up to the roof in pillars, and stretch along the aisles of this temple of mortality,-pale, glimmering, and ghastly. Absorbed in melancholy reverie, 'Behold,' sighed I, as I gazed upon the columns of cross-bones, crowned with skulls, extending in dark and endless vistas through this valley of the shadow of death, the final consummation of human affairs, and all that remains of the once busy and countless generations of a great city, here hushed in eternal silence! Yet each of these mouldering frame-works piled around me once enclosed within its frail tenement a brain to think and a heart to feel, an eye that beamed with love and that sparkled with joy, and an ear that drank in the harmony of sweet sounds; but where now are those countless perceptions, and that world of thoughts and feelings? Have they only passed from the earth, or are they lost for ever? And do we hope and fear, and toil and sweat, and groan through the weary pilgrimage of life, for no better end at last than to lie down and moulder away into the cold earth, and be as if we had never been ?' "While I stood bewildered in these melancholy reflections, the taper suddenly dropt from my hand, and was extinguished, leaving me in utter darkness. Instinctively I uttered a loud shriek, which a moment's reflection prompted me to repeat, in hopes that it might reach the ears of some of the party from whom I had strayed; but it called back no reply but the deep and sullen echoes of the tomb; for my companions had speedily satisfied their curiosity, and had ascended from the vaults. "To guard against the possibility of accidents, when a party returns from the Catacombs, they are not allowed to separate until it be ascertained that their number is complete; and if any are missing, the vaults are immediately searched; but of this circumstance I was not then aware, and consequently believed that I was lost for ever. A cold perspiration broke over my whole body; I stood fixed to the spot in a trance of horror and despair. A thousand hideous forms of darkness seemed to flit past me,-the skulls, with their eyeless sockets, seemed to scowl upon me, my head became dizzy,-the vaults, with their skeleton pillars, spun round me in the dance of death,―my brain reeled, and I fell against a crashing pile of mortality, where I swooned away. "My return to sensibility was accompanied by the usual horrors attendant in such cases upon the struggles of nature; but just as the lights had ceased to flash in my eyes, and the strange unearthly sounds to ring in my ears, I became conscious of the faint echo of distant voices. A gleam of hope came over me, and, starting to my feet, I uttered a wild cry, which rung like a death-knell through the vaults. Terrified at the sound of my own voice, I listened a moment, and heard my call answered from far away. In a short time the voices became more audible, and faint streaks of light began to stream through the gloom. I had been missed upon the ascent of the party, who had returned in search of me, and by whom I was thus rescued from one of the most horrible situations to which human nature can be exposed." |