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Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tinis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013534163 
 
NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 
 
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 LONDON, ADCC ex CIJ 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction 
 Chapter I. . 
 Chapter II. 
 Chapter III. 
 Chapter IV. 
 Chapter V. . 
 Chapter VI. 
 Chapter VII. 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Chapter IX. 
 Chapter X. . 
 Chapter XI. 
 Chapter XII. 
 Chapter XIII. 
 Chapter XIV. 
 Chapter XV. 
 
 Page 
 
 7 
 IS 
 
 31 
 38 
 44 
 51 
 61 
 
 73 
 80 
 
 87 
 
 97 
 
 108 
 
 "S 
 
 I2S 
 
 130 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 HAVE nearly finished 'Nightmare 
 Abbey,'" writes Peacock to Shelley 
 about the middle of 1818. "I think 
 it necessary to make a stand against the en- 
 croachments of black bile." Let it be noted that 
 this adversary of the atrabilious was himself the 
 author of " The Philosophy of Melancholy ; " 
 and, if Jefferson Hogg's probably exaggerated 
 gossip may be trusted, had posed among his friends 
 as one (Platonically) enamoured of suicide. But 
 set a thief to catch' a thief. Nothing could exceed 
 the sanity of Peacock's protest against pessimism 
 except its humour: and it certainly was not un- 
 called for. Wordsworth, indeed, was a grand 
 example of a thoroughly healthy minded author ; 
 but his influence had as yet only affected the 
 higher minds. Three years before the pubUcation of 
 " Nightmare Abbey," an almost perennial spring 
 of the purest, soundest, most thoroughly genial 
 and most thoroughly objective literature that the 
 world had seen since Homer had been unsealed by 
 the pubUcation of "Waverley," but Scott's merits 
 were never adequately recognised by Peacock, 
 
8 Introduction. 
 
 If, however, his protest seems in any respect ex- 
 aggerated, it is because the morbid stuff that 
 provoked it has mostly made room for fresh 
 developments of the decadence which, in letters 
 as in nature, goes on pari passu with healthy 
 growth, leaving the good literature of the period 
 invested in our eyes with a more representative 
 character than it in fact possessed. We can 
 depend upon Jane Austen, whose young ladies 
 in " Northanger Abbey " are found making it a 
 condition that the novels they procure from the 
 Bath circulating library shall " all be horrid." 
 The titles preserved to us (few will care to ex- 
 plore further) bear out this character, and it is 
 on record that it paid the publisher to bring 
 out Shelley's " St Irvyne " and " Zastrozzi." The 
 fashion of the terrific in fiction and drama had 
 been imported from Germany : naturally enough, 
 for it is but a crude form of romanticism, and the 
 rise of the German romantic school had anticipated 
 the English by twenty years. No one had written 
 more horrifically than the youthful Tieck, soon to 
 develop into the consummate master of humourous 
 poetical persiflage. Coleridge, in a striking sonnet, 
 had asserted that, rather than redescend to the 
 level of ordinary mortality, he would have been 
 willing and even anxious to expire, if he could but 
 have made his famishing father shriek as Schiller 
 had made his. As the taste for these crude effects 
 waned, mind prevailing over matter as it always 
 should, the merely horrible melted gradually into 
 
Introduction. 9 
 
 the misanthropic, and Giaour and Corsair took the 
 places of the One-handed Monk and the Castle 
 Spectre. A The ghosts," says Mr Flosky, in this 
 novel, ''have been laid, and the devil has been 
 cast into outer darkness, and now the delight of 
 our spirits is to dwell on all the vices and blackest 
 passions of our nature, tricked out in a masquerade 
 dress of heroism and disappointed benevolence."/ 
 At this juncture Peacock came forward to defend 
 " the cheerful and solid wisdom of antiquity " 
 against Childe Haroldism as impersonated in Mr 
 Cypress , and the C oleridgean transcendentalism 
 of Mr Flos ky, and the political methods of 
 "Spartacus Weishaupt, the immortal founder of 
 the sect of the Illuminati ; " to say nothing of 
 the blue devils chargeable partly upon climate and 
 domestic worries, partly upon "tea, late dinners, 
 and the French Revolution." If the executipn 
 appears fantastic, the object was highly practical : 
 and even in the few particulars in which the satire 
 may seem no longer applicable, it will be found 
 jhat Attic salt does not readily become obsolete. 
 " Nightmare Abbey " further possesses abiding 
 interest as a contemporary survey of men of 
 eminence, factors in the intellectual life of our 
 own day, from a point of view not frequently taken. 
 The novel, then, had a more definite purpose 
 than Shelley was willing to allow, and one entirely 
 consonant with the nature of the author, who 
 assuredly had more call to be a literary than a 
 moral or a political reformer. Artistically con- 
 
lo Introduction. 
 
 sidered, indeed, it is much more definite than 
 " Melincourt," and possesses greater unity of in- 
 terest.' In "Melincourt" the foothold which the 
 excellent conception of Sir Oran Haut-ton had 
 seemed to afford the author, soon gives way, and 
 the action scrambles about in quest of another. 
 In "Nightmare Abbey," on the other hand, 
 'Scythrop's dual attachment affords the nearest 
 approach to a regular plot to be found anywhere 
 in Peacock. The character, however, is incon- 
 sistent to a degree only to be explained by the 
 supposition that Peacock feared Shelley's taking it 
 for his own (as it appears that he actually did), and 
 was thus kept on the right, but, artistically speaking, 
 the wrong side of burlesque. While Scythrop's 
 behaviour is in general simply farcical, some of the 
 best sayings in the book are put into his mouth, 
 especially a dignified rebuke of Mr Cypress's 
 (Byron's) desertion of his country, which would 
 have better become Mr Hilary. / He is throughout 
 an incongruous blending of th6 sanguine enthusiast 
 with the disconsolate pessimist. And it is only on 
 the former side that he bears ^ny resemblance to 
 Shelley, except in the sensitiveness to real or 
 imaginary unkindness, which seems pourtrayed from 
 personal observation/ The reader, however, is not 
 likely to inquire too anxiously into the coherence 
 of a character which affords from first to last such 
 infinite amusement. The other^eigonages are^^s 
 usual_abstract_c[ualities iridividualised,/but richer 
 in flesh and blood than heretofore, an^'the satire is 
 
Introduction. 1 1 
 
 more mellow and urbane. The inept caricature of 
 Coleridge in "Melincourt" as "Mr Mystic, of Cim- 
 merian Lodge," is replaced by a view of him as a 
 transcendentalist really not unfair, considering that 
 Peacock, devoutly believing "the oracles of Kant " 
 to be " comprehensible only by the initiated," had 
 taken no superfluous trouble to understand them ; 
 and that the oral delivery of Coleridge's own oracles, 
 and their fragmentary publication when they did 
 get into print, rendered it difiicult to obtain a com- 
 plete view of him as a philosopher. In fa ct, the 
 very c omprehensiveness of this great man's mind 
 made him obscure. "He saw~every side of a question 
 at once, and in his anxiety to guard his thought 
 from every possible misconstruction, ended by 
 imprisoning her in a labyrinth. As a thinker, 
 he appears to most advantage in the obiter dicta 
 recorded and probably condensed by his friends, 
 or the notes in books where brevity of comment 
 was forcibly inculcated by exiguity of margin. 
 Shelley, whose appreciation of Coleridge was very 
 high, had probably effected something towards 
 modifying Peacock's original point of view. An- 
 other distinct advance in liberality was probably 
 spontaneous, the more favourable estimate of the 
 clergy. Mr Portpipe in " Melincourt," if a clerical 
 King Cole, is still a worthy man, and a great im- 
 provement upon the mere bigot and glutton of 
 "Headlong Hall;" but in the Mr_ Larynx jjf 
 " Nightmare Abbeyj^^jeiaveJie_firsi ir^tance of 
 the genuine J- e a co c ki a n -divin e, with every profes- 
 
1 2 Introduction. 
 
 signal characteristic sternly repressed ; but ready, 
 bright, obliging, every one's friend; destined to 
 further evolution into the massive sense and genial 
 scholarship of Doctor Folhot and Doctor Opimian. 
 Of the style of " Nightmare Abbey " it is impossible 
 to speak too highly; it is rather engraved than 
 written. 
 
 A French translation of " Nightmare Abbey " is 
 extant in MS., under the title of " L'Abbaye de 
 Cochemar." It does not appear when or by whom 
 it was made, but probably somewhere about 1830. 
 Its merits and demerits have hitherto been screened 
 under the triple aegis of execrable paper, execrable 
 ink, and execrable handwriting. Should any en- 
 couragement come from across the Channel, the 
 present possessor would make a serious effort to 
 disclose its virtues and educe its frailties, and per- 
 haps the indecipherable portions could be translated 
 de novo. 
 
NIGHTMARE ABBEY. 
 
 There's a dark lantern of the spirit, 
 Which none see hy but those who bear it, 
 That makes them in the dark see visions 
 And hag themselves with apparitions, 
 Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt 
 Of their own misery and want. — Butler. 
 
 [First published in 1818.] 
 
Matthew. Oh ! its your only fine humour, sir. Your true melancholy 
 breeds your perfect fine wit, sir. I am melancholy myself, divers times, 
 sir ; and then do I no more but take pen and paper presently, and over- 
 flow you half a score or a dozen of sonnets at a sitting. 
 
 Stephen. Truly, sir, and I love such things out of measure. 
 
 Matthew. Why, I pray you, sir, make use of my study : it's at your 
 service. 
 
 Stephen. I thank you, sir, 1 shall be bold, I warrant you. Have you 
 a stool there, to be melancholy upon ? 
 
 Ben Jonson. Every Man in his Humour, Act 3, Sc. *, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Ay esleu gazouiller et siffler oye, comme dit le commun proverbe, 
 entre les cygnes, plutoust que d'estre entre tant de eentils poetes et 
 faconds orateurs mut du tout estimd. — Rabelais, Prol' L. 5. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ^IGHTMARE ABBEY, a venerable family- 
 mansion, in a highly picturesque state 
 of semi-dilapidation, pleasantly situated 
 on a strip of dry land between the sea and the 
 fens, at the verge of the county of Lincoln, had 
 the honour to be the seat of Christopher Glowry, 
 Esquire. This gentleman was naturally of an 
 atrabilarious temperament, and much troubled 
 with those phantoms of indigestion which are 
 commonly called blue devils. He had been de- 
 ceived in an early friendship : he had been crossed 
 in love ; and had offered his hand, from pique, to 
 a lady, who accepted it from interest, and who, 
 in so doing, violently tore asunder the bonds of a 
 tried and youthful attachment. Her vanity was 
 gratified by being the mistress of a very extensive, 
 
1 6 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 if not very lively, establishment; but all the 
 springs of her sympathies were frozen. Riches she 
 possessed, but that which enriches them, the parti- 
 cipation of affection, was wanting. All that they 
 could purchase for her became indifferent to her, 
 because that which they could not purchase, and 
 which was more valuable than themselves, she had, 
 for their sake, thrown away. She discovered, when 
 it was too late, that she had mistaken the means 
 for the end — that riches, rightly used, are instru- 
 ments of happiness, but are not in themselves 
 happiness. In this wilful blight of her affections, 
 she found them valueless as means : they had 
 been the end to which she had immolated all her 
 affections, and were now the only end that re- 
 mained to her. She did not confess this to herself 
 as a principle of action, but it operated through 
 the medium of unconscious self-deception, and 
 terminated in inveterate avarice. She laid on 
 external things the blame of her mind's internal 
 disorder, and thus became by degrees an accom- 
 plished scold. She often went her daily rounds 
 through a series of deserted apartments, every 
 creature in the house vanishing at the creak of her 
 shoe, much more at the sound of her voice, to 
 which the nature of things affords no simile ; for, 
 as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by 
 gentleness and love, transcends all other sounds 
 in harmony, so far does it surpass all others in 
 discord, when stretched into unnatural shrillness 
 by anger and impatience, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 17 
 
 Mr dowry used to say that his house was no 
 better than a spacious kennel, for every one in it 
 led the life of a dog. Disappointed both in love 
 and in friendship, and looking upon human learn- 
 ing as vanity, he had come to a conclusion that 
 there was but one good thing in the world, videlicet, 
 a good dinner J and this his parsimonious lady 
 seldom suffered him to enjoy : but, one morning, 
 like Sir Leoline in Christabel, " he woke and found 
 his lady dead," and remained a very consolate 
 widower, with one small child. 
 
 This only son and heir Mr Glowry had 
 christened Scythrop,* from the name of a maternal 
 ancestor, who had hanged himself one rainy day in 
 a fit of tcedium vita, and had been eulogised by a 
 coroner's jury in the comprehensive phrase of felo 
 de se ; on which account, Mr Glowry held his^ 
 memory in high honour, and made a punchbowl 
 of his skull. 
 
 When Scythrop grew up, he was sent, as usual, 
 to a public school, where a little learning was 
 painfully beaten into him, and from thence to the 
 university, where it was carefully taken out of him ; 
 and he was sent home like a well-threshed ear of 
 corn, with nothing in his head : having finished his 
 education to the high satisfaction of the master 
 and fellows of his college, who had, in testimony of 
 their approbation, presented him with a silver 
 fish-shce, on which his name figured at the head of 
 
 * From the Greek cKvOpairos — of a sullen countenance. — 
 G. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 a laudatory inscription in some semi-barbarous 
 dialect of Anglo-Saxonised Latin, 
 
 His fellow-students, however, who drove tandem 
 and random* in great perfection, and were con- 
 noisseurs in good inns, had taught him to drink 
 deep ere he departed. He had passed much of 
 his time with these choice spirits, and had seen the 
 rays of the midnight lamp tremble on many a 
 lengthening file of empty bottles. He passed his 
 vacations sometimes at Nightmare Abbey, some- 
 times in London, at the house of his uncle, Mr 
 Hilary, a very cheerful and elastic gentleman, who 
 had married the sister of the melancholy Mr 
 dowry. The company that frequented his house 
 was the gayest of the gay. Scythrop danced with 
 the ladies and drank with the gentlemen, and was 
 pronounced by both a very accomplished charming 
 fellow, and an honour to the university. 
 
 At the house of Mr Hilary, Scythrop first saw 
 the beautiful Miss Emily Girouette. He fell 
 in love ; which is nothing new. He was favour- 
 ably received ; which is nothing strange. Mr 
 dowry and Mr Girouette had a meeting on the 
 occasion, and quarrelled about the terms of the 
 bargain; which is neither new nor strange. The 
 lovers were torn asunder, weeping and vowing 
 everlasting constancy; and, in three weeks after 
 this tragical event, the lady was led a smiling bride 
 to the altar, by the Honourable Mr Lackwit; 
 which is neither strange nor new. 
 
 * Is this an Oxonian proverb ? or only PeacocUian rhyme 
 and reason ? — G. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 19 
 
 Scythrop received this intelligence at Nightmare 
 Abbey, and was half distracted on the occasion. 
 It was his first disappointment, and preyed deeply 
 on his sensitive spirit. His father, to comfort him, 
 read him a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, which he 
 had himself composed, and which demonstrated 
 incontrovertibly that all is vanity. He insisted 
 particularly on the text, "One man among a 
 thousand have I found, but a woman amongst all 
 those have I not found." 
 
 "How could he expect it," said Scythrop, 
 " when the whole thousand were locked up in his 
 seraglio? His experience is no precedent for a 
 free state of society like that in which we live." 
 
 " Locked up or at large," said Mr dowry, " the 
 result is the same : their minds are always locked 
 up, and vanity and interest keep the key. I speak 
 feelingly, Scythrop." 
 
 "I am sorry for it, sir," said Scythrop. "But 
 how is it that their minds are locked up ? The 
 fault is in their artificial education, which studiously 
 models them into mere musical dolls, to be set out 
 for sale in the great toy-shop of society." 
 
 "To be sure," said Mr Glowry, "their educa- 
 tion is not so well finished as yours has been ; and 
 your idea of a musical doll is good. I bought one 
 myself, but it was confoundedly out of tune ; but, 
 whatever be the cause, Scythrop, the effect is 
 certainly this, that one is pretty nearly as good as 
 another, as far as any judgment can be formed of 
 them before marriage. It is only after marriage 
 
20 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 that they show their true qualities, as I know by 
 bitter experience. Marriage is, therefore, a lottery, 
 and the less choice and selection a man bestows 
 on his ticket the better ; for, if he has incurred 
 considerable pains and expense to obtain a lucky 
 number, and his lucky number proves a blank, he 
 experiences not a simple, but a complicated dis- 
 appointment ; the loss of labour and money being 
 superadded to the disappointment of drawing a 
 blank, which, constituting simply and entirely the 
 grievance of him who has chosen his ticket at 
 random, is, from its simplicity, the more endur- 
 able." This very excellent reasoning was thrown 
 away upon Scythrop, who retired to his tower as 
 dismal and disconsolate as before. 
 
 The tower which Scythrop inhabited stood at the 
 south-eastern angle of the Abbey; and, on the 
 southern side, the foot of the tower opened on a 
 terrace, which was called the garden, though 
 nothing grew on it but ivy, and a few amphibious 
 weeds. The south-western tower, which was 
 ruinous and full of owls, might, with equal pro- 
 priety, have been called the aviary. This terrace 
 or garden, or terrace-garden, or garden-terrace (the 
 reader may name it ad libitum), took in an oblique 
 view of the open sea, and fronted a long track of 
 level sea-coast, and a fine monotony of fens and 
 windmills. 
 
 The reader will judge, from what we have said, 
 that this building was a sort of castellated abbey ; 
 and it will, probably, occur to him to inquire if it 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 21 
 
 had been one of the strongholds of the ancient 
 church militant. Whether this was the case, or 
 how far it had been indebted to the taste of Mr 
 dowry's ancestors for any transmutations from its 
 original state, are, unfortunately, circumstances not 
 within the pale of our knowledge. 
 
 The north-western tower contained the apart- 
 ments of Mr Glowry. The moat at its base, and 
 the fens beyond, comprised the whole of his pros- 
 pect. This moat surrounded the Abbey, and was 
 in immediate contact with the walls on every side 
 but the south. 
 
 The north-eastern tower was appropriated to the 
 domestics, whom Mr Glowry always chose by one 
 of two criterions, — a long face, or a dismal name. 
 His butler was Raven ; his steward was Crow ; his 
 valet was Skellet. Mr Glowry maintained that the 
 valet was of French extraction, and that his name 
 was Squelette. His grooms were Mattocks and 
 Graves. On one occasion, being in want of a 
 footman, he received a letter from a person signing 
 himself Diggory Deathshead, and lost no time in 
 securing this acquisition ; but on Diggory's arrival, 
 Mr Glowry was horror-struck by the sight of a 
 round, ruddy face, and a pair of laughing eyes. 
 Deathshead was always grinning, — not a ghastly 
 smile, but the grin of a comic mask ; and disturbed 
 the echoes of the hall with so much unhallowed 
 laughter, that Mr Glowry give him his discharge. 
 Diggory, however, had staid long enough to make 
 conquests of all the old gentleman's maids, and 
 
22 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 left him a flourishing colony of young Deathsheads 
 to join chorus with the owls, that had before been 
 the exclusive choristers of Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 The main body of the building was divided into 
 rooms of state, spacious apartments for feasting, and 
 numerous bedrooms for visitors, who, however, 
 were few and far between. 
 
 Family interests compelled Mr dowry to receive 
 occasional visits from Mr and Mrs Hilary, who 
 paid them from the same motive; and, as the 
 lively gentleman on these occasions found few 
 conductors for his exuberant gaiety, he became 
 like a double-charged electric jar, which often ex- 
 ploded in some burst of outrageous merriment, to 
 the sigpal discomposure of Mr dowry's nerves. 
 
 Another occasional visitor, much more to Mr 
 dowry's taste, was Mr Flosky,* a very lachrymose 
 and morbid gentleman, of some note in the literary 
 world, but in his own estimation of much mor^ 
 merit than name. The part of his character which 
 recommended him to Mr Glowry, was his very 
 fine sense of the grim and the tearful. No one 
 could relate a dismal story with so many minuj 
 tiae of supererogatory wretchedness. No one 
 could call up a raw head and bloody bones with so 
 many adjuncts and circumstances of ghastliness. 
 Mystery was his mental element. He lived in the 
 midst of that visionary world in which nothing is 
 
 * A corruption of Filosky, quasi $(Xoo-)fios, a lover, or secta- 
 tor, of shadows. [The character is partly intended for Cole- 
 ridge, — G.] 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 23 
 
 but what is not. He dreamed with his eyes open, . 
 and saw ghosts dancing round him at noontide. 
 He had been in his youth an enthusiast for liberty, 
 and had hailed the dawn of the French Revolution 
 as the promise of a day that was to banish war 
 and slavery, and every form of vice and misery, 
 from the face of the earth. Because all this was 
 not done, he deduced that nothing was done ; and 
 from this deduction, according to his system of 
 logic, he drew a conclusion that worse than nothing 
 was done ; that the overthrow of the feudal for- 
 tresses of tyranny and superstition was the greatest 
 calamity that had ever befallen mankind ; and that 
 their only hope now was to rake the rubbish to- 
 gether, and rebuild it without any of those loop- 
 holes by which the light had originally crept in. 
 To qualify himself for a coadjutor in this laudable 
 task, he plunged into the central opacity of Kantian 
 metaphysics, and lay perdu several years in tran- 
 scendental darkness, till the common daylight of 
 common-sense became intolerable to his eyes. 
 He called the sun an ignis fatutis ; and exhorted 
 all who would listen to his friendly voice, which 
 were about as many as called "God save King 
 Richard," to shelter themselves from its delusive 
 radiance in the obscure haunt of Old Philosophy. 
 This word Old had great charms for him. The 
 good old times were always on his lips ; meaning 
 the days when polemic theology was in its prime, 
 and rival prelates beat the drum ecclesiastic with 
 Herculean vigour, till the one wound up his 'series 
 
24 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 of syllogisms with the very orthodox conclusion of 
 roasting the other. 
 
 But the dearest friend of Mr Glowry, and his 
 most welcome guest, was Mr Toobad, the Mani- 
 chsean Millenarian. The twelfth verse of the 
 twelfth chapter of Revelations was always in his 
 mouth : " Woe to the inhabitors of the earth and 
 of the sea ! for the devil is come among you, 
 having great wrath, because he knoweth that he 
 hath but a short time." He .maintained that the 
 supreme dominion of the world was, for wise 
 '^"'■poses, given over for a while to the Evil 
 Prmciple ; and that this precise, period of time, 
 commonly called the enlightened age, was the 
 point of his plenitude of power. He used to add 
 that by-and-by he would be cast down, and a high 
 and happy order of things succeed ; but he never 
 omitted the saving clause, " Not in our time : " 
 which last words were always echoed in doleful 
 response by the sympathetic Mr Glowry. 
 
 Another and very frequent visitor, was the 
 Reverend Mr Larynx, the vicar of Claydyke, a 
 village about ten miles distant; — a good-natured 
 accommodating divine, who was always most 
 obligingly ready to take a dinner and a bed at the 
 house of a country "gentleman in distress for a 
 companion. Nothing came amiss to him, — a 
 game at billiards, at chess, at draughts, at back- 
 gammon, at piquet, or at all-fours in a tcte-a-tete, — 
 or any game on the cards, round, square, or 
 triangular, in a party of any number exceeding 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 25 
 
 two. He would even dance among friends, rather 
 than that a lady, even if she were on the wrong 
 side of thirty, should sit still for want of a partner. 
 For a ride, a walk, or a sail, in the morning, — ^a 
 song after dinner, a ghost story after supper, — a 
 bottle of port with the squire, or a cup of green 
 tea with his lady, — for all or any of these, or for 
 anjrthing else that was agreeable to anyone else, 
 consistently with the dye of his coat, the Reverend 
 Mr Larynx was at aU times equally ready. When 
 at Nightmare Abbey, he would condole with Mr 
 dowry, — drink Madeira with Sc3^hrop, — crack 
 jokes with Mr Hilary, — hand Mrs HUary to the 
 piano, take charge of her fan and gloves, and turn 
 over Her music with surprising dexterity, — quote 
 Revelations with Mr Toobad, — and lament the 
 good old times of feudal darkness with the 
 transcendental Mr Flosky. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 mORTLY after the disastrous termination 
 of Scythrop's passion for Miss Emily 
 Girouette, Mr dowry found himself, 
 much against his will, involved in a lawsuit, which 
 compelled him to dance attendance on the High 
 Court of Chancery. Scythrop was left alone at 
 Nightmare Abbey. He was a burnt child, and 
 dreaded the fire of female eyes. He wandered 
 about the ample pile, or along the garden-terrace, 
 with "his cogitative faculties immersed in cogi- 
 bundity of cogitation." The terrace terminated at 
 the south-western tower, which, as we have said, 
 was ruinous and full of owls. Here would Scythrop 
 take his evening seat on a fallen fragment of 
 mossy stone, with his back resting against the 
 ruined wall, — a thick canopy of ivy, with an owl in 
 it, over his head, — and the Sorrows of Werter in 
 his hand. He had some taste for romance read- 
 ing before he went to the university, where, we 
 must confess, in justice to his college, he was 
 cured of the love of reading in all its shapes ; and 
 the cure would have been radical, if disappoint- 
 ment in love, and total solitude, had not conspired 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 27 
 
 to bring on a relapse. He began to devour 
 romances and German tragedies, and, by the 
 recommendation of Mr Flosky, to pore over pon- 
 derous tomes of transcendental philosophy, which 
 reconciled him to the labour of studying them by 
 their mystical jargon and necromantic imagery. 
 In the congenial solitude of Nightmare Abbey, 
 the distempered ideas of metaphysical romance 
 and romantic metaphysics had ample time and 
 space to germinate into a fertile crop of chimeras, 
 which rapidly shot up into vigorous and abundant 
 v^etation. 
 
 He now became troubled with the passion for 
 reforming the world* He built many castles in 
 the air, and peopled them with secret tribunals, 
 and bands of iUuminad, who were always the imag- 
 inary instruments of his projected regeneration of 
 the human species. As he intended to institute a 
 perfect republic, he invested himself with absolute 
 sovereignty over these mystical dispensers of 
 liberty. He slept with Horrid Mysteries under 
 his pillow, and dreamed of venerable eleuther- 
 archst and ghastly confederates holding midnight 
 conventions in subterranean caves. He passed 
 whole mornings in his study, immersed in gloomy 
 reverie, stalking about the room in his nightcap, 
 which he pulled over his eyes like a cowl, and 
 
 * See Forsyth's " Principles of Moral Science." 
 t These bdngs figure in Peacock's friend Jefferson Hc^s 
 novel " Alexy Haimatoffl" " The swans and the eleuther- 
 archs," says Shelley to Hogg, "are proofs that you were 
 getting a little sleepy." — G. 
 
28 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 folding his striped calico dressing-gown about him 
 like the mantle of a conspirator. 
 
 " Action," thus he soliloquised, " is the result of 
 opinion, and to new-model opinion would be to 
 new-model society. Knowledge is power ; it is in 
 the hands of a few, who employ it to mislead the 
 many, for their own selfish purposes of aggrandise- 
 ment and appropriation. What if it were in the 
 hands of a few who should employ it to lead the 
 many ? What if it were universal, and the multi- 
 tude were enlightened ? No. The many must be 
 always in leading-strings ; but let them have wise 
 and honest conductors. A few to think, and many 
 to act; that is the only basis of perfect society. 
 So thought the ancient philosophers : they had 
 their esoterical and exoterical doctrines. So thinks 
 the sublime Kant, who delivers his oracles in 
 language which none but the initiated can compre- 
 hend. Such were the views of those secret 
 associations of illuminati, which were the terror of 
 superstition and tyranny, and which, carefully 
 selecting wisdom and genius from the great wilder- 
 ness of society, as the bee selects honey from the 
 flowers of the thorn and the nettle, bound all 
 human excellence in a chain, which,' if it had not 
 been prematurely broken, would have commanded 
 opinion, and regenerated the world." 
 
 Scythrop proceeded to meditate on the practic- 
 ability of reviving a confederation of regenerators. 
 To get a clear view of his own ideas, and to feel 
 the pulse of the wisdom and genius of the age, he 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 29 
 
 wrote and published a treatise, in which his mean- 
 ings were carefully wrapt up in the monk's hood of 
 tianscendental technology, but filled with hints of 
 matter deep and dangerous, which he thought 
 would set the whole nation in a ferment \ and he 
 awaited the result in awful expectation, as a miner 
 who has fired a train awaits the explosion of a rock. 
 However, he listened and heard nothing ; for the 
 explosion, if any ensued, was not sufficiently loud 
 to shake a single leaf of the ivy on the towers of 
 Nightmare Abbey ; and some months afterwards 
 he received a letter from his bookseller, imforming 
 him that only seven copies had been sold, and 
 concluding with a polite request for the balance. 
 
 Scythrop did not despair. " Seven copies," he 
 thought, "have been sold. Seven is a mystical 
 number, and the omen is good. Let me find the 
 seven purchasers of my seven copies, and they 
 shall be the seven golden candlesticks with which 
 I will illuminate the world." 
 
 Scythrop had a certain portion of mechanical 
 genius, which his romantic projects tended to 
 develop. He constructed models of cells and 
 recesses, sliding panels and secret passages, that 
 would have b^ed the skill of the Parisian police. 
 He took the opportunity of his father's absence to 
 smuggle a dumb carpenter into the Abbey, and 
 between them they gave reality to one of these 
 models in Scythrop's tower. Scythrop foresaw that 
 a great leader of human regeneration would be 
 involved in fearful dilemmas, and determined, for 
 
30 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 the benefit of mankind in general, to adopt all 
 possible precautions for the preservation of him- 
 self. 
 
 The servants, even the women, had been tutored 
 into silence. Profound stillness reigned throughout 
 and around the Abbey, except when the occasional 
 shutting of a door would peal in long reverbera- 
 tions through the galleries, or the heavy tread of 
 the pensive butler would wake the hollow echoes of 
 the hall. Scythrop stalked about like the grand 
 inquisitor, and the servants flitted past him like 
 familiars. In his evening meditations on the 
 terrace, under the ivy of the ruined tower, the only 
 sounds that came to his ear were the rustling of 
 the wind in the ivy, the plaintive voices of the 
 feathered choristers, the owls, the occasional strik- 
 ing of the Abbey clock, and the monotonous dash 
 of the sea on its low and level shore. In the mean 
 time, he drank Madeira, and laid deep schemes for 
 a thorough repair of the crazy fabric of human 
 nature. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 'R GLOWRY returned from London with 
 the loss of his lawsuit. Justice was with 
 him, but the law was against him. He 
 found Scythrop in a mood most sympathetically 
 tragic ; and they vied with each other in enlivening 
 their cups by lamenting the depravity of this de- 
 generate age, and occasionally interspersing divers 
 grim jokes about graves, worms, and epitaphs. 
 Mr dowry's friends, whom we have mentioned in 
 the first chapter, availed themselves of his return 
 to pay him a simultaneous visit. At the same 
 time arrived Scythrop's friend and fellow-collegian, 
 the Honourable Mr Listless. Mr dowry had dis- 
 covered this fashionable young gentleman in Lon- 
 don, " stretched on the rack of a too easy chair," 
 and devoured with a gloomy and misanthropical nil 
 euro, and had pressed him so earnestly to take the 
 benefit of the pure country air, at Nightmare 
 Abbey, that Mr Listless, finding it would give 
 him more trouble to refuse than to comply, sum- 
 moned his French valet, Fatout, and told him he 
 was going to Lincolnshire. On this simple hint, 
 Fatout went to work, and the imperials were 
 
32 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 packed, and the post-chariot was at the door, 
 without the Honourable Mr Listless having said 
 or thought another syllable on the subject. 
 
 Mr and Mrs Hilary brought with them an 
 orphan niece, a daughter of Mr dowry's youngest 
 sister, who had made a runaway love-match with 
 an Irish officer. The lady's fortune disappeared 
 in the first year : love, by a natural consequence, 
 disappeared in the second : the Irishman himself, 
 by a still more natural consequence, disappeared 
 in the third. Mr Glowry had allowed his sister an 
 annuity, and she had lived in retirement with her 
 only daughter, whom, at her death, which had 
 recently happened, she commended to the care of 
 Mrs Hilary. 
 
 Miss Marionetta Celestina O'CarroU was a very 
 blooming and accomplished young lady. Being a 
 compound of the Allegro Vivace of the O'Carrolls, 
 and of the Andante Dolorosa of the Glowries, she 
 exhibited in her own character all the diversities of 
 an April sky. Her hair was light-brown ; her eyes 
 hazel, and sparkling with a mild but fluctuating 
 light ; her features regular ; her hps full, and of 
 equal size ; and her person surpassingly graceful. 
 She was a proficient in music. Her conversation 
 was sprightly, but always on subjects light in their 
 nature and limited in their interest : for moral 
 sympathies, in any general sense, had no place in 
 her mind. She had some coquetry, and more 
 caprice, liking and disliking almost in the same 
 moment; pursuing an object with earnestness 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 33 
 
 while it seemed unattainable, and rejecting it 
 when in her power as not worth the trouble of 
 possession. 
 
 Whether she was touched with a penchant for 
 her cousin Scythrop, or was merely curious to see 
 what effect the tender passion would have on so 
 outre a person, she had not been three days in the 
 Abbey before she threw out all the lures of her 
 beauty and accomplishments to make a prize of 
 his heart. Scythrop proved an easy conquest. 
 The image of Miss Emily Girouette was already 
 sufficiently dimmed by the power of philosophy 
 and the exercise of reason : for to these influences, 
 or to any influence but the true one, are usually 
 ascribed the mental cures performed by the great 
 physician Time. Scythrop's romantic dreams had 
 indeed given him many pure anticipated cognitions 
 of combinations of beauty and intelligence, which, 
 he had some misgivings, were not exactly realised 
 in his cousin Marionettaj but, in spite of these 
 misgivings, he soon became distractedly in love; 
 which, when the young lady clearly perceived, she 
 altered her tactics, and assumed as much coldness 
 and reserve as she had before shown ardent and 
 ingenuous attachment. Scythrop was confounded 
 at the sudden change ; but, instead of falling at 
 her feet and requesting an explanation, he retreated 
 to his tower, muffled himself in his nightcap, seated 
 himself in the president's chair of his imaginary 
 secret tribunal, summoned Marionetta with all 
 terrible formalities, frightened her out of her wits, 
 c 
 
34 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 disclosed himself, and clasped the beautiful penitent 
 to his bosom. 
 
 While he was acting this reverie — in the moment 
 in which the awful president of the secret tribunal 
 was throwing back his cowl and his mantle, and 
 discovering himself to the lovely culprit as her 
 adoring and magnanimous lover, the door of the 
 study opened, and the real Marionetta appeared. 
 
 The motives which had led her to the tower 
 were a little penitence, a little concern, a little 
 affection, and a little fear as to what the sudden 
 secession of Scythrop, occasioned by her sudden 
 change of manner, might portend. She had 
 tapped several times unheard, and of course un- 
 answered ; and at length, timidly and cautiously 
 opening the door, she discovered him standing up 
 before a black velvet chair, which was mounted 
 on an old oak table, in the act of throwing open 
 his striped calico dressing-gown, and flinging away 
 his nightcap — which is what the French call an 
 imposing attitude. 
 
 Each stood a few moments fixed in their respec- 
 tive places — the lady in astonishment, and the 
 gentleman in confusion. Marionetta was the first 
 to break silence. " For heaven's sake," said she, 
 " my dear Scythrop, what is the matter? " 
 
 "For heaven's sake, indeed!" said Scythrop, 
 springing from the table ; "for your sake, Marion- 
 etta, and you are my heaven, — distraction is the 
 matter. I adore you, Marionetta, and your cruelty 
 drives me mad." He threw himself at her knees, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 35 
 
 devoured her hand with kisses, and breathed a 
 thousand vows in the most passionate language of 
 romance. 
 
 Marionetta listened a long time in silence, till 
 her lover had exhausted his eloquence and paused 
 for a reply. She then said, with a very arch look, 
 " I prithee deliver thyself like a man of this world." 
 The levity of this quotation, and of the manner in 
 which it was delivered, jarred so discordantly on 
 the high -wrought enthusiasm of the romantic 
 inamorato, that he sprang upon his feet, and beat 
 his forehead with his clenched fists. The young 
 lady was terrified ; and, deeming it expedient to 
 soothe him, took one of his hands in hers, placed 
 the other hand on his shoulder, looked up in his 
 face with a winning seriousness, and said, in the 
 tenderest possible tone, "What would you have, 
 Scythrop?" 
 
 Scythrop was in heaven again. " What would I 
 have ? What but you, Marionetta ? You, for the 
 companion of my studies, the partner of my 
 thoughts, the auxiliary of my great designs for the 
 emancipation of mankind." 
 
 " I am afraid I should be but a poor auxiliary, 
 Scythrop. What would you have me do ? " 
 
 " Do as Rosalia does with Carlos, divine Marion- 
 etta. Let us each open a vein in the other's arm, 
 mix our blood in a bowl, and drink it as a sacra- 
 ment of love. Then we shall see visions of tran- 
 scendental illumination, and soar on the wings of 
 ideas into the space of pure intelligence." 
 
36 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Marionetta could not reply; she had not so 
 strong a stomach as Rosalia, and turned sick at the 
 proposition. She disengaged herself suddenly from 
 Scythrop, sprang through the door of the tower, 
 and fled with precipitation along the corridors. 
 Scythrop pursued her, crying, " Stop, stop, Marion- 
 etta — my life, my love ! " and was gaining rapidly 
 on her flight, when, at an ill-omened comer, where 
 two corridors ended in an angle, at the head of a 
 staircase, he came into sudden and violent contact 
 with Mr Toobad, and they both plunged together 
 to the foot of the stairs, like two biUiard-balls into 
 one pocket. This gave the young lady time to 
 escape, and enclose herself in her chamber ; while 
 Mr Toobad, rising slowly, and rubbing his knees 
 and shoulders, said, " You see, my dear Scythrop, 
 in this little incident, one pf the innumerable proofs 
 of the temporary supremacy of the devil ; for what 
 but a systematic design and concurrent contrivance 
 of evil could have made the angles of time and 
 place coincide in our unfortunate persons at the 
 head of this accursed staircase ? " 
 
 " Nothing else, certainly," said Scythrop : " you 
 are perfectly in the right, Mr Toobad. Evil, and 
 mischief, and misery, and confusion, and vanity, 
 and vexation of spirit, and death, and disease, and 
 assassination, and war, and poverty, and pestilence, 
 and famine, and avarice, and selfishness, and ran- 
 cour, and jealousy, and spleen, and malevolence, 
 and the disappointments of philanthropy, and the 
 faithlessness of friendship, and the crosses of love 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 37 
 
 — all prove the accuracy of your views, and the 
 truth of your system ; and it is not impossible that 
 the infernal interruption of this fall down stairs 
 may throw a colour of evil on the whole of my 
 future existence." 
 
 " My dear boy," said Mr Toobad, " you have a 
 fine eye for consequences." 
 
 So saying, he embraced Scythrop, who retired, 
 with a disconsolate step, to dress for dinner ; while 
 Mr Toobad stalked across the hall, repeating, 
 " Woe to the inhabiters of the earth, and of the 
 sea, for the devil is come among you, having 
 great wrath." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ^HE flight of Marionetta, and tlie pursuit of 
 Scythrop, had been witnessed by Mr 
 Glowry, who, in consequence, narrowly 
 observed his son and his niece in the evening j and, 
 concluding from their manner, that there was a 
 better understanding between them than he wished 
 to see, he determined on obtaining the next morn- 
 ing from Scythrop a full and satisfactory explana- 
 tion. He, therefore, shortly after breakfast, entered 
 Scythrop's tower, with a very grave face, and said, 
 without ceremony or preface, " So, sir, you are in 
 love with your cousin." 
 
 Scythrop, with as little hesitation, answered, 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 "That is candid, at least; and she is in love 
 with you." 
 
 " I wish she were, sir." 
 
 " You know she is, sir." 
 
 " Indeed, sir, I do not." 
 
 "But you hope she is." 
 
 " I do, from my soul." 
 
 "Now, that is very provoking, Scythrop, and 
 very disappointing: I could not have supposed 
 that you, Scythrop Glowry, of Nightmare Abbey, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 39 
 
 would have been infatuated with such a dancing, 
 laughing, singing, thoughtless, careless, merry- 
 hearted thing, as Marionetta — in all respects the 
 reverse of you and me. It is very disappointing, 
 Scythrop. And do you know, sir, that Marionetta 
 has no fortune ? " 
 
 "It is the more reason, sir, that her husband 
 should have one." 
 
 "The more reason for her; but not for you. 
 My wife had no fortune, and I had no consolation 
 in my calamity. And do you reflect, sir, what an 
 enormous slice this law-suit has cut out of our 
 family estate? we who used to be the greatest 
 landed proprietors in Lincolnshire." 
 
 " To be sure, sir, we had more acres of fen than 
 any man on this coast : but what are fens to love ? 
 What are dykes and windmills to Marionetta ? " 
 
 "And what, sir, is love to a windmill? Not 
 grist, I am certain : besides, sir, I have made a 
 choice for you. I have made a choice for you, 
 Scythrop. Beauty, genius, accomplishments, and 
 a great fortune into the bargain. Such a lovely, 
 serious creature, in a fine state of high dissatisfac- 
 tion Tvith the world, and every thing in it. Such a 
 delightful surprise I had prepared for you. Sir, I 
 have pledged my honour to the contract — the 
 honour of the Glowries of Nightmare Abbey : and 
 now, sir, what is to be done ? " 
 
 "Indeed, sir, I cannot say. I claim, on this 
 occasion, that liberty of action which is the co- 
 lutal prerogative of every rational being," 
 
40 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 " Liberty of action, sir ? there is no such thing 
 as liberty of action. We are all slaves and puppets 
 of a blind and unpathetic necessity." 
 
 " Very true, sir ; but liberty of action, between 
 individuals, consists in their being differently in- 
 fluenced, or modified, by the same universal 
 necessity ; so that the results are unconsentaneous, 
 and their respective necessitated volitions clash 
 and fly off" in a tangent." 
 
 " Your logic is good, sir : but you are aware, 
 too, that one individual may be a medium of 
 adhibiting to another a mode or form of necessity, 
 which may have more or less influence in the 
 production of consentaneity ; and, therefore, sir, if 
 you do not comply with my wishes in this instance 
 (you have had your own way in every thing else), 
 I shall be under the necessity of disinheriting you, 
 though I shall do it with tears in my eyes." Hav- 
 ing said these words, he vanished suddenly, in the 
 dread of Scythrop's logic. 
 
 Mr dowry immediately sought Mrs Hilary, 
 and communicated to her his views of the case 
 in point. Mrs Hilary, as the phrase is, was as 
 fond of Marionetta as if she had been her own 
 child : but — there is always a ^ui on these occa- 
 sions — she could do nothing for her in the way of 
 fortune, as she had two hopeful sons, who were 
 finishing their education at Brazen-nose, and who 
 would not like to encounter any diminution of 
 their prospects, when they should be brought out 
 of the hotise of meptal bondage — i.e., the uni- 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 41 
 
 versity — to the land flowing with milk and honey 
 — i.e., the west end of London. 
 
 Mrs Hilary hinted to Marionetta, that propriety, 
 and delicacy, and decorum, and dignity, &c., &c., 
 &c.,* would require them to leave the Abbey im- 
 mediately. Marionetta listened in silent submis- 
 sion, for she knew that her inheritance was passive 
 obedience ; but, when Scythrop, who had watched 
 the opportunity of Mrs Hilary's departure, entered, 
 and, without speaking a word, threw himself at 
 her feet in a paroxysm of grief, the young lady, 
 in equal silence and sorrow, threw her arms round 
 his neck and burst into tears. A very tender' 
 scene ensued, which the sympathetic suscepti- 
 bilities of the soft-hearted reader can more accur- 
 ately imagine than we can delineate. But when 
 Marionetta hinted that she was to leave the Abbey 
 immediately, Scythrop snatched from its repository 
 his ancestor's skull, filled it with Madeira, and pre- 
 senting himself before Mr Glowry, threatened to 
 drink off the contents if Mr Glowry did not im- 
 mediately promise that Marionetta should not be 
 taken from the Abbey without her own consent. 
 Mr Glowry, who took the Madeira to be some 
 deadly brewage, gave the required promise in 
 dismal panic. Scythrop returned to Marionetta 
 with ^ joyful heart, and drank the Madeira by the 
 way. 
 
 Mr Glowry, during his residence in London, 
 
 * We are not masters of the whole vocabulary. See any 
 nov^l by any literary lady. 
 
42 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 had come to an agreement with his friend Mr 
 Toobad, that a match between Scythrop and Mr 
 Toobad's daughter would be a very desirable 
 occurrence. She was finishing her education in 
 a German convent, but Mr Toobad described her 
 as being fully impressed with the truth of his 
 Ahrimanic* philosophy, and being altogether as 
 gloomy and antithahanf a young lady as Mr 
 dowry himself could desire for the future mistress 
 of Nightmare Abbey. She had a great fortune in 
 her own right, which was not, as we have seen, 
 without its weight in inducing Mr dowry to set 
 his heart upon her as his daughter-in-law that was 
 to be ; he was therefore very much disturbed by 
 
 * Ahrimanes, in the Persian mythology, is the evil power, 
 the prince of the kingdom of darkness. He is the rival of 
 Oromazes, the prince of the kingdom of light. These two 
 powers have divided and equal dominion. Sometimes one 
 of the two has a temporary supremacy. — According to Mr 
 Toobad, the present period would be the reign of Ahri- 
 manes. Lord Byron seems to be of the same opinion, by 
 the use he has made of Ahrimanes in ' ' Manfred ; " where 
 the great Alastor, or Ka/cos Aai/iuv, of Persia, is hailed king 
 of the world by the Nemesis of Greece, in concert with 
 three of the Scandinavian Valkyrse, under the name of the 
 Destinies ; the astrological spirits of the alchemists of the 
 middle ages ; an elemental witch, transplanted from Den- 
 mark to the Alps ; and a chorus of Dr Faustus's devils, who 
 come in the last act for a soul. It is difficult to conceive 
 where this heterogeneous mythological company could have 
 originally met, except at a table cChdie, like the six kings in 
 "Candide." 
 
 i" A Peacockian airaj "Keyoi^evov, admitted into Murray's 
 Pictionjiry on the authority of this passage. — G, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 43 
 
 Scythrop's untoward attachment to Marionetta. 
 He condoled on the occasion with Mr Toobadj 
 who said, that he had been too long accustomed 
 to the intermeddling of the devil in all his affairs, 
 to be astonished at this new trace of his cloven 
 claw ; but that he hoped to outwit him yet, for he 
 was sure there could be no comparison between 
 his daughter and Marionetta in the mind of any 
 one who had a proper perception of the fact, that, 
 the world being a great theatre of evil, seriousness 
 and solemnity are the characteristics of wisdom, 
 and laughter and merriment make a human being 
 no better than a baboon. Mr dowry comforted 
 himself with this view of the subject, and urged 
 Mr Toobad to expedite his daughter's return from 
 Germany. Mr Toobad said he was in daily ex- 
 pectation of her arrival in London, and would set 
 oif immediately to meet her, that he might lose no 
 time in bringing her to Nightmare Abbey. " Then," 
 he added, " we shall see whether Thalia or Mel- 
 pomene — whether the AUegra or the Penserosa — 
 will carry off the symbol of victory." — " There can 
 be no doubt," said Mr dowry, "which way the 
 scale will incline, or Scytlirop is no true scion of 
 the venerable stem of the Glowrys." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 fARIONETTA felt secure of Scythrop's 
 heart ; and notwithstanding the difficulties 
 that surrounded her, she could not debar 
 herself from the pleasure of tormenting her lover, 
 whom she kept in a perpetual fever. Sometimes 
 she would meet him with the most unqualified 
 affection ; sometimes with the most chilling indiffer- 
 ence ; rousing him to anger by artificial coldness 
 — softening him to love by eloquent tenderness — 
 or inflaming him to jealousy by coquetting with the 
 Honourable Mr Listless, who seemed, under her 
 magical influence, to burst into sudden life, like the 
 bud of the evening primrose. Sometimes she 
 would sit by the piano, and listen with becoming 
 attention to Scythrop's pathetic remonstrances; but, 
 in the most impassioned part of his oratory, she 
 would convert all his ideas into a chaos, by striking 
 up some Rondo Allegro, and saying, "Is it not 
 pretty ? " Scythrop would begin to storm ; and she 
 would answer him with, 
 
 "Zitto, zitto, piano, piano, 
 Non facciamo^confusione,'' 
 
 or some similar facezia, till he would start away 
 from her, and enclose himself in his tower, in an 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 45 
 
 agony of agitation, vowing to renounce her, and 
 her whole sex, for ever j and returning to her pres- 
 ence at the summons of the billet, which she never 
 failed to send with many expressions of penitence 
 and promises of amendment. Scythrop's schemes 
 for regenerating the world, and detecting his seven 
 golden candlesticks, went on very slowly in this 
 fever of his spirit. 
 
 Things proceeded in this train for several days ; 
 and Mr Glowry began to be uneasy at receiving no 
 intelligence from Mr Toobad ; when one evening 
 the latter rushed into the library, where the family 
 and the visitors were assembled, vociferating, " The 
 devil is come among you, having great wrath ! " 
 He then drew Mr Glowry aside into another apart- 
 ment, and after remaining some time together, they 
 re-entered the library with faces of great dismay, 
 but did not condescend to explain to any one the 
 cause of their discomfiture. 
 
 The next morning, early, Mr Toobad departed. 
 Mr Glowry sighed and groaned all day, and said 
 not a word to any one. Scythrop had quarrelled, 
 as usual, with Marionetta, and was enclosed in his 
 tower, in a fit of morbid sensibility. Marionetta 
 was comforting herself at the piano, with singing 
 the airs of Nina pazza per amore ; and the Hon- 
 ourable Mr Listless was listening to the harmony, 
 as he lay supine on the sofa, with a book in his 
 hand, into which he peeped at intervals. The 
 Reverend Mr Larnyx approached the sofa, and 
 proposed a game at billiards. 
 
46 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Billiards ! Really 
 I should be very happy ; but, in my present ex- 
 hausted state, the exertion is too much for me. I 
 do not know when I have been equal to such an 
 effort. (He rang the bell for his valet. Fatout 
 entered) Fatout ! when did I play at billiards last ? 
 
 Fatout. — De fourteen December de last year, 
 Monsieur. (Fatout bowed and retired) 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — So it was. Seven 
 months ago. You see, Mr Larynx ; you see, sir. 
 My nerves. Miss O'CarroU, my nerves are shattered. 
 I have been advised to ^try Bath. Some of the 
 faculty recommend Cheltenham. I think of trying 
 both, as the seasons don't clash. The season, you 
 know, Mr Larynx — the season, Miss O'Carroll — 
 the season is every thing. 
 
 Marionetta. — And health is something. N'est-ce 
 fas, Mr Larynx? 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Most assuredly. 
 Miss O'Carroll. For, however reasoners may dis- 
 pute about the summum bonum, none of them will 
 deny that a very good dinner is a very good thing : 
 and what is agood dinner without a good appetite ? 
 and whence is a good appetite but from good health ? 
 Now, Cheltenham, Mr Listless, is famous for good 
 appetites. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — The best piece 
 of logic I ever heard, Mr Larynx ; the very best, 
 I assure you. I have thought very seriously of 
 Cheltenham : very seriously and profoundly. I 
 thought of it — let me see — when did I think of it ? 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 47 
 
 (He rang again, and Fatout re-appeared^ Fatout ! 
 when did I think of going to Cheltenham, and did 
 not go ? 
 
 Fatout. — De Juillet twenty-von, de last summer, 
 Monsieur. {Fatout retired.) 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — So it was. An 
 invaluable fellow that, Mr Larynx — invaluable 
 Miss O'Carroll. 
 
 Marionetta. — So I should judge, indeed. He 
 seems to serve you as a walking memory, and to 
 be a living chronicle, not of your actions only, but 
 of your thoughts. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — An excellent 
 definition of the fellow. Miss O'Carroll, — excel- 
 lent, upon my honour. Ha ! ha ! he ! Heigho ! 
 Laughter is pleasant, but the exertion is too 
 much for me. 
 
 A parcel was brought in for Mr Listless j it had 
 been sent express. Fatout was summoned to un- 
 pack it ; and it proved to contain a new novel, and 
 a new poem, both of which had long been anxiously 
 expected by the whole host of fashionable readers ; 
 and the last number of a popular Review, of 
 which the editor and his coadjutors were in 
 high favour at court, and enjoyed ample pensions* 
 for their services to church and state. As Fatout 
 left the room, Mr Flosky entered, and curiously 
 inspected the literary arrivals. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — ( Turning over the leaves!) " Devil- 
 
 * " Pension. Pay given to a slave of state for treason to 
 his country. " — ^Johnson's Dictionary. 
 
48 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 man,* a novel." Hm. Hatred — revenge — misan- 
 thropy — and quotations from the Bible. Hm. 
 This is the morbid anatomy of black bile. — " Paul 
 Jones, a poem." Hm. I see how it is. Paul 
 Jones, an amiable enthusiast — disappointed in his 
 affections — turns pirate from ennui and magnanim- 
 ity — cuts various masculine throats, wins various 
 feminine hearts — is hanged at the yard-arm ! The 
 catastrophe is very awkward, and very unpoetical. 
 — "Th,2f Downing Street Review." Hm. First 
 article-— An Ode to the Red Book, by Roderick 
 Sackbutjt Esquire. Hm. His own poem re- 
 viewed by himself. Hm-m-m. 
 
 {Mr Flosky proceeded in silence to look over the 
 other articles of the review ; Marionetta inspected the 
 Hovel and Mr Listless the poem.") 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — For a young man of 
 fashion and family, Mr Listless, you seem to be of 
 a very studious turn. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Studious ! You 
 are pleased to be facetious, Mr Larynx. I hope 
 you do not suspect me of being studious. I have 
 finished my education. But there are some fashion- 
 able books that one must read, because they are 
 ingredients of the talk of the day ; otherwise, I am 
 no fonder of books than I daresay you yourself are, 
 Mr Larynx. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Why, sir, I cannot 
 say that I am indeed particularly fond of books ; 
 
 * Godwin's " Mandeville." — G. 
 
 + Southey, in allusion to the Laureate's perquisite of a butt 
 of sack. — G. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 49 
 
 yet neither can I say that I never do read. A tale 
 or a poem, now and then, to a circle of ladies over 
 their work, is no very heterodox employment of 
 the vocal energy. And I must say, for myself, 
 that few men have a more Job-like endurance of 
 the eternally recurring questions and answers that 
 interweave themselves, on these occasions, with the 
 crisis of an adventure, and heighten the distress of 
 a tragedy. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — And very often 
 make the distress when the author has omitted it. 
 Marionetta. — I shall try your patience some 
 rainy morning, Mr Larynx : and Mr Listless shall 
 recommend us the very newest new book, that 
 every body reads. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You shall receive 
 it. Miss O'Carroll, with all the gloss of novelty ; 
 fresh as a ripe green-gage in all the downiness of 
 its bloom. A mail-coach copy from Edinburgh, 
 forwarded express from London. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — This rage for novelty is the bane 
 of literature. Except my works and those of my 
 particular friends, nothing is good that is not as old 
 as Jeremy Taylor : and, entre nous, the best parts 
 of my friends' books were either written or suggested 
 by myself. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Sir, I reverence 
 you. But I must say, modern books are very con- 
 solatory and congenial to my feelings. There is, 
 as it were, a delightful north-east wind, an intel- 
 lectual blight breathing through them ; a delicious 
 
50 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 misanthropy and discontent, that demonstrates the 
 nullity of virtue and energy, and puts me in good 
 humour with myself and my sofa. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Very true, sir. Modern literature 
 is a north-east wind — a blight of the human soul. 
 I take credit to myself for having helped to make 
 it so. The way to produce fine fruit is to bHght 
 the flower. You call this a paradox. Marry, so be 
 it. Ponder thereon. 
 
 The conversation was interrupted by the re- 
 appearance of Mr Toobad, covered with mud. 
 He just showed himself at the door, muttered 
 " The devil is come among you ! " and vanished. 
 The road which connected Nightmare Abbey with 
 the civilised world, was artificially raised above the 
 level of the fens, and ran through them in a straight 
 line as far as the eye could reach, with a ditch on 
 each side, of which the water was rendered in- 
 visible by the aquatic vegetation that covered the 
 surface. Into one of these ditches the sudden 
 action of a shy horse, which took fright at a wind- 
 mill, had precipitated the travelling chariot of Mr 
 Toobad, who had been reduced to the necessity 
 of scrambling in dismal plight through the window. 
 One of the wheels was found to be broken ; and 
 Mr Toobad, leaving the postilion to get the chariot 
 as well as he could to Claydyke for the purposes of 
 cleaning and repairing, had walked back to Night- 
 mare Abbey, followed by his servant with the 
 imperial, and repeating all the way his favourite 
 quotation from the Revelations, 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ^R TOOBAD had found his daughter 
 Celinda in London, and after the first 
 joy of meeting was over, told her he 
 had a husband ready for her. The young lady 
 replied, very gravely, that she should take the 
 liberty to choose for herself. Mr Toobad said he 
 saw the devil was determined to interfere with all 
 his projects, but he was resolved on his own part, 
 not to have on his conscience the crime of passive 
 obedience and non-resistance to Lucifer, and there- 
 fore she should marry the person he had chosen 
 for her. Miss Toobad replied, ^rh pos'ement, she 
 assuredly would not. "Celinda, Celinda," said Mr 
 Toobad, "you most assuredly shall."— " Have I 
 not a fortune in my own right, sir ? " said Celinda. 
 "The more is the pity," said Mr Toobad : "but I 
 can find means, miss ; I can find means. There 
 are more ways than one of breaking in obstinate 
 girls.'' They parted for the night with the expres- 
 sion of opposite resolutions, and in the morning 
 the young lady's chamber was found empty, and 
 what was become of her Mr Toobad had no clue 
 to conjecture. He continued to investigate town 
 
52 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 and country in search of her ; visiting and revisit- 
 ing Nightmare Abbey at intervals, to consult with 
 his friend, Mr dowry. Mr Glowry agreed with 
 Mr Toobad that this was a very flagrant instance 
 of filial disobedience and rebellion ; and Mr Too- 
 bad declared, that when he discovered the fugitive, 
 she should find that " the devil was come unto her, 
 having great wrath." 
 
 In the evening, the whole party met, as usual, 
 in the library. Marionetta sat at the harp; the 
 Honourable Mr Listless sat by her and turned over 
 her music, though the exertion was almost too 
 much for him. The Reverend Mr Larynx relieved 
 him occasionally in this delightful labour. Scy- 
 throp, tormented by the demon Jealousy, sat in 
 the corner biting his lips and fingers. Marionetta 
 looked at him every now and then with a smile of 
 most provoking good humour, which he pretended 
 not to see, and which only the more exasperated 
 his troubled spirit. He took down a volume of 
 Dante, and pretended to be deeply interested in 
 the Purgatorio, though he knew not a word he was 
 reading, as Marionetta was well aware ; who, trip- 
 ping across the room, peeped into his book, and 
 said to him, "I see you are in the middle of Purga- 
 tory." — " I am in the middle of hell," said Scythrop 
 furiously. " Are you ? " said she ; " then come 
 across the room, and I will sing you the finale of 
 Don Giovanni." 
 
 " Let me alone," said Scythrop. Marionetta 
 looked at him with a deprecating smile, and said, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. S3 
 
 "You unjust, cross creature, you." — "Let me 
 alone," said Scythrop, but much less emphatically 
 than at first, and by no means wishing to be taken 
 at his word. Marionetta left him immediately, and 
 returning to the harp,' said, just loud enough for 
 Scythrop to hear — " Did you ever read Dante, Mr 
 Listless? Scythrop is reading Dante, and is just 
 now in Purgatory." — " And I," said the Honour- 
 able Mr Listless, "am not reading Dante, and 
 am just now in Paradise," bowing to Marionetta. 
 
 Marionetta. — You are very gallant, Mr Listless ; 
 and I dare say you are very fond of reading Dante. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — I don't know how 
 it is, but Dante never came in my way till lately. 
 I never had him in my collection, and if I had had 
 him I should not have read him. But I find he is 
 growing fashionable, and I am afraid I must read 
 him some wet morning. 
 
 Marionetta. — No, read him some evening, by all 
 means. Were you ever in love, Mr Listless ? 
 
 T}ie Honourable Mr Listless. — I assure you, Miss 
 O'CarroU, never — till I came to Nightmare Abbey. 
 I dare say it is very pleasant ; but it seems to give 
 so much trouble that I fear the exertion would be 
 too much for me. 
 
 Marionetta. — Shall I teach you a compendious 
 method of courtship, that will give you no trouble 
 whatever? 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You will confer 
 on me an inexpressible obligation. I am all 
 impatience to learn it. 
 
54 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Marionetta. — Sit with your back to the lady and 
 read Dante ; only be sure to begin in the middle, 
 and turn over three or four pages at once — back- 
 wards as well as forwards, and she will immediately 
 perceive that you are desperately in love with her 
 — desperately. 
 
 {The Honourable Mr Listless sitting between 
 Scythrop and Marionetta, and fixing all his 
 attention on the beautiful speaker, did not 
 observe Scythrop, who was doing as she 
 described^ 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You are pleased 
 to be facetious. Miss O'Carroll. The lady would 
 infallibly conclude that I was the greatest' brute in 
 town. 
 
 Marionetta. — Far from it. She would say, per- 
 haps, some people have odd methods of showing 
 their affection. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless, — But I should 
 think, with submission 
 
 Mr Flosky {joining them from another part of the 
 room). — Did I not hear Mr Listless observe that 
 Dante is becoming fashionable ? 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — I did hazard a 
 remark to that effect, Mr Flosky, though I speak 
 on such subjects with a consciousness of my own 
 nothingness, in the presence of so great a man as 
 Mr Flosky. I know not what is the colour of 
 Dante's devils, but as he is certainly becoming 
 fashionable I conclude they are blue; for the 
 blue devils, as it seems to me, Mr Flosky, con- 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 55 
 
 stitute the fundamental feature of fashionable 
 literature. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — The blue are, indeed, the staple 
 commodity ; but as they will not always be com- 
 manded, the black, red, and grey may be admitted 
 as substitutes. Tea, late dinners, and the French 
 Revolution, have played the devil, Mr Listless, 
 and brought the devil into play. 
 
 Mr Toobad (starting up). Having great wrath. 
 
 Mr Flosky. This is no play upon words, but the 
 sober sadness of veritable fact. 
 
 The honourable Mr Listless. — Tea, late dinners, 
 and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see 
 the connection of ideas. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — I should be sorry if you could ; I 
 pity the man who can see the connection of his 
 own ideas. Still more do I pity him, the connec- 
 tion of whose ideas any other person can see. Sir, 
 the great evil is, that there is too much common- 
 place light in our moral and political literature; 
 and light is a great enemy to mystery, and mystery 
 is a great friend to enthusiasm. Now the enthusi- 
 asm for abstract truth is an exceedingly fine thing, 
 as long as the truth, which is the object of the 
 enthusiasm, is so completely abstract as to be 
 altogether out of the reach of the human faculties ; 
 and, in that sense, I have myself an enthusiasm for 
 truth) but in no other, for the pleasure of meta- 
 physical investigation lies in the means, not in the 
 end ; and if the end could be found, the pleasure 
 of the means would cease. The mind, to be 
 
5 6 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 kept in health, must be kept in exercise. The/ 
 proper exercise of the mind is elaborate reasoning^ 
 Analytical reasoning is a base and mechanical pr(/- 
 cess, which takes to pieces and examines, bit l/y 
 bit, the rude material of knowledge, and extracts 
 therefrom a few hard and obstinate things called 
 facts, every thing in the shape of which I cordially 
 hate. /But synthetical reasoning, setting up as its 
 goal' some unattainable abstraction, like an im- 
 aginary quantity in algebra, and commencing its 
 course with taking for granted some two assertions 
 which cannot be proved, from the union of these 
 two assumed truths produces a third assumption, 
 and so on in infinite series, to the unspeakable 
 benefit of the human intellect. /The beauty of this 
 process is, that at every step it strikes out into two 
 branches, in a compound ratio of ramification ; so 
 that you are perfectly sure of losing your way, and 
 keeping your mind in perfect health, by the per- 
 petual exercise of an interminable quest ; and for 
 these reasons I have christened my eldest son 
 Emanuel Kant Flosky.* 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Nothing can be 
 more luminous. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — And what has all 
 that to do with Dante, and the blue devils ? 
 
 Mr Hilary. — Not much, I should think, with 
 Dante, but a great deal with the blue devils. 
 Mr Flosky. — It is very certain, and much to be 
 
 * Coleridge named his two eldest children Hartley and 
 Berkely. — G, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. S7 
 
 rejoiced at, that our literature is hag-ridden. Tea 
 has shattered our nerves; late dinners make us 
 slaves of indigestion ; the French Revolution has 
 made us shrink from the name of philosophy, and 
 has destroyed, in the more refined part of the com- 
 munity (of which number I am one), all enthusiasm 
 for political liberty. That part of the reading public 
 which shuns the solid food of reason for the light 
 diet of fiction, requires a perpetual adhibition of 
 sauce piquante to the palate of its depraved- iniagina- 
 tion. It lived upon ghosts, goblins, and skeletons 
 (I and my friend Mr Sackbut served up a few of 
 the best), till even the devil himself, though 
 magnified to the size of Mount Athos, became too 
 base, common, and popular, for its surfeited 
 appetite. /The ghosts have therefore been laid, 
 and the'devil has been cast into outer darkness, 
 and now the delight of our spirits is to dwell on 
 all the vices and blackest passions of our nature, 
 tricked out in a masquerade dress of heroism and 
 • disappointed benevolence ; /the whole secret of 
 which lies in forming combmations that contradict 
 all our experience, and affixing the purple shred of 
 some particular virtue to that precise character, in 
 which we should be most certain not to find it in 
 the hving world; and making this single virtue not 
 only redeem all the real and manifest vices of the 
 character, but make them actually pass for necessary 
 adjuncts, and indispensable accompaniments and 
 characteristics of the said virtue. 
 Mr Toobad. — That is, because the devil is come 
 
5 8 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 among us, and finds it for his interest to destroy 
 all our perceptions of the distinctions of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 Marionetta. — I do not precisely enter into your 
 meaning, Mr Flosky, and should be glad if you 
 would make it a little more plain to me. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — One or two examples will do it, 
 Miss O'Carroll. If I were to take all the mean 
 and sordid qualities of a money-dealing Jew, and 
 tack on to them, as with a nail, the quality of extreme 
 benevolence, I should have a very decent hero for 
 a modern novel ; and should contribute my quota 
 to the fashionable method of administering a mass 
 of vice, under a thin and unnatural covering of 
 virtue, like a spider wrapt in a bit of gold leaf, and 
 administered as a wholesome pill. On the same 
 principle, if a man knocks me down, and takes my 
 purse and watch by main force, I turn him to 
 account, and set him forth in a tragedy as a dash- 
 ing young fellow, disinherited for his romantic gene- 
 rosity, and full of a most amiable hatred of the 
 world in general, and his own country in particular, 
 and of a most enlightened and chivalrous affection 
 for himself : then, with the addition of a wild girl 
 to fall in love with him, and a series of adventures 
 in which they break all the Ten Commandments 
 in succession (always, you will observe, for some 
 sublime motive, which must be carefully analysed 
 in its progress), I have as amiable a pair of 
 tragic characters as ever issued from that new 
 region of the belles lettres, which I have called the 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 59 
 
 Morbid Anatomy of Black Bile, and which is 
 greatly to be admired and rejoiced at, as affording 
 a fine scope for the exhibition of mental power. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — ^Which is about as well employed 
 as the power of a hothouse would be in forcing up 
 a nettle to the size of an elm. If we go on in this 
 way, we shall have a new art of poetry, of which 
 one of the first rules will be : To remember to for- 
 get that there are any such things as sunshine and 
 music in the world. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — It seems to be 
 the case with us at present, or we should not have 
 interrupted Miss O'CarroU's music with this ex- 
 ceedingly dry conversation. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — I should be most happy if Miss 
 O'Carroll would remind us that there are yet both 
 music and sunshine 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — In the voice and 
 the smile of beauty. May I entreat the favour of 
 —{turning over the pages of music.) 
 
 All were silent, and Marionetta sung : — - 
 
 Why are thy looks so blank, grey friar ? 
 
 Why are thy looks so blue ? 
 Thou seem'st more pale and lank, grey friar, 
 
 Than thou wast used to do : — 
 
 Say, what has made thee rue ? 
 
 Thy form was plump, and a light did shine 
 
 In thy round and ruby face. 
 Which showed an outward visible sign 
 
 Of an inward spiritual grace ; — 
 
 Say, what has changed thy case ? 
 
6o Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Yet will I tell thee true, grey friar, 
 
 I very well can see, 
 That, if thy looks are blue, grey friar, 
 
 'Tis all for love of me, — 
 
 'Tis all for love of me. 
 
 But breathe not thy vows to me, grey friar. 
 
 Oh, breathe them not, I pray ; 
 For ill beseems in a reverend friar. 
 
 The love of a mortal may ; 
 
 And I needs must say thee nay. 
 
 But, could'st thou think my heart to move 
 With that pale and silent scowl ? 
 
 Know, he who would win a maiden's love, 
 Whether clad in cap or cowl, 
 Must be more of a lark than an owl. 
 
 Scythrop immediately replaced Dante on the 
 shelf, and joined the circle round the beautiful 
 singer. Marionetta gave him a smile of approba- 
 tion that fully restored his complacency, and they 
 continued on the best possible terms during the 
 remainder of the evening. The Honourable Mr 
 Listless turned over the leaves with double alac- 
 rity, saying, " You are severe upon invalids, Miss 
 O'CarroU : to escape your satire, I must try to be 
 sprightly, though the exertion is too much for 
 me." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 NEW visitor arrived at the Abbey, in the 
 person of Mr Asterias, the ichthyologist. 
 This gentleman had passed his life in 
 seeking the living wonders of the deep through 
 the four quarters of the world ; he had a cabinet 
 of stuffed and dried fishes, of shells, sea-weeds, 
 corals, and madrepores, that was the admiration 
 and envy of the Royal Society. He had pene- 
 trated into the watery den of the Sepia Octopus, 
 disturbed the conjugal happiness of that turtle- 
 dove of the ocean, and come off victorious in a 
 sanguinary conflict. He had been becalmed in 
 the tropical seas, and had watched, in eager ex- 
 pectation, though unhappily always in vain, to see 
 the colossal polypus rise from the water, and 
 entwine its enormous arms round the masts and 
 the rigging. He maintained the origin of all 
 things from water, and insisted that the polypodes 
 were the first of animated things, and that, from 
 their round bodies and many-shooting arms, the 
 Hindoos had taken their gods, the most ancient of 
 deities. But the chief object of his ambition, the 
 end and aim of bis researches, was to discover a 
 
62 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 triton and a mermaid, the existence of which he 
 most potently and implicitly believed, and was 
 prepared to demonstrate, a priori, h posteriori, ^ 
 fortiori, synthetically and analytically, syllogistic- 
 ally and inductively, by arguments deduced both 
 from acknowledged facts and plausible hypotheses. 
 A report that a mermaid had been seen " sleeking 
 her soft alluring locks" on the sea-coast of Lin- 
 colnshire, had brought him in great haste from 
 London, to pay a long-promised and often-post- 
 poned visit to his old acquaintance, Mr dowry. 
 
 Mr Asterias was accompanied by his son, to 
 whom he had given the name of Aquarius — flatter- 
 ing himself that he would, in the process of 
 time, become a constellation among the stars of 
 ichthyological science. What charitable female 
 had lent him the mould in which this son was 
 cast, no one pretended to know ; and, as he never 
 dropped the most distant allusion to Aquarius's 
 mother, some of the wags of London maintained 
 that he had received the favours of a mermaid, and 
 that the scientific perquisitions which kept him 
 always prowling about the sea-shore, were directed 
 by the less philosophical motive of regaining his 
 lost love. 
 
 Mr Asterias perlustrated the sea-coast for several 
 days, and reaped disappointment, but not despair. 
 One night, shortly after his arrival, he was sitting 
 in one of the windows of the library, looking to- 
 wards the sea, when his attention was attracted by 
 a figure which was moving near the edge of the 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 63 
 
 surf, and which was dimly visible through the 
 moonless summer night. Its motions were ir- 
 regular, like those of a person in a state of in- 
 decision. It had extremely long hair, which 
 floated in the wind. Whatever else it might be, 
 it certainly was not a fisherman. It might be a 
 lady; but it was neither Mrs Hilary nor Miss 
 O'CarroU, for they were both in the library. It 
 might be one of the female servants ; but it had 
 too much grace, and too striking an air of habitual 
 liberty, to render it probable. Besides, what should 
 one of the female servants be doing there at this 
 hour, moving to and fro, as it seemed, without any 
 visible purpose ? It could scarcely be a stranger ; 
 for Claydyke, the nearest village, was ten miles 
 distant ; and what female would come ten miles 
 across the fens, for no purpose but to hover over 
 the surf under the walls of Nightmare Abbey? 
 Might it not be a mermaid? It was possibly a 
 mermaid. It was probably a mermaid. It was 
 very probably a mermaid. Nay, what else could 
 it be but a mermaid ? It certainly was a mermaid. 
 Mr Asterias stole out of the library on tiptoe, with 
 his finger on his lips, having beckoned Aquarius to 
 follow him. 
 
 The rest of the party was in great surprise at Mr 
 Asterias's movement, and some of them approached 
 the window to see if the locality would tend to " 
 elucidate the mystery. Presently they saw him 
 and Aquarius cautiously stealing along on the other 
 side of the moat, but they saw nothing more ; and 
 
64 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Mr Asterias returning, told them, with accents of 
 great disappointment, that he had had a glimpse 
 of a mermaid, but she had eluded him in the dark- 
 ness, and was gone, he presumed, to sup with some 
 enamoured triton, in a submarine grotto. 
 
 " But, seriously, Mr Asterias," said the Honour- 
 able Mr Listless, " do you positively believe there 
 are such things as mermaids ? " 
 
 Mr Asterias. — Most assuredly ; and tritons too. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — What! things 
 that are half human and half fish ? 
 
 Mr Asterias. — Precisely. They are the oran- 
 outangs of the sea. But I am persuaded that there 
 are also complete sea men, differing in no respect 
 from us, but that they are stupid, and covered 
 with scales ; for, though our organisation seems to 
 exclude us essentially from the class of amphibious 
 animals, yet anatomists well know that Xh^ foramen 
 ovale may remain open in an adult, and that respir- 
 ation is, in that case, not necessary to life : and how 
 can it be otherwise explained that the Indian 
 divers, employed in the pearl fishery, pass whole 
 hours under the water; and that the famous 
 Swedish gardener of Troningholm lived a day and 
 a half under the ice without being drowned ? A 
 nereid, or mermaid, was taken in the year 1403 in 
 a Dutch lake, and was in every respect like a French 
 woman, except that she did not speak. Towards 
 the end of the seventeenth century, an English 
 ship, a hundred and fifty leagues from land, in the 
 Greenland seas, discovered a flotilla of sixty or 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 65 
 
 seventy little skiffs, in each of which was a triton, 
 or sea man : at the approach of the English vessel 
 the whole of them, seized with simultaneous fear, 
 disappeared, skiffs and all, under the water, as if 
 they had been a human variety of the nautilus. 
 The illustrious Don Feijoo has preserved an 
 authentic and well-attested story of a young 
 Spaniard, named Francis de la Vega, who, bath- 
 ing with some of his friends in June, 1674, suddenly 
 dived under the sea and rose no more. His 
 friends thought him drowned : they were plebeians 
 and pious Catholics ; but a philosopher might very 
 legitimately have drawn the same conclusion. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Nothing could be 
 more logical. 
 
 Mr Asterias. — Five years afterwards, some fisher- 
 men near Cadiz found in their nets a triton, or sea 
 man ; they spoke to him in several languages — 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — They were very 
 learned fishermen. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — They had the gift of tongues by 
 especial favour of their brother fisherman. Saint 
 Peter. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Is Saint Peter the 
 tutelar saint of Cadiz ? {None of the company could 
 answer this question, and Mr Asterias proceeded.) 
 
 They spoke to him in several languages, but he 
 was as mute as a fish. They handed him over to 
 some holy friars, who exorcised him; but the 
 devil was mute too. After some days he pro- 
 nounced the name Lierganes. A monk took him 
 
 E 
 
66 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 to that village. His mother and brothers recog- 
 nised and embraced him ; but he was as insensible 
 to their caresses as any other fish would have 
 been. He had some scales on his body, which 
 dropped off by degrees ; but his skin was as hard 
 and rough as shagreen. He stayed at home nine 
 years, without recovering his speech or his reason : 
 he then disappeared again; and one of his old 
 acquaintance, some years after, saw him pop his 
 head out of the water near the coast of the Asturias. 
 These facts were certified by his brothers, and by 
 Don Gaspardo de la Riba Aguero, Knight of 
 Saint James, who lived near Lierganes, and often 
 had the pleasure of our triton's company to 
 dinner. — Pliny mentions an embassy of the Olys- 
 siponians to Tiberius, to give him intelligence of 
 a triton which had been heard playing on its shell 
 in a certain cave ; with several other authenticated 
 facts on the subject of tritons and nereids. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You astonish me. 
 I have been much on the sea-shore, in the season, 
 but I do not think I ever saw a mermaid. {He 
 rang, and summoned Fatout, who tiiade his appear- 
 ance half-seas-over.) Fatout ! did I ever see a 
 mermaid ? 
 
 Fatout. — Mermaid ! mer-r-m-m-aid ! Ah ! merry 
 maid ! Oui, monsieur ! Yes, sir, very many. I vish 
 dere vas von or two here in de kitchen — ma foi ! 
 Dey be all as melancholic as so many tombstone. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — I mean, Fatout, 
 an odd kind of human fish. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 6y 
 
 Fatout. — De odd fish ! Ah, oui ! I understand 
 de phrase : ve have seen nothing else since ve left 
 town — ma foi ! 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You seem to have 
 a cup too much, sir. 
 
 Fatout. — Non, monsieur : de cup too little. De 
 fen be very unwholesome, and I drink-a-de ponch 
 vid Raven de butler, to keep out de bad air. 
 
 TTie Honourable Mr Listless. — Fatout ! I insist 
 on your being sober. 
 
 Fatout. — Oui, monsieur j I vil be as sober as de 
 reverendissime pbre Jean. I should be ver glad 
 of de merry maid ; but de butler be de odd fish, 
 and he swim in de bowl de ponch. Ah ! ah ! I do 
 recollect de lettle-a song : — "About fair maids, and 
 about fair maids, and about my merry maids all." 
 {Fatout reeled out, singing.) 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — I am over- 
 whelmed : I never saw the rascal in such a con- 
 dition before. But will you allow me, Mr 
 Asterias, to inquire into the cui bono of all the 
 pains and expense you have incurred to discover a 
 mermaid? The cui bono, sir, is the question I 
 always take the liberty to ask when I see any one 
 taking much trouble for any object. I am myself 
 a sort of Signor Pococurante, and should like to 
 know if there be any thing better or pleasanter, 
 than the state of existing and doing nothing ? 
 
 Mr Asterias. — I have made many voyages, Mr 
 Listless, to remote and barren shores : I have 
 travelled over desert and inhospitable lands : I 
 
68 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 have defied danger — I have endured fatigue — I 
 have submitted to privation. In the midst of these 
 I have experienced pleasures which I would not at 
 any time have ejcchanged for that of existing and 
 doing nothing/'^ I have known many evils, but I 
 have never Imown the worst of all, which, as it 
 seems to me, are those which are comprehended in 
 the inexhaustible varieties ol ennui: spleen, chagrin, 
 vapours, blue devils, time-killing, discontent, mis- 
 anthropy, and all their interminable train of fretful- 
 ness, querulousness, suspicions, jealousies, and 
 fears, which have alike infected society, and the 
 literature of society; and which would make an 
 arctic ocean of the human mind, if the more humane 
 pursuits of philosophy and science did not keep 
 alive the better feehngs and more valuable energies 
 of our nature. / 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — You are pleased 
 to be severe upon our fashionable belles lettres. 
 
 Mr Asterias. — Surely not without reason, when 
 pirates, highwaymen, and other varieties of the 
 extensive genus Marauder, are the only beau idial 
 of the active, as splenetic and railing misanthropy 
 is of the speculative energy. A gloomy brow and 
 a tragical voice seem to have been of late the 
 characteristics of fashionable manners : and a mor- 
 bid, withering, deadly, antisocial sirocco, loaded 
 with moral and political despair, breathes through 
 ,all the groves and valleys of the modern Parnassus ; 
 while science moves on in the calm dignity of its 
 course, affording to youth delights equally pure and 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 69 
 
 vivid — to maturity, calm and grateful occupation — 
 to old age, the most pleasing recollections and in- 
 exhaustible materials of agreeable and salutary re- 
 flection ; and, while its votary enjoys the disinter- 
 ested pleasure of enlarging the intellect and 
 increasing the comforts of society, he is himself 
 independent of the caprices of human intercourse 
 and the accidents of human fortune. Nature is his 
 great and inexhaustible treasure, ^^^is days are 
 always too short for his enjoynfent : ennui is a 
 stranger to his door. At peace with the world 
 and with his own mind, he suffices to himself, 
 makes all around him happy, and the close of his 
 pleasing and beneficial' existence is the evening of 
 a beautiful day.* 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Really I should 
 like very well to lead such a life myself, but the 
 exertion would be too much for me. Besides, I 
 have been at college. -I contrive to get through 
 my day by sinking the morning in bed, and killing 
 the evening in company; dressing and dining in 
 the intermediate space, and stopping the chinks 
 and crevices of the few vacant moments that remain 
 with a little easy reading. And that amiable dis- 
 content and antisociality which you reprobate in 
 our present drawing-room-table literature, I find, I 
 do assure you, a very fine mental tonic, which 
 reconciles me to my favourite pursuit of doing 
 nothing, by showing me that nobody is worth 
 doing any thing for. 
 
 * See Denys Montfort : Histoire Naturelle des Mol- 
 lusques ; Vues Generales, pp. 37, 38. 
 
70 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Mariomtta. — But is there not in such com- 
 positions a kind of unconscious self-detection, 
 which seems to carry their ovm antidote with 
 them? For surely no one who cordially and 
 truly either hates or despises the world will publish 
 a volume every three months to say so. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — There is a secret in all this, which 
 I will elucidate with a dusky remark. According 
 to Berkeley, the esse of things is percipi. They 
 exist as they are perceived. But, leaving for the 
 present, as far as relates to the material world, the 
 materialists, hyloists, and antihyloists, to settle this 
 point among them, which is indeed 
 
 A subtle question, raised among 
 
 Those out o' their wits, and those i' the wrong ; 
 
 for only we transcendentalists are in the right : we 
 may very safely assert that the esse of happiness is 
 percipi. It exists as it is perceived. "It is the 
 mind that maketh well or ill." The elements of 
 pleasure and pain are every where. The degree 
 of happinessthat any circumstances or objects can 
 confer on us depends on the mental disposition 
 with which we approach them. If you consider 
 what is meant by the common phrases, a happy 
 disposition and a discontented temper, you will 
 perceive that the truth for which I am contending 
 is universally admitted. 
 
 (Mr Flosky suddenly stopped: he found himself 
 unintentionally trespassing within the limits of 
 common sense.) 
 
 Mr Hilary. — It is very true ; a happy disposition 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 71 
 
 f.nds materials of enjoyment every where. In the 
 city, or the country — in society, or in solitude — 
 in the theatre, or the forest — in the hum of the 
 multitude, or in the silence of the mountains, are 
 alike materials of ' reflection and elements of 
 pleasure. It is one mode of pleasure to listen 
 to the music of "Don Giovanni," in a theatre 
 glittering with light, and crowded with elegance 
 and beauty : it is another to glide at sunset over 
 the bosom of a lonely lake, where no sound dis- 
 turbs the silence but the motion of the boat 
 through the waters. A happy disposition derives 
 pleasure from both, a discontented temper from 
 neither, but is always busy in detecting deficiencies, 
 and feeding dissatisfaction with comparisons. The 
 one gathers all the flowers, the other all the nettles, 
 in its path. The one has the faculty of enjoying 
 every thing, the other of enjoying nothing. The 
 one realises all the pleasure of the present good ; 
 the other converts it into pain, by pining after 
 something better, which is only better because it 
 is not present, and which, if it were present, would 
 not be enjoyed. These morbid spirits are in life 
 what professed critics are in literature; they see 
 nothing but faults, because they are predetermined 
 to shut their eyes to beauties. The critic does his 
 utmost to blight genius in its infancy ; that which 
 rises in spite of him he will not see ; and then he 
 complains of the decline of literature. In like 
 manner, these cankers of society complain of 
 human nature and society, when they have wil- 
 
72 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 fully debarred themselves from all the good they 
 contain, and done their utmost to blight their own 
 happiness and that of all around them. Misan- 
 ! thropy is sometimes the product of disappointed 
 benevolence ; but it is more frequently the ofT- 
 ' spring of overweening and mortified vanity, quar- 
 reUing with the world for not being better treated 
 than it deserves. 
 
 Scyihrop {to Marionettd). — These remarks are 
 rather uncharitable. There is great good in human 
 nature, but it is at present ill-conditioned. Ardent 
 spirits cannot but be dissatisfied with things as they 
 are; and, according to their views of the proba- 
 bilities of amelioration, they will rush into the 
 extremes of either hope or despair — of which the 
 first is enthusiasm, and the second misanthropy; 
 but their sources in this case are the same, as the 
 Severn and the Wye run in different directions, 
 and both rise in Plinlimmon. 
 
 Marionetta. — " And there is salmon in both ; " 
 for the resemblance is about as close as that be- 
 tween Macedon and Monmouth. 
 

 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 'ARIONETTA observed the next day a 
 remarkable perturbation in Scythrop, for 
 which she could not imagine any pro- 
 bable cause. She was wilUng to believe at first 
 that it had some transient and trifling source, and 
 would pass off in a day or two ; but, contrary to 
 this expectation, it daily increased. She was well 
 aware that Scythrop had a strong tendency to the 
 love of mystery, for its own sake ; that is to say, 
 he would employ mystery to serve a purpose, but 
 would first choose his purpose by its capability of 
 mystery. He seemed now to have more mystery 
 on his hands than the laws of the system allowed, 
 and to wear his coat of darkness with an air of 
 great discomfort. All her little playful arts lost by 
 degrees much of their power either to irritate or to 
 soothe ; and the first perception of her diminished 
 influence produced in her an immediate depres- 
 sion of spirits, and a consequent sadness of de- 
 meanour, that rendered her very interesting to 
 Mr dowry; who, duly considering the improba- 
 bility of accomplishing his wishes with respect to 
 Miss Toobad (which improbability naturally in- 
 
74 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 creased in the diurnal ratio of that young lady's 
 absence), began to reconcile himself by degrees 
 to the idea of Marionetta being his daughter. 
 
 Marionetta made many ineffectual attempts to 
 extract from Scythrop the secret of his mystery; 
 and, in despair of drawing it from himself, began 
 to form hopes that she might find a clue to it from 
 Mr Flosky, who was Scythrop's dearest friend, and 
 was more frequently than any other person ad- 
 mitted to his solitary tower. Mr Flosky, however, 
 had ceased to be visible in a morning. He was en- 
 gaged in the composition of a dismal ballad ; and, 
 Marionetta's uneasiness overcoming her scruples 
 of decorum, she determined to seek him in the 
 apartment which he had chosen for his study. 
 She tapped at the door, and at the sound " Come 
 in," entered the apartment. It was noon, and the 
 sun was shining in full splendour, much to . the 
 annoyance of Mr Flosky, who had obviated the 
 inconvenience by closing the shutters, and draw- 
 ing the window-curtains. He was sitting at his 
 table by the light of a solitary candle, with a pen 
 in one hand, and a muffineer in the other, with 
 which he occasionally sprinkled salt on the wick, 
 to make it burn blue. He sate with " his eye in a 
 fine frenzy rolling," and turned his- inspired gaze 
 on Marionetta as if she had been the ghostly ladie 
 of a magical vision ; then placed his hand before 
 his eyes, with an appearance of manifest pain — 
 shook his head — withdrew his hand — rubbed his 
 eyes, like a waking man — and said, in a tone of 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 75 
 
 ruefulness most jeremitaylorically pathetic, "To 
 what am I to attribute this very unexpected 
 pleasure, my dear Miss O'CarroU ? " 
 
 Marionetta. — I must apologise for intruding on 
 you, Mr Flosky ; but the interest which I — you — 
 take in my cousin Scythrop — 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Pardon me, Miss O'Carroll ; I do 
 not take any interest in any person or thing on the 
 face of the earth ; which sentiment, if you analyse j 
 it, you will find to be the quintessence of the most 
 refined philanthropy. 
 
 Marionetta. — I will take it for granted that it is 
 so, Mr Flosky; I am not conversant with meta- 
 physicaUsubtleties, but — •— 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Subtleties ! my dear Miss O'Car- 
 roll. I am sorry to find you participating in the 
 vulgar error of the reading public, to whom an un- 
 usual collocation of words, involving a juxtaposi- 
 tion of antiperistatical ideas, immediately suggests 
 the notion of hyperoxysophistical paradoxology. 
 
 Marionetta. — Indeed, Mr Flosky, it suggests no 
 such notion to me. I have sought you for the 
 purpose of obtaining information. 
 
 Mr Flosky (shaking his head). — No one ever 
 sought me for such a purpose before. 
 
 Marionetta. — I think, Mr Flosky — that is, I be- 
 lieve — that is, I fancy — that is, I imagine 
 
 Mr Flosky. — The rouTigTi, the id est, the a'oi, 
 the c'est d dire, the that is, my dear Miss O'Carroll, 
 is not applicable in this case — if you will permit 
 me to take the liberty of saying so. Think is not 
 
^^ Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 synonymous with believe — for belief, in many 
 most important particulars, results from the total 
 absence, the absolute negation of thought, and is 
 thereby the sane and orthodox condition of mind ; 
 and thought and belief are both essentially different 
 from fancy, and fancy, again, is distinct from im- 
 agination. This distinction between fancy and 
 imagination is one of the most abstruse and im- 
 portant points of metaphysics. I have written 
 seven hundred pages of promise to elucidate it, 
 which promise I shall keep as faithfully as the 
 bank will its promise to pay. 
 
 Marionetta. — I assure you, Mr Flosky, I care no 
 more about metaphysics than I do about the bank ; 
 and, if you will condescend to talk to a simple 
 
 girl in intelligible terms 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Say not condescend ! Know you 
 not that you talk to the most humble of men, to 
 one who has buckled on the armour of sanctity, 
 and clothed himself with humility as with a 
 garment ? 
 
 Marionetta. — My cousin Scythrop has of late 
 had an air of mystery about him, which gives me 
 great uneasiness. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — That is strange : nothing is so 
 becoming to a man as an air of mystery. Mystery 
 is the very key-stone of all that is beautiful in 
 poetry, all that is sacred in faith, and all that is 
 recondite in transcendental psychology. I am 
 writing a ballad which is all mystery ; it is " such 
 stuff as dreams are made of," and is, indeed, stuff 
 
Nightmare Abbey. jy 
 
 made of a dream ; for, last night I fell asleep as 
 usual over my book, and had a vision of pure 
 reason. I composed five hundred lines in my 
 sleep ;* so that, having had a dream of a ballad, 
 I am now officiating as my own Peter Quince, and 
 making a ballad of my dream, and it shall be called 
 Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom. 
 
 Mariomtta. — I see, Mr Flosky, you think my 
 intrusion unseasonable, and are inclined to punish 
 it, by talking nonsense to me. {Mr Flosky gave a 
 start at the word nonsense, which almost overturned 
 the table,) I assure you, I would not have intruded 
 if I had not been very much interested in the 
 question I wished to ask you. — {Mr Flosky listened 
 in sullen dignity.) — My cousin Scythrop seems to 
 have some secret preying on his mind. — {Mr Flosky 
 was silent.) — He seems very unhappy — Mr Flosky. 
 — Perhaps you are acquainted with the cause. — 
 {Mr Flosky was still silent.) — I only wish to know 
 — Mr Flosky — if it is any thing — that could be 
 remedied by any thing — that any one — of whom I 
 know any thing — could do. 
 
 Mr Flosky {after a pause). — There are various 
 ways of getting at secrets. The most approved 
 methods, as recommended both theoretically and 
 practically in philosophical novels, are eaves-drop- 
 ping at key-holes, picking the locks of chests and 
 desks, peeping into letters, steaming wafers, and 
 insinuating hot wire under sealing wax; none of 
 which methods I hold it lawful to practise. 
 
 * An allusion to Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." — G. 
 
78 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Marionetta. — Surely, Mr Flosky, you cannot 
 suspect me'of wishing to adopt or encourage such 
 base and contemptible arts. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Yet are they recommended, and 
 with well-strung reasons, by writers of gravity and 
 note, as simple and easy methods of studying 
 character, and gratifying that laudable curiosity 
 which aims at the knowledge of man. 
 
 Marionetta. — I am as ignorant of this morality 
 which you do iiot approve, as of the metaphysics 
 which you do : I should be glad to know by your 
 means, what is the matter with my cousin ; I do 
 not like, to see him unhappy, and I suppose there 
 is some reason for it. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Now I should rather suppose there 
 is no reason for it : it is the fashion to be unhappy. 
 To have a reason for being so would be exceed- 
 ingly common-place : to be so without any is the 
 province of genius : the art of being miserable for 
 misery's sake, has been brought to great perfection 
 in our days ; and the ancient Odyssey, which held 
 forth a shining example of the endurance of real 
 misfortune, will give place to a modern one, setting 
 out a more instructive picture of querulous im- 
 patience under imaginary evils. 
 
 Marionetta. — Will you oblige me, Mr Flosky, 
 by giving me a plain answer to a plain question ? 
 
 ■Mr Flosky. — It is injpossible, my dear Miss 
 O'Carroll. I never gave a plain answer to a 
 question in my life. 
 
 Marionetta. — Do you, or do you not, know what 
 is the matter with my cousin ? 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 79 
 
 Mr Mosky, — To say that I do not know, would 
 be to say that I am ignorant of something ; and 
 God forbid, that a transcendental metaphysiciafl, 
 who has pure anticipated cognitions of every thing, 
 and carries the whole science of geometry in his 
 head without ever having looked into Euclid, 
 should fall into so empirical an error as to declare 
 himself ignorant of any thing: to say that I do 
 know, would be to pretend to positive and circum- 
 stantial knowledge touching present matter of fact, 
 which, whea you consider the nature of evidence, 
 and the various lights in which the same thing may 
 be seen 
 
 Mariomtta. — I see, Mr Flosky, that either you 
 have no information, or are determined not to im- 
 part it; and I beg your pardon for having given 
 you this unnecessary trouble. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — My dear Miss O'CarroU, it would 
 have given me great pleasure to have said any 
 thing that would have^ven you pleasure; but if 
 any person living could make report of having 
 obtained any information on any subject from 
 Ferdinando Flosky, ray transcendental reputation 
 would be ruined for ever. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 5CYTHR0P grew every day more reserved, 
 mysterious, and distrait ; and gradually 
 lengthened the duration of his diurnal 
 seclusions in his tower. Marion etta thought she 
 perceived in all this very manifest symptoms of a 
 warm love cooling. 
 
 It was seldom that she found herself alone with 
 him in the morning, and, on these occasions, if she 
 was silent in the hope of his speaking first, not a 
 syllable would he utter; if she spoke to him 
 indirectly, he assented monosyllabically ; if she 
 questioned him, his answers were brief, con- 
 strained, and evasive. Still, though her spirits 
 were depressed, her playfulness had not so totally 
 forsaken her, but that it illuminated at intervals 
 the gloom of Nightmare Abbey; and if, on any 
 occasion, she observed in Scythrop tokens of un- 
 extinguished or returning passion, her love of 
 tormenting her lover immediately got the better 
 both of her grief and her sympathy, though not of 
 her curiosity, which Scythrop seemed determined 
 not to satisfy. This playfulness, however, was in fi 
 great measure artificial, and usually vanished with 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 8i 
 
 the irritable Strephon, to whose annoyance it had 
 been exerted. The Genius Loci, the tutela of 
 Nightmare Abbey, the spirit of black melancholy, 
 began to set his seal on her pallescent countenance. 
 Scythrop perceived the change, found his tender 
 sympathies awakened, and did his utmost to com- 
 fort the afflicted damsel, assuring her that his 
 seeming inattention had only proceeded from his 
 being involved in a profound meditation on a very 
 hopefiil scheme for the regeneration of human 
 society. Marionetta called him ungrateful, cruel, 
 cold-hearted, and accompanied her reproaches 
 with many sobs and tears : poor Scythrop grow- 
 ing every moment more soft and submissive — till, 
 at length, he threw himself at her feet, and declared 
 that no competition of beauty, however dazzhng, 
 genius, however transcendent, talents, however 
 cultivated, or philosophy, however enlightened, 
 should ever make him renounce his divine 
 Marionetta. 
 
 "Competition!" thought Marionetta, and sud- 
 denly, with an air of the most freezing indifference, 
 she said, "You are perfectly at liberty, sir, to do 
 as you please ; I beg you will follow your own plans 
 without any reference to me." 
 
 Scythrop was confounded. What was become 
 of all heir passion and her tears? Still kneeling, 
 he kissed her hand with rueful timidity, and said, 
 in most pathetic accents, " Do you not love me, 
 Marionetta ? " 
 
 " No," said Marionetta, with a look of cold 
 F 
 
82 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 composure : " No." Scythrop still looked up in- 
 credulously. " No, I tell you.'' 
 
 " Oh ! very well, madam," said Scythrop, rising, 
 "if that is the case, there are those in the 
 world " 
 
 " To be sure there are, sir ; — and do you sup- 
 pose I do not see through your designs, you 
 ungenerous monster ? " 
 
 " My designs ? Marionetta ! " 
 
 " Yes, your designs, Scythrop. You have come 
 here to cast me off, and artfully contrive that it 
 should appear to be my doing, and not. yours, 
 thinking to quiet your tender conscience with 
 this pitiful stratagem. But do not suppose that 
 you are of so much consequence to me : do not 
 suppose it : you are of no consequence to me at 
 all — none at all : therefore, leave me : I renounce 
 you : leave me ; why do you not leave me ? " 
 
 Scythrop endeavoured to remonstrate, but with- 
 out success. She reiterated her injunctions to 
 him to leave her, till, in the simplicity of his spirit, 
 he was preparing to comply. When he had 
 nearly reached the door, Marionetta said, "Fare- 
 well." Scythrop looked back. "Farewell, Scy- 
 throp," she repeated, " you will never see me 
 again." 
 
 " Njever, see you again, Marionetta ? " 
 
 " I shall go from hence to-morrow, perhaps to- 
 day I and before we meet again, one of us will be 
 married, and we might as well be dead, you know, 
 Scythrop." 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 83 
 
 The sudden change of her voice in the last few 
 words, and the burst of tears that accompanied 
 them, acted like electricity on the tender-hearted 
 youth ; and, in another instant, a complete recon- 
 ciliation was accomplished without the intervention 
 of words. 
 
 There are, indeed, some learned casuists, who 
 maintain that love has no language, and that all 
 the misunderstandings and dissensions of lovers 
 arise from the fatal habit of employing words on 
 a subject to which words are inapplicable; that 
 love, beginning with looks, that is to say, with 
 the physiognomical expression of congenial mental 
 dispositions, tends through a regular gradation of 
 signs and symbols of affection, to that consum- 
 mation which is most devoutly to be wished ; and 
 that it neither is necessary that there should be, 
 nor probable that there would be, a single word 
 spoken from first to last between two sympathetic 
 spirits, were it not that the arbitrary institutions 
 of society have raised, at every step of this very 
 simple process, so many complicated impedi- 
 ments and barriers in the shape of settlements 
 and ceremonies, parents and guardians, lawyers, 
 Jew-brokers, and parsons, that many an adventur- 
 ous knight (who, in order to obtain the conquest 
 of the Hesperian fruit, is obliged to fight his way 
 through all these monsters) is either repulsed at 
 the onset, or vanquished before the achievement 
 of his enterprise : and such a quantity of unnatural 
 talking is rendered inevitably necessary through all 
 
84 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 the stages of the progression, that the tender and 
 volatile spirit of love often takes flight on the 
 pinions of some of the sTsa vTipoivra, or winged 
 words, which are pressed into his service in despite 
 of himself. 
 
 At this conjuncture, Mr Glowry entered, and 
 sitting down near them, said, "I see how it is; 
 and, as we are all sure to be miserable do what 
 we may, there is no need of taking pains to 
 make one another more so ; therefore, with God's 
 blessing and mine, there" — ^joining their hands 
 as he spoke. 
 
 Scythrop was not exactly prepared for this 
 decisive step ; but he could only stammer out, 
 "Really, sir, you are too good;" and Mr Glowry 
 departed to bring Mr Hilary to ratify the act. 
 
 Now, whatever truth there may be in the theory 
 of love and language, of which we have so recently 
 spoken, certain it is, that during Mr dowry's ab- 
 sence, which lasted half an hour, not a single word 
 was said by either Scythrop or Marionetta. 
 
 Mr Glowry returned with Mr Hilary, who was 
 delighted at the prospect of so advantageous an 
 establishment for his orphan niece, of whom he 
 considered himself in some manner the guardian, 
 and nothing remained, as Mr Glowry observed, 
 but to fix the day. 
 
 Marionetta blushed, and was silent. Scythrop 
 was also silent for a time, and at length hesitatingly 
 said, " My dear sir, your goodness overpowers me ; 
 but really you are so precipitate," 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 85 
 
 Now, this remark, if the young lady had made 
 it, would, whether she thought it or not — for sin- 
 cerity is a thing of no account on these occasions, 
 nor indeed on any other, according to Mr Flosky 
 — this remark, if the young lady had made it, 
 would have been perfectly comme il faut ; but, 
 being made by the young gentleman, it was toute 
 autre chose, and was, indeed, in the eyes of his 
 mistress, a most heinous and irremissible offence. 
 Marionetta was angry, very angry, but she con- 
 cealed her anger, and said, calmly and coldly, 
 " Certainly, you are much too precipitate, Mr 
 dowry. I assure you, sir, I have by no means 
 made up my mind ; and, indeed, as far as I know 
 it, it inclines the other way ; but it will be quite 
 time enough to think of these matters seven years 
 hence." Before surprise permitted reply, the 
 young lady had locked herself up in her own 
 apartment. 
 
 " Why Scythrop," said Mr dowry, elongating 
 his face exceedingly, " the devil is come among us 
 sure enough, as Mr Toobad observes : I thought 
 you and Marionetta were both of a mind." 
 
 " So we are, I beUeve, sir," said Scythrop, 
 gloomily, and stalked away to his tower. 
 
 " Mr dowry," said Mr Hilary, " I do not very 
 well understand all this." 
 
 " Whims, brother Hilary," said Mr dowry ; 
 "some litde foolish love quarrel, nothing more. 
 Whims, freaks, April showers. They will be blown 
 over by to-morrow." 
 
86 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 " If not," said Mr Hilary, " these April showers 
 have made us April fools." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Mr Glowry, " you are a happy man, 
 and in all your afiflictions you can console yourself 
 with a joke, let it be ever so bad, provided you 
 crack it yourself. I should be very happy to laugh 
 with you, if it would give you any satisfaction ; 
 but, really, at present, my heart is so sad, that I 
 find it impossible to levy a contribution on my 
 muscles." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 jN the evening on which Mr Asterias had 
 caught a glimpse of a female figure on 
 the sea-shore, which he had translated 
 into the visual sign of his interior cognition of a 
 mermaid, Scythrop, retiring to his tower, found his 
 study pre-occupied. A stranger, muffled in a 
 cloak, was sitting at his table. Scythrop paused 
 in surprise. The stranger rose at his entrance, 
 and looked at him intently a few minutes, in 
 silence. The eyes of the stranger alone were 
 visible. All the rest of the figure was muffled and 
 mantled in the folds of a black cloak, which was 
 raised, by the right hand, to the level of the eyes. 
 This scrutiny being completed, the stranger, 
 dropping the cloak, said, "I see, by your physi- 
 ognomy, that you may be trusted ; " and revealed 
 to the astonished Scythrop a female form and 
 countenance of dazzling grace and beauty, with 
 long flowing hair of raven blackness, and large 
 black eyes of almost oppressive brilliancy, which 
 strikingly contrasted with a complexion of snowy 
 whiteness. Her dress was extremely elegant, but 
 had an appearance of foreign fashion, as if both 
 
88 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 the lady and her mantuamaker were of "a far 
 countree." 
 
 " I guess 't was frightful there to see 
 
 A lady richly clad as she, 
 
 Beautiful exceedingly." 
 
 For, if it be terrible to one young lady to find 
 another under a tree at midnight, it must, h fortiori, 
 be much more terrible to a young gentleman to 
 find a young lady in his study at that hour. If 
 the logical consecutiveness of this conclusion be 
 not manifest to my readers, I am sorry for their 
 dulness, and must refer them, for more ample 
 elucidation, to a treatise which Mr Flosky intends 
 to write, on the Categories of Relation, which 
 comprehend Sabstance and Accident, Cause and 
 Effect, Action and Re-action. 
 
 Scythrop, therefore, either was or ought to have 
 been frightened ; at all events, he was astonished ; 
 and astonishment, though not in itself fear, is 
 nevertheless a good stage towards it, and is, indeed, 
 as it were, the half-way house between respect and 
 terror, according to Mr Burke's graduated scale of 
 the sublime.* 
 
 * There must be some mistake in this, for the whole 
 honourable band of gentlemen pensioners has resolved un- 
 animously, that Mr Burke was a very sublime person, 
 particularly after he had prostituted his own soul, and be- 
 trayed his country and mankind, for ;f 1200 a year : yet he 
 does not appear to have been a very terrible personage, and 
 certainly went off with a very small portion of human respect, 
 though he contrived to excite, in a great degree, the astonish- 
 ment of all honest men, Our immaculate laureate (who 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 89 
 
 "You are surprised," said the lady; "yet why 
 should you be surprised ? If you had met me in a 
 drawing-room, and I had been introduced to you 
 by an old woman, it would have been a matter of 
 course ; can the division of two or three walls, and 
 the absence of an unimportant personage, make 
 the same object essentially different in the per- 
 ception of a philosopher ? " 
 
 " Certainly not," said Scythrop ; " but when any 
 class of objects has habitually presented itself to 
 our perceptions in invariable conjunction with 
 particular relations, then, on the sudden appear- 
 ance of one object of the class divested of those 
 accompaniments, the essential difference of the 
 relation is, by an involuntary process, transferred 
 to the object itself, which thus offers itself to our 
 perceptions with all the strangeness of novelty." 
 
 " You are a philosopher," said the lady, " and a 
 lover of liberty. You are the author of a treatise, 
 
 gives us to understand that, if he had not been purified by 
 holy matrimony into a mystical type, he would have died a 
 virgin,) is another sublime gentleman of the same genus : he 
 very much astonished some persons when he sold his birth- 
 right for a pot of sack ; but not even his Sosia has a grain of 
 respect for him, though, doubtless, he thinks his name very 
 terrible to the enemy, when he flourishes his critico-poetico- 
 political tomahawk, and sets up his Indian yell for the blood 
 of his old friends : but, at best, he is a mere political scare- 
 crow, a man of straw, ridiculous to all who know of what 
 materials he is made ; and to none more so, than to those 
 who have stuffed him, and set him up, as the Friapus of the 
 garden of the golden apples of coiruption. 
 
90 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 called ' Philosophical Gas ; or, a Project for a 
 General Illumination of the Human Mind.'" 
 
 " I am," said Scythrop, delighted at the first 
 blossom of his renown. 
 
 " I am a stranger in this country," said the lady ; 
 " I have been but a few days in it, yet I find my- 
 self immediately under the necessity of seeking 
 refuge from an atrocious persecution. I had no 
 friend to whom I could apply ; and, in the midst 
 of my difficulties, accident threw your pamphlet in 
 my way. I saw that I had, at least, one kindred 
 mind in this nation, and determined to apply to 
 you." 
 
 "And what would you have me do?" said 
 Scythrop, more and more amazed, and not a little 
 perplexed. 
 
 " I would have you," said the young lady, " assist 
 me in finding some place of retreat, where I can 
 remain concealed from the indefatigable search 
 that is being made for me. I have been so nearly 
 caught once or twice already, that I cannot confide 
 any longer in my own ingenuity." 
 
 Doubtless, thought Scythrop, this is one of my 
 golden candlesticks. " I have constructed," said 
 he, " in this tower, an entrance to a small suite of 
 unknown apartments in the main building, which I 
 defy any creature living to detect. If you would 
 like to remain there a day or two, till I can find 
 you a more suitable concealment, you may rely on 
 the honour of a transcendental eleutherarch." 
 
 " I rely on myself," said the lady. " I act as I 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 91 
 
 please, go where I please, and let the world say 
 what it will. I am rich enough to set it at de- 
 fiance. It is the tyrant of the poor and the feeble, 
 but the slave of those who are above the reach of 
 its injury." 
 
 Scythrop ventured to inquire the name of his 
 fair prottgke. " What is a name ? " said the lady : 
 "any name will serve the purpose of distinction. 
 Call me Stella. I see by your looks," she added, 
 " that you think all this very strange. When you 
 know me better, your surprise will cease. I submit 
 not to be an accomplice in my sex's slavery. I 
 am, like yourself, a lover of freedom, and I carry 
 my theory into practice. TAey alone are subject to 
 blind authority who have no reliance on their own 
 strength!^ 
 
 Stella took possession of the recondite apart- 
 ments. Scythrop intended to find her another 
 asylum; but from day to day he postponed his 
 intention, and by degrees forgot it. The young 
 lady reminded him of it from day to day, till she 
 also forgot it. Scythrop was anxious to learn her 
 history; but she would add nothing to what she 
 had already communicated, that she was shunning 
 an atrocious persecution. Scythrop thought of 
 Lord C. and the AUen Act, and said, " As you 
 will not tell your name, I suppose it is in the green 
 bag." Stella, not understanding what he meant, 
 was silent; and Scythrop, translating silence into 
 acquiescence, concluded that he was sheltering an 
 illumink whom Lord S. suspected of an intention 
 
92 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 to take the Tower, and set fire to the Bank : 
 exploits, at least, as likely to be accomplished by 
 the hands and eyes of a young beauty, as by a 
 drunken cobbler and doctor, armed, with a pam- 
 phlet and an old stocking. * 
 
 Stella, in her conversations with Scythrop dis- 
 played a highly cultivated and energetic mind, full 
 of impassioned schemes of liberty, and impatience 
 of masculine usurpation. She had a lively sense of 
 all the oppressions that are done under the sun ; 
 and the vivid pictures which her imagination pre- 
 sented to her of the numberless scenes of injustice 
 and misery which are being acted at every moment 
 in every part of the inhabited world, gave an habit- 
 ual seriousness to her physiognomy, that made it 
 seem as if a smile had never once hovered on her 
 lips. She was intimately conversant with the Ger- 
 man language and literature; and Scythrop listened 
 with delight to her repetitions of her favourite pas- 
 sages from Schiller and Goethe, and to her en- 
 comiums on the subUme Spartacus Weishaupt, the 
 immortal founder of the sect of the Illuminati. 
 Scythrop found that his soul had a greater capacity 
 of love than the image of Marionetta had filled. 
 The form of Stella took possession of every vacant 
 corner of the cavity, and by degrees displaced that 
 of Marionetta, from many of the outworks of the 
 citadel ; though the latter still held possession of 
 
 * Lords C. and S. are Castlereagh and Sidmouth : " the 
 drunken cobbler and doctor " is a political incendiary named 
 Watson. — G, 
 
Nightmare Abbey, 93 
 
 the keep. He judged, from his new friend calling 
 herself Stella, that, if it were not her real name, 
 she was an admirer of the principles of the German 
 play from which she had taken it, jand took an 
 opportunity of leading the conversation to that 
 su^ect ; but to his great surprise, the lady spoke 
 very ardently of the singleness and exclusiveness of 
 love, and declared that the reign of affection was 
 one and indivisible; that it might be transferred, 
 but could not be participated. " If I ever love," 
 said she, "I shall do so without limit or restriction. 
 I shall hold all difficulties light, all sacrifices cheap, 
 all obstacles gossamer. But for love so total, I 
 shall claim a return as absolute. I will have no 
 rival : whether more or less favoured will be of little 
 moment. I will be neither first nor second — I will 
 be alone. The heart which I shall possess I will 
 possess entirely, or entirely renounce." 
 
 Scythrop did not dare to mention the name of 
 Marionetta; he trembled lest some unlucky ac- 
 cident should reveal it to Stella, though he scarcely 
 knew what result to wish or anticipate, and lived in 
 the double fever of a perpetual dilemma. He 
 could not dissemble to himself that he was in love, 
 at the same time, with two damsels of minds and 
 habits as remote as the antipodes. The scale of 
 predilection always inclined to the fair one who 
 happened to be present ; but the absent was never 
 effectually outweighed, though the degrees of ex- 
 altation and depression varied according to acci- 
 dental variations in the outward and visible signs 
 
94 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 of the inward and spiritual graces of his respective 
 charmers. Passing and repassing several times a 
 day from the company of the one to that of the 
 other, he was like a shuttlecock between two battle- 
 dores, changing its direction as rapidly as the 
 oscillations of a pendulum, receiving many a hard 
 knock on the cork of a sensitive heart, and flying 
 from point to point on the feathers of a super- 
 sublimated head. This was an awful state of 
 things. He had now as much mystery about him 
 as any romantic transcendentalist or transcend- 
 ental romancer could desire. He had his esoteri- 
 cal and his exoterical love. He could not endure 
 the thought of losing either of them, but he 
 trembled when he imagined the possibility that 
 some fatal discovery might deprive him of both. 
 The old proverb concerning two strings to a bow 
 gave him some gleams of comfort ; but that con- 
 cerning two stools occurred to him more frequently, 
 and covered his forehead with a cold perspiration. 
 With Stella, he could indulge freely in all his 
 romantic and philosophical visions. He could 
 build castles in the air, and she would pile towers 
 and turrets on the imaginary edifices. With Mar- 
 ionetta it was otherwise : she knew nothing of 
 the world and society beyond the sphere of her 
 own experience. Her life was all music and sun- 
 shine, and she wondered what any one could see 
 to complain of in such a pleasant state of things. 
 She loved Scythrop, she hardly knew why ; indeed 
 she was not always sure that she loved him at all ; 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 95 
 
 she felt her fondness increase or diminish in an in- 
 verse ratio to his. When she had manceuvred him 
 into a fever of passionate love, she often felt and 
 always assumed indifference : if she found that her 
 coldness was contagious, and that Scythrop either 
 was, or pretended to be, as indifferent as herself, 
 she would become doubly kind, and raise him again 
 to that elevation from which she had previously 
 thrown him down. Thus, when his love was flow- 
 ing, hers was ebbing: when his was ebbing, hers 
 was flowing. Now and then there were moments 
 of level tide, when reciprocal affection seemed to 
 promise imperturbable harmony ; but Scythrop 
 could scarcely resign his spirit to the pleasing 
 illusion, before the pinnace of the lover's affec- 
 tions was caught in some eddy of the lady's caprice, 
 and he was whirled away from the shore of his 
 hopes, without rudder or compass, into an ocean 
 of mists and storms. It resulted, from this system 
 of conduct, that all that passed between Scythrop 
 and Marionetta consisted in making and unmaking 
 love. He had no opportunity to take measure 
 of her understanding by conversations on general 
 subjects, and on his favourite designs ; and, being 
 left in this respect to the exercise of indefinite 
 conjecture, he took it for granted, as most lovers 
 would do in similar circumstances, that she had 
 great natural talents, which she wasted at present 
 on trifles : but coquetry would end with marriage, 
 and leave room for philosophy to exert its influence 
 on her mind, Stella had no coquetry, no disguise : 
 
g6 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 she was an enthusiast in subjects of general interest ; 
 and her conduct to Scythrop was always uniform, 
 or rather showed a regular progression of partiality 
 which seemed fast ripening into love. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 [CYTHROP,attending one day the summons 
 to dinner, found in the drawing-room his 
 friend Mr Cypress the poet,* whom he 
 had known at college, and who was a great favour- 
 ite of Mr dowry. Mr Cypress said he was on the 
 point of leaving England, but could not think of 
 doing so without a farewell-look at Nightmare 
 Abbey and his respected friends, the moody Mr 
 Glowry and the mysterious Mr Scythrop, the 
 sublime Mr Flosky and the pathetic Mr Listless ; 
 to all of whom, and the morbid hospitality of the 
 melancholy dwelling in which they were then 
 assembled, he assured them he should always look 
 back with as much affection as his lacerated spirit 
 could feel for anything. The sympathetic condo- 
 lence of their respective replies was cut short by 
 Raven's announcement of " dinner on table." 
 
 The conversation that took place when the wine 
 was in circulation, and the ladies were withdrawn, 
 we shall report with our usual scrupulous fidelity. 
 
 Mr Glowry. — You are leaving England, Mr 
 Cypress. There is a delightful melancholy in saying 
 farewell to an old acquaintance, when the chances 
 * Byron.— G. 
 G 
 
98 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 are twenty to one against ever meeting again. A 
 smiling bumper to a sad parting, and let us all be 
 unhappy together. 
 
 Mr Cypress {^filling a bumper). — This is the only 
 social habit that the disappointed spirit never 
 unlearns. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx (^filling). — It is the 
 only piece of academical learning that the finished 
 educatee retains. 
 
 Mr Floshy (filling). — It is the only objective fact 
 which the sceptic can realise. 
 
 Scythrop (filling). — It is the only styptic for a 
 bleeding heart. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless (filling^ — It is the 
 only trouble that is very well worth taking. 
 
 Mr Asterias (filling). — It is the only key of 
 conversational truth. 
 
 Mr Toobad (filling). — It is the only antidote to 
 the great wrath of the devil. 
 
 Mr Hilary (filling). — It is the only symbol of 
 perfect hfe. The inscription " hic non bibitur " 
 will suit nothing but a tombstone. 
 
 Mr Glowry. — You will see many fine old ruins, 
 Mr Cypress ; crumbling pillars, and mossy walls — 
 many a one-legged Venus and headless Minerva — 
 many a Neptune buried in sand — many a Jupiter 
 turned topsy-turvy — many a perforated Bacchus 
 doing duty as a water-pipe — many reminiscences 
 of the ancient world, which I hope was better 
 worth living in than the modern; though, for 
 myself, I care not a straw more for one than the 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 99 
 
 other, and would not go twenty miles to see any 
 thing that either could show. 
 
 Mr Cypress. — It is something to seek, Mr 
 dowry. The mind is restless, and must persist 
 in seeking, though to find is to be disappointed. 
 Do you feel no aspirations towards the countries of 
 Socrates and Cicero ? No wish to wander among 
 the venerable remains of the greatness that has 
 passed for ever? 
 
 Mr Glowry. — Not a grain. 
 
 Scythrqp. — It is, indeed, much the same as if a 
 lover should dig up the buried form of his mistress, 
 and gaze upon relics which are any thing but her- 
 self, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are 
 only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, 
 and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins 
 of human nature — a degenerate race of stupid and 
 shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest depths 
 of servility and superstition. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — It is the fashion 
 to go abroad. I have thought of it myself, but am 
 hardly equal to the exertion. To be sure, a little 
 eccentricity and originality are allowable in some 
 cases; and the most eccentric and original of all 
 characters is an Englishman who stays at home. 
 
 Scythrop. — I should have no pleasure in visiting 
 countries that are past all hope of regeneration. 
 There is great hope of our own; and it seems 
 to me that an Englishman, who, either by his 
 station in society, or by his genius, or (as in your 
 instance, Mr Cypress) by both, has the power 
 
lOO Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 of essentially serving his country in its arduous 
 struggle with its domestic enemies, yet forsakes 
 his country, which is still so rich in hope, to dwell 
 in others which are only fertile in the ruins of 
 memory, does what none of those ancients, whose 
 fragmentary memorials you venerate, would have 
 done in similar circumstances. 
 
 Mr Cypress. — Sir, I have quarrelled with my 
 wife ; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife 
 is absolved from all duty to his country. I have 
 written an ode to tell the people as much, and they 
 may take it as they list. 
 
 Scythrop. — Do you suppose, if Brutus had quar- 
 relled with his wife, he would have given it as a 
 reason to Cassius for having nothing to do with 
 his enterprise ? Or would Cassius have been satis- 
 fied with such an excuse ? 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Brutus was a senator; so is our 
 dear friend : but the cases are different. Brutus 
 had some hope of pohtical good : Mr Cypress has 
 none. How should he, after what we have seen in 
 France ? 
 
 Scythrop. — A Frenchman is born in harness, 
 ready saddled, bitted, and bridled, for any tyrant to 
 ride. He will fawn under his rider one moment, 
 and throw him and kick him to death the next ; 
 but another adventurer springs on his back, and by 
 dint of whip and spur on he goes as before. We 
 may, without much vanity, hope better of ourselves. 
 
 Mr Cypress. — I have no hope for myself or for 
 others. Our life is a false nature ; it is not in the 
 
Nightmare Abbey. lOi 
 
 haxmony of things ; it is an all-blasting upas, whose 
 root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which 
 rain their poison-dews upon mankind. We wither 
 from our youth ; we gasp with unslaked thirst for 
 unattainable good ; lured from the first to the last 
 by phantoms — love, fame, ambition, avarice — all 
 idle, and all ill — one meteor of many names, that 
 vanishes in the smoke of death. * 
 
 Mr Flosky. — A most delightful speech, Mr 
 Cypress. A most amiable and instructive philo- 
 sophy. You have only to impress its truth on the 
 minds of all living men, and life will then, indeed, 
 be the desert and the solitude; and I must do you, 
 myself, and our mutual friends, the justice to 
 observe, that let society only give fair play at one 
 and the same time, as I flatter myself it is inclined 
 to do, to your system of morals, and my system of 
 metaphysics, and Scythrop's system of politics, and 
 Mr Listless's system of manners, and Mr Toobad's 
 system of religion, and the result will be as fine a 
 mental chaos as even the immortal Kant himself 
 could ever have hoped to see ; in the prospect of 
 which I rejoice. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — " Certainly, ancient, it is not a 
 thing to rejoice at : " I am one of those who cannot 
 see the good that is to result from all this mystify- 
 ing and blue-devilling of society. The contrast it 
 presents to the cheerful and solid wisdom of anti- 
 quity is too forcible not to strike any one who has 
 the least knowledge of classical literature. To 
 * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxiv. cxxvi. 
 
I02 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 represent vice and misery as the necessary accom- 
 paniments of genius, is as mischievous as it is false, 
 and the feeling is as unclassical as the language in 
 which it is usually expressed. 
 
 Mr Toobad. — It is our calamity. The devil has 
 come among us, and has begun by taking posses- 
 sion of all the cleverest fellows. Yet, forsooth, this 
 is the enlightened age. Marry, how? Did our 
 ancestors go peeping about with dark lanterns, and 
 do we walk at our ease in broad sunshine ? Where 
 is the manifestation of our light ? By what symp- 
 toms do you recognise it ? What are its signs, its 
 tokens, its symptoms, its symbols, its categories, its 
 conditions ? What is it, and why ? How, where, 
 when is it to be seen, felt, and understood ? What 
 do we see by it which our ancestors saw not, and 
 which at the same time is worth seeing ? We see 
 a hundred men hanged, where they saw one. We 
 see five hundred transported, where they saw one. 
 We see five thousand in the workhouse, where they 
 saw one. We see scores of Bible Societies, where 
 they saw none. We see paper, where they saw 
 gold. We see men in stays, where they saw men 
 in armour. We see painted faces, where they saw 
 healthy ones. We see children perishing in manu- 
 factories, where they saw them flourishing in the 
 fields. We see prisons, where they saw castles. We 
 see masters, where they saw representatives. In 
 short, they saw true men, where we see false 
 knaves. They saw Milton, and we see Mr 
 Sackbut. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 103 
 
 Mr Flosky. — The false knave, sir, is my honest 
 friendjj therefore, I beseech you, let him be coun- 
 tenanced. God forbid but a knave should have 
 some countenance at his friend's request. 
 
 Mr Toobad. — "Good men and true" was their 
 common term, like the xaXos y-kyoStoc, of the Athen- 
 ians. It is so long since men have been either 
 good or true, that it is to be questioned which is 
 most obsolete, the fact or the phraseology. 
 
 Mr Cypress. — There is no worth nor beauty but 
 in the mind's idea. Love sows the wind and reaps 
 the whirlwind.* Confusion, thrice confounded, is 
 the portion of him who rests even for an instant on 
 that most brittle of reeds — the affection of a human 
 being. The sum of our social destiny is to inflict 
 or to endure, t 
 
 Mr Hilary. — Rather to bear and forbear, Mr 
 Cypress — a maxim which you perhaps despise. 
 Ideal beauty is not the mind's creation : it is real 
 beauty, refined and purified in the mind's alembic, 
 from the alloy which always more or less accom- 
 panies it in our mixed and imperfect nature. But 
 still the gold exists in a very ample degree. To 
 expect too much is a disease in the expectant, for 
 which human nature is not responsible; and, in 
 the common name of humanity, I protest against 
 these false and mischievous ravings. To rail 
 against humanity for not being abstract perfection, 
 and against human love for not realising all the 
 splendid visions of the poets of chivalry, is to rail 
 
 * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxiii. + Ibid, canto 3. Ixxi, 
 
I04 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 at the summer for not being all sunshine, and at 
 the rose for not being always in bloom. 
 
 Mr Cypress. — Human love ! Love is not an 
 inhabitant of the earth. We worship him as the 
 Athenians did their unknown God : but broken 
 hearts are the martyrs of his faith, and the eye 
 shall never see the form which phantasy paints, 
 and which passion pursues through paths of de- 
 lusive beauty, among flowers whose odours are 
 agonies, and trees whose gums are poison.* 
 
 Mr Hilary. — You talk like a Rosicrucian, who 
 will love nothing but a sylph, who does not believe 
 in the existence of a sylph, and who yet quarrels 
 with the whole universe for not containing a sylph. 
 
 Mr. Cypress. — The mind is diseased of its own 
 beauty, and fevers into false creation. The forms 
 which the] sculptor's soul has seized exist only in 
 himself, t 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Permit me to discept. They are 
 the mediums of common forms combined and 
 arranged into a common standard. The ideal 
 beauty of the Helen of Zeuxis was the combined 
 medium of the real beauty of the virgins of 
 Crotona. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — But to make ideal beauty the 
 shadow in the water, and, like the dog in the fable, 
 to throw away the substance in catching at the 
 shadow, is scarcely the characteristic of wisdom, 
 whatever it may be of genius. To reconcile man 
 
 * Childe Harold, canto 4. cxxi. cxxxvi. 
 + Ibid, canto 4. cxxii. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 105 
 
 as he is to the world as it is, to preserve and im- 
 prove all that is good, and destroy or alleviate all 
 that is evil, in physical and moral nature — have 
 been the hope and aim of the greatest teachers and 
 ornaments of our species. J will say, too, that the 
 highest wisdom and the highest genius have been 
 invariably accompanied with cheerfulness. We 
 have sufficient proofs on record that Shakspeare 
 and Socrates were the most festive of companions. 
 But now the little wisdom and genius we have 
 seem to be entering into a conspiracy against 
 cheerfulness. 
 
 Mr Toobad. — How can we be cheerful with the 
 devil among us ? 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — How can we be 
 cheerful when our nerves are shattered ? 
 
 Mr Flosky. — How can we be cheerful when we 
 are surrounded by a reading public, that is growing 
 too wise for its betters ? 
 
 Scythrop. — How can we be cheerful when our 
 great general designs are crossed every moment by 
 our little particular passions ? 
 
 Mr Cypress. — How can we be cheerful in the 
 midst of disappointment and despair ? 
 
 Mr Glowry. — Let us all be unhappy together. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — Let us sing a catch. 
 
 Mr Glowry. — No : a nice tragical ballad. The 
 Norfolk Tragedy to the tune of the Hundredth 
 Psalm. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — I say a catch. 
 
 Mr Glowry. — I say no. A song from Mr 
 Cypress. 
 
I06 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 All. — A song from Mr Cypress. 
 Mr Cypress sung — 
 
 There is a fever of the spirit, 
 
 The brand of Cain's unresting doom, 
 Which in the lone dark souls that bear it 
 
 Glows like the lamp in Tullia's tomb : 
 Unlike that lamp, its subtle fire 
 
 Burns, blasts, consumes its cell, the heart, 
 Till, one by one, hope, joy, desire. 
 
 Like dreams of shadowy smoke depart. 
 
 When hope, love, life itself, are only 
 
 Dust — spectral memories — dead and cold — 
 The unfed fire bums bright and lonely. 
 
 Like that undying lamp of old : 
 And by that drear illumination. 
 
 Till time its clay-built home has rent, 
 Thought broods on feeling's desolation — 
 
 The soul is its own monument. 
 
 Mr dowry. — Admirable. Let us all be un- 
 happy together. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — Now, I say again, a catch. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — I am for you. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — " Seamen three." 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Agreed. I'll be 
 Harry Gill, with the voice of three. Begin. 
 
 Mr Hilary and the Reverend Mr Larynx. — 
 
 Seamen three ! What men be ye ? 
 
 Gotham's three wise men we be. 
 
 W^hither in your bowl so free ? 
 
 To rake the moon from out the sea. 
 
 The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. 
 
 And our ballast is old wine ; 
 
 And your ballast is old wine, 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 107 
 
 Who art thou, so fast adrift ? 
 I am he they call Old Care. 
 Here on board we will thee lift. 
 No : I may not enter there. 
 Wherefore so ? 'Tis Jove's decree, 
 In a bowl Care may not be ; 
 In a bowl Care may not be. 
 
 Fear ye not the waves that roll ? 
 
 No : in charmed bowl we swim. 
 
 What the charm that floats the bowl ? 
 
 Water may not pass the brim. 
 
 The bowl goes trim. The moon doth shine. 
 
 And our ballast is old wine ; 
 
 And your ballast is old wine. 
 
 This catch was so well executed by the spirit 
 and science of Mr Hilary, and the deep tri-une 
 voice of the reverend gentleman, that the whole 
 party, in spite of themselves, caught the contagion, 
 and joined in chorus at the conclusion, each rais- 
 ing a bumper to his lips : 
 
 The bowl goes trim : the moon doth shine : 
 And our ballast is old wine. 
 
 Mr Cypress, having his ballast on board, stepped, 
 the same evening, into his bowl, or travelling 
 chariot, and departed to rake seas and rivers, 
 lakes and canals, for the moon of ideal beauty. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 It was the custom of the Honourable Mr 
 Listless, on adjourning from the bottle 
 to the ladies, to retire for a few moments 
 to make a second toilette, that he might present 
 himself in becoming taste. Fatout, attending as 
 usual, appeared with a countenance of great dismay, 
 and informed his master that he had just ascer- 
 tained that the abbey was haunted. Mrs Hilary's 
 gentlewoman, for whom Fatout had lately conceived 
 a tendresse, had been, as she expressed it, "fritted 
 out of her seventeen senses " the preceding night, 
 as she was retiring to her bedchamber, by a ghastly 
 figure which she had met stalking along one of the 
 galleries, wrapped in a white shroud, with a bloody 
 turban on its head. She had fainted away with 
 fear; and, when she recovered, she found herself 
 in the dark, and the figure was gone. " Sucre — 
 cochon — bleu I " exclaimed Fatout, giving very de- 
 liberate emphasis to every portion of his terrible 
 oath — " I vould not meet de revenant, de ghost — 
 non — not for all de bowl-de-ponch in de vorld." 
 
 "Fatout," said the Honourable Mr Listless, 
 " did I ever see a ghost ? " 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 109 
 
 "Jamais, monsieur, never.'' 
 
 " Then I hope I never shall, for, in the present 
 shattered state of my nerves, I am afraid it would 
 be too much for me. There — loosen the lace of 
 my stays a little, for really this plebeian practice 
 of eating — Not too loose — consider my shape. 
 That will do. And I desire that you bring me 
 no more stories of ghosts ; for, though I do not 
 believe in such things, yet, when one is awake in 
 the night, one is apt, if one thinks of them, to have 
 fancies that give one a kind of a chill, particularly 
 if one opens one's eyes suddenly on one's dress- 
 ing gown, hanging in the moonlight, between the 
 bed and the window." 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless, though he had 
 prohibited Fatout from bringing him any more 
 stories of ghosts, could not help thinking of that 
 which Fatout had already brought ; and, as it was 
 uppermost in his mind, when he descended to 
 the tea and coffee cups, and the rest of the com- 
 pany in the hbrary, he almost involuntarily asked 
 Mr Flosky, whom he looked up to as a most oracu 
 lous personage, whether any story of any ghost 
 that had ever appeared to any one, was entitled 
 to any degree of belief? 
 
 Mr Flosky. — By far the greater number, to a 
 very great degree. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Really, that is 
 very alarming! 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Sunt gemince somni portce. There 
 are two gates through which ghosts find their way 
 
no Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 to the upper air : fraud and self-delusion. In the 
 latter case, a ghost is a deceptio visits, an ocular 
 spectrum, an idea with the force of a sensation. 
 I have seen many ghosts myself. I dare say there 
 are few in this company who have not seen a 
 ghost. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — I am happy to 
 say, I never have, for one. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — We have such high 
 authority for ghosts, that it is rank scepticism 
 to disbelieve them. Job saw a ghost, which came 
 for the express purpose of asking a question, and 
 did not wait for an answer. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — Because Job was 
 too frightened to give one. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — Spectres appeared 
 to the Egyptians during the darkness with which 
 Moses covered Egypt. The witch of Endor raised 
 the ghost of Samuel. Moses and Elias appeared 
 on Mount Tabor. An evil spirit was sent into 
 the army of Sennacherib, and exterminated it in 
 a single night. 
 
 Mr Toobad. Saying, The devil is come among 
 you, having great wrath. 
 
 Mr Flosky.—^z.vD.\. Macarius interrogated a skull, 
 which was found in the desert, and made it relate, 
 in presence of several witnesses, what was going 
 forward in hell. Saint Martin of Tours, being 
 jealous of a pretended martyr, who was the rival 
 saint of his neighbourhood, called up his ghost, 
 and made him confess that he was damned. Saint 
 
Nightmare Abbey. in 
 
 Germain, being on his travels, turned out of an 
 inn a large party of ghosts, who had every night 
 takep possession of the tatk d'hdte, and consumed 
 a copious supper. 
 
 Mr Hilary. — ^Jolly ghosts and no doubt all friars. 
 A similar party took possession of the cellar of M. 
 Swebach, the painter, in Paris, drank his wine, and 
 threw the empty bottles at his head. 
 
 The Reverend Mr Larynx. — An atrocious act. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — Pausanias relates, that the neighing 
 of horses and the tumult of combatants were heard 
 every night on the field of Marathon : that those 
 who went purposely to hear these sounds suffered 
 severely for their curiosity; but those who heard 
 them by accident passed with impunity. 
 
 Th£ Reverend Mr Larynx. — I once saw a ghost 
 myself, in my study, which is the last place where 
 any one but a ghost would look for me. I had 
 not been into it for three months, and was going 
 to consult Tillotson, when, on opening the door, I 
 saw a venerable figure in a flannel dressing gown, 
 sitting in my arm chair, and reading my Jeremy 
 Taylor. It vanished in a moment, and so did I ; 
 and what it was or what it wanted I have never 
 been able to ascertain. 
 
 Mr Flosky. — It was an idea with the force of a 
 sensation. It is seldom that ghosts appeal to two 
 senses at once ; but, when I was in Devonshire, the 
 following story was well attested to me. A young 
 woman, whose lover was at sea, returning one 
 evening over some solitary fields, saw her lover 
 
112 Nightmare A bbey. 
 
 sitting on a stile over which she was to pass. Her 
 first emotions were surprise and joy, but there was 
 a paleness and seriousness in his face, that made 
 them give place to alarm. She advanced towards 
 him, and he said to her, in a solemn voice, " The 
 eye that hath seen me shall see me no more. Thine 
 eye is upon me, but I am not." And with these 
 words he vanished ; and on that very day and hour, 
 as it afterwards appeared, he had perished by ship- 
 wreck. 
 
 The whole party now drew round in a circle, and 
 each related some ghostly anecdote, heedless of the 
 flight of time, till, in a pause of the conversation, 
 they heard the hollow tongue of midnight sounding 
 twelve. 
 
 Mr Hilary. —All these anecdotes admit of solu- 
 tion on psychological principles. It is more easy 
 for a soldier, a philosopher, or even a saint, to be 
 frightened at his own shadow, than for a dead man 
 to come out of his grave. Medical writers cite a 
 thousand singular examples of the force of imagin- 
 ation. Persons of feeble, nervous, melancholy 
 temperament, exhausted by fever, by labour, or by 
 spare diet, will readily conjure up, in the magic ring 
 of their own phantasy, spectres, gorgons, chimseras, 
 and all the objects of their hatred and their love. 
 We are most of us Uke Don Quixote, to whom a 
 windmill was a giant, and Dulcinea a magnificent 
 princess : all more or less the dupes of our own 
 imagination, though we do not all go so far as to see 
 ghosts, or to fancy ourselves pipkins and teapots. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 1 1 3 
 
 Mr Flosky. — I can safely say I have seen too 
 many ghosts myself to believe in their external 
 existence. I have seen all kinds of ghosts : black 
 spirits and white, red spirits and grey. Some in the 
 shapes of venerable old men, who have met me in 
 my rambles at noon ; some of beautiful young 
 women, who have peeped through my curtains at 
 midnight. 
 
 The Honourable Mr Listless. — And have proved, 
 I doubt not, " palpable to feeling as to sight." 
 
 Mr Flosky. By no means, sir. You reflect 
 upon my purity. Myself and my friends, particularly 
 my friend Mr Sackbut, are famous for our purity. 
 No, sir, genuine untangible ghosts. I live in a 
 world of ghosts. I see a ghost at this moment. 
 
 Mr Flosky fixed his eyes on a door at the farther 
 end of the library. The company looked in the 
 same direction. The door silently opened, and a 
 ghastly figure, shrouded in white drapery, with the 
 semblance of a bloody turban on its head, entered 
 and stalked slowly up the apartment. Mr Flosky, 
 familiar as he was with ghosts, was not prepared 
 for this apparition, and made the best of his way 
 out at the opposite door. Mrs Hilary and 
 Marionetta followed, screaming. The Honourable 
 Mr Listless, by two turns of his body, rolled first 
 off the sofa and then under it. The Reverend Mr 
 Larynx leaped up and fled with so much precipi- 
 tation, that he overturned the table on the foot of 
 Mr dowry. Mr dowry roared with pain in the 
 ear of Mr Toobad. Mr Toobad's alarm so be- 
 H 
 
1 14 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 wildered his senses, that, missing the door, he 
 threw up one of the windows, jumped out in his 
 panic, and plunged over head and ears in the moat. 
 Mr Asterias and his son, who were on the watch 
 for their mermaid, were attracted by the splashing, 
 threw a net over him, and dragged him to land. 
 
 Scythrop and Mr Hilary meanwhile had hastened 
 to his assistance, and, on arriving at the edge of 
 the moat, followed by several servants with ropes 
 and torches, found Mr Asterias and Aquarius busy 
 in endeavouring to extricate Mr Toobad from the 
 net, who was entangled in the meshes, and flounder- 
 ing with rage. Scythrop was lost in amazement ; 
 but Mr Hilary saw, at one view, all the circum- 
 stances of the adventure, and burst into an 
 immoderate fit of laughter ; on recovering from 
 which, he said to Mr Asterias, " You have caught 
 an odd fish, indeed." Mr Toobad w^as highly 
 exasperated at this unseasonable pleasantry; but 
 Mr Hilary softened his anger, by producing a knife, 
 and cutting the Gordian knot of his reticular en- 
 velopment. " You see," said Mr Toobad, " you 
 see, gentlemen, in my unfortunate person proof 
 upon proof of the present dominion of the devil 
 in the affairs of this world ; and I have no doubt 
 but that the apparition of this night was ApoUyon 
 himself in disguise, sent for the express purpose of 
 terrifying me into this complication of misadven- 
 tures. The devil is come among you, having 
 great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but 
 a short time,'' 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 *R GLOWRY was much surprised, on 
 occasionally visiting Scythrop's tower, to 
 find the door always locked, and to be 
 kept sometimes waiting many minutes for ad- 
 mission : during which he invariably heard a heavy 
 rolling sound like that of a ponderous mangle, 
 or of a waggon on a weighing-bridge, or of thea- 
 trical thunder. 
 
 He took little notice of this for some time : at 
 length his curiosity was excited, and, one day, 
 instead of knocking at the door, as usual, the 
 instant he reached it, he applied his ear to the 
 key-hole, and like Bottom, in the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream, "spied a voice," which he guessed 
 to be of the feminine gender, and knew to be not 
 Scythrop's, whose deeper tones he distinguished at 
 intervals. Having attempted in vain to catch a 
 syllable of the discourse, he knocked violently at 
 the door, and roared for immediate admission. 
 The voices ceased, the accustomed rolling sound 
 was heard, the door opened, and Scythrop was 
 discovered alone. Mr Glowry looked round to 
 every corner of the apartment and then said, 
 " Where is the lady ? " 
 
Ii6 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 " The lady, sir ? " said Scythrop. 
 
 "Yes, sir, the lady." 
 
 " Sir, I do not understand you." 
 
 "You don't, sir?" 
 
 " No, indeed, sir. There is no lady here." 
 
 " But, sir, this is not the only apartment in the 
 tower, and I make no doubt there is a lady up 
 stairs." 
 
 " You are welcome to search, sir." 
 
 "Yes, and while I am searching, she will slip 
 out from some lurking place, and make her escape." 
 
 " You may lock this door, sir, and take the key 
 with you." 
 
 " But there is the terrace door : she has escaped 
 by the terrace." 
 
 " The terrace, sir, has no other outlet, and the 
 walls are too high for a lady to jump down." 
 
 " Well, sir, give me the key." 
 
 Mr dowry took the key, searched every nook 
 of the tower, and returned. 
 
 " You are a fox, Scythrop ; you are an exceed- 
 ingly cunning fox, with that demure visage of yours. 
 What was that lumbering sound I heard before 
 you opened the door ? " 
 
 "Sound, sir?" 
 
 "Yes, sir, sound." 
 
 "My dear sir, I am not aware of any sound, 
 except my great table, which I moved on rising 
 to let you in." 
 
 "The table ! — let me see that. No, sir; not a 
 tenth part heavy enough, not a tenth part," 
 
Nigbimare Abbey. 117 
 
 "But, sir, you do not consider the laws of 
 acoustics : a whisper becomes a peal of thunder 
 in the focus of reverberation. Allow me to explain 
 this : sounds striking on concave surfaces are re- 
 flected from them, and, after reflection, converge 
 to points which are the foci of these surfaces. It 
 follows, therefore, that the ear may be so placed 
 in one, as that it shall hear a souifd better than 
 when situated nearer to the point of the first im- 
 pulse : again, in the case of two concave surfaces 
 placed opposite to each other " 
 
 " Nonsense, sir. Don't tell me of foci. Pray, 
 sir, will concave surfaces produce two voices when 
 nobody speaks ? I heard two voices,' and one was 
 feminine ; feminine, sir : what say you to that ? " 
 
 " Oh, sir, I perceive your mistake : I am writing 
 a tragedy, and was acting over a scene to myself. 
 To convince you, I will give you a specimen ; but 
 you must first understand the plot. It is a tragedy 
 on the German model. The Great Mogul is in 
 exile, and has taken lodgings at Kensington, with 
 his only daughter, the Princess Rantrorina, who 
 takes in needlework, and keeps a day school. The 
 princess is discovered hemming a set of shirts for the 
 parson of the parish : they are to be marked with a 
 large R. Enter to her the Great Mogul. A pause, 
 during which they look at each other expressively. 
 The princess changes colour several times. The 
 Mogul takes snuff in great agitation. Several grains 
 are heard to fall on the stage. His heart is seen to 
 beat through his upper benjamin. — The Mogul 
 
Ii8 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 {with a mournful look at his left shoe). " My shoe- 
 string is broken." — The Princess {after an in- 
 terval of melancholy reflection). " I know it." — 
 The Mogul. " My second shoe-string ! The 
 first broke when I lost my empire : the second 
 has broken to-day. When will my poor heart 
 break?" — The Princess. "Shoe-strings, hearts, 
 and empires ! Mysterious sympathy ! " 
 
 " Nonsense, sir," interrupted Mr Glowry. " That 
 is not at all like the voice I heard." 
 
 "But, sir," said Scythrop, "a key-hole may be 
 so constructed as to act like an acoustic tube, 
 and an acoustic tube, sir, will modify sound in a 
 very remarkable manner. Consider the con- 
 struction of the ear, and the nature and causes 
 of sound. The external part of the ear is a 
 cartilaginous funnel." 
 
 "It won't do, Scythrop. There is a girl con- 
 cealed in this tower, and find her I will. There 
 are such things as sliding panels and secret closets." 
 — He sounded round the room with his cane, but 
 detected no hollowness. — " I have heard, sir," he 
 continued, "that during my absence, two years 
 ago, you had a dumb carpenter closeted with you 
 day after day. I did not dream that you were 
 laying contrivances for carrying on secret intrigues. 
 Young men will have their way : I had my way 
 when I was a young man : but, sir, when your 
 cousin Marionetta " 
 
 Scythrop now saw that the affair was growing., 
 serious. To have clapped his hand upon his 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 119 
 
 father's mouth, to have entreated him to be silent, 
 would, in the first place, not have made him so ; 
 and, in the second, would have shown a dread of 
 being overheard by somebody. His only resource, 
 therefore, was to try to drown Mr dowry's voice ; 
 and, having no other subject, he continued (his 
 description of the ear) raising his voice continually 
 as Mr dowry raised his. 
 
 "When your cousin Marionetta," said Mr 
 Glowry, "whom you profess to love — whom you 
 
 profess to love, sir " 
 
 " The internal canal of the ear,'' said Scythrop, 
 "is partly bony and partly cartilaginous. This 
 
 internal canal is " 
 
 "Is actually in the house, sir; and, when you 
 
 are so shortly to be— as I expect " 
 
 "Closed at the further end by the membrana 
 tympani — " 
 
 " Joined together in holy matrimony — " 
 " Under which is carried a branch of the fifth 
 pair of nerves — " 
 
 "I say, sir, when you are so shortly to be married 
 to your cousin Marionetta — " 
 " The cavUas tympani — " 
 A loud noise was heard behind the book-case, 
 which, to the astonishment of Mr Glowry, opened 
 in the middle, and the massy compartments, with 
 all their weight of books, receding from each other 
 in the manner of a theatrical scene, with a heavy 
 rolling sound (which Mr Glowry immediately 
 recognised to be the same which had excited his 
 
120 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 curiosity), disclosed an interior apartment, in the 
 entrance of which stood the beautiful Stella, who, 
 stepping forward, exclaimed, " Married ! Is he 
 going to be married ? The profligate ! " 
 
 " Really, madam," said Mr Glowry, " I do not 
 know what he is going to do, or what I am going 
 to do, or what any one is going to do ; for all this 
 is incomprehensible." 
 
 " I can explain it all," said Scythrop, " in a 
 most satisfactory manner, if you will but have the 
 goodness to leave us alone." 
 
 " Pray, sir, to which act of the tragedy of the 
 Great Mogul does this incident belong ? " 
 
 " I entreat you, my dear sir, leave us alone." 
 
 Stella threw herself into a chair, and burst into a 
 tempest of tears. Scythrop sat down by her, and 
 took her hand. She snatched her hand away, and 
 turned her back upon him. He rose, sat down on 
 the other side, and took her other hand. She 
 snatched it away, and turned from him again. 
 Scythrop continued entreating Mr Glowry to 
 leave them alone; but the old gentleman was 
 obstinate, and would not go. 
 
 " I suppose, after all," said Mr Glowry malici- 
 ously, " it is only a phaenomenon in acoustics, and 
 this young lady is a reflection of sound from 
 concave surfaces." 
 
 Some one tapped at the door : Mr Glowry 
 opened it, and Mr Hilary entered. He had been 
 seeking Mr Glowry, and had traced him to Scy- 
 throp's tower. He stood a few moments in silent 
 
Nightmare Abbey. I2l 
 
 surprise, and then addressed himself to Mr Glowry 
 for an explanation. 
 
 "The explanation," said Mr Glowry, "is very 
 satisfactory. The Great Mogul has taken lodgings 
 at Kensington, and the external part of the ear is 
 a cartilaginous funnel." 
 
 " Mr Glowry, that is no explanation." 
 " Mr Hilary, it is all I know about the matter." 
 "Sir, this pleasantly is very unseasonable. I 
 perceive that my niece is sported with in a most 
 unjustifiable manner, and I shall see if she will be 
 more successful in obtaining an intelligible answer." 
 And he departed in search of Marionetta. 
 
 Scythrop was now in a hopeful predicament. 
 Mr Hilary made a hue and cry in the abbey, and 
 summoned his wife and Marionetta to Scythrop's 
 apartment. The ladies, not knowing what was the 
 matter, hastened in great consternation. Mr Too- 
 bad saw them sweeping along the corridor, and 
 judging from their manner that the devil had 
 manifested his wrath in some new shape, followed 
 from pure curiosity. 
 
 Scythrop meanwhile vainly endeavoured to get 
 rid of Mr Glovpry and to pacify Stella. The latter 
 attempted to escape from the tower, declaring she 
 would leave the abbey immediately, and he should 
 never see her or hear of her more. Scythrop held 
 her hand and detained her by force, till Mr Hilary 
 reappeared with Mrs Hilary and Marionetta. 
 Marionetta, seeing Scythrop grasping the hand of 
 a strange beauty, fainted away in the arms of her 
 
122 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 aunt Scythrop flew to her assistance ; and Stella 
 with redoubled anger sprang towards the door, but 
 was intercepted in her intended flight by being 
 caught in the arms of Mr Toobad, who exclaimed 
 — " Celinda ! " 
 
 " Papa ! " said the young lady disconsolately. 
 
 " The devil is come among you," said Mr Too- 
 bad, " how came my daughter here ? " 
 
 " Your daughter ! " exclaimed Mr Glowry. 
 
 " Your daughter ! " exclaimed Scythrop, and Mr 
 and Mrs Hilary. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr Toobad, "my daughter Celinda." 
 
 Marionetta opened her eyes and fixed them on 
 Celinda ; Celinda in return fixed hers on Marion- 
 etta. They were at remote points of the apartment. 
 Scythrop was equidistant from both of them, central 
 and motionless, like Mahomet's coffin. 
 
 " Mr Glowry," said Mr Toobad, " can you tell 
 by what means my daughter came here ? " 
 
 " I know no more," said Mr Glowry, " than the 
 Great Mogul." 
 
 "Mr Scythrop," said Mr Toobad, "how came 
 my daughter here ? " 
 
 "I did not know, sir, that the lady was your 
 daughter." 
 
 " But how came she here ? " 
 
 " By spontaneous locomotion," said Scythrop, 
 sullenly. 
 
 " Celinda," said Mr Toobad, " what does all this 
 mean ? " 
 
 " I really do not know, sir," 
 
Nightmare A bbey. 123 
 
 " This is most unaccountable. When I told you 
 in London that I had chosen a husband for you, 
 you thought proper to run away from him; and 
 now, to all appearance, you have run away to him." 
 
 " How, sir ! was that your choice ? " 
 
 " Precisely ; and if he is yours too we shall be 
 both of a mind, for the first time in our lives." 
 
 " He is not my choice, sir. This lady has a 
 prior claim : I renounce him." 
 
 " And I renounce him," said Marionetta. 
 ■ Scythrop knew not what to do. He could not 
 attempt to conciliate the one without irreparably 
 offending the other ; and he was so fond of both, 
 that the idea of depriving himself for ever of the 
 society of either was intolerable to him : he there- 
 fore retreated into his strong hold, mystery ; main- 
 tained an impenetrable silence; and contented 
 himself with stealing occasionally a deprecating 
 glance at each of the objects of his idolatry. Mr 
 Toobad and Mr Hilary, in the mean time, were 
 each insisting on an explanation from Mr dowry, 
 who they thought had been playing a double game 
 on this occasion. Mr Glowry was vainly en- 
 deavouring to persuade them of his innocence in 
 the whole transaction. Mrs Hilary was endeavour- 
 ing to mediate between her husband and brother. 
 The Honourable Mr Listless, the Reverend Mr 
 Larynx, Mr Flosky, Mr Asterias, and Aquarius, 
 were attracted by.the tumult to the scene of action, 
 and were appealed to severally and conjointly by 
 the respective disputants. Multitudinous questions, 
 
124 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 and answers en masse, composed a charivari, to 
 which the genius of Rossini alone could have given 
 a suitable accompaniment, and which was only 
 terminated by Mrs Hilary and Mr Toobad retreat- 
 ing with the captive damsels. The whole party 
 followed, with the exception of Scythrop, who 
 threw himself into his arm chair, crossed his left 
 foot over his right knee, placed the hollow of his 
 left hand on the interior ancle of his left leg, rested 
 his right elbow on the elbow of the chair, placed 
 the ball of his right thumb against his right temple, 
 curved the forefinger along the upper part of his 
 forehead, rested the point of the middle finger on 
 the bridge of his nose, and the points of the two 
 others on the lower part of the palm, fixed his eyes 
 intently on the veins in the back of his left hand, 
 and sat in this position like the immovable 
 Theseus, who, as is well known to many who have 
 not been at college, and to some few who have, 
 sedet, aternumque sedebit* We hope the admirers 
 of the minutice in poetry and romance will 
 appreciate this accurate description of a pensive 
 attitude. 
 
 * Sits, and will sit for ever. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 fCYTHROP was still in this position when 
 Raven entered to announce that dinner 
 was on table. 
 
 " I cannot come," said Scythrop. 
 
 Raven sighed. " Something is the matter," said 
 Raven : " but man is born to trouble." 
 
 "Leave me," said Scythrop: "go, and croak 
 elsewhere." 
 
 "Thus it is," said Raven. " Five-and-twenty 
 years have I lived in Nightmare Abbey, and now 
 all the reward of my affection is — Go, and croak 
 elsewhere. I have danced you on my knee, and 
 fed you with marrow." 
 
 " Good Raven," said Scythrop, " I entreat you 
 to leave me." 
 
 " Shall I bring your dinner here ? " said Raven. 
 " A boiled fowl and a glass of Madeira are pre- 
 scribed by the faculty in cases of low spirits. But 
 you had better join the party : it is very much re- 
 duced already." 
 
 "Reduced! how?" 
 
 "The Honourable Mr Listless is gone. He 
 declared that, what with family quarrels in the 
 nioming, and ghosts at night, he could get neither 
 
126 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 sleep nor peace ; and that the agitation was too 
 much for his nerves : though Mr Glowry assured 
 him that the ghost was only poor Crow walking in 
 his sleep, and that the shroud and bloody turban 
 were a sheet and a red nightcap." 
 
 "Well, sir?" 
 
 " The Reverend Mr Larynx has been called off 
 on duty, to marry or bury (I don't know which) 
 some unfortunate person or persons, at Claydyke : 
 but man is born to trouble ! " 
 
 " Is that all ? " 
 
 " No. Mr Toobad is gone too, and a strange 
 lady with him." 
 
 " Gone ! " 
 
 "Gone. And Mr and Mrs Hilary, and Miss 
 O'Carroll : they are all gone. There is nobody 
 left but Mr Asterias and his son, and they are 
 going to-night." 
 
 " Then I have lost them both." 
 
 " Won't you come to dinner ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Shall I bring your dinner here ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " What will you have ? " 
 
 " A pint of port and a pistol." * 
 
 "A pistol ! " 
 
 " And a pint of port. I will make my exit like 
 Werter. Go. Stay. Did Miss O'Carroll say any 
 thing?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 * See The Sorrows of Werter, Letter 93. 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 127 
 
 " Did Miss Toobad say any thing ? " 
 
 " The strange lady ? No." 
 
 " Did either of them cry? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " What did they do ? " 
 
 " Nothing." 
 
 " What did Mr Toobad say ? " 
 
 " He said, fifty times over, the devil was come 
 among us." 
 
 " And they are gone ? " 
 
 " Yes ; and the dinner is getting cold. There is 
 a time for every thing under the sun. You may 
 as well dine first, and be miserable afterwards." 
 
 " True, Raven. There is something in that. I 
 will take your advice : therefore, bring me " 
 
 " The port and the pistol ? " 
 
 " No ; the boiled fowl and Madeira." 
 
 Scythrop had dined, and was sipping his 
 Madeira alone, immersed in melancholy musing, 
 when Mr dowry entered, followed by Raven, who, 
 having placed an additional glass and set a chair 
 for Mr dowry, withdrew. Mr dowry sat down 
 opposite Scythrop. After a pause, during which 
 each filled and drank in silence, Mr dowry said, 
 " So, sir, you have played your cards well. I pro- 
 posed Miss Toobad to you : you refused her. Mr 
 Toobad proposed you to her: she refused you. 
 You fell in love with Marionetta, and were going 
 to poison yourself, because, from pure fatherly 
 regard to your temporal interests, I withheld my 
 consent, When, at length, I offered you my con- 
 
128 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 sent, you told me I was too precipitate. And, 
 after all, I find you and Miss Toobad living 
 together in the same tower, and behaving in every 
 respect like two plighted lovers. Now, sir, if there 
 be any rational solution of all this absurdity, I 
 shall be very much obliged to you for a small 
 glimmering of information." 
 
 " The solution, sir, is of little moment ; but I 
 will leave it in writing for your satisfaction. The 
 crisis of my fate is come : the world is a stage, and 
 my direction is exitT 
 
 " Do not talk so, sir ; — do not talk so, Scythrop. 
 What would you have ? " 
 
 " I would have my love." 
 
 " And pray, sir, who is your love ? " 
 
 "Celinda — Marionetta — either — both." 
 
 " Both ! That may do very well in a German 
 tragedy ; and the Great Mogul might have found 
 it very feasible in his lodgings at Kensington ; but 
 it will not do in Lincolnshire. Will you have Miss 
 Toobad?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "And renounce Marionetta?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " But you must renounce one." 
 
 " I cannot." 
 
 "And you cannot have both. What is to be 
 done?" 
 
 " I must shoot myself." 
 
 "Don't talk so, Scythrop. Be rational, my 
 dear Scythrop. Consider, and make a cool, calm 
 choice, and I will exert myself in your behalf," 
 
Nightmare Abbey. 129 
 
 "Why should I choose, sir? Both have re- 
 nounced me : I have no hope of either." 
 
 " Tell me which you will have, and I will plead 
 your cause irresistibly." 
 
 Well, sir, — I will have — no, sir, I cannot re- 
 nounce either. I cannot choose either. I am 
 doomed to be the victim of eternal disappoint- 
 ments; and I have no resource but a pistol." 
 
 "Scythrop — Scythrop; — if one of them should 
 come to you — what then ? " 
 
 " That, sir, might alter the case : but that can- 
 not be." 
 
 " It can be, Scythrop; it will be: I promise you 
 it will be. Have but a little patience — but a 
 week's patience and it shall be." 
 
 " A week, sir, is an age : but, to oblige you, as 
 a last act of filial duty, I will live another week. 
 It is now Thursday evening, twenty-five minutes 
 past seven. At this hour and minute, on Thursday 
 next, love and fate shall smile on me, or I will 
 drink my last pint of port in this world." 
 
 Mr dowry ordered his travelling chariot, and 
 departed from the abbey. 
 
 ^^^^^Sf^ 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ^HE day after Mr dowry's departure was 
 one of incessant rain, and Scythrop re- 
 pented of the promise he had given. 
 The next day was one of bright sunshine : he sat 
 on the terrace, read a tragedy of Sophocles, and 
 was not sorry, when Raven announced dinner, to 
 find himself alive. On the third evening, the wind 
 blew, and the rain beat, and the owl flapped against 
 his windows ; and he put a new flint in his pistol. 
 On the fourth day, the sun shone again ; and he 
 locked the pistol up in a drawer, where he left it 
 undisturbed, till the morning of the eventful 
 Thursday, when he ascended the turret with a 
 telescope, and spied anxiously along the road that 
 crossed the fens from Claydyke : but nothing ap- 
 peared on it. He watched in this manner from 
 ten A.M. till Raven summoned him to dinner at 
 five ; when he stationed Crow at the telescope, 
 and descended to his own funeral-feast. He left 
 open the communications between the tower and 
 turret, and called aloud at intervals to Crow, — 
 " Crow, Crow, is any thing coming ? " * Crow 
 • "Anne, ma soeur Anne, ne vois-tu rien venir?" Et la 
 
Nightmare A bbey. 1 3 1 
 
 answered, "The wind blows, and the windmills 
 turn, but I see nothing coming;" and at every 
 answer, Scythrop found the necessity of raising his 
 spirits with a bumper. After dinner, he gave 
 Raven his watch to set by the abbey clock. Raven 
 brought it, Scythrop placed it on the table, and 
 Raven departed. Scythrop called again to Crow ; 
 and Crow, who had fallen asleep, answered 
 mechanically, " I see nothing coming." Scythrop 
 laid his pistol between his watch and his bottle. 
 The hour-hand passed the VII. — the minute-hand 
 moved on; — it was within three minutes of the 
 appointed time. Scythrop called again to Crow. 
 Crow answered as before. Scythrop rang the 
 bell : Raven appeared. 
 
 "Raven," said Scythrop, "the clock is too fast." 
 
 " No, indeed," said Raven, who knew nothing of 
 Scythrop's intentions; "if anything, it is too slow." 
 
 " Villain ! " said Scythrop, pointing the pistol 
 at him ; " it is too fast." 
 
 " Yes — yes — too fast, I meant," said Raven, in 
 manifest fear. 
 
 " How much too fast ? " said Scythrop. 
 
 " As much as you please," said Raven. 
 
 " How much, I say," said Scythrop, pointing the 
 pistol again. 
 
 "An hour, a full hour, sir," said the terrified 
 butler. 
 
 " Put back my watch," said Scythrop. 
 
 sceur Anne lui repondait, " Je ne vois rien que le soleil qui 
 poudroie et I'herbe qui verdoie." — Barbe Bleue, — G. 
 
132 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 Raven, with trembling hand, was putting back 
 the watch, when the rattle of wheels was heard in 
 the court ; and Scythrop, springing down the stairs 
 by three steps together, was at the door in sufficient 
 time to have handed either of the young ladies 
 from the carriage, if she had happened to be in 
 it ; but Mr dowry was alone. 
 
 " I rejoice to see you," said Mr Glowry ; " I was 
 fearful of being too late, for I waited to the last 
 moment in the hope of accomplishing my promise ; 
 but all my endeavours have been vain, as these 
 letters will show." 
 
 Scythrop impatiently broke the seals. The con- 
 tents were these : — 
 
 "Almost a stranger in England, I fled from 
 parental tyranny, and the dread of an arbitrary 
 marriage, to the protection of a stranger and a, 
 philosopher, whom I expected to find something 
 better than, or at least something diflferent from, 
 the rest of his worthless species. Could I, after 
 what has occurred, have expected nothing more 
 from you than the common-place impertinence of 
 sending your father to treat with ^me, and with 
 mine, for me ? I should be a little moved in your 
 favour, if I could believe you capable of carrying 
 into effect the resolutions which your father says 
 you have taken, in the event of my proving in- 
 flexible ; though I doubt not you will execute 
 them, as far as relates to the pint of wine, twice 
 over, at least. I wish you much happiness with 
 
Nightmare A bbey. 133 
 
 Miss O'CarroU. I shall always cherish a grateful 
 recollection of Nightmare Abbey, for having been 
 the means of introducing me to a true transcend- 
 entalist ; and, though he is a little older than 
 myself, which is all one in Germany, I shall very 
 soon have the pleasure of subscribing myself 
 
 " Celinda Flosky." * 
 
 "I hope, my dear cousin, that you will not be 
 angry with me, but that you will always think of 
 me as a sincere friend, who will always feel in- 
 terested in your welfare ; I am sure you love Miss 
 Toobad much better than me, and I wish you 
 much happiness with her. Mr Listless assures me 
 that people do not kill themselves for love now-a- 
 days, though it is still the fashion to talk about it. 
 I shall, in a very short time, change my name and 
 situation, and shall always be happy to see you in 
 Berkeley Square, when, to the unalterable designa- 
 tion of your affectionate cousin, I shall subjoin the 
 signature of 
 
 " Marionetta Listless." 
 
 Scythrop tore both the letters to atoms, and 
 railed in good set terms against the fickleness of 
 women. 
 
 "Calm yourself, my dear Scythrop," said Mr 
 dowry J " there are yet maidens in England." 
 
 " Very true, sir," said Scythrop. 
 
 * It is to be hoped that Celinda was not unaware of the 
 existence of Emanuel Kant Flosky, vide chapter vi. — G. 
 
134 Nightmare Abbey. 
 
 "And the next time," said Mr dowry, "have 
 but one string to your bow." 
 
 " Very good advice, sir," said Scythrop. 
 
 " And, besides," said Mr Glowry, " the fatal time 
 is past, for it is now almost eight." 
 
 "Then that villain, Raven," said Scythrop, 
 "deceived me when he said that the clock was 
 too fast ; but, as you observe very justly, the time 
 has gone by, and I have just reflected that these 
 repeated crosses in love qualify me to take a very 
 advanced degree in misanthropy; and there is, 
 therefore, good hope that I may make a figure in 
 the world. But I shall ring for the rascal Raven, 
 and admonish him." 
 
 Raven appeared. Scythrop looked at him very 
 fiercely two or three minutes ; and Raven, still re- 
 membering the pistol, stood quaking in mute 
 apprehension, till Scythrop, pointing significantly 
 towards the dining-room, said, " Bring some 
 Madeira." 
 
 TORNBULL AND SPEARS, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 5162.N5 1891 
 
 Nightmare abbey; 
 
 3 1924 013 534 163