attended with as much happiness as this world can
afford. O'Brien and I are blessed with children, until we can now muster
a large Christmas party in the two families.

Such is the history of Peter Simple, Viscount Privilege, no longer the
fool, but the head, of the family.

* * * * *

CHARLES MATURIN

Melmoth the Wanderer

The romances of Charles Robert Maturin mark the transition
stage between the old crude "Gothic" tales of terror and the
subtler and weirder treatment of the supernatural that had its
greatest master in Edgar Allan Poe. Maturin was born at Dublin
in 1782, and died there on October 30, 1824. He became a
clergyman of the Church of Ireland; but his leanings were
literary rather than clerical, and his first story, "Montorio"
(1807), was followed by others that brought him increasing
popularity. Over-zealousness on a friend's behalf caused him
heavy financial losses, for which he strove to atone by an
effort to write for the stage. Thanks to the good offices of
Scott and Byron, his tragedy, "Bertram," was acted at Drury
Lane in 1816, and proved successful. But his other dramatic
essays were failures, and he returned to romance. In 1820 was
published his masterpiece, "Melmoth the Wanderer," the central
figure of which is acknowledged to be one of the great Satanic
creations of literature. The book has been more appreciated in
France than in England; one of its most enthusiastic admirers
was Balzac, who paid it the compliment of writing a kind of
sequel to it.

_I.--The Portrait_

"I want a glass of wine," groaned the old man; "it would keep me alive a
little longer."

John Melmoth offered to get some for him. The dying man clutched the
blankets around him, and looked strangely at his nephew.

"Take this key," he said. "There is wine in that closet."

John knew that no one but his uncle had entered the closet for sixty
years--his uncle who had spent his life in greedily heaping treasure
upon treasure, and who, now, on his miserable death-bed, grudged the
clergyman's fee for the last sacrament.

When John stepped into the closet, his eyes were instantly riveted by a
portrait that hung on the wall. There was nothing remarkable about
costume or countenance, but the eyes, John felt, were such as one feels
they wish they had never seen. In the words of So