1830. J The Club-Room. 31 



But the tempest came once more, and I was overwhelmed, my strength 

 was withered up; I felt that with years a subtler spirit had wound 

 itself into me, and the consciousness was made an instrument of added 

 agony. The voice now still more loudly spoke, "Ambition !" 



Again I rushed upward. A long scene of strange and furious confu- 

 sion followed. I saw kingdoms wrenched away, thrones consumed, nations 

 suddenly put to flight, the precious things of earth trampled under foot 

 by the flyers and the pursuers ; the ground suddenly spouting up 

 founts and cataracts of blood ; and turbans, helmets, and diadems alter- 

 nately flung up and buried in the smoking tide. In the midst of this 

 ruin, which looked like the general upbursting of the foundations of the 

 earth, I shook with every rocking of the ground I was scorched by 

 every arrow of the lightning I was dyed in every gush of gore. I 

 in vain attempted now to fly. All nations were absorbed in this tre- 

 mendous encounter. Again the old horrors came, as if they were com- 

 missioned against me alone. The air darkened with the dragon shadow- 

 ing me with his whirlwind wings ; the serpent, huge as the tallest tree, 

 rolled his colossal bulk around my frame. The beasts of the forest, with 

 new instruments of destruction, talons more than of the lion or the tiger, 

 and blasts of flame and poison from their dilated nostrils, clustered round 

 me by troops of thousands. The agonies of this moment seemed to have 

 pushed nature to its extremity, and I cried aloud for instant extinction. 

 There was a deeper torture to come. 



To a wild and woeful sound, that afflicted my soul with a sensation 

 of incurable melancholy, arose from the earth a multitude of shapes, 

 human only so far as to show that they had once borne the form. They 

 were skeletons. J saw in their hollow skulls the brain still preyed upon 

 by things of restless torture in their fleshless ribs, the heart still qui- 

 vering with innumerable stings in their bony fingers they still clasped 

 sceptres and swords, with which, from time to time, they struck their 

 own white and naked frames, and whose every touch brought out a 

 flash of keen flame from the limb, and an exclamation of agony from 

 the chapless skull. As they swept round me I knew their faces, and 

 I heard their warning words. At length, while I stood paralyzed with 

 a horror deeper than all that the past sufferings could have inflicted, 

 they all approached me; all their swords and sceptres were pointed 

 to me at once ; flame burst from them all ; I was enveloped in a circle 

 of flame ; a circle of flame hovered above my head a footstool of flame 

 rose under my step a car of singular and terrible grandeur, every 

 jewel of which was a mass of flame, received my form. The voice 

 again uttered " Ambition !" but it was now with the roar of a thousand 

 thunders and I was suddenly borne up a viewless height into the air. 



Talk of the scaffold or the rack, talk of years of the dungeon, with 

 but the reptile for our companion ; or the flames of the martyr's 

 pile ! as I rose from cloud to cloud, from tempest to tempest, from 

 flash to flash of the lightnings that gathered rqund me in their own 

 kingdom, with what joy would I have exchanged my hideous loneliness 

 for all the concentrated deaths of man. At length, the agony subdued 

 my power of suffering, and I seemed to myself to die. (He sinks back in 

 his chair exhausted, draws his handkerchief over his face, and remains in 

 reverie. The rest sit with their eyes fixed on the table ; at length Cul- 

 ver in whispers.} 



Culverin. We must think nothing of this, and say as little. I have 



