looked up to by a certain set who would like
to be intellectual too. The excitement amongst
us was intense: we freely used the words
calumny, malice, falsehood—and one girl, a
soldier's daughter, said "lying." But it was
all right in such a cause; for the more vehement
our indignation the more complimentary
to Madame. I was in a fright, to be sure,
lest my confidante should, in the excitement,
forget her solemn promise not to tell, and let
out my secret. The subject was discussed, day
by day by us, to please Madame—by Madame
in sad earnestness. At length she requested
her friend Miss Montague, a great lady in
Grosvenor Square, to ascertain the truth of the
matter; for she knew a little of Mrs. Horseman's
sister, and could ask her, which I suppose
she did, for in a few days she came to Mrs.
Ruleit with the result of the interview. Miss
Chickworth, the sister, wishing to be well
with Grosvenor Square, denied it in toto,
"felt convinced her sister had never said a
word in disparagement of Madame, but trusted
Miss Montague would excuse her being told
of the occurrence," as "it would infinitely
distress her, and might be prejudicial, as she
was a nurse; "we knew nothing about being
a nurse, how should we? so we decided it
was only a ruse; and when we went out to
walk, relieved our feelings by looking daggers
at the houses opposite.

When the holidays came, we went home,
and the school dwindled, and dwindled, and
poor dear Madame drooped, and drooped,
until she was compelled at last to let her
house and accept the kind offer of some
relatives to make her home with them. I never
saw her more, but I retain a grateful
recollection of her painstaking anxiety for my
improvement; and I learned from the anguish
I witnessed there, never to say one word
lightly, or unadvisedly, in disparagement of
a ladies' school.

                        VAMPYRES.

OF all the creations of superstition, a Vampyre
is, perhaps, the most horrible. You are
lying in your bed at night, thinking of
nothing but sleep, when you see, by the faint
light that is in your bed-chamber, a shape
entering at the door, and gliding towards you
with a long sigh, as of the wind across the
open fields when darkness has fallen upon
them. The thing moves along the air as if
by the mere act of volition; and it has a
human visage and figure. The eyes stare
wildly from the head; the hair is bristling;
the flesh is livid; the mouth is bloody.

You lie still—like one under the influence
of the night-mare—and the thing floats slowly
over you. Presently you fall into a dead sleep
or swoon, returning, up to the latest moment
of consciousness, the fixed and glassy stare of
the phantom. When you awake in the
morning, you think it is all a dream, until you
perceive a small, blue, deadly-looking, spot on
your chest near the heart; and the truth
flashes on you. You say nothing of the matter
to your friends; but you know you are
a doomed man—and you know rightly. For
every night comes the terrible Shape to your
bed-side, with a face that seems horrified at
itself, and sucks your life-blood in your sleep.
You feel it is useless to endeavour to avoid
the visitation, by changing your room or your
locality: you are under a sort of cloud of
fate.

Day after day you grow paler and more
languid: your face becomes livid, your eyes
leaden, your cheeks hollow. Your friends
advise you to seek medical aid—to take
change of air—to amuse your mind; but you
are too well aware that it is all in vain.
You therefore keep your fearful secret to
yourself; and pine, and droop, and languish,
till you die. When you are dead (if you will
be so kind as to suppose yourself in that
predicament), the most horrible part of the
business commences. You are then yourself
forced to become a Vampyre, and to create
fresh victims; who, as they die, add to the
phantom stock.

The belief in Vampyres appears to have
been most prevalent in the south-east of
Europe, and to have had its origin there.
Modern Greece was its cradle; and among
the Hungarians, Poles, Wallachians, and
other Sclavonic races bordering on Greece,
have been its chief manifestations. The early
Christians of the Greek Church believed that
the bodies of all the Latin Christians buried in
Greece were unable to decay, because of their
excommunication from that fold of which the
Emperor of Russia now claims to be the
sovereign Pope and supreme Shepherd. The
Latins, of course, in their turn, regarded
these peculiar mummies as nothing less
than saints; but the orthodox Greeks
conceived that the dead body was animated by a
demon who caused it to rise from its grave
every night, and conduct itself after the
fashion of a huge mosquito. These dreadful
beings were called Brucolacs; and, according
to some accounts, were not merely manufactured
from the dead bodies of heretics, but
from those of all wicked people who have
died impenitent. They would appear in divers
places in their natural forms; would run a
muck indiscriminately at whomsoever they
met, like a wild Malay; would injure some,
and kill others outright; would occasionally,
for a change, do some one a good service;
but would, for the most part, so conduct
themselves that nothing could possibly be
more aggravating or unpleasant. Father
Richard, a French Jesuit of the seventeenth
century, who went as a missionary to the
Archipelago, and who has left us an account of the
Island of Santerini, or Saint Irene, the Thera
of the ancients, discourses largely on the subject
of Brucolacs. He says, that when the
persecutions of the Vampyres become
intolerable, the graves of the offending parties are