they taught me music; and the misery they have taught me, hardly makes a balance against that new and delicious language.”--“But think,” rejoined Melmoth, “if your taste for music be indeed so exquisite, how it will be indulged, how it will be enlarged, in hearing those voices accompanied and re-echoed by the thunders of ten thousand billows of fire, lashing against rocks which eternal despair has turned into adamant! They talk of the music of the spheres!--Dream of the music of those living orbs turning on their axis of fire for ever and ever, and ever singing as they shine, like your brethren the Christians, who had the honour to illuminate Nero’s garden in Rome on a rejoicing night.”--“You make me tremble!”--“Tremble!--a strange effect of fire. Fie! what a coyness is this! I have promised, on your arrival at your new territory, all that is mighty and magnificent,--all that is splendid and voluptuous--the sovereign and the sensualist--the inebriated monarch and the pampered slave--the bed of roses and the canopy of fire!”--“And is this the home to which you invite me?”--“It is--it is. Come, and be mine!--myriads of voices summon you--hear and obey them! Their voices thunder in the echoes of mine--their fires flash from my eyes, and blaze in my heart. Hear me, Isidora, my beloved, hear me! I woo you in earnest, and for ever! Oh how trivial are the ties by which mortal lovers are bound, compared to those in which you and I shall be bound to eternity! Fear not the want of a numerous and splendid society. I have enumerated sovereigns, and pontiffs, and heroes,--and if you should condescend to remember the trivial amusements of your present sejour, you will have enough to revive its associations. You love music, and doubtless you will have most of the musicians who have chromatized since the first essays of Tubal Cain to Lully, who beat himself to death at one of his own oratorios, or operas, I don’t know which. They will have a singular accompaniment--the eternal roar of a sea of fire makes a profound bass to the chorus of millions of singers in torture!”--“What is the meaning of this horrible description?” said the trembling Isidora; “your words are riddles to me. Do you jest with me for the sake of tormenting, or of laughing at me?”--“Laughing!” repeated her wild visitor; “that is an exquisite hint--_vive la bagatelle!_ Let us laugh for ever!--we shall have enough to keep us in countenance. There will be all that ever have dared to laugh on earth--the singers, the dancers, the gay, the voluptuous, the brilliant, the beloved--all who have ever dared to mistake their destiny, so far as to imagine that enjoyment was not a crime, or that a smile was not an infringement of their duty as sufferers. All such must expiate their error under circumstances which will probably compel the most inveterate disciple of Democritus, the most _inextinguishable laugher_ among them, to allow that _there_, at