there was a thought, which bore the ascendancy over this in Delmé's mind. It was a thought which rose involuntarily,—one for which he could not then account, and cannot now. For some seconds, it swayed his every emotion. He felt the conviction-deep, undefinable-that there was indeed a soul, to "shame the doctrine of the Sadducee."

IIe deemed that on those lineaments, this was

the language forcibly engraven! The features were still and fixed:-the brow alone revealed a dying sense of pain.

The lips! how purple were they! and the eye, that erst flashed so freely:-the yellow film of death had dimmed its lustre.

The legs were apart, and one of the feet was in the lake. Henry tried to chafe his brother's forehead.

In vain! in vain! he knew it was in vain!

He let the head fall, and buried his face in his hands.

He turned reproachfully, to gaze on that cloudless Heaven, where the moon, and the brilliant stars, and the falling meteor, seemed to hold a bright and giddy festival.

He clasped his hands in mute agony. For a brief moment-his dark eye seeming to invite His wrath-he dared to arraign the mercy of God, who had taken what he had made.

It was but for a moment he thus thought.

He had watched that light of life, until its existence was almost identified with his own. He had

seen it flicker-had viewed it reillumed-blaze with increased brilliancy-fade-glimmer—and fade. Now! where was it?

A bitter cry escaped! his limbs trembled convulsively, and could no longer support him.

He fell senseless beside his brother.

CHAPTER XI.

THE STUDENT.

"What is my being? thou hast ceased to be."

CARL OBERS was as enthusiastic a being as ever Germany sent forth. Brought up in a lone recess in the Hartz mountains, with neither superiors nor equals to commune with, he first entered the miniature world, as a student at Heidelberg.

His education had been miserably neglected. He had read much; but his reading had been without order and without system.

The deepest metaphysics, and the wildest romances had been devoured in succession; until the young man hardly knew which was the real, or which was the visionary world :—the one he actually lived in, or the one he was always brood

ing over-where souls are bound together by mysterious and hidden links, and where men sell themselves to Satan;-the penalty merely being:to walk through life, and throw no shadow.

Enrolled amongst a select corps of bürschen, warm and true; his ear was caught by the imposing jargon of patriotism; and his imagination dwelt on those high sounding words, "the rights of man;" -until he became the staunch advocate and unflinching votary of a state of things, which, for aught we know, may exist in one of the planets, but which never can, and which never will exist on this earth of ours.

"What!" would exclaim our enthusiast, "have we not all our bodily and our mental energies? Doth not dame Nature, in our birth, as in our death, deal out impartial justice? She may endow me with stronger limbs, than another :-our feelings as we grow up, may not be chained down to one servile monotony ;-the lip of the precocious cynic"-this was addressed to a young matter of fact Englishman-"who sneers at my present animation, may not curl with a smile as often as my