hing about the unfortunate
relic?--

AMICUS REDIVIVUS

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Clos'd o'er the head of your loved Lycidas?

I do not know when I have experienced a stranger sensation, than
on seeing my old friend G.D., who had been paying me a morning
visit a few Sundays back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking
leave, instead of turning down the right hand path by which he had
entered--with staff in hand, and at noon day, deliberately march right
forwards into the midst of the stream that runs by us, and totally
disappear. A spectacle like this at dusk would have been appalling
enough; but, in the broad open daylight, to witness such an unreserved
motion towards self-destruction in a valued friend, took from me all
power of speculation.

How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness was quite gone. Some
spirit, not my own, whirled me to the spot. I remember nothing but the
silvery apparition of a good white head emerging; nigh which a staff
(the hand unseen that wielded it) pointed upwards, as feeling for the
skies. In a moment (if time was in that time) he was on my shoulders,
and I--freighted with a load more precious than his who bore Anchises.

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious zeal of sundry
passers by, who, albeit arriving a little too late to participate in
the honours of the rescue, in philanthropic shoals came thronging to
communicate their advice as to the recovery; prescribing variously
the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the person of
the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast away, amidst the stifle of
conflicting judgments, when one, more sagacious than the rest, by a
bright thought, proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel
was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed on,--shall I
confess?--in this emergency, it was to me as if an Angel had spoken.
Great previous exertions--and mine had not been inconsiderable--are
commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This was a moment of
irresolution.

MONOCULUS--for so, in default of catching his true name, I choose
to designate the medical gentleman who now appeared--is a grave,
middle-aged person, who, without having studied at the college, or
truckled to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great portion
of his valuable time in experimental processes upon the bodies of
unfortunate fellow-creatures, in whom the vital spark, to mere
vulgar thinking