reality, as my dream had foreshadowed; and had the wise
and beneficent order of nature been disturbed and distorted from its
just relations, how fearful would have been the result! Here, in my
green old age, I stood amongst a new generation, honoured for what I
was, beloved for what I had been. What if, at some mortal wish in
some freak of nature, the form which I now bore were for ever to
remain before the eyes of my children! Were such a thing to befall,
how would their souls ever be lifted upward to the contemplation of
that higher state of being into which it is my hope soon to pass
when the hand which guided me hither shall beckon me hence? At the
thought my heart was chastened. Never since that night have I
indulged in any one wish framed in opposition to nature's laws.
_Now_ I find my dream-children in the present; and to the past I
yield willingly all things which are its own--among the rest, the
Lost Ages.

STORY OF GASPAR MENDEZ.

BY CATHERINE CROWE.

The extraordinary motives under which people occasionally act, and
the strange things they do under the influence of these motives,
frequently so far transcend the bounds of probability, that we
romance-writers, with the wholesome fear of the critics before our
eyes, would not dare to venture on them. Only the other day we read
in the newspapers that a Frenchman who had been guilty of
embezzlement, and was afraid of being found out, went into a theatre
in Lyon and stabbed a young woman whom he had never seen before in
his life, in order that he might die by the hands of the
executioner, and so escape the inconvenience of rushing into the
other world without having time to make his peace with Heaven. He
desired death as a refuge from the anguish of mind he was suffering;
but instead of killing himself he killed somebody else, because the
law would allow him leisure for repentance before it inflicted the
penalty of his crime.

It will be said the man was mad--I suppose he was; and so is
everybody whilst under the influence of an absorbing passion,
whether the mania be love, jealousy, fanaticism, or revenge. The
following tale will illustrate one phase of such a madness.

In the year 1789, there resided in Italy, not far from Aquila in the
Abruzzo, a man called Gaspar Mendez. He appears to have been a
Spaniard, if not actually by birth, at least by descent, and to have
possessed a small estate, which he rendered valuable by pasturing
cattle. Not far