MONTHLY REVIEW OF LITERATURE. 611 



" I frowned on the man with a dark brow, and I said, ' So sure as the 

 sea murmurs, and the bird flies, I will slay you!' I seized him in my 

 arms ; I plucked him from my bed ; I took him into the open air, and we 

 stood together on the smooth sand, and by the great sea. A fear came 

 suddenly upon me I was struck with the awe of the still spirit which 

 reigns over solitude. Had a thousand been around us, I would have 

 slain him before them all. I feared now because we were alone in the 

 desert, with Silence and GOD ! I relaxed my hold : * Swear,' I said, 

 * never to molest me again ; swear to preserve unpassed the boundary of 

 our several homes,' I will not kill you !' * I cannot swear/ answered the 

 man ; ' I would sooner die than forswear the blessed human face, even 

 though that face be my enemy's.' 



" At these words my rage returned : I dashed the man to the ground, 

 and I put my foot upon his breast, and my hand upon his neck, and he 

 struggled for a moment and was dead ! I was startled ; and as I looked 

 upon his face, I thought it seemed to revive: I thought the cold blue eye 

 fixed on me, and the vile grin returned to the livid mouth, and the hands, 

 which in the death-pang had grasped the sand, stretched themselves out to 

 me. So I stamped on the breast again, and I dug a hole in the shore, and 

 I buried the body. ' And now,' said I, ' I am alone at last! ' And then the 

 TRUE sense of loneliness the vague, comfortless, objectless sense of desola- 

 tion passed into rne ; and I shook shook in every limb of my giant frame, 

 as if I had been a child that trembles in the dark : and my hair rose, and 

 my blood crept, and I would not have stayed in that spot a moment more, 

 as if I had been made young again for it. I turned away and fled fled 

 round the Island ; and gnashed my teeth when I came to the sea, and 

 longed to be cast into some illimitable desert that I might flee on for ever. 

 At sunset I returned to my cave : I sat myself down on one corner of my 

 bed, and I covered my face with my hands : I thought I heard a noise ; 

 I raised my eyes, and, as I live, I saw on the other end of the bed the 

 man whom I had slain and buried. There he sat six, feet from me, and 

 looked at me with his wan eyes, and laughed. I rushed from the cave 

 I entered a wood I threw myself down : there opposite to me, six feet 

 from my face, was the face of that man again ! And my courage rose, 

 and I spoke ; but he answered not. I attempted to seize him, but he 

 glided from my grasp, and was still opposite, six feet from me as before. 

 I flung myself on the ground, and pressed my face on the sod, and would 

 not look up till the night came on, and darkness was over the earth. I 

 then rose, and returned to the cave ; I lay down on the bed, and the man 

 lay down by me : and I frowned and tried to seize him as before, but I 

 could not, and the man lay by me. Day followed day, and it was the same. 

 At board, at bed, at home and abroad, in my up-rising and my down- 

 sitting, by day and by night, by my bed-side six feet from me, and no 

 more, was that ghastly and dead thing. And I said as I looked upon the 

 beautiful land and the still heavens, and then turned to that fearful com- 

 rade, * I shall never be alone again !' and the man laughed." 



And so on with equally fearful power. The moral is splendid, and the 

 figure of its being traced by the feet of the dead man is peculiarly graphic : 

 ** Solitude is only for the guiltless evil thoughts are companions for a time 

 evil deeds are companions through eternity. 1 ' 



Two-thirds of the second volume are filled wilh " Conversations with 

 an Ambitious Student," which appeared some time ago in the " New 

 Monthly Magazine." We are pleased to see them in a body, but we wish 

 the title given to them, " the Modern Phaedo," had been otherwise. It 

 excites comparison, and invites a species of criticism for which the papers 

 are by no means fitted. The " honied lips " of Plato, the " divine," died 

 with him. 



