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Che Eram

A WEEKLY JOU

—- ———

EDWARD WHELAN] Vout. SpagE Herse:

This is true Libertn, when Free-born Men, having to advise the Public, man speak free.——BURIPIDES.

ier.

RNAL OF POLITICS, LITERATURE AND NEWS.

CHARLOTTETOWN, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND, MONDAY, OCTOBER

3, 1859.

(EDITOR ann PUBLISHER

Literature. HEART EASING THINGS.

To spend a calm, bright summer day alone,

In one of Nature's sanctuaries holy,

Where the uncourted hours glide on so slowly That the long day dream seems a life bygone ;

Tn leafy place with water flowing nigh it,

Where faintly sound the never-ceasing gush, Low whispering its everlasting hush,

Itself the only breaker of the quiet ;

On the cool, shining grass so still to lie That you can see the thrush’s gleaming eye,

Her soft, white eye, and mark her speckled breast, As near she comes, in doubt a moment hovering, Then darting through the curt‘ning boughs, discovering

Low in the alder her leaf-hidden nest.

Or lying on a lonely hill side, to

Look upward through the unfathomable blue, Beyond the earth born cloud across it driven, Calm, clangeless, everlasting, called Heayen ;

The sapphire floor trodden by angel legions—

At least the way to reach their blissful regions. To wateh the floating eloudiets soft and fair, And long to be a spirit thin as air.

To sink half way into their downy pillows,

And roll to westward "mong the crimson billows ;

Strande upon the sunset’s golden sand ;

W hile clear still is the mild air above —

Embracing all, like the Infinite love— Dapillur'd dome, roofing Earth’s temple grand.

—_oae +

[From Blackwood’s Magazine for August, 1859.]

THE HAUNTED HOUSE. Concluded.

But my story is not yet done, A few days after Mr. J had moved into the house, [ paid hima visit. We were standing by the window and conversing. A van con- taining some articles of furniture which he was moving from his former house was at the door. [ had just urged on him my theory, that all those phenomena regarded as supermnn- dave had emanated from a human brain ; adducing the charm or rather curse we had found in siapport of my philosophy Mr. J was observing in reply, “‘ That even if mesmer- ism, Or whatever analogous power it might be calleJ, could rexlly thus work in the absence of the operator, and produce effects so extraordinary, still could those effects continue when the operator himself was dead? and if the spell had been wrougit, and, indeed, the room walled up, more than seventy years ago, the probability was, that the operator had long since Jeparted this tife ;" Mr. J-—, | say, was thus

answering wien [ caught hold of his arm and pointed to the |

street below.

A well-dressed man had ercssed from the spposite side, anu was accosting the carrier in charge of the van. is face, as he stood, was exactly fronting our window. -It was che fac of the miniature we had discovered ; it was the face of the portrait of the noble of three centuries ago.

“ Good heavens!” cried Mr. J that is the face o de V . and scarcely a day older than when [ saw it the Rajah’s court in my youth!”

Seized by the same thought, we both hastened down stairs L was first in the street ; but the man had already gone. I

caught sight of him, however, not many yards in advance, |

and in anotser moment I was by hs side.

I had resolved to speak to him, but when I looked into his face I felt as if it were impossible to do so. That eye —the eye of the serpent—fixed and beld me spell-bound. And withal, about the man’s whole person there was a dig- nity, an air of pride and station, and superiority, that would have made any one, habituated to the usages of the world, hesitate long before venturing upon a liberty or impertinence. And what could I say? what was it I could ask? ‘hus

baman habitation

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“Oh !—a very homely one—Richards.” | ‘ And what is his birth—his family ?”

| “How do I know? What does it signify ?—no doubt , Some parvenu, but rich—so infernally rich !"

a drew me up to the stranger, and the introduction was effected. The mannecs of Mr. Richards were not those of an adventurous traveller. Travellers are in general con- )Stitutionally gifted with high animal spirits ; they are talk- ative, eager, imperious. Mr. Richards was calm and subdued

Lin tone, with manners which were made distant by the lofti-

ness of punctilious courtesy—ihe manners of a former age. { observed that the English he spoke was not of our day. { should even have said that the accent was slightly foreign. But then Mr. Richards remarked that he had been little in the habit for many years of speaking in his native tongue. Te conversation fell upon the changes in the aspect of Lon- don since he had last visited our metropclis, G then glanced off to the moral changes—literary, social, political— the great men who were removed from the stage within the last twenty years—the new great men who were coming on. In all this Mr. Richards evinced no interest. He had evidently read none of our living authors, and seemed scarcely acquainted by name with our younger statesmen. Once and euly once he laughed ; it was when G—— asked him when he had any thoughts of getting into Parliament. And the leigh was inward—sarcastie —sinister—a sneer raised into @ laugh. After a few minutes G left us to talk to some other acquaintances who had just lounged into the room, and I then-said quietly—

“T have seen a miniature of you, Mr. Richards, in the house you once inhabited, and perhaps built, if not wholly, at least in part, in street. You passed by that house this morning.”

bis fixed my gaze so stedfastly that I could not withdraw it —those fascinating serpent eyes. But involuntarily, and as if the words that translated my thought were dragged from me, I added in a low whisper, “ I have been a student in the mysteries of life and mature ; of those mysteries | have known the occult professors. L have the right to speak to you thus.” And [ uttered a certain pass-word.

« Well,” said he drily,.« [ concede the right—whas would

you ask 2”

} “To what extent human will in certain temperaments can extend ?”

‘To what extent can thought extend? Think, and be- , fore you can draw breath you are in China ?” “True. But my thought has no power in China !”’

“Give it expression and it may have > you may write down a thought which, socner or later, may alter the whole condition of China. What is alaw butathought? There- fore thought is. infiuite—therefore thought bas power ; not in proportion to its value—a bad thought may make a bad law as potent as a good thought can make a good one,” = Yes; what you say confirms my own theory. Through invisible currents one human brain may transnvit its ideas to other human brains with the same rapidity as a thought promulgated by visible means. And as thought is imperish- able—ns it ieaves its stamp behind it in the natural world ‘even when the thinker bas passed out of this world—so the 'thought of the living may have power to rouse up and re- | vive the thoughts of the dead—such as those thoaghts were

thoughts which the dead mow may entertain. {8 it not so ?” «“[ decline to answer if, in my judgment, thought has

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Not till [had fi ished did I raise my eyes to his, and then |

| pore his desires emphatically those of the sensualist—he has, therefore, a strong love of life. He is an absolute egotist—

his will is concentrated in himself—he has fierce passions-~ |

he knows no enduring, no holy affections, but he can covet eagerly what for the moment he desires—he can hate inypla- cably what opposes itfelf to his objects—be can commit fear- ful crimes, yet feel small remorse—he resorts rather to curses upon others, than to penitence for his misdeeds. Circum- stances, to which his constitution guides him, lead him to a rare knowledge of the natural secrets which may serve his egotism. He isa close ob-erver where his passions encourage observation, he is a minute calculator, not from love of truth, but where love of self sharpens his faculties,—therefore he ean be a man of science, I suppose such a being, having by | experience learned the | over of hisarts over others, trying what ‘may be the power of will over his own frame, and studying all that in natural philosophy may increase that power. He loves life, he dreads death ; Ae wills to live on. He cannot restore himself youth, he cannot entirely stay the progress- ‘of death, he cannot make himself immortal in the flesh and blood ; but he may arrest fora time so prolonged as to appear incredible, if L said it—that hardening of the parts which constitutes old age. A year may age him no more than an hour ages another. Fis intense will, scientifically trained into system, operates, in short, over the wear and tare of his own frame. He lives on. That he may not seem a portent and a miracle, he dies from time to time, seemingly, to certain persons. Having schemed the transfer of a wealth that suffices to his wants, he disappears from one corner of the world, and econtrives that his obsequies shall be celebrated. He reappears at another corner of the world, where he resides undetected, and does not visit the scenes of his former career till all who could remember his features are no more. He would be profoundly miserable if he had affections,—he has none but for Ifimself. | No good man would accept his lon- gevity, and to no men, good or bad, would he or could he communicate its true secret. Such aman might exist ; such a man as I have described I see now before me !—Duke of , in the court of , dividing time between lust and brawl, alchemists and wizards ;—again, in the last century, charlatan and criminal, with name less noble, domiciled in the house at which you gazed to-day, and flying from the law you had outraged, none knew whither ;—traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through yonder streets ;—o tlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner mystics ;—execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, | warn you back from the cities and homes of bealth{ul men ;. back to the ruins of departed empires ; back to the deserts of nature uaredcemed !”

There answered me a whisper so musical, that it seemed to enter into my whole being, and subdue me despite of myself. Thus it caid—

* T brave sought one like you for the last hundred years. Now I Wate found you, we part not til] Tknow what [ desire. Phe vision that sees through the Past, and cleaves through the veil of the Future, is im you at this hour ; never before. never to come again. ‘The vision of no puling, fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong man with a vigorous brain. Soar and look forth !”

As he spoke I felt as if I rose out of myself upon eagle wings. All the weight seemed gone from air,—roofless the

| in life—though the thought of the living cannot reach the | rom, roofless the dome of space. I was not in the body—

where L knew not— but aloft over time, over earth. Again I heard the melodious whisper,—** You say right.

ithe limit you would fix to it; but proceed. You havea/T have mastere] great secrets by the power of Will; true, by

special question you wish to put.” “T[ntense malignity in an intense will, engendered in a

| peculiar temperament, and sided by natural means within |

Will and Science I cam retard the process of years; but death comes not by agealons. Can | frustrate the accidents ‘which bring death upon the young ?”

‘the reach of science, may produce effects like those ascribed| ‘* No; every accident is a providence, Before a provi- ‘of old to evil magic. It might thus haunt the walls of a|denee snaps every human will.’’

/and guilty deeds once conceived and done within those walls ; ‘all, im short, with which the evil will claims rapport and

ashamed of my first impulse, I fell a few paces back, still, | old dramas acted therein years ago. Thoughts thus crossing

however, following the stranger, undecided what else to do. Meanwhile he turned the corner of the strect ; a plain car- riage was in waiting with a servant out of livery dressed like a valet-de-place at the carriage-door. In another mo- ment he hail stepped into the carriage, and it drove off. I returned to the house. Mr. J

door. He had asked the carrier what the stranger had said |

to him. Merely asked whom that house now belonged to.” The same evening I happened to go with a friend to a

place in town called the Cosmopolitan Club, a place open to} .men of al! countries, all opinions, all degrees. Oac order3

one’s coffee, «mokes one’s cigar. One is always sure to meet agreeable, sometimes remarkable persons.

I had not been two minutes in the room at table, conversing with an acquaintance of mine, will designate by the initial G , the man ; the Origina of the Miniature. He was now without his hat, and the likeness was yet more startling, only I observed that whila he was conversing there was less severity in the countenance ; there was even a smile, though a very quiet and very cold one. The dignity of mien I had acknowledged in the street was also more striking ; a dignity akin to that which invests

each other hap-hazard, as ia the nightmare of a vision, grow-

ing up into phantom sights and sounds, and all serving to

visitations from a world without, but that they are ghastly monstrous renewals of what have been in this world its If,

was still at the street; et into malignant play by a malignant mortal. And it is) th | through the material agepcy of that human brain that these | kings 2”

things would acquire even a human power—would strike as) You will yet play a part on the earth that will fill earth

with the shoek of elestricity, and might kill, if the thought! with commotion and amaze. For wondrous designs have

of the person assailed did not rise superior to the dignity of the original assailer—might kill the most powerful animal if unnerved by fear, but not injure the feeblest man, if, while his flesh crept, his mind stood out fearless. Thus, when in old stories we read of a migician rent to pieces by the fiends

own evil propensities, certain elements and fluids, usually quiescent or harmless, with awful shape and terrific force ; —just as the lightning that had lain hidden and innocent in the cloud becomes by natural law cuddenly visible, takes a distinct shape to the eye, and can strike destruction on the object to which it is attracted.”

some prince of the Nast ; conveying the idea of supreme in-| ‘ You are not without glimpses of a very mighty seeret,” difference and habitual, indisputable, indolent, but resiztless| said Mr. Richards composediy. ‘* According io your view,

power. G . scientific journal, which seemed to absorb his attention.

‘could a mortal obtain the power you speak of, he would ne-

soon after left the stranger, who then took up a cessarily be a malignant andevil being.” | “If the power were exercised as t have said, most malig-

I drew G———aside. “ Who and what is that gentleman ?”’ | nant and most evil ; though I believe in the ancient traditions

“That? Oh, a very remarkable man, indeed. I met him last year amidst the caves of Petra; the scriptaral Edum. He is the best Oriental scholar | know. We joined company, had an adventure with robbers, in which he showed

‘that he‘could not injure the good. His will could only injure ‘those with whom it had established an affinity, or over whom ‘it forces unresisted sway. I will not imagine an example ‘that may be within the laws of nature, yet seem wild as the

create horror, not because those sights and sounds are really | ‘I did ere I learned these secrets, resume eager inierest in

with spectral revivals of all guilty thoughts | “Shall [ die at last, ages and ages hence, by the slow,

‘though inevitable growth of time, or by the cause that I call

' aecident ?”

| aflinity,—imperfect, incoherent, fragmentary snatches at the} “ By a cause you call aecident.” : ‘ | Is not tiie end still remote ?” asked the whisper, with a

|slight tremor.

* Regarded as my life regards time, it is stil} remote.” * And shall 1 before then, mix with the world of men as

their strife and their troubles—battle with ambition, and use the power of the sage to win the power that belongs to

you, a wonder ycurself, been permitted to live on through

‘the centuries. All the secrets you have stored will then jhave their wses—all that now makes you a stranger amidst

‘the generations will contribute then to make you their lord. As the trees and the straws are drawn into the whirlpool —

'—but in destroying, made, against your ewn will, a Con- structor !”

“ And that date, too, is far off ?” | ‘Bapvoff; when it comes, think your end in this world is at hand!”

“ Flow and what is the end? Look east, west, south. and

norte.”

point whence your instincts have warned you, there a spectre

’tis chased—it sails on:. Baffled navies sail after that ship. It enters the region of'ice. It passesa sky red with meteors. ‘Two moons stand on high, over ice-reefs. 1 see the ship locked between white defiles—they are ice-rocks. I see the dead strew the decks — stark and livid, green mould on ‘their limbs. All are dead but one man-—it is you! But ‘years, though slowly they come, have then scathed you.

“Tn the north, where you never yet trod—towards the |

will seize you. "Tis Death! [ see a ship—it is haunted— |

a coolness that saved our lives; afterwards he invited me to | fables of a bewildered monk.

spend a day with him in a aouse he had bought at Damascus,! ‘“You will remember that Albertus Magnus, after des- There is the coming of age upon your brow, and the will is re-|

a houve buried amongst almond blossoms and roses, the most | eribing minutely the process by which spirits may be invoked | laxed in the cells of the brain, Still that will, though en- beautiful thivg! the had lived there for some years, quite | and cemaiil adds.emphatically, that the process will in- | feebled, exceeds all that man knew Wate ore Sete the as an Oriental, in grand style. I half suspect he isa rene-. struct and avail only to the few; that a man must be born will you live on, gnawed with famine - Ans pay no i de, immensely rich, very old; by the by, a great mesmerizer. a magician /, that is, born with a peculiar physical tempera- | obeys you in that death-spreading ogre — es 79 ® : y have seen him with my own eyes produce an effect on in- ment, a5°& man is born a poet. Rarely are men within | f iron, and the air bas iron clamps, and the ice-recks wedge

animate things. If you take a letter from your pocket and ‘whose constitution lurks this obcult power of the highest in the ship. Hark how it eracks and groans. Ice will im-

: ‘e the intellect there is some bed it as amber imbeds a straw. A man has gone forth, meek’ “towinee living yet, from the ship and its dead ; and he has clamte spikes of an iceberg, and two moons gaze down on

throw it to the other end of the room, he will order it to! order of intellec come to his feet, and you will see the letter wriggle itself twist, perversity, or disease. But, on the other band, they. along the floor till it has his command. ’Pon my must possess, to an astonishing degree, the faculty to con- | up the honor ‘tis true; I have seen him affect ‘the clouds, by means centrate thought on a single object ; the energic faeulty that form.

of a glass tube or wand. But he does not like ae of we call witt. Therefore, though their intellect be not

ta : AT in | t. Te ; : i - up the steep ice-rock, gray grizzly things. The bears of the

ese matters to strangers. He has only just arrived in sound, it is execedingly forcible for the attainment of UP ,

Ragland ; says he has not been here for a great many years ; what it desires will imagine such a person, pre-eminently th have scented their quarry—they come near you and on po. fie brent. e088) J9Ph2 5) See oe : ‘i oe soe shambling and rolling their bulk. And in that day

. : = |, : : i aies : : ; nearer, , me introduce him to you. gifted with this constitution and its concomitant forces eve ssomeat shall-scem to you longer than the centuries

“Certainly! He is English, then? What is his name ?”” will place him in the loftier grades of society. { will sup- |

his at Portsmouth in October.

That man is yourself ; and terror is on you—terror ; | and terror has swallowed your will. And I see swarming jargely increased.

) =e er — ‘through which you have passed. And heed this—after life, ‘moments continued make the bliss or the hell of eternity.”

* Hush,” said the whisper ; * but the day, you assure me, is far off—very far! I gc back to the almond and rose of Damascus !—sleep !”

The room swam before my eyes. TI became insensible. When I recovered, I found G holding my hand and smiling. He said, “‘ You, who have always declared your-

self proof against mesmerism, have succumbed at last to my

friend Richards.”

“Where is Mr. Richards #’

“ Gone, when you passed into a trance—siying quietly to me, ‘ Your friend will not wake for an hour.’ ”

I asked, as collectedly as I cou'd, where Mr. Richards lodged.

“ At the Trafalgar Hotel.”

“* Give me your arm,” said I toG——, “let us call om him; I have something to say.”

When we arrived at the hotel, we were told that Mr. Richards had returned twenty minutes before, paid his bill, left directions with his servant (a Greek) to pack his effects, and proceed to Malta by the steamer that should leave South- ampton the next day. Mr. Richards had merely said of his owe: movements, that he had visits to pay in the neighbour- hood of London, and it was uncertain whether he should be able to reach Southampton in time for that steamer ; if not, he should follow in the next one.

The waiter asked me my nime. On my informing him, he gave me a note that Mr. Richards kad lefi for me, in case I called.

The aote was as follows :—‘‘ I wished you to utter what ‘was in your mind. You obeyed. I have therefore establish- ed power over you. For three months from this day you can communicate to no living man what has passed betwesm us—you cannot even show this note to the friend by yeur side. During three months, silence complete as to me and mine. Do you doubt my power to lay on this command ?— try to disobey me. At the end of the third month the spe!l is raised. For the rest I spare sou. I shall visit your grave a year and a day after it has received you.”

So ends this strange story, which I ask no one to belicvo. [ write it down exactly three months after L received the above note. I could not write it before, nor could I show to G , in spite of his urgent request, the note which L read under the gas-lamp by his side,

SUNSET ON LAKE LEMAN.

Leaving Lausanne in the afternoon, we passed slowly along the margin of the lake. The air was co»! and pleasant—the scenery most enlivering ; the waters of the lake were gently cuffed by the zephyr which skimmed over its surface; on the opposite shore rose towering to the skies the snow clad members. of the gigantic Alps—most appropriate scenery for the display of that magnificence which the two rulers of day and night put forth on that evening. At the extremity of the lake toward Geneva the sun was setting, arrayed in glory, behind the Alpe, whose bold outline was finely pencilled on a sky of deepening red. The lake below glitiered with gold in the broad line of light, which the declining luminary threw across its waters. At the other extremity the moon was rising behind mountains, whose dark end mysterious form were dimly shadowed out in the gloom. Here a broad belt of glistening silver seemed to vird the lake, as its waters gently rippled in the moonbeams. No description, much less the imperfect one here presen'- ed, can possibly give an adequate idea of the magnificence of the scene.—Rambles in Switzerland.

-_coe? —-—

GEORGE WASHINGTON.

George Washington, wihout the genius of Julius Caesar or Napoleon Bonaparte, has afar purer fame, as his ambitiow was of a higher and holier nature. Instead of seeking to raise his own name, or seize supreme power, he devoted his whole talents, military and civil, to the establishment of the inde- pendence and the perpetuity of the liberties of his own country. In modern history no man has done such great things without the soil of selfixhness or the stain of -a grovelling ambition. Caozar, Cromwell, Napoleon, attainea@ a higher elevation, but the love of dominion was the spur thit drove them on. John ‘Hampden, Wm. Kussell, Algernon Sydney, may have hac motives a8 pure, and an ambition as unstained ; but they fell. To George Washington nearly alone in modern times has ix been given to accomplish a wonderful revolution, and yet ‘to |remain to all future times the theme of a people’s grattnde, ‘and sn example of virtuous and beneficent power.— Lord J.

}

| Russell's Life of For.

4 oo &

f THE TIMBER OF PARAGUAY.

| We brought home sections of a variety of woods, and of tlcir

indestructible qualities [ had some opportunity of jadging in my | frequent vistis to the abandoned missions of the Jesuits in Pa- | raguay, where the finest wood-work—columns, statuary, and | roofing —expused ‘o the action of the elements for more than ‘two centuries, was as untouched by time as granite or inten.

before I beheld; he had evoked—or still more, in Eastern legions, that one as they spin round, are sucked into the deep, and again). 4 ship built of Paragnay wood,’ says Azara; * will outiast four whom [| magician succeeds by arts in destroying another—there may |toesed aloft by the eddies, so shall races and thrones be! of European timber.’ The economy of nature is also most };be so far truth, that a material beiog has clothed, from his | plucked into the charm of your vortex. Awful Destroyer

wonderful and beaut:fal. In the edible froits, foliage, darks, fibres, and juices of its greet forest treee, as wei) as in those of every species of minor vegetation, we find farmmaceous fond, |astimulant, or tea, more beautiful than that afforded by the ‘Chinese leaf, precious medicines, raw materials for the finest ‘tissues and the most useful fabrics, dye-steffs offering varied land unfaded tinge, gums, resins. This exuberance of vege- j table life ig united with a climate as delicious es it 1s salubrious.

| Rewepy ror THe Bitz or Map Docs.—A Saxon forester,

‘named Gastell, now at tho venerable age of 82, unwilling to jtake to the grave with him a secret of so much importance, ‘has niade public in the Leipsic Journal the means which he has used for 50 years, and wherewith he affirms he has re- jseued many human beings from the fearfal death of hydra- phobia. Take immediately vinegar or tepid water, wash the wound clean therewith, and then dry it; then pour upon the ,wound a few drops of hydrochloric acid, because mineral acids destroy the poison of the saliva, by which means tho _ latter is eee

j a » '

A correspondent from Constantinople in the Presse speaks of serious disorders which have taken place at Sueboli, on the Black Sea. The agency of the French steamer company had been invaded, the agent wounded anc dragged through the

‘streets. The Turks bad assaulted the Christians on every side,

and injured them severely.

red! Orders are given to launch three screw line-of-battle ships

The number of workmen at Chatkam dockyard is being

Spain is occupied seriously with the preparation of its ex-

ition against the Moors. 40,000 men are to form the army

of invasion. The whole of the several political parties joi in supporting such a national undertaking.

ae