eason prisoner,

he gave one likewise to his wife, desiring her to stand by and watch
the event, and as soon as she saw him fairly turned into a tiger, to
thrust it into his mouth. The wife promised, but her nerves were not
equal to the performance. As soon as she saw her husband fixed in his
new form, she took to flight--carrying in her hand, in the confusion
of her mind, the root that would have restored him to her faithful
arms! And so it befell that the poor man-tiger was obliged to take to
the woods, where for many a day he dined on his old neighbours of the
village, till he was at length shot, and _recognised_! In this
superstition will be seen the prototype of the wolf-mania of mediaeval
Europe. In Brittany, men betook themselves to the forests in the shape
of wolves, out of a morbid passion for the amusement of howling and
ravening; but if they left in some secure place the clothes they had
thrown off to prepare for the metamorphosis, they had only to reassume
them in order to regain their natural forms. But sometimes a
catastrophe like the above occurred: the wife discovered the hidden
clothes, and carrying them home in the innocent carefulness of her
heart, the poor husband lived and died a wolf.

The Hindoos, like other ancient peoples, predict good or evil fortune
from certain phenomena of nature; but one instance of this has been
described to us in a communication from our Old Indian, which far
excels in the poetical the finest fancies of the Greeks. We cannot
undertake to say that the thing is new, although we ourselves never
heard of it before; but as the knowledge of it was imparted to her by
her moonshee as a profound secret, we present it as such to our
readers, recommending them to make the experiment for themselves. At
the initiation of our informant, she was about to undertake a distant
journey, and the old moonshee was anxious to consult the fates as to
the fortunes that might be in store for his beloved mistress. He,
accordingly, prevailed upon her to walk forth one night from the
veranda, and with many quaint expressions of respect and anxiety,
besought her to follow his directions with an attentive mind,
abstracted as much as possible from the common thoughts of life.

It was a clear, calm night; the moon was full, and not the faintest
speck in the sky disturbed her reign. The Ganges was like a flood of
silver light, hastening on in charmed silence; while on the green
smooth sward on which th