16 LOVE AND MADNESS. 



A taint of the chamel infected the air ; 



And every face wore the wan hue of despair. 



A deep groan is heard ! — On that hall's ancient floor 



Kilkaven has sunk, and shall never rise more ! 



%* The author hopes, in a future number, to detail "The 

 Accredited Ghost Story," Which suggested the above stanzas to him, 

 many years ago ; with various other instances and illustrations of 

 supernatural impressions, commonly so called, embodied in an essay 

 on Omens and Apparitions. For the metrical tale itself, he can 

 only say it must be regarded as the production of a youth, while 

 still at a public school, — not of the man of mature age, who now at- 

 tempts to revise it. 



— » ♦ » 



LOVE AND MADNESS. 



On our return to the hotel, we found the landlord in a fiery dis- 

 pute with two English gentlemen, who had just landed from a 

 French brig in the bay. One was a fine-looking young man of 

 about four or five and twenty, but apparently in the last stage of 

 emaciation and disease; and his companion, rather more robust, 

 was endeavouring to persuade the Italian host to give him quarters 

 in the locanda. This however,-he obstinately refused, on the plea 

 of the young gentleman's illness, who was reclining, as we entered, 

 on a sofa, in a state of enfeebled exhaustion, with sunken cheek and 

 lustreless eye, whilst the debate was proceeding; and the landlord 

 with expressive shrugs unfeelingly pointed to his miserable appear- 

 ance, and urged that as a few days must terminate his existence, he 

 should not only have the annoyance of his death and interment, but 

 his establisliment would lose its character, in the suspicious climate 

 of Smyrna, by an inmate having expired in it. 



It was with difficulty that the elder gentleman procured permis- 

 sion for him to remain on the sofa whilst he went to seek more 

 hospitable quarters for him; he succeeded, however, and in the 

 evening the invalid was removed to a house near St. Catherine's 

 Gardens, where he stretched himself on the bed from which he was 

 never destined to rise, as he expired on the following day. The 

 particulars of his story, as they were related to us by his companion, 

 combined with the circumstances of his death, contained something 

 peculiarly melancholy and romantic. 



