hold even one-fourth part of that same liqueur which your majesty has just mentioned. To say nothing of the stuffs placed on board in the forenoon by way of ballast, and not to mention the various ales and liqueurs shipped this evening at various seaports, I have at present a full cargo of 'humming stuff' taken in and duly paid for at the sign of the 'Jolly Tar.' You will therefore, please your majesty, be so good as to take the will for the deed-for by no manner of means either can I or will I swallow another dropleast of all a drop of that villanous bilge-water that answers to the hail of 'Black Strap.""

"Belay that!" interrupted Tarpaulin, astonished not more at the length of his companion's speech than at the nature of his refusal-" Belay that, you lubber! -and I say, Legs, none of your palaver! My hull is still light, although I confess you yourself seem to be a little top-heavy; and as for the matter of your share of the cargo, why rather than raise a squall I would find stowage-room for it myself, but "

"This proceeding," interposed the president, "is by no means in accordance with the terms of the mulct or sentence, which is in its nature Median, and not to be altered or recalled. The conditions we have imposed must be fulfilled to the letter, and that without a moment's hesitation-in failure of which fulfilment we decree that you do here be tied neck and heels together, and duly drowned as rebels in yon hogshead of October beer!"

"A sentence a sentence !-a righteous and just sentence—a glorious decree!— a most worthy and upright and holy condemnation!" shouted the Pest family altogether. The king elevated his forehead into innumerable wrinkles; the gouty little old man puffed like a pair of bellows; the lady of the winding

sheet waved her nose to and fro; the gentleman in the cotton drawers pricked up his ears; she of the shroud gasped like a dying fish; and he of the coffin looked stiff and rolled up his eyes.

"Ugh! ugh ugh!" chuckled Tarpaulin, without heeding the general excitation, "ugh! ugh! ugh!— ugh! ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—I was saying," said he, "I was saying when Mr. King Pest poked in his marlin-spike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or less of Black Strap, it was a trifle to a tight sea-boat like myself not overstowed-but when it comes to drinking the health of the devil (whom God assoilzie) and going down upon my marrow bones to his ill-favoured majesty there, whom I know, as well as I know myself to be a sinner, to be nobody in the whole world but Tim Hurlygurly the stage-player! why! I guess it's quite another sort of a thing, and utterly and altogether past my comprehension."

He was not allowed to finish this speech in tranquillity. At the name of Tim Hurlygurly the whole assembly leaped from their seats.

"Treason!" shouted his Majesty King Pest the First. "Treason! said the little man with the gout.

"Treason!" screamed the Archduchess Ana-Pest. "Treason!" muttered the gentleman with his jaws tied up.

"Treason" growled he of the coffin.

"Treason! treason!" shrieked her majesty of the mouth; and, seizing by the hinder part of his breeches the unfortunate Tarpaulin, who had just commenced pouring out for himself a skull of liquor, she lifted him high into the air, and let him fall without ceremony into the huge open puncheon of his beloved ale. Bobbing up and down for a few seconds like an apple in a bowl of toddy, he at length finally disappeared

amid the whirlpool of foam which, in the already effervescent liquor, his struggles easily succeeded in creating.

Not tamely, however, did the tall seaman behold the discomfiture of his companion. Jostling King Pest through the open trap, the valiant Legs slammed the door down upon him with an oath, and strode. towards the centre of the room. Here tearing down the skeleton which swung over the table, he laid it about him with so much energy and good will, that as the last glimpses of light died away within the apartment, he succeeded in knocking out the brains of the little gentleman with the gout. Rushing then with all his force against the fatal hogshead full of October ale and Hugh Tarpaulin, he rolled it over and over in an instant. Out burst a deluge of liquor so fierce so impetuous-so overwhelming-that the room was flooded from wall to wall-the loaded table was overturned-the tressels were thrown upon their backs the tub of punch into the fireplace-and the ladies into hysterics. Piles of death-furniture floundered about. Jugs, pitchers, and carboys mingled promiscuously in the mêlée, and wicker flagons encountered desperately with bottles of junk. The man with the horrors was drowned upon the spot-the little stiff gentleman floated off in his coffin-and the victorious Legs, seizing by the waist the fat lady in the shroud, rushed out with her into the street, and made a beeline for the "Free and Easy," followed under easy sail by the redoubtable Hugh Tarpaulin, who, having sneezed three or four times, panted and puffed after him with the Archduchess Ana-Pest.

THE OVAL PORTRAIT.

'Egli è vivo e parlerebbe se non osservasse la rigola del silentio." Inscription beneath an Italian picture of St. Bruno.

My fever had been excessive and of long duration. All the remedies attainable in this wild Apennine region had been exhausted to no purpose. My valet and sole attendant in the lonely chateau was too nervous and too grossly unskilful to venture upon letting blood, of which, indeed, I had already lost too much in the affray with the banditti. Neither could I safely permit him to leave me in search of assistance. At length I bethought me of a little packet of opium which lay with my tobacco in the hookah-case; for at Constantinople I had acquired the habit of smoking the weed with the drug. Pedro handed me the case. I sought and found the narcotic. But when about to cut off a portion I felt the necessity of hesitation. In smoking it was a matter of little importance how much was employed. Usually, I had half-filled the bowl of the hookah with opium and tobacco cut and mingled, half and half. Sometimes when I had used the whole of this mixture I experienced no very peculiar effects; at other times I would not have smoked the pipe more than two-thirds out, when symptoms of mental derangement, which were even alarming, warned me to desist. But the effect proceeded with an easy gradation which deprived the indulgence of all danger. Here, however,

the case was different. I had never swallowed opium before. Laudanum and morphine I had occasionally used, and about them should have had no reason to hesitate. But the solid drug I had never seen employed. Pedro knew no more respecting the proper quantity to be taken than myself, and thus, in this emergency, I was left altogether to conjecture. Still I felt no especial uneasiness, for I resolved to proceed by degrees. I would take a very small dose in the first instance. Should this prove impotent, I would repeat it; and so on, until I should find an abatement of the fever, or obtain that sleep which was so pressingly requisite, and with which my reeling senses had not been blessed for now nearly a week. No doubt it was this very reeling of my senses-it was the dull delirium which already oppressed me, that prevented me from perceiving the incoherence of my reason-which blinded me to the folly of defining anything as either large or small where I had no preconceived standard of comparison. I had not, at the moment, the faintest idea that what I conceived to be an exceedingly small dose of solid opium might in fact be an excessively large one. On the contrary, I well remember that I judged confidently of the quantity to be taken by reference to the entire quantity of the lump in my possession. The portion which, in conclusion I swallowed, and swallowed without fear, was no doubt a very small proportion of the piece which I held in my hand.

The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Apeninnes, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe. To all appearance it had been temporarily