pursue his inquiry. Here he had not long remained, when the strange and alarming sounds which had been heard on the preceding night were repeated. The circumstance that now sunk in terror the minds of Emilia and Julia fired with new wonder that of Ferdinand, who, seizing a light, darted through the discovered door, and almost instantly disappeared.

He

He descended into the same wild hall he had passed on the preceding night. He had scarcely reached the bottom of the staircase, when a feeble light gleamed across the hall, and his eye. caught the glimpse of a figure retiring through the low-arched door which led to the south tower. drew his sword and rushed on. A faint sound died away along the pas sage, the windings of which prevented his seeing the figure he pursued. Of this, indeed, he had obtained so slight a view, that he scarcely knew whether it bore the impression of a human form. The light quickly disappeared, and he heard the door that opened upon the tower suddenly close. He reached it, and forcing it open, sprang forward; but the place was dark and solitary, and there was no appearance of any person having passed along it. He looked up the tower, and the chasm which the staircase exhibited convinced him that no human being could have passed up. He stood silent and amazed; examining the place with an eye of strict inquiry, he perceived a door, which was partly concealed by hanging stairs, and which till now had escaped his notice. Hope invigorated curiosity, but his expectation was quickly disappointed, for this door also was fastened. He tried in vain to force it. He knocked, and a hollow sound ran in echoes through the place, and died away at a distance. It was evident that beyond this door were chambers of considerable extent, but after long and various attempts to reach them, he was obliged to desist, and he quitted the tower as ignorant and more dissatisfied than he had entered it. He returned to the hall, which he now for the first time deliberately surveyed. It was a spacious and desolate apartment, whose lofty roof rose into arches supported by pillars of black marble. The same substance inlaid the floor, and formed the staircase. The windows were high and Gothic. An air of proud sublimity, united with singular wildness, characterised the place, at the extremity of which arose several Gothic arches, whose dark shade veiled in obscurity the extent beyond. On the left hand appeared two doors, each of which was fastened, and on the right the grand entrance from the courts. Ferdinand determined to

U

explore the dark recess which terminated his view, and as he traversed the hall, his imagination, affected by the surrounding scene, often multiplied the echoes of his footsteps into uncertain sounds of strange and fearful import.

He reached the arches, and discovered beyond a kind of inner hall, of considerable extent, which was closed at the farther end by a pair of massive folding-doors, heavily ornamented with carving. They were fastened by a lock, and defied his utmost strength.

As he surveyed the place in silent wonder, a sullen groan arose from

beneath the spot where he stood. His blood ran cold at the sound; but silence returning, and continuing unbroken, he attributed his alarm to the illusion of a fancy which terror had impregnated. He made another effort to force the door, when a groan was repeated more hollow and more dreadful than the first. At this moment his courage forsook him; he quitted the door, and hastened to the staircase, which he ascended, almost breathless with terror.

- MRS RADCLIFFE.

OROONOKO AND IMOINDE.

[Our extract from "Oroonoko" will be very brief, and is only intended as a specimen of its author's style. Its plot will be familiar to many readers, through Southern's adaptation of it in one of his best tragedies.]

RINCE OROONOKO, the grandson of the King of Coromantim,

is an admirably perfect man, both in mind and person; had a great soul, a fine wit, discoursed eloquently, was brave and gallant. He fell in love with Imoinde, the beautiful daughter of a general who had saved his life in battle, but who was also beloved by the aged King of Coromantim, and inasmuch as she preferred the grandson to the grandfather, was, by the latter, sold as a slave. Oroonoko, soon afterwards, met with the same wretched lot. Landing at Surinam, he became the property of a Cornish gentleman named Trefry, in whose household he met with his beloved Imoinde, then called Clemine. They were married, and for some time lived happily. But Oroonoko's lofty soul could not endure the chains of servitude, and with his wife, and numerous other slaves, he fled to the woods; was pursued by one Byam, at the head of six hundred slaves, overtaken and overpowered. Being promised generous treatment, he surrendered, but was immediately whipped with the utmost ferocity, and thrown into irons. The indignity was intolerable, and he resolved upon revenge, but before he attempted it, resolved to secure his wife and unborn child from all hazard of dishonour or ill-treatment.

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Being able to walk, and, as he believed, fit for the execution of his great design, he begged Trefry to trust him into the air, believing a walk would do him good, which was granted him; and taking Imoinde with him, as he used to do in his more happy and calmer days, he led her up into a wood, where (after a thousand sighs and long gazing silently on her face, while tears gushed in spite of him from his eyes) he told her his design; first of killing her, and then his enemies, and next himself, and the impossibility of escaping, and therefore he told her the necessity of dying.

"He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death than he was to