vibrates with pity and terror, especially at the moment when about to plunge a dagger into her bosom he discovers her to be his daughter: every word, every action of the shocked and self-accusing Confessor, whose character is, marked with traits almost superhuman, appal yet delight the reader, and it is difficult to ascertain whether ardent curiosity, intense commiseration, or apprehension that suspends almost the faculty of breathing, be, in the progress of this well-written story, most powerfully excited. Smollet too, notwithstanding his peculiar propensity for burlesque and broad humour, has in his Ferdinand Count Fathom, painted a scene of natural terror with astonishing effect; with such vigour of imagination indeed, and minuteness of detail, that the blood runs cold, and the hair stands erect from the impression." The whole turns upon the Count, who is admitted during a tremendous storm, into a solitary cottage in a forest, discovering a body just murdered in the room where he is going to sleep, and the door of which, on endeavouring to escape, he finds fastened upon him. The sublime Collins likewise, in his lyric pieces, exhibits much admirable imagery which forcibly calls forth the emotions of fear as arising from natural causes; the concluding lines of the following description of Danger make the reader absolutely shudder, and present a picture at once true to nature and full of originality. Danger, whose limbs of giant mold The exquisite Scotch ballad of Hardyknute, so happily compleated by Mr. Pinkerton, may be also mentioned as including several incidents. which for genuine pathos, and for that species of terror now under consideration, cannot easily be surpassed. The close of the first, and commencement of the second part are particularly striking. Ode to Fear. In the fragment annexed to these observations, it has been the aim of the author to combine pictoresque description with some of those objects of terror which are independent of supernatural agency. THE sullen tolling of the Curfew was heard over the heath, and not a beam of light issued from the dreary villages, the murmuring Cotter had extinguished his enlivening embers, and had shrunk in gloomy sadness to repose, when Henry De Montmorency and his two attendants rushed from the castle of A- -y. The night was wild and stormy, and the wind howled in a fearful manner. The moon flashed, as the clouds passed from before her, on the silver armour of Montmorency, whose large and sable plume of feathers streamed threatening in the blast. They hurried rapidly on, and, arriving at the edge of a declivity, descended into a deep glen, the dreadful and savage appearance of which, was sufficient to strike terror into the stoutest heart. It was narrow, and the rocks on each side, rising to a prodigious height, hung bellying over their heads; furiously along the bottom of the valley, turbulent and dashing against huge fragments of the rock, ran a dark and swoln torrent, and farther up the glen, down a precipice of near ninety feet, and roaring with tremendous strength, fell, at a single stroke, an aweful and immense cascade. From the clefts and chasms of the crag, abrupt and stern the venerable oak threw his broad breadth of shade, and bending his gigantic arms athwart the stream, shed, driven by the wind, a multitude of leaves, while from the summits of the rock was heard the clamor of the falling fragments. that bounding from its rugged side leapt with resistless fury on the vale beneath.. Montmorency and his attendants, intrepid as they were, felt the inquietude of apprehension; they stood for some time in silent astonishment, but their ideas of danger from the conflict of the elements being at length. alarmning, they determined to proceed, when all instantly became dark, whilst the rushing of the storm, the roaring of the cascade, the shivering of the branches of the trees, and the dashing of the rock assailed at once their sense of hearing. The moon, however, again darting from a |