se negotiator, away! See, the scroll
of the storm is rolled back; the house is unharmed; and in the blue
heavens I read in the rainbow, that the Deity will not, of purpose, make
war on man's earth."

"Impious wretch!" foamed the stranger, blackening in the face as the
rainbow beamed, "I will publish your infidel notions."

The scowl grew blacker on his face; the indigo-circles enlarged round
his eyes as the storm-rings round the midnight moon. He sprang upon me;
his tri-forked thing at my heart.

I seized it; I snapped it; I dashed it; I trod it; and dragging the dark
lightning-king out of my door, flung his elbowed, copper sceptre after
him.

But spite of my treatment, and spite of my dissuasive talk of him to my
neighbors, the Lightning-rod man still dwells in the land; still travels
in storm-time, and drives a brave trade with the fears of man.

THE ENCANTADAS; OR, ENCHANTED ISLES

* * * * *

SKETCH FIRST.

THE ISLES AT LARGE.

--"That may not be, said then the ferryman,
Least we unweeting hap to be fordonne;
For those same islands seeming now and than,
Are not firme land, nor any certein wonne,
But stragling plots which to and fro do ronne
In the wide waters; therefore are they hight
The Wandering Islands; therefore do them shonne;
For they have oft drawne many a wandring wight
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight;
For whosoever once hath fastened
His foot thereon may never it secure
But wandreth evermore uncertein and unsure."

* * * * *

"Darke, dolefull, dreary, like a greedy grave,
That still for carrion carcasses doth crave;
On top whereof ay dwelt the ghastly owl,
Shrieking his balefull note, which ever drave
Far from that haunt all other cheerful fowl,
And all about it wandring ghosts did wayle and howl."

Take five-and-twenty heaps of cinders dumped here and there in an
outside city lot; imagine some of them magnified into mountains, and
the vacant lot the sea; and you will have a fit idea of the general
aspect of the Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles. A group rather of extinct
volcanoes than of isles; looking much as the world at large might, after
a penal conflagration.

It is to be doubted whether any spot of earth can, in desolateness,
furnish a parallel to this group. Abandoned cemeteries of long ago, old
cities by piecemeal tumbling to their ruin, these are melancholy e