[I wish I could have given the above tale as it was related to me by my friend Laird Izaak Mac Farragon-I might then have presented my reader with a treat; the one before him is the mere shade, the bare outline of the droll yet fearful story he made of it. The beseeming gravity with which he went through the first part, and the cast of his eye' towards the conclusion, were perfectly inexpressible— inimitable.]

THE

WANDERINGS OF AN IMMORTAL.

I

Was spurned and hated—but no more—I am
Immortal now-Hundreds of untold years,
That now lie sleeping in the gulf of time,
Shall rise and roll before me ere I die.

WERNER.

THE

WANDERINGS OF AN IMMORTAL.

For me the laws of Nature are suspended: the eternal wheels of the Universe roll backwards: I am destined to be triumphant over Fate and Time.

I shall take my distant posterity by the hand; I shall close the tomb over them.

ST. LEON.

Ir was not a vain desire of life, or a fear of death, that made me long for immortality; nor was it the cupidity of wealth, or the love of splendour, or of pleasure, that made me spend years of anxious study to penetrate into the hidden recesses of Nature, and drag forth those secrets which she has involved in an almost impenetrable obscurity; but it was the desire of revenge,

of deep-seated and implacable revenge, that urged me on, till by incredible exertion and minute investigation, I discovered that which it has by turns been the object of philosophy to obtain, and the aim of incredulity to ridiculethe philosopher's stone. And yet, I was naturally of a mild and compassionate disposition. I had a heart open to the tenderest and best emotions of our nature; injury heaped on injury,-received, too, from one whose highest aim ought to have been to manifest the gratitude which he owed to me, who, in the hour of danger and adversity, should have been the readiest to offer assistance,has rendered me what I am.

It is useless to add to the instances of human depravity. I will not relate the miseries which I endured. I will not look back upon the prospects which have been blasted by the perfidy of him whom I thought a friend; suffice it, that they have been such as the soul shudders to contemplate; such as planted in my soul a thirst of vengeance, which I brooded over, till it became a part of my very existence.

I soon found, that by human means I had