95 A Quartette. PLAY, while the lamplight lingers Over the sable curls, Over the lissome fingers, The smooth brown braids of the girls; Play, till the sweet sad singing Of viol, piano, and bass Sends thought to the brain upspringing, And blood to the thinker's face. It makes me dream and remember A sweet night ages ago, A night of a chill December When the earth was veiled in snow; A lithe and a gentle form, Dark eyes that sought to mine, And made my glad heart warm Like a draught of Italian wine. She sings with the Blessed now, I sit with a head that may not bow, Around, and all before me Is the time when her fingers bore me 96 A Survivor of the Terror. THE site of the ancient Temple of Diana in the Tauric Chersonese --better known as the Russian Crimea-whither Iphigenia was mysteriously conveyed to serve as priestess before the altar of the vestal goddess, has long since been dedicated to the purposes of Christian devotion, represented by the Eastern branch of the Church Catholic. The terrace of St. George's Monastery, commanding a wide and magnificent prospect, slopes downward over a stretch of fertile garden-ground to the base of the lofty and almost beetling cliff, on the summit of which the huge building stands, where a beach of sand is fretted by rocks of the wildest and most bizarre shapes and outlines. During the terrible autumn and winter of 1854-55, when hundreds of siege guns were bellowing from their iron throats against the walls of the Russian Gibraltar, probably only one individual within a radius of many miles from the beleaguered city failed to catch an echo from those volcanic thunderbolts. Close beside one of the before-mentioned fantastic rocks, or giant boulders, there stood, at this very period, a rude stonebuilt, moss-mantled hut or shanty, whose existence was known only to the inmates of the neighbouring monastery. On entering it with a feeling akin to superstitious awe, a stranger would have found himself suddenly in presence of a human figure, whose weird and wizard-like aspect would certainly not have reassured him. It was that of a man almost preternaturally aged; whose wan and withered cheeks, fleshless hands and fingers, and the stony stare of his apparently sightless eyes, gave him rather the semblance of a resuscitated mummy than a living and breathing shape of mortal flesh and blood. His white beard, flowing down to his waist, was fastened to the long, loose, faded black robe, which served to hide his skeleton form, by a leathern girdle almost worn threadbare with time. Frère Antoine, as the monks of St. George called this singular being, had dwelt here in unbroken seclusion since the day when he first descended the steep ravine bordered by luxuriant and evergreen trees, which forms the only avenue of communication betwixt the cloister and the sea-shore. His history was a mysterious secret to all his brother monks, as they styled themselves by a sort of courteous fiction; for Frère Antoine, though he had from time |