old man came tottering round an angle of the building; and seeing me, he ran to my feet and cowered down like a whipped hound seeking for protection. “Curse them for inhuman wretches”--groaned, or rather screamed the old man--“They chain me up like a vile beast--a dog to murder me. They drag me into that black den and shut me there, and say I’m crazed--mad. What is mad? Who?--O! yes,--my children, they broke my heart--one went from me, and the other--Ah! save me--save me”--His keepers came in sight, and in their hands were the scourges they had been using, the sounds of which had rung in my ears so appalling. “O! don’t--don’t--I’ll follow--you won’t whip me, will you master--I’m good--good”--and the old man actually knelt down, and like a beast licked the feet of his tormentors. I fell to the earth senseless. ‘A long and doleful night followed--a blank--a vacancy; so long, it seemed ten thousand eternities; so gloomy, it seemed as if the darkness was consolidated. O! what a night is that, when the helm of reason breaks--the unshackled faculties wander forth--and the maddened powers invoke images of horror, only to madden themselves the more by gazing at them! All that is grand--all that is terrible--all horrible, loathsome, fearful images, that the mind had ever while healthy repulsed, then come back on the heart like vultures that have been scared awhile from their prey, whose fasts have only whetted their ungorged appetites. At one moment, I seemed borne through the Eternal void chained to the lightnings; at another, I was dashing downward towards a tremendous barrier of cavernous rocks, and their serrated pinnacles seemed waiting to embrace me. Now I was tossed on billows of fire, and a tremendous surge would hurl me on a jagged precipice; then with its reflux suck me down through unimaginable depths, and the hot fires scorched me as they shot into my brain. Again I heard peals of laughter, and howlings of formless, shapeless beings that hovered around me; they had snakes and basilisks twisted round their foreheads, and the flames that issued from their forked mouths seemed to burn into my very soul. Then came the sense of a release--the gasping, choking, horrible consciousness, that you are struggling on the confines of two worlds, and not knowing which is to be yours--whether earth or death shall have you. Suddenly a fountain seemed tossing its cool spray over me--the fires that withered up my brain went out--the fiends that howled about me passed away--the subtlest life began to dance through my veins--and I awoke! My first thoughts were true to their mark, and my first words, “Mother, lives she? The rest--father, brother--God of Heaven! why was I reserved for it?”