furnace; as soon as it boiled, the operator threw in several ingredients separately, submitting the whole to the careful inspection of the Prince and his followers; lastly, he poured in a few drops of a small phial, which he produced from a curious case; a thick white vapour arose, diffusing through the chamber an odour so strong and pungent as to oblige the surrounding spectators to withdraw to some distance. The operator then approached the furnace, declaring the transmutation to be now completed, and removed the crucible, originally containing the quicksilver, from the fire; a light spungy black cinder apparently filled it, but on removing the exterior surface, a button of gold was found below, weighing more than one-third of the mercury employed. No doubt remained on the minds of all present as to the accuracy of the experiment, and the entire success attending the result. The Prince impatiently demanded the price of this inexhaustible mine of wealth. The professor humbly remarked that any sum that could be given was but as the dust under the feet of him who already possessed the secret; he required no recompense, except the glory of standing in the presence of the King's son, and enjoying the smiles of his favour: he only asked a house wherein to conduct his operations, and unfold the mysteries of the golden science to the pupils appointed for initiation. He had already discovered a small empty house, he said, which pleased him, and would precisely suit his purpose, if the Prince would condescend to grant an order for his occupying it. The order was immediately written, and sealed with the royal signet. The Prince, after the warmest assurances of his gratitude and protection for ever, dismissed the assembly, and commanded some of his servants to accompany the professor, and put him in possession of the house designated in the order, which was precisely the old dwelling of the long unheard-of Allaverdi; his baggage soon followed him, and he was left for the remainder of the day to make the necessary arrangements previous to commencing his operations on a larger scale. How did the heart of Allaverdi (for it was he) beat as he closed the door of the court-yard, and found himself once more alone in his own little chamber, which had not undergone the slightest alteration during his absence. Time and sufferings, with the growth of his beard, and change of dress, had so completely altered his appearance, that he felt sure of passing his oldest and most intimate friends unknown. "Now then," he exultingly exclaimed, "I shall see the end of all my wanderings, slavery, escapes, and poverty; all will now be amply repaid, and an old age of ease and affluence will terminate a life wasted with toil and anxieties. Fools! avaricious, greedy, infatuated idiots!" he continued, regarding the heavy purse containing the produce of his flattering communications; "to credit for a moment that the possessor of incalculable treasures would barter them for a few pieces of that dross of which he could at pleasure create millions." He determined that night to dig up his jewels, and to leave the town with them on the morrow, under pretence of collecting the herbs and simples requisite, as it was believed, for the composition of the elixir of trans mutation. He was eating his solitary evening meal, when a violent clamour at the door of the house alarmed him; loud cries and imprecations on the impostor confirmed the worst fears that some of his plans had miscarried. In an instant, the chamber was filled with armed men, who, in the name of the governor, seized and bound the deluding adventurer. The accusations against him were numerous and well-founded; some of his private disciples, neglecting his strict injunctions of four days' delay, and impatient to prove by their own experience the efficacy of their dearly acquired knowledge, had repeated the experiment without success. Enraged at their actual loss, and the disappointment of their golden hopes, they hastened to carry their complaints to the governor, where they met many of their acquaintances engaged in a similar errand; mutual explanations ensued, and the outcry against the impudent impostor became general; an order for his arrest was, in consequence, soon obtained. When led before the governor he refused to answer his accusers, declaring that through envy only they sought to ruin him, a stranger, in the eyes of the Prince; that he never had communicated the secret to any of them for money, and insisted upon being taken before the Prince, when he would again prove, by ocular demonstation, that he was not the impostor which they would represent him. As none of the complainants could produce a second witness to any of the alleged facts, the governor, finding ten pieces of gold in his lap, during the examination and short explanation of the accused, complied with his request; he was confined for the night, and the next day was conducted to the same chamber where he had performed his first essay. The Prince, curious to behold a second time the promising miracle, soon arrived, and commanded the proof experiment to proceed. The professor boldly advanced, approached the furnace with all confidence, but suddenly stopping, felt anxiously in his pockets, faultered, and became confused and agitated; in fact, the paper containing the powder mixed with gold dust, which formed the only essential ingredient in the composition, was no where to be found; ruin, inevitable ruin, he saw awaited him; in an agony of shame and vexation, he confessed that he wasnot at the moment prepared for the experiment, having by some misfortune lost the elixir; but that on any future day he would lose his head if he made not his words good. All believed this a poor excuse only to gain time; his accusers recommenced their exclamations against him, and demanded justice for the fraud practised upon them; many even asserted, that his life would not compensate for the insult offered to the person of the King's son, who seemed fast inclining to the same opinion. The indignant Prince called for the ferashes, and the rods for the bastinado. All hope seemed lost. The miserable culprit was already thrown on his back, ⚫ with his ancles in the noose, attached to a long pole supported by two ferashes, in such a manner as to expose the soles of his feet to the blows of the two executioners, who stood on each side of him armed with heavy sticks; when, making a sudden effort, he turned his face towards the Prince, and cried out, "O, son of the King, hearken to the voice of truth, and let the beauty of mercy rest on thy countenance; say, hast thou not lost the richest of thy jewels? what is the recompense of him who restores them?" The Prince replied, " He who again binds the armlets on my arm, and replaces the dagger in my girdle, shall have his face made fair, although it were blackened with many crimes." " But swear," cried the criminal, "swear by thy own head, by the beard of the King thy father, and by the sacred Koran." "I swear," repeated the Prince. "Go then to the house of Allaverdi," he continued, "of him who now lies before thee, dig in the chamber to the left on entering, and ye shall find what ye seek." All stood amazed at this unexpected discovery; the Prince ordered some of his ministers and servants to go and examine the house, and others to unbind the prisoner. "If," he said, "thy words are true, mine shall be the same, and thou shalt rise high in my favour; but if they are false, thou diest." " I ask no other," submissively answered Allaverdi: he then related his adventures to the great astonishment of the whole court, and the delight of the Prince, which was much increased by the messengers returning loaded with nearly all the long lost jewels. All the faults of the accused vanished in the joy of that moment; in vain his poor deluded dupes claimed restitution of their money; they themselves only became subjects of ridicule; royal favours showered upon him, which his intriguing spirit knew well how to turn to the best advantage.---Allaverdi yet lives in the enjoyment of high honours, and the possession of so much wealth, that at his death his son may reasonably expect the honour of a severe bastonadoing, either to induce him to relinquish the whole, or, at least, to refund a large portion of his father's ill-gotten treasure into the coffers of his most equitable protector and sovereign. J. W. W. MAY, 1823. A PARTHIAN PEEP AT LIFE. 1. A MURRAIN on it, Dick! The joys, I seem to have robb'd St. Thomas! 2. Dost thou remember, man! the hours 3. The book beneath the dappling shade, By country air and boyhood ? For nests which we destroy would? 4. Filch'd pleasures too-Oh Dick! my boy- Of a' name I trace my soul in!) Than wildest crabs then stolen?- The school-dance too! How full of mirth! Why, man,-thou canst not be Dick! ON BEAUTY, AND OTHER CONDITIONS OF FACE. NOTHING has exposed Beauty to branded-as outcasts from the dea so much odium and ill-will, as the est benefits and first honours of our bombastic misrepresentations of her being. What peace can there be professed encomiasts and flatterers. the world under such a dispensation Like most earthly sovereigns, she of its blessings? If a perfect fact owes her worst enemies to the blun- is the only bait that can tempt dering zeal and officiousness of her angel from the skies, what is to be th friends. The poets, or the courtiers recompence of the unfortunate wit and danglers of her council, have a wide mouth, and a turn-up nose? invested her with such outrageous prerogatives, extended her empire for beauty has this peculiar ill-effect The extravagant influence claime so much beyond its natural limits, that it produces nothing but fretta and made her altogether of so much ness and bad fellowship in both more importance in the system of the great classes into which humsethe world, than she is or ought to kind is divided: those without the be, that nine-tenths of the human pale are burning with envy race, who are not of her family, malice against those within, who in feeling themselves irremediably pro their turn are harassed by the sa scribed, insulted, and degraded, by order of feelings, and by others m her arrogant assumptions, have no at all more gentle and friendly, to resource, as a measure of self-de- wards one another. With the ladies fence and justification, but in flat the very name is a watch-word that rebellion. I am myself, I perceive, calls to arms and to battle; the Ultras on this subject, and am party, incapable of settlement, and talking as of a goddess, when I mean cheeks. I beg to correct myself. never to be discussed or Like thought of nothing more in my heart, than a without heat, and rage, and unap pair of agreeable eyes, and rosy peasable contradiction. This la who is ugly, makes her life miser If there be truth in the familiar able, by her ceaseless anxiety Irant that we hear so much of, both prove that there is no such quality Isaid and sung, on the accident of as beauty; and another, who is beauty, those who are not beautiful beautiful, is equally removed fr stand convicted at once-signed- happiness, by the restless pains wi a S " which she insists, that it is the lot of no one but herself. "A woman,' says the President Henault, "will praise one of her sex for any thing but her beauty;" that is, she will praise her for any or every honourable distinction, for the very purpose of denying that she has the smallest pretensions of face. "Miss-is very clever, and plays charmingly on the harpsichord-in other words, she is any thing but handsome." No persons have a more hyperbolical opinion of the power and glory of beauty, than the unelect; and hinc illæ lachrymæ; hence undoubtedly their peevishness and spite. They attach to it a significance that is altogether romantic, and with this exaggerated estimate of it in their hearts, betray their secret with their tongues, either by denying its existence against the most irresistible evidence, or by refusing to it that moderate degree of control which really and plainly belongs to it. A woman of sense and feeling, without exterior attractions, regards a beauty as an unrighteous tyrant; one who, on the strength of her mere clay, usurps all hearts; arrogates to herself the empire of love, a passion which she can neither understand nor requite, to the exclusion of those who, whatever may be their features, alone have souls fit for its home and its worship. This is not true:beauty has no such excesses to answer for. The conduct of men, since the Deluge, has proved, that love (the true thing) is not mere fealty to a face. The very least angelical, who reasonably contend for all the mind and feeling of the sex, should know, that all which is most profound and impassioned in that sentiment which beauty, to say the worst of it, can no more than inspire, will be given to their worthiness; and with this distinguished advantage, that, being raised on the only safe foundation, it will, when once accorded to them, endure for ever. Beauty may be a short cut to that eminence, which ugliness, or any thing else that you please better than beauty, must reach by a dark, doubtful, and circuitous route: but if her possession is more immediate, it is less secure; if her rule is more absolute, it is less constant and durable. If an ugly woman of wit and worth cannot be loved till she is known, a beautiful fool will cease to please when she is found out. A greater variety-a more certain and rapid succession of miscellaneous homage this truly is chargeable to beauty; but surely the ultra-sentimental should not make this barren honour a subject for their envy and disquiet. Instantaneous and universal admiration-the eye-worship of the world, is unquestionably the reward of the best faces; and the male-contents had much better come into the general opinion with a good grace, than be making themselves at once unhappy and ridiculous, by their hollow and self-betraying recusancy. Let them face the truth boldly; it is not worth the pains of opposition. Concede to the pretty tyrant all that she asks and can obtain, and it is still but a trifle. There are differences of opinion, it is true, on this point. Madame de Staël, with all her genius and knowledge, and with no imperfect consciousness of her merits, is reported to have declared, that she would would cheerfully have given up her accumulated and various distinctions, for the single attribute of beauty. Her name is high authority certainly, but will scarcely sanctify such profanation as this. If she really made so silly a declaration, and made it from her heart, it proves only, that profound sensibility, and a generous ambition, were not among the number of her many eminent qualifications. The woman--the Frenchwoman--was uppermost, in spite of all her philosophy. If fame, the notice of numbers, was her object, she must have been a loser by the exchange of means which she desired; for she never could have been seen so extensively as she has been heard. If it was the dominion of love that she calculated upon, we must conclude that, being already married, her pride would have been to please, not a husband, but a host. So weak an aspiration might be pardoned in a girl too young to feel a sterling passion, and to form a rational preference; but one who, without beauty, had already secured its noblest triumphs-what was the gift to do for her? what influence was it to bring that could aid-nay, in the spirit in which it was coveted, that would not |