of the Advocates' Library; and, as its echo sounded from shelf to shelf, from pillar to pillar, and from table to table, I thought that it would rival the loudest yawn ever uttered by luckless wight, while luxuriating in the recondite pages of that profound philosopher, Dr. Black. Kings might have owned it, heroes claimed it as their own, sages contended for it, poets sung about it. In one word, it was worthy of the Man with the Mouth. Need more be said? Answer, "No." Nor was this the only yawn. There were one, two, three, each louder than its predecessor. The last in particular was tremendous, and filled me with awe and admiration. I even yawned myself in hopeless rivalry, but I might as well have tried to outbrave the thunders of Jove with a pop-gun, as enter the lists with this most doughty opponent. yawn and gape till the "crack of doom." The Library was robed in darkness-true-but that did not prevent me from seeing him. Obscurity could not shroud him. He still gaped prodigiously. His mouth was large, round and deep, and formed a circle in the centre of his face-a black circle, only broken at the top of his nose, which peeped over it--and below by his chin, which protruded forward as if to harmonize with the nasal protuberance, and render the symmetry perfect. I saw also his eyes, that shone like two lambent lights, and shed a sepulchral lustre around the boundaries of his awful and mysterious mouth. Altogether I felt alarmed-still respect for the remarkable object of my meditations bound me to my seat; and though minutes and hours passed by, I was yet gazing intently at it. I could perceive no diminution of its size: it was still the same yawning gulf the same "antar vast," which gave birth to the portentous yawns. On one side I sat rapt in a frenzied awe; on the other, sat the Man with the Mouth, like an idol, commanding and compelling my adoration. I knew not what to make of him-or rather of his mouth. There was something surprising in the whole business; and now, for the first time, did I feel my respect for this wonderful feature beginning to decline. The gradual opening of the feature was fine-the yawning magnificent--but such a persevering system of gaping seemed to me absurd. There was something in it which shocked my causality; and I began to suspect that, after all, his mouth was a very so so affair, scarcely worthy of the time and trouble it had cost me. These mighty yawns being at an end, I naturally concluded that the mouth would resume its former condition-that it would close and be as when I first beheld it. But it closed not. Dark as the evening was, I saw that the man still gaped-that his mouth was as wide as ever: he seemed in truth, yawning though inaudibly. He no longer perused upon the Chronicle: this the darkness rendered a hopeless attempt; and he quietly deposited the paper upon the table and looked at me-not with his eyes, but with his mouth. I cannot describe the feelings which pervaded me at this time. The room was almost pitch dark; no relic of the solar influence remained behind; the pillars had lost the gaudy lustre lent them by the twilight, and stood like rows of sable giants in their respective places, while a silence, dread and At last, what with violent excitedrear as the grave, prevailed on ev-ment, and the fatigue of gazing, my ery side. My admiration-my love -my respect for the mouth was as great as ever, but in a short time they began to be coupled with fear; and had it not been for some mysterious witchery exercised upon my understanding, I believe I should have taken leg-bail, and left the man to imagination got violently agitated. I no longer saw things with my own eyes, but with the optics of fancy, and revelled in a profusion of extravagant and unbridled thought. The man who at first seemed nameless and unknown, was now invested with a habitation and a name." 66 His habitation was Eternity, and his name was TIME. That mouth was the gulf of oblivion into which all things must pass, save those doomed to endure for ever. The day before I had seen the frontispiece of George Cruickshank's Illustrations of Time, where the insatiable monster is feeding upon the works of nature-where he has an elephant in one hand, and a church in the other, raising them to his ruthless maw; and where cities, pyramids, and temples, are spread out before him for his next repast. This then was Time who sat before me; and his mouth, I doubted not, was expanded to receive whatsoever was unstamped with the seal of immortality. "A change came o'er the spirit of my dream." In a moment the Library, which had been silent, dark, and deserted, was lighted up, and crowded with wonted visitors. Three hundred advocates in their gowns paraded its vista--three hundred gentlemen learned in the law! I was amazed at it-not so Time. He chuckled with delight, and (mirabile dictu) gaped wider than before. It was a night of miracles. Those thousands of tomes which crowded the shelves, seemed stricken with a dead palsy. The shelves themselves shook with trepidation, and their inhabitants tumbled with "hideous ruin and combustion" upon the floor. Shakspeare, Milton, Scott, and some others, kept their accustomed births, but the multitudinous mass started from theirs in dismay, as if some dreadful angel had pronounced their doom. What did Time? He raised his right hand, and the volumes, as if borne upon some mighty stream, came rushing towards him. I heard their leaves fluttering in agony; and commingled with their agitations, came the groans of living and dead authors, bewailing their luckless offspring. The mouth, as they approached it, grew wider; and into its abyss sunk reams of paper innumerable, blackened with oceans of printer's ink. Another freak of Time. He again raised his hand, and the three hundred gentlemen learned in the law, approached him by an irresistible impulse, and were instantly sucked into that mouth from whose vortex there is no return. One caprice of imagination leads to another. A table was spread in the centre of the room, and a knot of worthy souls were busily enjoying themselves. They were the members of the Noctes Ambrosianæ. North was there, and Tickler, and Hogg, and ODoherty, and Mullion, and the rest of that illustrious band. And when the mouth saw them, he elevated his dexter-hand a third time but its spell was unavailing now. North shook his crutch at him in derision-the Shepherd saluted him with a guffaw of contempt-Mullion snapped his fingers in his faceODoherty discharged a brandy bottle at his head,-and Tickler swore he did not value him a pipe-stopper. Poor mouth-he was quite chop-fallen! I pitied him. There is something painful in witnessing the failure of one who has been invariably victorious; and in spite of my respect for those excellent friends who had set him at defiance, I would rather have seen them sucked into his Lethean gulf than witnessed his overthrow. I pitied him profoundly, for his faculties of devourment were next to boundless; and it was lamentable to think that there dwelt on this ball of earth any power capable of saying, "thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." Time, or the Man with the Mouth, or whatever name we choose to call him by, felt his situation bitterly. He did not gnash his teeth; that would have been a tedious business to one whose mouth required thirty-six minutes to open, and doubtless as many to shut-but the tears rolled down his pallid cheeks, and deep long-drawn sighs of anguish and disappointment proceeded from the bottom of his heart. To assuage sorrow was always one of my principles. My heart is ever open "to the sweet music of huma nity;" and I resolved to pour consolation into the spirit of this injured one. "Yes, Mouth! I shall assuage thy matchless griefs," said I, weeping bitterly, while I buried my eyes in my handkerchief with one hand, and seized that of the object of my philanthropy with the other. Scarcely had I done so, than the mouth uttered these awful words-" Friend, thou art more free than welcome!"_ and, on looking up to see what they could import, I found that I was seated in the travellers' room of the Hen and Chickens at Birmingham, and had caught by the nose a worthy quaker, who was at that moment occupied in devouring a savoury dish of pork-chops and sausages. A MODERN PYTHAGOREAN. IN THE SEXTON OF COLOGNE. N the year 1571 there lived at Cologne a rich burgomaster, whose wife, Adelaide, then in the prime of her youth and beauty, fell sick and died. They had lived very happily together, and, throughout her fatal illness, the doating husband scarcely quitted her bedside for an instant. During the latter period of her sickness she did not suffer greatly; but the fainting fits grew more and more frequent, and of increasing duration, till at length they became incessant, and she finally sank under them. It is well known that Cologne is a city which, as far as respects religion, may compare itself with Rome; on which account it was called, even in the middle ages, Roma Germanica, and sometimes the Sacred City. It seemed as if, in after-times, it wished to compensate by piety the misfortune of having been the birth-place of the abominable Agrippina. many years nothing else was seen but priests, students, and mendicant monks; while the bells were ringing and tolling from morning till night. Even now you may count in it as many churches and cloisters as the year has days. For The principal church is the cathedral of St. Peter-one of the handsomest buildings in all Germany, though still not so complete as it was probably intended by the architect. The choir alone is arched. The chief altar is a single block of black marble, brought along the Rhine to Cologne, from Namur upon the Maas. In the sacristy an ivory rod is shown, said to have belonged to the apostle Peter; and in a chapel stands a gilded coffin, with the names of the holy Three Kings inscribed. Their skulls are visible through an opening-two being white, as belonging to Caspar and Baltesar-the third black, for Melchior. It was in this church that Adelaide was buried with great splendour. In the spirit of that age, which had more feeling for the solid than real tastemore devotion and confidence than unbelieving fear-she was dressed as a bride in flowered silk, a motley garland upon her head, and her pale fingers covered with costly rings; in which state she was conveyed to the vault of a little chapel, directly under the choir, in a coffin with glass windows. Many of her forefathers were already resting here, all embalmed, and, with their mummy forms, offering a strange contrast to the silver and gold with which they were decorated, and teaching, in a peculiar fashion, the difference between the perishable and the imperishable. The custom of embalming was, in the present instance, given up; and, when Adelaide was buried, it was settled that no one else should be laid there for the future. With a heavy heart had Adolph followed his wife to her final restingplace. The turret-bells, of two hundred and twenty hundred weight, lifted up their deep voices, and spread the sounds of mourning through the wide city; while the monks, carrying it was no good pledge." tapers and scattering incense, sang "he could lend no monies on a child requiems from their huge vellum folios, which were spread upon the music-desks in the choir. But the service was now over; the dead lay alone with the dead; the immense clock, which is only wound up once a-year, and shews the course of the planets, as well as the hours of the day, was the only thing that had sound or motion in the whole cathedral. Its monotonous ticking seemed to mock the silent grave. It was a stormy November evening, when Petier Bolt, the Sexton of St. Peter's, was returning home after this splendid funeral. The poor man, who had been married four years, had one child, a daughter, which his wife brought him in the second year of their marriage, and was again expecting her confinement. It was, therefore, with a heavy heart that he had left the church for his cottage, which lay damp and cold on the banks of a river, and which, at this dull season, looked more gloomy than ever. At the door he was met by the little Maria, who called out with great delight, "You must not go up stairs, father; the stork has been here, and brought Maria a little brother!"-a piece of information more expected than agreeable, and which was soon after confirmed by the appearance of his sister-in-law, with a healthy infant in her arms. His wife, however, had suffered much, and was in a state that required assistance far beyond his means to supply. In this distress he bethought himself of the Jew, Isaac, who had lately advanced him a trifle on his old silver watch; but now, unfortunately, he had nothing more to pledge, and was forced to ground all his hopes on the Jew's compassion-a very unsafe anchorage. With doubtful steps he sought the house of the miser, and told his tale amidst tears and sighs; to all of which Isaac listened with great patience—so much so, that Bolt began to flatter himself with a favorable answer to his petition. But he was disappointed the Jew, having heard him out, coolly replied, that With bitter execrations on the usurer's hard-heartedness, poor Bolt rushed from his door; when, to aggravate his situation, the first snow of the season began to fall, and that so thick and fast, that, in a very short time, the house-tops presented a single field of white. Immersed in his grief, he missed his way across the market-place, and, when he least expected such a thing, found himself in the front of the cathedral. The great clock chimed three quarters—it wanted then a quarter to twelve. Where was he to look for assistance at such an hour-or, indeed, at any hour? He had already applied to the rich prelates, and got from them all that their charity was likely to give. Suddenly, a thought struck him like lightning; he saw his little Maria crying for the food he could not give herhis sick wife, lying in bed, with the infant on her exhausted bosom-and then Adelaide, in her splendid coffin, and her hand glittering with jewels that it could not grasp. "Of what use are diamonds to her now?" said he to himself. "Is there any sin in robbing the dead to give to the liv ing? I would not do such a thing for myself if I were starving-no, Heaven forbid ! But for my wife and child-ah! that's quite another matter." Quieting his conscience as well as he could with this opiate, he hurried home to get the necessary implements; but by the time he reached his own door, his resolution began to waver. The sight, however, of his wife's distress wrought him up again to the sticking-place; and having provided himself with a dark lantern, the church-keys, and a crow to break open the coffin, he set out for the cathedral. On the way, all manner of strange fancies crossed him: the earth seemed to shake beneath him-it was the tottering of his own limbs: a figure seemed to sign him back-it was the shade thrown from some column, that waved to and fro as the lamp-light flickered in the night-wind. But still the thought of home drove him on; and even the badness of the weather carried this consolation with it-he was the more likely to find the streets clear, and escape detection. He had now reached the cathedral. For a moment he paused on the steps, and then, taking heart, put the huge key into the lock. To his fancy, it had never opened with such readiness before. The bolt shot back at the light touch of the key, and he stood alone in the church, trembling from head to foot. Still it was requisite to close the door behind him, lest its being open should be noticed by any one passing by, and give rise to suspicion; and, as he did so, the story came across his mind of the man who visited a church at midnight to show his courage. For a sign that he had really been there he was to stick his knife into a coffin; but, in his hurry and trepidation, he struck it through the skirt of his coat without being aware of it, and supposing himself held back by some supernatural agency, dropt down dead from terror. Full of these unpleasant recollections, he tottered up the nave; and as the light successively flashed upon the sculptured marbles, it seemed as if the pale figures frowned ominously upon him. But desperation supplied the place of courage. He kept on his way to the choir-descended the steps-passed through the long, narrow passage, with the dead heaped on either side-opened Adelaide's chapel, and stood at once before her coffin. There she lay, stiff and pale —the wreath in her hair, and the jewels on her fingers, gleaming strangely in the dim lights of the lantern. He even fancied that he already smelt the pestilential breath of decay, though it was full early for corruption to have begun his work. A sickness seized him at the thought; and he leaned for support against one of the columns, with his eyes fixed on the coffin; when-was it real, or was it illusion ?—a change came over the face of the dead! He started back; and that change, so indescribable, had passed away in an instant, leaving a darker shadow on the features. "If I had only time," he said to himself" if 1 had only time, I would rather break open one of the other coffins, and leave the lady Adelaide in quiet. Age has destroyed all that is human in these mummies; they have lost that resemblance to life, which makes the dead so terrible, and I should no more mind handling them than so many dry bones. It's all nonsense, though; one is as harmless as the other, and since the lady Adelaide's house is the easiest for my work, I must e'en set about it." But the coffin did not offer the facilities he reckoned upon with so much certainty. The glass-windows were secured inwardly with iron wire, leaving no space for the admission of the hand, so that he found himself obliged to break the lid to pieces, a task that, with his imperfect implements, cost both time and labor. As the wood splintered and cracked under the heavy blows of the iron, the cold perspiration poured in streams down his face, the sound assuring him more than all the rest that he was committing sacrilege. Before, it was only the place, with its dark associations, that had terrified him: now he began to be afraid of himself, and would, without doubt, have given up the business altogether, if the lid had not suddenly flown to pieces. Alarmed at his very success, he started round, as if expecting to see some one behind, watching his sacrilege, and ready to clutch him; and so strong had been the illusion, that, when he found this was not the case, he fell upon his knees before the coffin, exclaiming, "Forgive me, dear lady, if I take from you what is of no use to yourself, while a single diamond will make a poor family so happy. It is not for myself-Oh no!it is for my wife and children." He thought the dead looked more kindly at him as he spoke thus, and certainly the livid shadow had passed away from her face. Without more delay, he raised the cold hand |