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THE JUNE NUMBER OF

AINSWORTH'S MAGAZINE.

EDITED BY

W. HARRISON AINSWORTH, ESQ.

Contents.

I. JAMES THE SECOND; OR, THE REVOLUTION OF 1688.
AN HISTORICAL ROMANCE. EDITED BY W. HARRISON
AINSWORTH, ESQ. ILLUSTRATED BY R. W. BUSS.

BOOK THE SECOND.-Chap. VI. What happened in the Picture Gallery
of Whitehall.-Chap. VII. The Trial of the Bishops.

BOOK THE THIRD.-The Conspiracy.-Chap. I. The Meeting at Mrs.

Potter's.

II. THE PROTESTANT BURIAL-GROUND AT ROME. BY NICHO

LAS MICHELL.

III. RAFFAELLE, LORD OF RAVENNA, CALLED THE MAGNANIMOUS. BY THOMAS ROSCOE, ESQ.

IV. THEODORE CALVI, THE CORSICAN.

Chap. I. A Mysterious Assassination and Robbery.-Chap. II. Theodore Calvi.-Chap. III. The Prison Yard.-Chap. IV. The Three Convicts. -Chap. V. The Cell of the Condemned.-Chap. VI. The Mystery unravelled. Chap. VII. The Convict Capitalists. - Chap. VIII. Trompe la Mort's first Appearance in Comedy.-Chap. IX. Conclusion. V. THE FEITICEIRA AND THE MAGIC CAVERN. BY W. H. G. KINGSTON, ESQ.

VI. RICHARD HARDRESS. A PASSAGE IN THE HISTORY OF EDITH CARLETON. BY EDWARD KENEALY, LL.B.

VII. BERITOLA. BY ROBERT SNOW, ESQ.

VIII. MAXIMS FOR THE NEWLY MARRIED.

IX. AN EVENING WITH THEOPHILUS CHEFFINS, AND A MORNING AT BOW-STREET. EXTRACTS FROM THE "DIARY OF A FORTUNATE." BY W. M. MORRISON, ESQ.

X. LAUNCELOT WIDGE. BY CHARLES HOOTON, ESQ.

CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.-Launcelot attends a Parish Statute; hires a Score of Bumpkins for his Father-A Terrific Conflict and Fearful Pursuit of Messrs. Launcelot and Stretcher.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST.-Mrs. Widge encounters her Husband and the Widow Stiff face to face in Fosselthorpe Church-yard-What happened therein.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.-Mr. Stretcher gives a brief Insight into his Profession, and assists Launcelot in finding a Bachelor's Hall; with a Supper at Mrs. Neverdone's.

CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186, STRAND.

NEW MONTHLY MAGAZINE.

THE PRIEST OF ISIS.

66
BY THE AUTHOR OF AZETH, THE EGYPTIAN."

I.

THE LOVELESS LAW.

IT had been the day of the solemn ceremony in Phila, when the priests celebrated the mystic burial of that dread god, whose name none might breathe aloud. The sad death of the king-deity, Osiris, by the hand of the cruel Typhon, had been again recalled to the minds of men; and the history of his interment, after his scattered members had been found by the persevering love of Isis, and, under her watchful care conveyed to this holy isle, again enacted. The jars, whose number was the same as the number of the days of the year, had been replenished with the milk of the sacred heifer-emblematic of the peace, richness, and innocence, spread over the earth during the joint sovereignty of these twinconsorts. The tomb had been crowned with flowers. A mournful ceremony-but how true its acted mythe! For are not flowers-those sweet children of gladness-the soft words of life which nature speaks in every chamber of the universe? Ay! even through the articulation of the rock and the desert-sand does she utter this universal language of life! And are not these flowers, when hung round the tomb of a god, her promises of a bright resurrection-her assurances of the nullity of death

of the truth of an immortality? The tomb was crowned with young blossoms; the cold sarcophagus was garlanded with the dearest creations of life laden with the night-dews, perfumed with odour from the skies, their colours part of the very orb of fire. And these wove the robe of the coffined deity.

It was indeed a beautiful mythe, this yearly celebration of the burial of Osiris at Philæ, veiling the tomb, and making the grave a place of beauty! The silent guest of the banquets, with his flowery crown and glistening robe, he was a warning of annihilation in the midst of life; but this festival of the island was a promise of life in the midst of decay. It was the holiest and the most significant of all the rites in use among the sons of Khemi;* for it was the cord which bound this state of being with that which is unseen, before the altar of Besa.† Nature herself confessed its solemnity and deep import. For a spell lay around the islet, so that not a wing beat from its groves, nor a bright-scaled fish leaped about its shores, during the solemnisation. A silence, like that of death, reigned over the holy place, and the meanest, as the grandest, child of animation was hushed in the stillness of awe. The very shadows fell heavier and more intense in depth, and the sun's path through the heavens seemed stiller and slower.

But now the moonlight again brooded over the island, enwrapping its

The Black Land, or the Land of Khem (Ham), Egypt.

†The Egyptian God of Death.

An ancient tradition, cited by Plutarch, and a little altered by the author. June.-VOL. LXXX. No. CCCXVIII.

K

groves, and obelisks, and sculptured temples, and holy sepulchres, in one robe of chastened loveliness. The ceremonies were over, and the charmed spell removed; and once more the tide of life rushed back in its boundless torrent. The birds sang blithely through the cloudless sky, the insects chirped their merry call while fanning their slender wings in the cool Nile-breeze, the heart of man again beat with emotions, and affections once more resumed their sway.

But though all other hearts might throb freely, when the yellow moon loosened those bands of insupportable awe-yet to the Isiac priest this solemn day was but as one of the unchanging moments in his long night of existence. No passions might stir, no affections warm, him who had devoted himself to the still worship of the chaste goddess. Love, the soul's best virtue, was his crime, and its purest aspirations forbidden. He was the bound prisoner of forms and mistaken religion, and he must stifle the urgent cry of the heart's necessity in the hymns of the bigot's false zeal. He must die while in life, and with his own hands dig his dark grave beneath the sunlight.

Is the murder of the heart a crime less heinous than the murder of the body? Is the suicide of feeling less guilty than the suicide of existence? Let the victims answer!

Yet all the votaries of this stern creed could not thus wholly turn from the beautiful of warm life, from its loves, its desires, its affections, to the cold contemplation of heavenly things, or the speculations of an abstract philosophy. All could not so closely enwrap themselves in the white garb of their office, as to forget their manhood's nature. Many a blackened corpse suddenly slain, and apparently by no human hand, whose place, when among men, had been before the altar of Isis, and who had outraged her laws of deadly coldness, attested to the impossibility of universal obedience. Yet the oracles-the hierophants-declarers of the mysteries of the Mighty Mother-gave to such more than honourable burial; and, to the herd, named their death the proof of Her gracious preference; for she it was who had rapt their souls away, to dwell among the stars, freed from the frailities of humanity.

The priests of Isis may not love. Woe to him who forgets this law ! Of what avail are funeral honours and hired bewailers, when the blow has been struck home? The hierophant may weep-but it is not he who has slain? He may name the wretch's death, the heavenly love of Isis— would he, the dying sinner, have named it aught but murder clothed in the veil of punishment for crime? The juice of the chilling hemlockfastings and prayers-vows-resolutions-all may prove insufficient, and woman's beauty may still exert her god-bestowed power, to kindle those flames which man has forbidden: yet if these are thus insufficient, and the flames rise high, and consume and scorch, the steel, and the deadly drug, and the life-long imprisonment, are as so many books, from which the incautious priest may study, when too late, the forgotten lessons of prudence. Many, crafty and subtle, transgressed these laws, yet were not punished. But these were the men of policy, whose secret sins, at which the spirit of a love, falsely named unlawful, would blush to be compared, were hidden in darkness, and cloaked in an outward, exceeding, strictness. There are many such in life, and they gain, for their day, the honour of their fellows: after life-what?

In which class must be placed this young Isiac priest, who, the Mysteries of the Death ended, and himself released from the painful duties of

his office, wandered through the sacred groves beneath the waves of the moonbeams? His dark eyes, and swarthy brow which burned with fire, might not be his claim to a place among the still, cold, perfect-the Hermesian philosophers,-the fit priests of Isis. And neither might he be named one of the crafty wise; for his frank and fearless bearing,his youth's impetuosity impatient of control and concealment alike,his independence, and his pride, spoke him one of the brave and open, whose heart was too noble for the false principle and distorted morality of his sect.

Beautiful in feature and in person, the young priest might have served as a model for the dear son of Isis, Horus the Beloved, when first escaped from childhood. Yet his features were not beautiful from shape alone; their chief grace consisted in the depth of expression,-in the heart, the soul,-the intellect,--beaming from each line. But it was an intellect whose origin was feeling. It was not the cold logical reason of a subtle-witted man, whose thoughts could pierce like bladed spears; it was rather the warmth of the burning summer-cloud, which from love becomes the recipient of beauty and of gloriousness. But, alas! he was not rightly placed in his career of life! Zimnis, the Isiac priest, was a man born for action,-for an existence of outward energies,―an existence made up of deeds and strongest emotions. Nature never moulded him for a still, contemplative, inactive, mode of life-his most energetic deed, the priest's silent and secret influence,-his wildest passion, the zealot's pale, visionary faith. And oh! still less was he born to be a follower of the Loveless Law! Each word, each act, each thought, belied that law. His whole being was one with love and beauty. This was his life-his spirit-his fountain-spring of animation-without which he would lie in the sunlight, a stiffened corpse.

And now the dread ceremony over, Zimnis was again free to turn his steps whither he would :-though the name of Freedom was a mockery in that prison-isle of temples !-and with rapid feet, and unquiet mien, he hurried through the consecrated grove in which the awful Adytum, where the body of Osiris reposed, was placed. The bright flowers, which bloomed in such rich luxuriance round him, were passed by unheeded; their odorous sighs were breathed in vain; their gentle eyes lured unseen; and disregarded they held up their coloured, glancing cups, filled with the evening dew. The heart of Zimnis throbbed, and each nerve thrilled with strong emotion, and the fairest gifts and scenes lay as the dumb dead in his way. The songs of the parting birds, the glorious plumage of some, such as the emerald bee-eater, and the painted snipe, and the golden lapwing,-the melodious tones of others, the rainbowlike hues of the circling butterflies, as they hung on the lips of the white lily of the Nile, or hid in the bosoms of her brighter sisters, the blue and the crimson loti,—all these, beautiful as they were, and full of alluring charms, were neither seen nor heard by the youthful Hierophant. He pursued his way with a world in his own breast, which closed the avenues of outward sense, and, in the midst of the beautiful, rendered him ignorant of its loveliness.

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As he passed the pylon, or gateway, of the magnificent Temple of Isis, to which he more immediately belonged, though an assistant and participator generally in the rites of the other adyta of the Holy Isle, a shudder ran through him, and involuntarily he covered his face in his Was that strange horror the sting of remorse ?-the pang

robe.

of

shame, as he was thus forced to compare his office with his feelings,-to remember his vows in the midst of his passions? Or, was it not rather the dread of the prisoner, who, in his short space of freedom, was thus rudely reminded of the cell and the chain of his daily life? Ay! it was indeed the articulation of the heart's sorrows;-its dumb cry before the grave of its happiness! But the temple was now behind him; the dromos, or paved way, with its avenue of colossal sphynxes which led up to each Ædes, traversed; and Zimnis found himself on the shores of his Nile-girt home. The cool waves beat fresh against its rocks: the lines of silver, the path of the moon on the waters, lay like threads of Heaven's own weaving ;-cords, by which to ascend, in heart at least, to the glories of the Place of Tpe.* The stars had crowded out in countless numbers, making the night radiant and beautiful; their long, shining hair fell athwart the sky's black brow, and cinctured the blue with a gleaming coronet of Life. But to Zimnis, they seemed like the eyes of those good genii who watched over the life of his beloved, Oëri of Thebes. For to the lover, what image doth not recall the dear form ?— what sound doth not echo the dear voice ?-what beauty is not as an emanation of the adored spirit? And when love is named unlawful,— when strong principles war against it, when religion opposes, and superstition shrieks out aloud,-when vows bar its nurture, and custom names it crime, then does it grow deep and deeper; becoming like the tempest's consuming fire, where, with its course unchecked, it had glowed with a sunlight of gladness.

And because the love which the Isiac priest cherished for the Egyptian girl was deemed sinful, because it required courage in opposition and manliness in self-reliance, because it was forbidden, Zimnis nourished it yet more and more, according to the nature of man. And he kept it in his breast, tenderly as he would have hidden a young dove. He knew not that he had bound about his heart a snake-bright and flattering-but one whose kiss was death!

II.

OERI.

A WOMAN'S light step was heard. The sound struck the ear of the priest, and he started with a thrill of rapturous expectation. As he turned, a graceful figure swept from amongst the trees, and hastened to meet him. Her long thin veil she flung off with an impatient gesture, and her proud beauty stood revealed in the light of the moon. She was taller than most of her countrywomen; with limbs whose mould was at once firm and dignified, yet feminine and elegant; her feet, clad in the many-coloured sandals of Anthylla,† were as light and elastic in their tread as was the pace of the wild mouflont of the hills; and the small ancles, glancing below the broad hem of her robe, had put the antelope to shame for delicacy. Her dark, almond-shaped eyes, with their jetty lashes resting against her pale cheek, spoke of a haughty, tameless spirit. Their glances were like lightning flashes from a night-black cloud, as she turned those full orbs with a steady gaze of a quenchless pride, which owns nor superior nor equal. But when her

* Tpe: : a circling female form, representing the heavens.

†The royal pin-money city. Part of its revenues were paid to the reigning queen in wine, and part in sandals.

According to Laurence, &c., the patriarch of the Ovine tribe.

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