superstition of childhood, a thought that I might have been Iured by some spirit of evil into the place of ruin, suddenly came over me. I stopped to gather my faculties. I leaned against one of the pillars; it was hot; the floor shook and crackled under my tread, the walls heaved, the flame hissed below, and overhead roared the whirlwind, and burst the thunder-peal.

My brain was fevered. The immense golden lamps still burning; the long tables disordered, yet glittering with the costly ornaments of patrician luxury; the scattered Tyrian couches; the scarlet canopy that covered the whole range of the tables, and gave the hall the aspect of an imperial pavilion partially torn down in the confusion of the flight, all assumed to me a horrid and bewildered splendour. The smokes were already rising through the crevices of the floor; the smell of flame was on my robes; a huge volume of yellow vapour slowly wreathed and arched round the chair at the head of the banquet. I could have imagined a fearful lord of the feast under that cloudy veil! Every thing round me was marked with preternatural fear, magnificence, and ruin.

A low groan broke my reverie. I heard the voice of one in despair. I heard the broken words, "O, bitter fruit of disobedience !-O, my mother, shall I never see your face again?-For one crime I am doomed. Eternal mercy, let my crime be washed away-let my spirit ascend pure. Farewell, mother, sister, father, husband." With the last word I heard a fall, as if the spirit had left the body.

I sprung toward the sound: I met but the solid wall, "Horrible illusion," I cried-" am I mad, or the victim of the powers of darkness ?" I tore away the hangingsa door was before me. I burst it through with a blow of the axe, and saw stretched on the floor, and insensibleSalome!

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I caught my child in my arms; I bathed her forehead with my tears; I besought her to look up, to give some sign of life, to hear the full forgiveness of my breaking heart. She looked not, answered not, breathed not. make a last effort for her life, I carried her into the banquetroom. But the fire had forced its way there; the wind bursting in, had carried the flame through the long galleies; and flashes and spires of lurid light, already darting

through the doors, gave fearful evidence that the last stone of the palace must soon go down.

I bore my unhappy daughter toward the window; but the height was deadly; no gesture could be seen through the piles of smoke; the help of man was in vain. To my increased misery, the current of air revived Salome at the instant when I hoped that, by insensibility, she would escape the final pang. She breathed, stood, and, opening her eyes, fixed on me the vacant stare of one scarcely aroused from sleep. Still clasped in my arms, she gazed again; but my wild face covered with dust, my half-burnt hair, the axe gleaming in my hand, terrified her; she uttered a scream, and darted away from me headlong into the centre of the burning.

I rushed after her, calling on her name.

A column of fire shot up between us; I felt the floor sink; all was then suffocation-I struggled, and fell.—

CROLY.

119.-EXTRACT FROM MR. WEBSTER'S SPEECH ON THE TRIAL OF J. F. KNAPP.

AGAINST the prisoner at the bar, as an individual, I cannot have the slightest prejudice. I would not do him the smallest injury or injustice. But I do not affect to be indifferent to the discovery, and the punishment of this deep guilt. I cheerfully share in the opprobrium, how much soever it may be, which is cast on those who feel and manifest an anxious concern that all who had a part in planning, or a hand in executing this deed of midnight assassination, may be brought to answer for their enormous crime at the bar of public justice. Gentlemen, it is a most extraordinary case. In some respects it has hardly a precedent any where; certainly none in our New England history. This bloody drama exhibited no suddenly excited, ungovernable rage. The actors in it were not surprised by any lion-like temptation upon their virtue, overcoming it before resistance could begin. Nor did they do the deed to glut savage vengeance, or satiate long settled and deadly hate. It was a cool, calculating, money-making murder. It was all "hire and salary, not revenge." It was the

weighing of money against life; the counting out of so many pieces of silver, against so many ounces of blood.

An aged man without an enemy in the world, in his own house, and in his own bed, is made the victim of butcherly murder for mere pay. Truly, here is a new lesson for painters and poets. Whoever shall hereafter draw the portrait of murder, if he will show it as it has been exhibited in an example, where such example was last to have been looked for, in the very bosom of our New England society, let him not give it the grim visage of Moloch, the brow knitted by revenge, the face black with settled hate, and the blood-shot eye emitting livid fires of malice; -let him draw, rather, a decorous, smooth-faced, bloodless demon; a picture in repose, rather than in action; not so much an example of human nature in its depravity, and in its paroxysms of crime, as an infernal nature,- -a fiend in the ordinary display and development of his character.

The deed was executed with a degree of self-possession and steadiness, equal to the wickedness with which it was planned. The circumstances now clearly in evidence, spread out the whole scene before us. Deep sleep had fallen on the destined victim, and on all beneath his roof. A healthful old man, to whom sleep was sweet-the first sound slumbers of the night held him in their soft but strong embrace. The assassin enters, through the window already prepared, into an unoccupied apartment. With noiseless foot he paces the lonely hall, half lighted by the moon; he winds up the ascent of the stairs, and reaches the door of the chamber. Of this he moves the lock, by soft and continued pressure, till it turns on its hinges; and he enters, and beholds his victim before him. The room was uncommonly open to the admission of light. The face of the innocent sleeper was turned from the murderer, and the beams of the moon, resting on the gray locks of his aged temple, showed him where to strike. The fatal blow is given!-and the victim passes, without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! It is the assassin's purpose to make sure work; and he yet plies the dagger, though it was obvious that life had been destroyed by the blow of the bludgeon. He even raises the aged arm, that he may not fail in his arm at the heart; and replaces it again over the wounds of

the poniard! To finish the picture, he explores the wrist for the pulse! he feels it, and ascertains that it beats no longer! It is accomplished. The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder-no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him. The secret is his own, and it is safe!

Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner, where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. Not to speak of that eye which glances through all disguises, and beholds every thing as in the splendour of noon,-such secrets of guilt are never safe from detection, even by men. True it is, generally speaking, that "murder will out.” True it is, that Providence hath so ordained, and doth so govern things, that those who break the great law of heaven, by shedding man's blood, seldom succeed in avoiding discovery. Espe cially, in a case exciting so much attention as this, discovery must come, and will come, sooner or later. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, every thing, every circumstance connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery. Mean time the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labours under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. The human heart was not made for the residence of such an inhabitant. It finds itself preyed on by a torment, which it does not acknowledge to God nor man. A vulture is devouring it, and it can ask no sympathy or assistance, either from heaven or earth. The secret which the murderer possesses, soon comes to possess him; and, like the evil spirits of which we read, it overcomes him, and leads him whithersoever it will. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts. It has become his master. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his pru

dence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstances to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed, there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession. WEBSTER.

120.-THE VALUE OF THE BIBLE.

ON casting a survey over the different orders into which society is distributed, I am at an utter loss to fix on any description of persons who are likely to be injured by the most extensive perusal of the word of God. The poor, we

may be certain, will sustain no injury from their attention to a book which while it inculcates, under the most awful sanctions, the practice of honesty, industry, frugality, subordination to lawful authority, contentment, and resignation to the allotments of providence, elevates them to "an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away;" a book, which at once secures the observation of the duties which attach to an inferior condition, and almost annihilates its evils, by opening their prospects into a state where all the inequalities of fortune will vanish, and the obscurest and most neglected piety shall be crowned with eternal glory. "The poor man rejoices that he is exalted:" and while he views himself as a member of Christ, and the heir of a blessed immortality, he can look with undissembled pity on the frivolous distinctions, the fruitless agitations, and the fugitive enjoyments of the most eminent and most prosperous of those who have their portion in this world. The poor man will sustain no injury by exchanging the vexations of envy for the quiet of a good conscience, and fruitless repining for the consolations of religious hope. The less is his portion in this life, the more ardently will he cherish and embrace the promise of a better, while the hope of that better exerts a reciprocal influence, in prompting him to discharge the duties, and reconciling him to the evils, which are inseparable from the present. The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst