sit for ever on my
heart, and engender visions that in the hours of night must torture my
soul, to the end of my pilgrimage in this dark world?"

I hesitated to say more; the orbless socket--the torn stump of the
arm--the limpets that clung to her skin--the bosom pierced by
Vanderhoek's mattock, were all before me, and shook my soul. But why
should I have added an artificial misery to wretchedness like his? I
would not dwell on the subject. The stranger imputed my disinclination
to satisfy his morbid desire for information to its true cause. A
paroxysm of sorrow seized him. He rose suddenly, took his hat, and,
covering his pallid face with his handkerchief, rushed out of the room.
How often have I thought of that individual! I never saw him again; but
his image is for ever associated with the vision of that corpse, shining
in the sickly green hue of the medium in which it lay. The body was
never found; he never saw it. And was it not well for him? What would
have been his agony, to have seen the beloved of his bosom as I saw her,
to have treasured up in his mind the lineaments of that face, the
harrowing minutiae of her mutilated form?

I got an account from Mr. W---- of what took place on board of the
lighter while the bell was down. It was a long time, he said, before
anything was suspected to be wrong, as the men often remain down for an
hour without a single signal coming from them. The difficulty of working
the air-pumps first roused their suspicions; and when they found that
the bell would not respond to the action of the crane, they knew at once
that it had got fixed among some part of the wreck. I need not detail
their efforts to relieve us; they are possessed of no interest; the
result is known; but who shall know, as I experienced, the horrors of
that period?

My patient, when he had finished his narrative, put his hand over his
eyes, and shuddered. I could do little for an individual thus situated;
but I visited him often, more with a view to the benefit of science,
than from any hope of rescuing him from the dominion of the power he
had, like Frankenstein, created, to satisfy a diseased craving of the
mind, and trembled at after it was formed, as he found himself helpless
and weak in his energies to exorcise it. The continued brooding of his
sick fancy over all the strange forms he had seen, produced, in a still
greater degree, a weakness of the mind itself, that is, a weakness as
regards the sane conditi