shelter to the wall of a house, when a great flash of lightning came directly upon him, and that immediately he fancied himself strangled for want of breath. About three months previous to this melancholy occurrence the same young man, who is well known in these parts, and whose name and address we withhold out of respect to his surviving relations, dreamt that as he sat on a fragment of St. John’s Castle, romantically situated on the shores of Loch-Ree--one of those many ruins that are to be found in desolated parts of this county! The scene around him was one of age and sublimity: he felt its imposing effect and was filled with the solemnity of its aspect! The winds were sweeping their sullen murmurs through the broken walls of the gigantic pile; the “voice of Time-disporting towers” fell with a sad sound upon the ear, and he could fancy, in the pauses of the hollow blast, that he saw spectral shapes of other days peeping from the dark passages and broken windows, and then suddenly disappearing like night-birds, that, having wakened too early for their dusky evening flight, shrink back aghast to their gloomy bowers, from the offensive glare of a lingering sunset! Melancholy and romance were in the hour, and he insensibly yielded to their powerful influence. As his half-closed eyes were carelessly fixed upon a little chasm in the vaulted floor, that lay some fifty feet beneath him, he perceived, with a surprise not unmixed with terror, that the long grass which partly concealed it began to move with more than the wind-motion. He thought a thin blue smoke issued from the widening aperture, and a confused murmer of hollow voices arose. He would have fled from the place, but his companions had, at his own request, left him to indulge in melancholy, and had taken his boat for a short sail to some islands farther up the lake; besides, he had no means of quitting the almost insulated ruin, but by passing the mysterious vapour, which crossed the only path to a strip of land that connected the basement of the castle with the main shore. This he was determined not to do. He therefore quietly remained in the watch-tower with mingled feelings of curiosity and dread!