is it time. Resolve, or it will be too late. Will you sign the parchment?"

"I must - Fate urges me - I accept your conditions."

"Sign the parchment," replied the demon, in an exulting tone. The contract and the bloody pen still lay upon the table. Ambrosio drew near it. He prepared to sign his name. A moment's reflection made him hesitate.

"Hark!" cried the tempter. "They come. Be quick! Sign the parchment, and I bear you from hence this moment."

In effect, the archers were heard approaching, appointed to lead Ambrosio to the stake. The sound encouraged the monk in his resolution.

"What is the import of this writing?" said he.

"It makes your soul over to me forever, and without reserve." "What am I to receive in exchange?"

"My protection, and release from this dungeon. Sign it, and this instant I bear you away."

Ambrosio took up the pen. He set it to the parchment. Again his courage failed him. He felt a pang of terror at his heart, and once more threw the pen upon the table.

"Weak and puerile!" cried the exasperated fiend. "Away with this folly! Sign the writing this instant, or I sacrifice you to my rage."

At this moment the bolt of the outward door was drawn back. The prisoner heard the rattling of chains; the heavy bar fell; the archers were on the point of entering. Worked up to frenzy by the urgent danger, shrinking from the approach of death, terrified by the demon's threats, and seeing no other means to escape destruction, the wretched monk complied. He signed the fatal contract, and gave it hastily into the evil spirit's hands, whose eyes, as he received the gift, glared with malicious rapture. "Take it!" said the God-abandoned. "Now then save me! Snatch me from hence!"

"Hold! Do you freely and absolutely renounce your Creator and His Son?"

"I do! I do!"

"Do you make over your

"Forever!"

soul to me forever?"

"Without reserve or subterfuge? without future appeal to the divine mercy?"

The last chain fell from the door of the prison. The key was heard turning in the lock. Already the iron door grated heavily upon its rusty hinges

"I am yours forever, and irrevocably!" cried the monk, wild with terror. "I abandon all claim to salvation. I own no power but yours. Hark! hark! they come! Oh, save me! bear me away!"

"I have triumphed! You are mine past reprieve, and I fulfill my promise."

While he spoke, the door unclosed. Instantly the demon grasped one of Ambrosio's arms, spread his broad pinions, and sprang with him into the air. The roof opened as they soared upwards, and closed again when they had quitted the dungeon. . .

Though rescued from the Inquisition, Ambrosio as yet was insensible of the blessings of liberty. The damning contract weighed heavy upon his mind; and the scenes in which he had been a principal actor had left behind them such impressions as rendered his heart the seat of anarchy and confusion. The objects now before his eyes, and which the full moon sailing through clouds permitted him to examine, were ill calculated to inspire that calm of which he stood so much in need. The disorder of his imagination was increased by the wildness of the surrounding scenery; by the gloomy caverns and steep rocks, rising above each other, and dividing the passing clouds; solitary clusters of trees scattered here and there, among whose thick-twined branches the wind of night sighed hoarsely and mournfully; the shrill cry of mountain eagles, who had built their nests among these lonely deserts; the stunning roar of torrents, as swelled by late rains they rushed violently down tremendous precipices; and the dark waters of a silent sluggish stream, which faintly reflected the moonbeams, and bathed the rock's base on which Ambrosio stood. The abbot cast round him a look of terror. His infernal conductor was still by his side, and eyed him with a look of mingled malice, exultation, and contempt. . . . Ambrosio could not sustain his glance. He turned away his eyes, while thus spoke the demon:

"I have him then in my power! This model of piety! This being without reproach! This mortal who placed his puny virtues on a level with those of angels. He is mine! irrevocably, eter

nally mine! Companions of my sufferings! denizens of hell! how grateful will be my present! . . . I burn to possess my right, and alive you quit not these mountains."

During the demon's speech Ambrosio had been stupefied by terror and surprise. This last declaration aroused him.

"Not quit these mountains alive!" he exclaimed. "Perfidious, what mean you? Have you forgotten our contract?" The fiend answered by a malicious laugh.

"Our contract? Have I not performed my part? What more did I promise than to save you from your prison? Have I not done so? Are you not safe from the Inquisition — safe from all but me? Fool that you were to confide yourself to a devil! Why did you not stipulate for life, and power, and pleasure? Then all would have been granted; now your reflections come too late. Miscreant, prepare for death; you have not many hours to live!"

On hearing this sentence, dreadful were the feelings of the devoted wretch! He sank upon his knees, and raised his hands toward heaven. The fiend read his intention, and prevented it.

"What!" he cried, darting at him a look of fury. "Dare you still implore the Eternal's mercy? Would you feign penitence, and again act an hypocrite's part? Villain, resign your hopes of pardon. Thus I secure my prey!"

As he said this, darting his talons into the monk's shaven crown, he sprang with him from the rock. The caves and mountains rang with Ambrosio's shrieks. The demon continued to soar aloft, till, reaching a dreadful height, he released the sufferer. Headlong fell the monk through the airy waste. The sharp point of a rock received him, and he rolled from precipice to precipice, till, bruised and mangled, he rested on the river's banks. Instantly a violent storm arose; the winds in fury rent up rocks and forests; the sky was now black with clouds, now sheeted with fire; the rain fell in torrents; it swelled the stream; the waves overflowed their banks. They reached the spot where Ambrosio lay, and, when they abated, carried with them into the river the corse of the despairing monk.

THE ANTI-JACOBIN

1798

[This periodical, a protest against "the spirit of 1789," appeared weekly from September, 1797, to July, 1798. The chief contributors were George Canning, then under-secretary of state, and Hookham Frere; to Canning most of the successful satirical articles are attributed. (This weekly AntiJacobin must not be confused with a monthly which adopted its name after it had ceased to appear, and ran till 1821.) The Rovers, the drama described in the following extracts (of which Acts I, II, and IV were printed in full) is at once a burlesque of the radical philosophy of the school of Godwin, and of the sentimentalism and doubtful ethics of the new German romantic drama, which at this period was influential in England. In particular, Goethe's Stella, Schiller's The Robbers, and Kotzebue's The Stranger are ridiculed by imitations of detail. The extracts are from Numbers xxx and XXXI.]

OUR ingenious correspondent, Mr. Higgins, has not been idle. The deserved popularity of the extracts which we have been enabled to give from his two didactic poems, The Progress of Man and The Loves of the Triangles, has obtained for us the communication of several other works which he has in hand, all framed upon the same principle and directed to the same end. The propagation of the "new system of philosophy" forms, as he has himself candidly avowed to us, the main object of all his writings. A system comprehending not politics only, and religion, but morals and manners, and generally whatever goes to the composition or holding together of human society; in all of which a total change and revolution is absolutely necessary (as he contends) for the advancement of our common nature to its true dignity, and to the summit of that perfection which the combination of matter called Man is by its innate energies capable of attaining.

Of this system, while the sublimer and more scientific branches are to be taught by the splendid and striking medium of didactic poetry, or ratiocination in rhyme, illustrated with such paintings and portraitures of essences and their attributes as may lay hold of the imagination while they perplex the judgment, the more ordinary parts, such as relate to the conduct of common

life, and the regulation of the social feelings, are naturally the subject of a less elevated style of writing, — of a style which speaks to the eye as well as to the ear, — in short, of dramatic poetry and scenic representation.

"With this view," says Mr. Higgins (for we love to quote the very words of this extraordinary and indefatigable writer), in a letter dated from his study in St. Mary Axe, the window of which looks upon the parish pump, - "with this view I have turned my thoughts more particularly to the German stage, and have composed, in imitation of the most popular pieces of that country, which have already met with so general reception and admiration in this, a play; which, if it has a proper run, will, I think, do much to unhinge the present notions of men with regard to the obligations of civil society, and to substitute, in lieu of a sober contentment and regular discharge of the duties incident to each man's particular situation, a wild desire of undefinable latitude and extravagance; an aspiration after shapeless somethings, that can neither be described nor understood, — a contemptuous disgust at all that is, and a persuasion that nothing is as it ought to be; - to operate, in short, a general discharge of every man (in his own estimation) from everything that laws, divine or human, that local customs, immemorial habits, and multiplied examples, impose upon him; and to set them about doing what they like, where they like, when they like, and how they like, without reference to any law but their own will, or to any consideration of how others may be affected by their conduct.

"When this is done, my dear sir," continues Mr. H. (for he writes very confidentially), "you see that a great step is gained towards the dissolution of the frame of every existing community. I say nothing of governments, as their fall is of course implicated in that of the social system, and you have long known that I hold every government (that acts by coercion and restriction by laws made by the few to bind the many) as a malum in se, - an evil to be eradicated, a nuisance to be abated, by force, if force be practicable, if not, by the artillery of reason, by pamphlets, speeches, toasts at club dinners, and though last, not least - didactic poems.

"But where would be the advantage of the destruction of this or that government, if the form of society itself were to be suf