my card-come to me at eight to-night," he added, in an under tone, so as to be heard by none but her he addressed. She took the hint, appeared pacified, and each withdrew different ways-Mr. Effingstone almost suffocated with suppressed exeerations. He flung himself into a hackneycoach, and ordered it to Street, intending to assure Lady with a smile, that he had instantly put an end to the ridiculous affair." His knock, however, breught him a prompt "Not at home," though their carriage had but the instant before driven from the door. He jumped again into the coach, almost gnashing his teeth with fury, drove home, and dispatched his groom with a note, and orders to wait an answer. He soon brought it back, with the intelligence that Lord and Lady had given their porter orders to reject all letters or messages from Mr. Effingstone. So there was an end of all hopes from that quarter. He now plunged into profligacy with a spirit of almost diabolical desperation.

He was boxing one morning with Belasco-I think it was at the latter's rooms; and was preparing to plant a hit which the fighter had defied him to do, when he suddenly dropped his guard, turned pale, and in a moment or two, fell fainting into the arms of the astounded boxer. He had several days previously suspected himself the subject of indisposition-how could it be otherwise, keeping such bours, and living such a life as he did-but not of so serious a nature as to prevent him from going out as usual. As soon as he had recovered, and swallowed a few drops of spirits and water, he drove home, intending to have sent inmediately for Mr. the well-known surgeon; bat on arriving at his rooms, he found a travelling carriage-and-four waiting before the door, for the purpose of conveying him instantly to the bed-side of his dying mother, in a distant part of England, as she wished personally to communicate to him something of importance before she died. This he learnt from two of his relatives, who were up stairs giving direc tions to pack up his clothes, and make other preparations for his journey, so that nothing might detain him from setting off, the instant he arrived at his rooms. He was startled-alarmed-confounded at all this. Good God, he thought, what was to become of him? He was unfit to undertake a journey, requiring instant medical attendance, which had already been too long deferred; for his dissipation had already made rapid inroads on his constitution. Yet what was to be done? His situation was such as could not be communicated to his brother and sister-in-law

for he did not choose to encounter their sarcastic reproaches. He had nothing for it but to get into the carriage with them, go down to shire, and when there devise some plausible pretext for returning instantly to town. That, however, he found impracticable. His mother would not trust him out of her sight one instant, night or day-but kept his hand close locked in hers; he was also surrounded by the congregated members of the family

and could literally scarce stir out of the house an instant. He dissembled his illness with tolerable success-till his aggravated agonies drove him almost beside himself. Without breathing a syllable to any one but his own man, whom he took with him, he suddenly left the house, and without even a change of clothes, threw himself into the first London coach-and by two o'clock the next day was at his own rooms in M Street, in a truly deplorable condition, and attended by Sir and myself. Nine weeks of unmitigated agony were passed by Mr. Effingstone-the virulence of his disorder for a long time setting at defiance all that medicine could do. This illness, also, broke him down sadly, and we recommended to him a sojourn in the south of France-for which he set out the instant he could undertake the journey with safety.

About seven months from the period last mentioned, I received, one Sunday evening, a note, written in hurried characters; and a hasty glance at the seal, which bore Mr. Effingstone's crest, filled me with sudden vague apprehensions that some misfortune or other had befallen him. This was the note :

"Dear Doctor-For God's sake come and see me immediately, for I have this day arrived in London from the continent, and am suffering the tortures of the damned, both in mind and body, Come-comein God's name, come instantly, or I shall go mad. Not a word of my return to any one till I have seen you. You will find me-in short, my man will accompany you, Yours in agony, St. J. H. Effingstone. Sunday evening, November, 18—.”

His unexpected return from abroadthe obscure and distant part of the town (St. George's in the East) where he had established himself—the dreadful terms in which his note was couched, revived, certain fearful apprehensions for him which I had began to entertain before be quitted England. I ordered out my chariot instantly; his groom mounted the box to guide the coachman, and we drove down

rapidly. A sudden recollection of the contents of several of the letters he had sent me latterly from the continent, at my request, served to corroborate my worst fears. I had given him over for lost-by the time my chariot drew up opposite the honse where he had so strangely taken up his abode. The street and neighbourhood, though not clearly discernible through the fogs of a November evening, contrasted strangely with the aristocratical regions to which my patient had been accus tomed. row was narrow, and the houses were small, yet clean and creditable-looking. On entering No. , the landlady, a person of quiet respectable appearance, told me that Mr. Hardy for such, it seems, was the name he chose to go by in these parts-had just retired to rest, as he felt fatigued and poorly, and she was just going to make him some gruel. 1 repaired to his bedchamber immediately. It was a small comfortably furnished room; the fire was lit, and two candles were burning on the drawers. On the bed, the plain chintz curtains of which were only half drawn, lay -St. John Henry Effingstone. I must pause a moment to describe his appearance, as it struck me at first looking at him. It may be thought rather far-fetched, perhaps, but I could not help comparing him, in my own mind, to a gem set in the midst of faded tarnished embroidery: the coarse texture of the bed-furniture-the ordinary style of the room-its constrained dimensions, contrasted strikingly with the indications of elegance and fashion afforded by the scattered clothes, toilet, and travelling paraphernalia, &c.—the person and manners of its present occupant, who lay on a bed all tossed and tumbled, with only a few minutes' restlessness. A dazzling diamond ring sparkled on the little finger of his left hand, and was the only ornament he ever wore. There was something, also, in the snowiness, simplicity, and fineness of his Jinen, which alone might have evidenced the superior consideration of its wearer, even were that not sufficiently visible in the noble, commanding outline of the features, faded though they were, and shrinking beneath the inroads of illness and dissipation. His forehead was white and ample; his eye had lost none of its fire, though it gleamed with restless energy; in a word, there was that → ease and loftiness in his bearing, that indescribable manière d'être, which are inseparable from high birth and breeding. So much for the appearance of things on my

"Doctor the pains of hell liave got hold upon me. I am undone," he replied gloomily, in a broken voice, and extended to me a band cold as marble.

"Is it as you suspected in your last letter to me from Ronen, Mr. Effingstone?" I inquired, after a pansé. He shook his head, and covered his face with both hands, but made me no answer. Thinking he was in tears, I said, in a soothing tone, "Come, come, my dear sir, don't be carried away; don't"

"Faugh! do you take me for a puling child, or a woman, doctor? Don't suspect me again of such contemptible pusillanimity, low as I am fallen," he replied, with startling sternness, removing his hands from his face.

"I hope, after all, that matters are not so desperate as your fears would persuade yon," said I, feeling his pulse.

"Doctor, don't delude me; all is over, I know it is. A horrible death is before me; but I shall meet it like a man. have made my bed, and must lie upon it.”

"Come, come, Mr. Effingstone, don't be so gloomy, so hopeless; the exhausted powers of nature may yet be revived," said I, after having asked him many questions.

"Doctor

I'll soon end that strain of yours. 'Tis silly-pardon me→ but it is. Reach me one of those candles, please." I did so. "Now, I'll show you how to translate a passage of Persius.

Tentemus fauces:-tenero latet ulcus in ore Putre, quod haud deceat plebeia raderobeta, "Eh, you recollect it? Well, look!What say you to this; isn't it frightful?" he asked bitterly, raising the candle, that I might look into his mouth. It was, alas! as he said! In fact, his whole constitution had been long tainted, and exhibited symptoms of soon breaking up altogether! I feared, from the period of my attendance on him during the illness which drove him last to the continent, that it was beyond human power to dislodge the harpy that had fixed its cruel fangs deeply, inextricably in his vitals. Could it be wondered at, even by himself? Neglect, in the first instance, added to a persevering course of profligacy, had doomed him long, long before, to premature and horrible decay! And though it can scarcely be credited, it is nevertheless the fact; even on the continent, in the character of a shattered invalid, the infatuated man resumed those dissolute courses which, in England, had already burried him almost to death's door!

My good God, Mr. Effingstone!".

inquired, almost paralyzed with amaze ment, at hearing him describe recent scenes in which he had mingled, which would have made even satyrs skulk ashamed into the woods of old, "how could you have been so insane, so stark staring mad?"

"By instinct, doctor, by instinct! The nature of the beast!" he replied, through his closed teeth, and with an unconscious clenching of his hands. Many inquiries into his past and present symptons forewarned me that his case would probably be marked by more appalling features than any that had ever come under my care; and that there was not a ray of hope that he would survive the long, lingering, and maddening agonies, which were "measured out to him from the poi soned chalice" which he had " commended to his own lips." At the time I am speaking of, I mean when I paid him the visit above described, his situation was not far from that of Job, described in chap. xx. v, 7, 8.

He shed no tears, and repeatedly strove, but in vain, to repress sighs with which his breast heaved, nearly to bursting, while I pointed out-in obedience to his determination to know the worst-some portions of the dreary prospect before him.

"Horrible! hideous!" he exclaimed, in a low broken tone, his flesh creeping from head to foot. "How shall I endure it!Oh, Epictetus, how?" He relapsed into silence, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling, and his hands joined over his breast, and pointing upwards, in a posture which I considered supplicatory. I rejoiced to see it, and ventured to say, after much hesitation, that I was delighted to see him at last looking to the right quarter for support and consolation.

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Bah!" he exclaimed impetuously, removing his hands, and eyeing me with sternness, almost approaching fury, why will you persist in pestering your patients with twaddle of that sort?" eandem semper canens cantilenam, ad nauseam usque" as though you carried a psalter in your pocket? When I want to listen to any thing of that kind, why, I'll pay a parson! Haven't I tide enough of horror to bear up against already, without your bringing a sea of superstition upon me? No more of it-no more-tis foul, I look for support to the energies of my own mind the tried disciplined energies of my own mind, doctor-a mind that never knew what fear was that no disastrous combinations of misfortune could ever yet shake from its fortitude! What but this is it that enables me to shut my ears to the whisperings of some pitying friend, who, knowing what hideous tortures await me,

has stepped out of hell to come and advise me to suicide-Eh?" he inquired, his eye glaring on me with a very unusual expres sion. "However, as religion, that is, your Christian religion, is a subject on which you and I can never agree—an old bone of contention between us-why, the less said about it the better. Its useless to irritate a man whose mind is made up. D-n it! I shall never be a believer-may I die first!" he concluded, with angry vehemence.

The remainder of the interview I spent in endeavouring to persuade him to relinquish his present unsuitable lodgings, and return to the sphere of his friends and relations but in vain. He was fixedly determined to continue in that obscure hole, he said, till there was about a week or so between him and death, and then he would return, "and die in the bosom of his family, as the phrase was.” Alas! however, I knew but too well, that in the event of his adhering to that resolution, he was fated to expire in the bed where he then lay; for I foresaw but too truly, that the termination of his illness would be attended with circumstances rendering removal utterly impossible. He made me pledge my word that I would not, without his express request or sanc tion, apprize any member of his family, or any of his friends, that he had returned to England. He begged me to prescribe him a powerful anodyne draught, for that he could get no rest at nights; that an intense racking pain was gnawing all his bones from morning to evening, and froni evening to morning; and what with this and other dreadful concomitants, he was, he said, "suffering the torments of the damned, and perhaps worse." I complied with his request, and ordered him also many other medicines and applications, and promised to see him soon in the morning. I was accordingly with him about twelve the next day. He was sitting up, and in his dressing-gown, before the fire, in great pain, and suffering under the deepest dejection. He complained heavily of the intense and unremitting agony he had endured all night long, and thonght that from some cause or other, the laudanum draught I ordered had tended to make him only more acutely sensible of the pain. "It is a peculiar and horrible sensation; and I cannot give you an adequate idea of it," he said:"it is as though the marrow in my bones were transformed into something animatedinto blind worms, writhing, biting, and stinging incessantly"-and he shuddered, as I did also, at the revolting comparison. He put me fpon a minute exposition of the rationale of his disorder: and if ever

t

I was at a loss for adequate expressions or illustrations, he supplied them with a readiness, an exquisite appositeness, which, added to his astonishing acuteness in comprehending the most strictly technical de tails, filled me with admiration for his great powers of mind, and poignant regret at their miserable desecration.

"Well, I don't think you can give me auy efficient relief, doctor," said he, " and I am therefore bent on trying a scheme of my own."

"And what, pray, may that be?" I inquired curiously.

"I'll tell you my preparations. I've ordered-by -!-nearly a hundred weight of the strongest tobacco that's to be bought, and thousands of pipes; and with these I intend to smoke myself into stupidity, or rather insensibility, if possi ble, till I can't undertake to say whether I live or not; and my good fellow, George, is to be reading me 'Don Quixote' the while." Oh, with what a sorrowful air of forced gaiety was all this uttered!

One sudden burst of bitterness I well recollect. I was saying, while putting on my gloves to go, that I hoped to see him in better spirits the next time I called. "Better spirits? Ha! ha! How the can I be in better spirits an exile from society and absolutely rotting away here-in such a contemptible hovel as this-among a set of base-born brutal savages?-faugh! fangh! It does need something here-here," pressing his hand to his forehead, "to bear it-aye, it does !", I thought his tones were tremulous, and that for the first time I had ever known them so and I could not help thinking the tears came into his eyes; for he started suddenly from me, and affected to be gazing at some passing objects in the street.

[Then follow the details of his disease, which are so shocking as to be unfit for any but professional eyes. They represent all the energies of his nature as shaken beyond the possibility of restoration-his constitution thoroughly polluted -wholly undermined. That the remedies resorted to had been almost more dreadful than the disease-and yet exhibited in vain! In the next twenty pages of the Diary, the shades of horror are represented as gradually closing and darkening around this wretched victim of debauchery; and the narrative is carried forward through three months. A few extracts only, from this portion, are fitting for the reader.]

Friday, January 5.-Mr. Effingstone continues in the same deplorable state

described in my former entry. It is absolutely revolting to enter his room, the effluvia are so sickening-so overpowering. I am compelled to use a vinaigrette incessantly, as well as eau de Cologne, and other scents, in profusion. I found him engaged, as usual, deep in "Petronius Arbiter!" He describes his bodily sufferings as frightful. Indeed, Mrs. has often told me, that his groans both disturb and alarm the neighbours, even as far as over the way! The very watchman has several times been so much startled in passing, at hearing his groans, that he has knocked at the door to inquire about them. Neither Sir nor I can think of any thing that seems likely to assuage his agonies. Even laudanum has failed us altogether, though it has been given in unprecedented quantities. I think I can say with truth and sincerity, that scarce the wealth of the Indies should tempt me to undertake the management of another such case. I am losing my appetiteloathe animal food-am haunted day and night by the piteous spectacle which I have to encounter daily in Mr. Ethingstone. Oh, that heaven would terminate his tortures-surely he has suffered enough. I am sure he would hail the prospect of death with ecstasy!

Friday, 26. Surely, surely I have never seen, and seldom heard or read, of such sufferings as the wretched Effingstone's. He strives to endure them with the fortitude and patience of a martyr-or rather is struggling to exhibit a spirit of sullen, stoical submission to his fate, such as is inculcated in Arrian's "Discourses of Epictetus," which he reads almost all day. His anguish is so excruciating and unin terrupted, that I am astonished how he retains the use of his reason. All power of locomotion has disappeared long ago. The only parts of his body he can move now are his fingers, toes, and headwhich latter he sometimes shakes about, in a sudden ecstasy of pain, with such frightful violence as would, one should think, almost suffice to sever it from his shoulders! The flesh of the lower extremities-the fleshHorrible! All sensation has ceased in them for a fortnight! He describes the agonies about his stomach and bowels to be as though wolves were ravenously gnawing and mangling all within.

Oh, my God! if "men about town," in London, or elsewhere, could but see the hideous spectacle Mr. Effingstone presents, surely it would palsy them in the pursuit of ruin, and scare them into the paths of virtue !

Tuesday, 31.-Again I have visited that scene of loathsomeness and horror, Mr.