instead. I was mad, but even mania-a-potu madness has bounds. I have rolled into the gutter, and lay there wallowing like a hog, a mere brute; yet a secret pleasure danced around my heart even there. I regarded not the scoffs of the rich, as they rolled past in their carriages, whose wheels passed within an inch of my feet-they could crush, but could not subdue. I lay basking in the sunshine of desperation-the world had rolled from me in dense clouds; her beauty was like the rainbow, momentary to my soul. The curb-stone (my pillow) seemed in the agony of that blissful moment a pillow of down. I shouted in the triumph of madness over reason-blasphemed in the wildness of my dreams, and sank into total forgetfulness amid the hum of voices and the rush of carriages. That state of feeling is inadequate for language to describe. The opium eater can form some idea of its ecstasy, but the dull mechanical operations of the natural mind cannot conceive any thing like it. It may be asked how I found my home, all my movements were instinctive-I reached my bed of straw,—the very burning of my brain lit me on my way!

A drunkard is cut out from the rest of mankind-he stands apart from all-and that is because he lives and moves in a world of his own. Who can describe the feelings of a drunkard, who paint these dark hours of his lone night when the demons of hell are let loose to worry him? Who picture these mental scenes of horror which are conjured up by the imagination, and torture the mind with their ghastly fracture? Who can describe that nervous feeling of terror, which the avant couriers of approaching insanity excites? No one !—

My voice, my person, and mind, had undergone a change. That curse of hell-that enemy to our natures, had erased the likeness of our Maker from my person,-I was a dis

torted, bloated, maddened brute-a vagabond and a wanderer. Yet my thoughts were exalted, my hopes buoyant and ambitious, and I felt all that independence and nobleness of soul which would have been honorable in another sphere.

One night as I lay on my wretched pallet, I heard groans issuing from an adjoining chamber-a chamber of misery, for this was a house of wretchedness. These groans were repeated, and seemed like one in distress, or the agony of death. I arose, and pushing open the door, entered; a lamp placed on the chimney, shed a feeble light on the scene-in one corner, on a bed of straw, lay a woman and a child; the one was the very picture of misery, a being in rags, the other starving at the very fount which dame nature intended for its infant sustenance, thus famishing at the very threshold of life! They had no covering; the shake of palsied death was on them, and I laughed in the madness of reflection. I moralized on the mutability of things, and shouted in the agony of their conclusions. Here was a mother, the prototype of myself, yet she clung to her babe, and carried it through every grade of life, to die on a bed of straw. I took up the lamp to gaze more intently on this victim of capricious fortune-but, gracious God! what were my feelings, when in this wretched object before me, I recognized the once blooming, the once gay and accomplished Maria!—A scream of agony escaped me. This, I cried, is my work-end of my crimes the final triumph of liquor-a triumph that had brought this once virtuous and innocent creature to the lowest possible state of human degradation. She was muttering in her sleep-the child clung to her breast, and twisted its little hands in her hair-I stood over them-the Demon that had worked their ruin. She still muttered-her words were incoherent—wild-occasionally, however, I could hear the words-rum, water, water-I gazed until mine eyes refused

to see more—the room grew dark-horrid spectres seemed to rise up, around and about. Ghastly forms were grinning and shouting around me. The lamp fell from my trembling hand, and in a moment the room was in flames. I shouted for help, and tried, but in vain, to stay them. The light combustibles which composed her bed, defied all my efforts; I stamped upon the crackling straw, but in vain. I stamped more furiously a convulsive groan followed the action. Gracious God, I had crushed my child! My child, my child. I felt the fire scorching me- —it was in my brain. I attempted to save Maria-the hand of death was on us. The whole house was in a blaze-and amid the cry of thousands without, and the distant rushing of the engines, I lost all recollection.

I was saved-my child crushed beneath a father's feet. Maria-not a trace of her body was found! Horrid remembrance! Oh! memory, memory, would I could blot thee out from the book of the brain, and destroy all traces of the dreaded past. But no- -it is engraved there, as if on adamant, and the pathway back to that dread hour is as clear and distinct as if my life had been one continued sunshine. True I was mad, and for months was confined in a madhouse, then for awhile I was happy, for the book of the brain was locked up, and that fearful history suppressed. But reason came again, and with it the key unlocking the charnel house of memory, and presenting to my view the blackened corse of my child-the writhing form of Maria, with the flames encircling them like a wild demon from hell. What can hide these things from me? Death?"

[Here follows some profane reasoning on the immortality of the soul, and of man's accountability to his God for actions committed here. It is deemed unfit for the public ear, and appears to have been written immediately before he com

mitted the last act of his eventful career, and ended a life of crime by suicidal hands.]

Note. The body was discovered in a room of a wretched house in Small street, a phial lay beside it, upon which was labeled laudanum. In his pockets there were found several articles of little or no value, and sundry scraps of paper, from which I have compiled this confession. It is a plain statement of facts, and should prove a powerful lesson to awaken the inebriate from his insane sleep. Such was the object I had in view, and if it should have the effect even in a solitary instance, my time will not have been unprofitably consumed.

LEAF THIRTEENTH.

THE CURSE, OR THE INFLUENCE AND POWER OF THE BOWL.

"Despair shall round their souls be twin'd.

And drink the vigor of the mind,

As around the oak rank ivy cleaves,

Steals its sap, and blasts its leaves."

O'er the vast earth there rules with fiendish sway
Some mighty power, whose laws mankind obey;
Around whose altars bloated forms are seen,
Like the wild visions of a heated dream;
From whose gay pageant and unholy throng,
Are heard the ribald and lascivious song;
See grim despair join chorus with a howl,
And madness echoes with a savage growl-

Old earth is blighted-o'er her fairest walks
Licentiousness with stately footsteps stalks;
Crime grows apace-e'en murder finds a friend
Its cause to sanction, and the deed defend :
Dishonest means with usury at their head,
Strips honest worth-the poor deprives of bread;
From the broad glare of vice, in open day,
Fair virtue shrinks with grief and shame away;
The bloom of nature hath no charms, the air
Is tainted-for that fearful curse is there!
From pillar'd temples screams and groans we hear,
Which break discordant on the list'ning ear:

The rattling chains the tales of horror tell,
This agony of sounds bespeak a living hell;"
There madness reigns, while curses loud and deep,
With horrid slumbers midnight vigils keep;
The affrighted soul, appall'd starts fearful back,
Nor seeks to trace crime's long and dreary track,
From whose deep source the dark and damning cause
Has stricken justice and perverted laws;

Drown'd reason's voice, crushed every tender shoot
Which promised virtue with its opening fruit;
Rear'd madness up where all was joy and truth,
Crush'd hopes in manhood, blighted love in youth.
The fields are fruitless-enterprise has fled,
Hope's avant couriers wingless, helpless, dead:
The shatter'd frame, the tottering mind alone,
Rules now in madness round this hellish throne,
Where shriek on shriek, like trumpet tongues arise,
To mock, as 'twere, the music of the skies.

Down this dread tide, in fearful numbers roll,
The shattered frame of many a sinful soul,