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of excellent texture -- a white ground, spotted with small circular green figures. At the windows were curtains
of snowy white jaconet muslin: they were tolerably full, and hung decisively, perhaps rather formally in sharp,
parallel plaits to the floor -- just to the floor. The walls were prepared with a French paper of great delicacy, a
silver ground, with a faint green cord running zig-zag throughout. Its expanse was relieved merely by three of
Julien's exquisite lithographs a trois crayons, fastened to the wall without frames. One of these drawings was a
scene of Oriental luxury, or rather voluptuousness; another was a "carnival piece," spirited beyond compare;
the third was a Greek female head -- a face so divinely beautiful, and yet of an expression so provokingly
indeterminate, never before arrested my attention.
The more substantial furniture consisted of a round table, a few chairs (including a large rocking-chair), and a
sofa, or rather "settee;" its material was plain maple painted a creamy white, slightly interstriped with green;
the seat of cane. The chairs and table were "to match," but the forms of all had evidently been designed by the
same brain which planned "the grounds;" it is impossible to conceive anything more graceful.
On the table were a few books, a large, square, crystal bottle of some novel perfume, a plain ground -- glass
astral (not solar) lamp with an Italian shade, and a large vase of resplendently-blooming flowers. Flowers,
indeed, of gorgeous colours and delicate odour formed the sole mere decoration of the apartment. The
fire-place was nearly filled with a vase of brilliant geranium. On a triangular shelf in each angle of the room
stood also a similar vase, varied only as to its lovely contents. One or two smaller bouquets adorned the
mantel, and late violets clustered about the open windows.
It is not the purpose of this work to do more than give in detail, a picture of Mr. Landor's residence -- as I
found it. How he made it what it was -- and why -- with some particulars of Mr. Landor himself -- may,
possibly form the subject of another article.
~~~ End of Text ~~~
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WILLIAM WILSON
What say of it? what say of CONSCIENCE grim, That spectre in my path?
Chamberlayne's Pharronida.
LET me call myself, for the present, William Wilson. The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied
with my real appellation. This has been already too much an object for the scorn -- for the horror -- for the
detestation of my race. To the uttermost regions of the globe have not the indignant winds bruited its
unparalleled infamy? Oh, outcast of all outcasts most abandoned! -- to the earth art thou not forever dead? to
its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations? -- and a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless, does it not
hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?
I would not, if I could, here or to-day, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery, and
unpardonable crime. This epoch -- these later years -- took unto themselves a sudden elevation in turpitude,
Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor 111
whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign. Men usually grow base by degrees. From me, in an
instant, all virtue dropped bodily as a mantle. From comparatively trivial wickedness I passed, with the stride
of a giant, into more than the enormities of an Elah-Gabalus. What chance -- what one event brought this evil
thing to pass, bear with me while I relate. Death approaches; and the shadow which foreruns him has thrown a
softening influence over my spirit. I long, in passing through the dim valley, for the sympathy -- I had nearly
said for the pity -- of my fellow men. I would fain have them believe that I have been, in some measure, the
slave of circumstances beyond human control. I would wish them to seek out for me, in the details I am about
to give, some little oasis of fatality amid a wilderness of error. I would have them allow -- what they cannot [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]