The Levantine now struck with tremendous force against a rock, which lay concealed amidst the swelling waters, and instantaneously disappeared, leaving the wretched crew floating on the surface—­borne on the billows!

Cedric, by the tumultuous fury of the element, was thrown on a shelf of one of the steep rocks which form a natural barrier between the sea and land; being recovered from his stupor, he was again awake to the horrors that surrounded him; what had become of his comrades he knew not—­he thought not.  He clung to a fragment of the precipice with the desperation and firm grasp of madness—­while every successive tide that rolled over his head became stronger and stronger.

He counted the billows as they passed over him; he watched the receding wave—­he looked sternly at the approaching one.  Time with him was fast ebbing.  The wave that was to wash him into eternity was already curling towards him in fearful whiteness, which the glare of lightnings that seemed to illuminate the universe showed him in all its terrors.

At the same time he distinguished a towering rock which the darkness had hitherto obscured, but which now rose in awful majesty before him, amidst the spray and foam of the heaving surges, and seemed a sea-god’s throne!  The sublimity and magnificence of the storm were now at their height!  On the summit of the conical rock, which was reddened by the fierce blaze of the brilliant fires that incessantly played around it, appeared a colossal figure, arrayed in white, whose long tresses and flowing robes streamed with the wind.  The figure pointed at the hopeless Cedric with a deadly smile on his countenance.  Cedric glared wildly at the unearthly vision.  The last whelming wave approached and buried him for ever in the foaming sea.

The spectre mounted his car, attended by an innumerable host of tributary spirits, and was borne on the whirlwind to visit other climes.  He was the Spirit of the Storm!

CYMBELINE.

* * * * *

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

RECOLLECTIONS OF AN OLD FAVOURITE.

“In his wine he would volunteer an imitation of somebody,
generally of Incledon.  His imitation was vocal; I made
pretensions to the oratorical parts; and between us, we boasted,
that we made up the entire phenomenon.” 

          
                                                                            LEIGH HUNT’S BYRON.

“Of Incledon? poor Charles Incledon!” said I, turning to his portrait in the “Storm,” hanging in goodly fellowship with a few of the idols of my theatrical days, Siddons, Kemble, Bannister, Mrs. Jordan, and G. Cook, in my little book-room—­“Poor Charles Incledon!  The mighty in genius, the high in birth, the conceited in talent, have not forgotten thee, then—­and will even condescend to imitate thee, to imitate thee who wast inimitable!”