may be redargued,” saith he, “by those who have more spleen than brain, that forasmuch as the Archbishop preacheth in English, he will not thereby much edify the Turkish folk, who do altogether hold in a vain gabble of their own.”  But this (to use his own language) he “evites,” by judiciously observing, that where service was performed in an unknown tongue, the devotion of the people was always observed to be much increased thereby; as, for instance, in the church of Rome,—­that St. Augustine, with his monks, advanced to meet King Ethelbert singing litanies (in a language his majesty could not possibly have understood), and converted him and his whole court on the spot;—­that the sybilline books. . . .

. . . . .

Cum multis aliis.

Between the pages were cut most exquisitely in paper the likenesses of some of these Turkish ambassadors; the hair of the beards, in particular, was feathered with a delicacy of touch that seemed the work of fairy fingers,—­but the pages ended with a complaint of the operator, that his scissors had been taken from him.  However, he consoled himself and the reader with the assurance, that he would that night catch a moonbeam as it entered through the grating, and, when he had whetted it on the iron knobs of his door, would do wonders with it.  In the next page was found a melancholy proof of powerful but prostrated intellect.  It contained some insane lines, ascribed to Lee the dramatic poet, commencing,

     “O that my lungs could bleat like buttered pease,” &c.

There is no proof whatever that these miserable lines were really written by Lee, except that the measure is the fashionable quatrain of the period.  It is singular that Stanton read on without suspicion of his own danger, quite absorbed in the album of a madhouse, without ever reflecting on the place where he was, and which such compositions too manifestly designated.

It was after a long interval that he looked round, and perceived that his companion was gone.  Bells were unusual then.  He proceeded to the door,—­it was fastened.  He called aloud,—­his voice was echoed in a moment by many others, but in tones so wild and discordant, that he desisted in involuntary terror.  As the day advanced, and no one approached, he tried the window, and then perceived for the first time it was grated.  It looked out on the narrow flagged yard, in which no human being was; and if there had, from such a being no human feeling could have been extracted.

Sickening with unspeakable horror, he sunk rather than sat down beside the miserable window, and “wished for day.”

. . . . .

At midnight he started from a doze, half a swoon, half a sleep, which probably the hardness of his seat, and of the deal table on which he leaned, had not contributed to prolong.