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POSTHUMOUS LETTER.

(By the Author of "Rutson Morley.")

[I do not know any more pleasurably painful duty that a man can be called upon to discharge than the revision of the papers of a deceased literary friend. The very livingness of the mind, still communicating life and activity to that of him who reads, only recalls the more vividly the irrevocable deadness of the hand that wrote. It is this life in death-this communion without interchange-this sympathy without acceptance-this near approach which is yet so unutterably far from union, that causes the performance of this duty to be accompanied with the most strange intermingling of pleasure and pain of which a man can well be susceptible. It has lately been my melancholy pleasure to revise and arrange-not with any view to publication-the literary remains of one who was once my fellow-student, and, up to the time of his death, my most intimate friend. During the last year of his life we were both abroad; in different parts of the world, however, and with different objects-I, in Paris, in a professional capacity; he, in Egypt, in search of health. I heard of his death only two months after his return to England. We had corresponded faithfully up to this time, and his letters from Egypt were most minute and full of interest. In one of them, however, he had alluded to an adventure which he said was so strange that he would keep it for our next re-union. It was not our happiness to meet again, and I often wondered, after hearing of his death, what could have been the nature of the story he had in reserve for me. In looking over his Egyptian journal the other day, I came upon a loose manuscript which I read with much interest, as it contained apparently a narrative of the very adventure in question. I cannot account, however, for the circumstance of its not being incorporated with the rest of the journal. It is in the form of a letter addressed to myself; but whether it is a recital of the circumstances exactly as they occurred, or whether the story is only founded on the original adventure, amplified into what was intended to be a literary amusement for our two selves, must in the meantime remain a matter of doubt. The following is the story referred to, which I have been kindly permitted by the relations of the deceased to submit to the public, on the simple condition of altering the names of the persons concerned]. You remember, Willie, how you and I used to discuss the character of that mysterious fellow Drapier, and think it about as difficult a

subject of psychological analysis as ever was operated upon by our trenchant intellects, sharpened as they then were by hourly disputa tions on all the insolvable problems of metaphysics. You remember his incomprehensible isolation from his fellow-men, and the utter futility of all our efforts to learn anything regarding his origin or his personal circumstances. You remember the defiant contempt with which he treated all friendly advances, and the special hatred towards me which his looks so evidently betrayed, as year after year he found himself second to me in the list of honours. You remember how we oscillated from loathing to pity, from pity to loathing, and from loathing to pity again. What his object in life might be was a problem to his fellow-students, compared with which the "Summum Bonum," and all the other mysteries that we dreamt of in our philosophy, were tangible and luminous. His only passion seemed to be for distinction, and even this was often belied by his capricious abandonment of study at the very time when he was gaining on the only antagonist he had to fear. I sometimes fancy he must have been of noble parentage, but unacknowledged. Surely to none but the scion of a noble house could such face and figure belong. Had the pride of a princely race stooped to the queen of a gipsy tribe, it would have been a fitting solution of the Drapier mystery. And then, his resources! Do you remember what speechless awe fell upon us, when we learned that instead of humble lodgings like those of most of our student class, this great Hidalgo inhabited a suite of apartments in -Hotel, Princes-street? suppose you will hardly believe me, Willie, when I tell you that there is a circumstance connected with my acquaintance with him in Edinburgh, which I have never told you of. After you left, having no other male friend to vent my affections upon, I actually found myself leaning daily more and more to the side of pity in regard to the Drapier subject. By a series of little kindnesses, all in the way of class-business, the first of which were met with sullen_indifference that gradually warmed into something better as the series accumulated, I positively succeeded in thawing him, to the edified amazement of all who beheld the miracle. I got so far into his inner sentiments in a day or two, as to discover that he would not object to a little female society, and found very little persuasion necessary to induce him to accompany

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me one evening to the Armours'. We passed a very pleasant evening, Drapier proving himself much more talkative than I could have previously given him credit for being. I was so secure of Mary at that time, that I did not feel it any great stretch of benevolence to yield her society entirely to the stranger, and to confine my attentions to Mrs. Armour and little Jane. To my surprise Drapier suggested to me next day that we should renew the visit as soon as possible, which we did, and, as stage books say-" same play as before." Next day he was absent from his class. This, you remember, was an unusual thing for him; and when I found the same to be the case on the day following, I felt so anxious regarding him, that after class hours I called at his hotel to see if anything were the matter. I was surprised to learn that he had not been seen since the last evening we had spent at the Armours': in fact, I thought I was looked upon with something not very far from suspicion when the waiter told me that I was the last man in whose company he had been seen. I returned in a state of considerable anxiety to my lodgings, and pondered over the circumstance for some time; but, hitting upon no satisfactory theory, I betook myself to my usual refuge. After filling the room with the accumulated smoke of three or four pipes in unbroken succession, I had risen and opened the window, when, just as I was in the act of turning round to resume my seat, I became suddenly aware of Drapier standing before me, pale and haggard, and scowling on me with a look of intensified hate that was absolutely fiendish. "What devil," he gasped out, “sent you to blast the only two hopes I ever had?" And before I had time to protect myself he had planted a blow on my chest that stretched me breathless on the floor. I heard him slam the door with a wild laugh, after which I became utterly unconscious, and continued so for several hours. When I again came to myself I was lying with my head beneath the open window. The snow was falling fast, and huge flakes were settling on my face, where they melted and mingled with the blood that was flowing from my mouth. I felt a dead chill all over me, and it was only after a series of sore efforts that I was able to crawl to the bell-rope. I need not trouble you with any details regarding my subsequent illness, which lasted about a fortnight. Next time I saw Mary I learned from her that just before paying me that disagreeable visit Drapier had called at the house, had sought and obtained an interview with her, and had made her a formal offer of marriage. Mary of course told him in the gentlest possible manner of our engagement. He made no reply, it seems, but rushed from the house, from which, I suppose, he came direct to my lodgings. I told Mary nothing of the circumstance at the time, as I thought it would only vex her; and I concealed it from you, as I fancied you would blame the unworthy intimacy which had led to it. But something tells me, Willie, that the time is not far distant when whatever you have loved in me will become tenfold dearer, and

Ah,

when the thought of blame will find no entrance into your heart. To tell the truth, I trace back my disease to that unlucky blow. It was not till sometime after Mary and I were married that I became aware that the effects of it had settled down on me, and that the strength on which I had prided myself was on the wane. Willie, may you never know such sorrow as mine was when I led Mary back to the home of her childhood, and turned away to seek that which I knew too well was lost to me for ever! I had almost murmured against Providence when I counted up my means and found that if I went abroad at all, it must needs be-alone. It was necessary that I should narrate the above, before you could fully enter into my feelings in what follows. I am about to tell you of the strangest and most awful adventure that ever varied the tenour of my life. It would seem as if it had been ordained that though my life was to be a short one, there was yet to be crowded into it the concentrated experience and discipline of many years. Is it not good that it should be so? Is it by time, or by its result that we shall be judged? Is the fruit-tree that winter finds leafless to be held in dishonour because of the barren laurel? There is no set time for meetness and maturity. If mine is summer-fruit, shall I murmur because it is gathered in its freshness before such as need the mellow suns of Autumn?

As I told you in a former letter, I arrived at Thebes on the 14th of January. I had been upwards of a fortnight exploring the wonders of Gourneh, the Memnonium, Medeenet Habou, Luxor, and last, and greatest by far, Karnac, before I allowed myself to visit the wonderful old tombs that honeycomb the mountains separating the "Lybian suburb" from the desert. You know that my tastes are sepulchral, and though I was well prepared before seeing Thebes to delight in the abundance of templeglories, the tombs of the kings were what I kept to the last,'as by far the most interesting of all the sights with which Egypt could tempt me. It was a long and dreary ride up a long and dreary valley. It was in the very depths of solitude that these grand old monarchs chose to lie down, each one in his glory. How easy, with the same sun looking down on the same glaring hills, to fill the valley with the long mourning processions that, thousands of years ago, bore successive dynasties to their long resting-places! How easy to conjure up the whole funereal pageantry filling these barren solitudes with the solemn glory of dead majesty, the placing of the royal mummy in the chambers of the hills, and the loud return of servile multitudes to hail a new yoke of bondage!

I spent the greater part of the day in the tombs known as Belzoni's and Bruce's. You have read too many books of Egyptian travel to require that I should describe these to you. But oh, Willie, there is that which books cannot give-that intensity of realization which the immediate presence of famous remains so delightfully excites-that translation of our whole

being to past ages, that gives us the delirious," Monitors of the Nile," being supposed by the rapture of a victory over Time itself! Sitting Arabs to give warning of the vicinity of a in the heart of the earth, surrounded with the crocodile. Its head was like that of a serpent, grand emblems of monarchies that lie buried in and the resemblance was heightened by its the farthest mounds of hoarest History, shut in having a forked tongue that appeared and disand o'ercanopied with rocks richly burdened appeared with the usual snakelike rapidity. In with the typical language of ancient worship and its rage, too, at its unwelcome durance, it was regal chronicle, gazing on the hallowed mysteries hissing like an infuriated dragon-of which on which the eyes of the royal occupant alone fabulous monster only the want of wings prewere to gaze when the cycles of ages should vented its being the express miniature. There bring about the glory of resurrection-here was a diabolical beauty about it, such as Turner (and I say it with reverence) I felt one day as a might have transferred to the canvass with thousand years, and a thousand years as one terrific effect. Even the sleepless dragon of his poor day. How nearly the mortality of the Hesperides might have been a more masterly world's oldest kings touched upon my own! I specimen of colouring and conception, had he was a dying man in the nineteenth century of seen the combination of beauty and fury that the reign of grace, and I held in my hand the was presented by this enraged reptile. It was cerements that had wrapt a royal corpse when in vain that it writhed and twisted, it could not this world that we call old was yet in its early reach the hand of its captor, who was by this prime! The cerements that shrouded him time laughingly holding it out towards me, and royally three thousand years ago, are not so far offering it for money. Anxious to possess the faded but that to-morrow they might wrap me creature, I presented the Arab with a few piastres, round respectably enough for a stranger's grave which he accepted without demur. The difficulty under a palm-tree, Surely this respect should now lay in the delicate operation of conveying it make calamity of shorter life, or at least choke from one hand to another, as I found that he the breath of impatience. I have striven hard, objected to my wish, made known to him by Willie, to learn the lesson of the tomb. It has signs, that he would carry it for me to the boat. one for you, and another for me. To you, in the In the said act of transference the little wretch vigour of manhood, it is that every hour is long, made such a violent snap at our hands that we long in great action, longer still in glorious both instinctively let go, upon which the monitor result. To me, blasted in my youth, a mere made off in one direction, and the Arab in apprentice to be smitten down with the hammer another, the latter doubtless fearing that the of the Master ere yet I have reared one pillar money would be reclaimed. I shouted after him, that shall perpetuate my name, it is that hours, but he soon disappeared, and I saw him no days, years, ages are nothing-Time itself but more. When I turned round again in the a vesture of thought, a perishable garment, yet direction that the monitor had taken, I saw its to be cast away as at once unserviceable and out scaly form just disappearing over the ridge of a of fashion. Surely both lessons are true. Face sand-hill in the direction of the river. Making life with yours; I shall meet the last enemy with a rapid circuit I soon found myself in front of mine. him; but seeing me he wheeled round, and struck out for the desert. I followed of course. Sometimes I lost sight of him for a little, and invariably on coming up with him again, found him making for the river, until the sight of me sent him round again to the west. I suppose he travelled farther from the water that day than Nature ever intended him to do; for by the time I lost sight of him his pace had considerably slackened. At length, when I was within twenty yards of him, he disappeared behind a loose fragment of rock. I made my way to the spot as fast as possible, but my enthusiasm was considerably damped on finding that I had miscalculated the dimensions of the stony impediment, which, with the exception of a small opening at the bottom through which the monitor had crept, was deeply embedded in the sand. I tried in vain to tear it from its position by main force, and then, being determined if possible to have some reward for the labours of the chase, I set to, with might and main, to remove the sand. It was slow work, Every handful that I removed was only the signal for double the quantity to roll down and more than fill up the momentary vacancy. I felt conscious, however, that this loose sand was a much less serious obstacle to the displacing of the stone than the

Full of such thoughts I emerged into the daylight, and being anxious fully to realize the unutterable solitude of this region of death, I sent my guides and horses back to the boat, telling the former that I would return on foot, and that I might be expected shortly after sunset. I retained a flask of wine, a torch, and wherewithal to light it, having some idea of revisiting the tombs I had just left, when the usual time for travellers' visits should be past, and I should be free from all fear of interruption in continuing my researches. In the meantime I wandered hither and thither over the interminable series of dreary sandstone ridges that stretch away to the Lybian desert,

I had pursued this erratic course for some little time, when I descried one of the natives a half-naked member of the class of the fellaheen -making towards me, carrying something in his hand, that in the distance looked like a snake writhing in the agony of captivity. As he approached I began to imagine that it was a young crocodile, some three and a half feet long, which he was holding by the tail. On a nearer approach still, I saw that it was a specimen of a class of animals which I had long wished to see, and which are popularly known as

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