form to any of its standards. From first to last, his writings are of one stamp and character. They reflected the image of his own soul, and refused connexion with any other. Volume after volume, theme upon theme, in defiance of all rebuke or counsel, took the same course, bore the same character, followed one wandering wisp, and lived in the same one wild witch element, of which, in his translations from Goethe, and in his Alastor, he himself so beautifully speaks. Of his own personal complaints to those about him, we know nothing, but it is self-evident that if the criticism of the reviewer affected him so very seriously as alleged, they must have given some coloring to his writings. His songs must have taken their tinge from the spirit from which they came, even as the clouds at evening borrow from the departing sun, the glad and glorious hues that envelop and adorn them. He must have broken forth, forever, in the one deep tone, and the monotony of his lament, alone, could have proved its sincerity. Such was not the case. He was a gloomy insensible. His heart fed upon the abstractions of his head; and relying on them for subsistence, and deriving it, as he so readily did, from them, he disdained to look for counsel, and disregarded rebuke; indifferent, alike, it would seem, to the pillars and the thongs of criticism. Shelley has written quite as much as Gray, Collins, and Keats together. He has written full as much as Coleridge, and nearly as much, poetry alone, as Robert Southey, over whom, as a poet, we assign him unhesitatingly, the preference. And now, for the question. Is severe criticism injurious, in a general sense? Does it, as alleged, more frequently do harm than good? Is it, in truth, dangerous to the young beginner-the man of genius, we mean, not him of pretension merely? Does it tend to defeat his aims, diminish his labors, compel him to throw aside the lyre which nature has put into his hands, and upon which she expects him to play, and drive him from that field of glory and of greatness-that path of honorable emulation and ardor, in which, alone, such a temperament as that which belongs to the poetical sensibilities, may hope to arrive at distinction? Has it done this; has it ever had this effect, and where and when? The answer to this question at once disposes of this argument; for there is no proof that harsh criticism has ever had the power to turn one true genius from the object of his aim-to lessen the number of the living lyre-to take one bright star from the heaven to which it would aspire? EPIGRAM, By one of the Ancien Regime, after the deposition of Charles X. The change in the state Of our king is not great, However your mob of republicans snarls; For, look and behold, It was Charles X. of old, And the monarch in exile is surely X-Charles. THE HAUNTED HOF. CHAPTER III. THE third of Major McDermot's nocturnal visitations was currently reported to have been in character with its predecessors. He had retired late to his chamber, with a determination not to close his eyes, nor indeed to commit himself to his bed, the whole night through; but to keep a vigilant watch, and, if possible, gain some elucidation of the singular occurrences of which he had been an involuntary participant. His resolution sustained him in his unaccustomed vigil, until nearly two hours beyond the time at which his senses had on the two former occasions been so remarkably assailed; but as yet nothing either of discovery or alarm had recompensed his wakefulness. Two thirds of the night had passed-all around was hushed in deep repose, unbroken save by the occasional bark of some stray cur, or the scrambling sound of a vagrant mouse, venturously exploring the recesses of the thick partition. Heaviness began to sit upon the eyelids of the watcher;-despite himself, his jaws expanded at brief intervals into yawns of the most portentous amplitude; and more than once, he started from his chair with a strong suspicion of incipient slumber. He arose from his seat, walked slowly to the window, and gazed for a minute at the stars, which seemed, to his wandering imagination, to twinkle like myriads of laughing eyes, all fixed upon himself with a mirthful expression of amusement at his unprofitable avocation. Muttering a few unintelligible sentences, he returned to the fire, which, having been long unreplenished, began to exhibit strong symptoms of declension; and thrusting both his hands into the pockets of his small-clothes, he stood, with expanded legs, and head sunk upon his breast, in an attitude of profound meditation. Another dreary yawn ensued; the major shook himself, cast a look around the apartment, and then, with the prompt action of one who has suddenly formed his determination after a long debate, kicked off his slippers, and gravely laid himself down upon his bed, but without undressing. A very few minutes had elapsed before his measured and somewhat heavy breathing, gradually deepening to a gentle snore, announced that sleep had put an end, for the time at least, to all his doubts and purposes. How long he had slumbered he had no means of ascertaining, when he started upright from his recumbent posture, broad awake, but not yet in full possession of his senses. The candle was extinguished, and total darkness was around him, save the faint dull gleam emitted by the few remaining embers of his neglected fire. The major held his breath, and rubbed his eyes; yawned once more, and was on the point of making up his mind to turn down the quilted coverlet, and betake himself in earnest to the legitimate purpose of the night, when he fancied that he could per ceive the first faint stealings of that same delicious odor, by which his nerves had been so fearfully disturbed on the preceding night. Aroused to full activity of mind and body, he started to his feet, and hastened to the window; but ere he could reach it, his steps were arrested by a voice of singular sweetness, apparently close at his ear, which commanded him in very pure German, to pause and listen. His first impulse was to make a grasp in the direction of the sound, so perfect was the effect of its immediate vicinity to his person, but his hands encountered only vacancy; and with a dogged feeling of desperation, he returned to his bed and scated himself upon its edge. For a brief space there was no repetition of the voice, no interruption of the solemn stillness; and the Major very deliberately proceeded to undress himself and go to rest in the legitimate mode, as though his resolution was taken to give himself no farther trouble about the doings or character of his nightly disturber. But it was soon apparent that his rest was not to be left unbroken; he had not totally lost the dim, dreamy, but luxurious consciousness of going to sleep, when the perfume again began to pervade his chamber, at first weak, faint, and scarcely perceptible, but rapidly gaining in power, until its intensity became painful, though not to such an exquisite pitch of agony as before, and then dying away, like the wail of an Æolian harp in the pauses of the breeze that gives its melody. Inferior as the odor was in pungency, however, its purpose was accomplished; the Major was broad awake; and so he remained, very unwillingly, until within an hour of the dawn. The aromatic emanation, whatever might be its origin or nature, was succeeded by a repetition of the voice, speaking at first in the same low sweet tone, but in no intelligible words, and always, as it seemed, within a few inches of his ear. In vain he sat up, strained his eyes, and with extended arms explored the space around him as far as he could reach; he could discover nothing, although the voice continued with increasing sharpness of tone and rapidity of utterance; and soon its whisperings became so complicated and voluble, that they seemed to proceed not from one but from several distinct organs of speech, none by any means deficient in energy. At first the unwilling listener was startled at the inexplicable character of the occurrence; after a season the effect produced upon him was a slight feeling of annoyance and vexation, not altogether unmingled with amusement; but at last the new and unaccountable sounds with which the air of the room seemed actually to be loaded, became so piercing, so multitudinous, and of such inconceivable rapidity, that their infliction upon the nerve was torture. It was as if a multitude of tongues of different age, sex, and language, urged to their utmost velocity, were at once pouring into his ear innumerable words in every conceivable variety of tone and pitch; now and then he could distinguish a word, or even part of a sentence in German, as well as English; but with very few exceptions, the clatter was utterly unintelligible. This continued not merely without diminution, but as it seemed to him, with continually increasing violence and effect, for nearly half an hour, when there was a sudden and dead pause; and a single voice, sweet and rich, but not loud, chanted to a wild and agreeable melody the following whimsical if not mysterious stanzas. Up and away, up and away Your place is wanted, sir, every day; The king and the queen and the whole of our crew How are your eyes? did they like the light Old Number Nip flashed on them twice last night? The greater your sorrow the longer you stay- Good morning, good morning, we 're going at last - Take my word you had better be up and away. As the lay was sung, the Major had continued sitting upright in his bed, in rapt attention, his eyes fixed-not upon any particular object, for the darkness was intense-but in the direction of the sound, and almost holding his breath, lest he should lose any portion of the strain; at its close, there was a chorus of subdued laughter from many voices, as it seemed; and the listener was suddenly and painfully aroused from his fixed position by two sharp and stinging strokes upon his back, inflicted apparently with a small riding whip, in such quick succession as to be almost simultaneous. The pain was dreadful for the moment, and the sufferer darted from the bed, heaping all manner of maledictions upon his unseen tormentors, as to whose character he began, although by no means superstitious, to entertain some awkward misgivings. His reading had not been very extensive, it is true; but still he had some acquaintance with books, principally of an amusing character, and although the Freischutz had not then made the wild legends of Germany a popular study among all the other nations of Europe, he had read enough to be conscious that nowhere was the belief in the existence of powers distinct from human, greater, or, so far as he had any reason to suppose, better supported by facts, than among the children of the Rhine. Besides, the Black Forest was not so very distant, and the conviction of its being tenanted by whole legions of gloomy fairies, nixies, and dark shapes of evil, was too general and too sincere to be utterly scouted, even by an Irish major of dragoons; he feared them not, but it would probably be too much to say that he had not some little grain of credulity touching their existence, hidden away among the recesses and out-of-the-way corners of his imagination. Be that as it may, however, rage was the most predominant of his feelings at the moment of his starting from the bed, as already stated; and, mortal or goblin, the perpetrator of the outrage would have had a dangerous enemy to encounter, if the major could have laid his hands upon it or him, while yet smarting under the infliction. But he groped around the room in vain; the silence of the hour was no farther broken; and after a fruitless exploration of every corner, the indignant major was fain to betake himself once more to his bed, and seek for the repose which had been so often, and so unpleasantly disturbed. It was not again interrupted, and he awoke at his usual hour, notwithstanding the fatigues of the night, in very good spirits and humor, all things considered. His first thought, while dressing, was to have a talk about all these strange matters and things, with old Conrad Weinbrenner -he would have preferred Gertrude as his confidante, but he was afraid she would laugh him out of his senses-and then either leave the hof, or try to devise some plan for the suppression of his nocturnal annoyances; but the fear of ridicule, if the story should leak out, a lingering suspicion of human agency in the matter, a native love of adventure, and, perhaps, more than all, a good breakfast, wrought a change in his views, and he concluded to make one more trial at least, without communicating either his facts or his suspicions to any body. "As yet," the major reasoned within himself, "the affair has been strange enough, and a ghost or a goblin may be at the bottom of it; but still, every thing so far has been within the scope of human devices, and I should like to catch that long-legged schoolmaster amazingly, if he has any hand in it." Under the influence of this excusable inclination, he determined to say nothing of what had happened; and having passed the day as usual in flirting violently with Gertrude, and various other young women of Langen-Schwalbach, teasing such of the more elderly class as he encountered in his rambles about the village, gossiping with all manner of men, both young and old, smoking with Conrad Weinbrenner, playing with his dog, and drinking huge quantities of brandy and water, he betook himself in good spirits to the scene of his nocturnal visitations at his accustomed hour, with a long candle, a stout slip of cherry-tree wood, which in Ireland would have passed very well for a shillela, and his pistols well loaded. As before, he kept on his clothes; and having seen that an abundant supply of fire-wood was laid in for the night, he sat himself down directly in front of the fire, with his pistols and cherry-tree plant on the table before him, and the candle upon the mantel-piece, fully prepared for whatever might happen. He had not to wait long. He had been sitting very quietly, perhaps for ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, and his thoughts, by some unaccountable process, had wandered away to the scenes, and sorrows, and joys, of his childhood, afar off in his native Erin; he was once more, in fancy, a barefooted, white-headed urchin, wasting over a spelling-book under the calm severe eye of Father Delaney, the priest and schoolmaster of the village where he was born, the precious hours which, as he well knew, might have been better spent in chub-fishing, or nutting, or bird-nesting, or rambling along by the river side, now and then making ducks and drakes in the water |