his own
voice in the roaring tempest.

Men have died in dungeons--and their skeletons been found long years
afterwards lying on the stone floor, in postures that told through what
hideous agonies they had passed into the world of spirits. But no eye
saw, no ear heard, and the prison-visitor gathers up, as he shudders,
but a dim conviction of some long horror from the bones. One day in
spring--long after the snows were melted--except here and there a patch
like a flock of sheep on some sunless exposure--a huge Raven rose
heavily, as if gorged with prey, before the feet of a shepherd, who,
going forward to the spot where the bird had been feeding, beheld a
rotting corpse! A dog, itself almost a skeleton, was lying near, and
began to whine at his approach. On its collar was the name of its
master--a name unknown in that part of the country--and weeks elapsed
before any person could be heard of that could tell the history of the
sufferer. A stranger came and went--taking the faithful creature with
him that had so long watched by the dead--but long before his arrival
the remains had been interred; and you may see the grave, a little way
on from the south gate, on your right hand as you enter, not many yards
from the Great Yew-Tree in the churchyard of----, not far from the foot
of Ullswater.

Gentle reader! we have given you two versions of the same story--and
pray, which do you like the best? The first is the most funny, the
second the most affecting. We have observed that the critics are not
decided on the question of our merits as a writer; some maintaining that
we are strongest in humour--others, that our power is in pathos. The
judicious declare that our forte lies in both--in the two united, or
alternating with each other. "But is it not quite shocking," exclaims
some scribbler who has been knouted in Ebony, "to hear so very serious
an affair as the death of a Quaker in the snow among mountains, treated
with such heartless levity? The man who wrote that description, sir, of
the Ordinary of the Red Tarn Club, would not scruple to commit murder!"
Why, if killing a scribbler be murder, the writer of that--this--article
confesses that he has more than once committed that capital crime. But
no intelligent jury, taking into consideration the law as well as the
fact--and it is often their duty to do so, let high authorities say what
they will--would for a moment hesitate, in any of the cases alluded to,
to bring in a verdi