this tomb or of the holy
manuscripts which it contains. Surely there can be nothing here to make
a noise, for are we not here alone, a hundred feet under the earth, in a
place where no one comes?--It is nothing: certainly it is nothing;" and
so saying, he lifted up one of the candles and peered about in the
darkness; but as there was nothing to be seen, and all was silent as the
grave, he sat down again, and at our leisure we completed our
examination of all the books which lay upon the steps.

They proved to be all church books, liturgies for different seasons, or
homilies; and not historical, nor of any particular interest, either
from their age or subject. There now remained only the great book upon
the altar, a ponderous quarto, bound either in brown leather or wooden
boards; and this the carpenter's son with difficulty lifted from its
place, and laid it down before us on the ground; but, as he did so, we
heard the noise again. The carpenter and I looked at each other: he
turned pale--perhaps I did so too; and we looked over our shoulders in
a sort of anxious, nervous kind of way, expecting to see something--we
did not know what. However, we saw nothing; and, feeling a little
ashamed, I again settled myself before the three candle-ends, and opened
the book, which was written in large black characters of unusual size.
As I bent over the huge volume, to see what it was about, suddenly there
arose a sound somewhere in the cavern, but from whence it came I could
not comprehend; it seemed all round us at the same moment. There was no
room for doubt now: it was a fearful howling, like the roar of a hundred
wild beasts. The carpenter looked aghast: the tall and grisly figures of
the Egyptian gods seemed to stare at us from the walls. I thought of
Cornelius Agrippa, and felt a gentle perspiration coming on which would
have betokened a favourable crisis in a fever. Suddenly the dreadful
roar ceased, and as its echoes died away in the tomb, we felt
considerably relieved, and were beginning to try and put a good face
upon the matter, when, to our unutterable horror, it began again, and
waxed louder and louder, as if legions of infernal spirits were let
loose upon us. We could stand this no longer: the carpenter and I jumped
up from the ground, and his son in his terror stumbled over the great
Coptic manuscript, and fell upon the candles, which were all put out in
a moment; his screams were now added to the uproar which resound