several parliaments. He afterwards went to Portugal,, and purchasing an estate at Cintra-that "glorious Eden" of the south-he built himself a palace for a residence.

"There thou, too, Vathek ! England's wealthiest son,
Once formed thy paradise, as not aware

When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done,—
Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan
Beneath yon mountain's ever-beauteous brow;
But now, as if a thing unblest by man,
Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou:
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To halls deserted, portals gaping wide;
Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how
Vain are the plesaunces on earth supplied,

Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide.”

"Recollections of an Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha," was published in 1835. The excursion was made in June 1794, at the desire of the Prince Regent of Portugal. Mr. Beckford describes the wonderful ancient ecclesiastical edifice of Alcobaça, with its princely monks, its paintings, and antique tombs and fountains, as only a mind of the highest imagination could do. The kitchen, whither he and his friends were conducted by the Abbot, to witness the preparations made to regale them, must have been worthy of an eastern sultan. "Through the centre of the immense and nobly-groined hall, not less than sixty feet in diameter, ran a brisk rivulet of the clearest water, containing every sort and size of the finest river fish. On one side loads of game and venison were heaped up; on the other vegetables and fruits in endless variety. Beyond a long line of stores extended a row of ovens, and close to them hillocks of wheaten

flour whiter than snow, rocks of sugar, jars of the purest oil, and pastry in vast abundance, which a numerous tribe of lay brothers and their attendants were rolling out and puffing up into a hundred different shapes, singing all the while as blithely as larks in a cornfield." This magnificent monastery was plundered and burnt by the French troops under Massena, in 1811. "Vathek," the fourth and last edition of which was published in 1834, by Bentley, is unquestionably Beckford's great work, the one for which he will always hold a high rank amongst romantic and imaginative writers. The first edition of this work in French was printed in 1786. It was written at the age of twenty-two, at one sitting, as Beckford himself told Cyrus Redding. Day and night he kept to his work, only stopping occasionally for refreshment, and as might have been expected, such protracted application brought on a fit of illness.

"Vathek," says Lord Byron, "bears such marks of originality, that those who have visited the East will have some difficulty in believing it to be more than a translation."

In his own preface, Mr. Beckford says, "J'ai preparé quelques épisodes; ils sont indiqués à la page 200,* comme faisant suite à Vathek; peut-être parâitront-ils un jour." But they have not appeared yet. Beckford at his house in Park Lane, in his eightieth year, read them to Cyrus Redding, in the twilight of a gloomy spring day, and without spectacles; but Mr. Redding does not appear to have considered these episodes important. He (Mr. Redding) mentions the fact, that Beckford gave strict orders for the purchase of a certain Eastern book, enti

We have given the titles of these Episodes; the only part ever written.

tled "Abdallah: les Aventures du Fils de Hanif, envoyé par le Sultan des Indes a la Découverte de l'Isle de Borico où est la Fontaine merveilleuse dont l'eau fait rajeunir." "There was nothing in 'Vathek,' says Mr. Redding, "that might not have been found in 'Abdallah,' which is supposed to be from an Arabic MS. found in Batavia, The time in which the events of the history occur is the reign of Chah-Jehan. The Hindoo mythology is commingled in it with that of the Arabs. Genius and Ginne, the Divs and Peris, the mountain Kaf, and the empire of Ginnistan; in fact Indian and Mohammedan notions intermingled, seemed to explain the source, which, from happening to be in the hands of young Beckford at the moment, supplied the images and terms which were requisite in order to render the Eastern illusion in 'Vathek' complete. The two kinds of Genii called Dives, or Divs and Peris masculine, and Perises and Dives feminine, according to the Mohammedan doctors, inhabited the earth before the creation of Adam. Dazzial and his ass, Lutfallah, Gian's sword, Ronschau and similar names or objects on which elaborate notes have been written, may all be found in the work in question."

Byron praises "Vathek" for its correctness of costume, beauty of description, and power of imagination. “As an Eastern tale," he says, “even Rasselas must bow before it; his Happy Valley will not bear a comparison with the Hall of Eblis."

As might be expected, the aim of the fortune-favoured author of "Vathek " appears to have been to realize through his surroundings the dreams and fictions of his fancy; yet he does not seem to have brought himself in bondage to his entourage, for, in 1822, he sold Fonthill Abbey, and left for Bath, taking with him his most precious valuables, and glad of the change.

Fonthill Abbey, Hazlitt called, "A desert of magnificence, a glittering waste of laborious idleness, a cathedral turned into a toy-shop, an immense museum of all that is most curious and costly, and at the same time most worthless in the productions of art and nature." The tower of the abbey seems to have met with the misfortunes incidental to all towers, from that of Babel downwards. At one time it tumbled down; at another was partially burnt, the owner himself watching the flames with as much composure as if they had not devoured what it would cost a fortune to repair; but Mr. Beckford had determined upon the completion of his cherished scheme, and once the royal works of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, were abandoned, that 460 men might be employed night and day on Fonthill Abbey. These men were made to relieve each other by regular watches; and during the longest and darkest nights of winter the astonished traveller might see the tower rising under their hands, the trowel and torch being associated for that purpose. This must have had a very extraordinary appearance, and we are told that it was another of those exhibitions which Mr. Beckford was fond of contemplating. He is represented as surveying the work thus expedited, the busy levy of masons, the high and giddy dancing of the lights, and the strange effects produced upon the architecture and woods below, from one of the eminences in the walks, and wasting the coldest hours of December darkness in feasting his sense with this display of almost superhuman power. Thus far the extinct Literary Gazette of 1822. Critics,

unless of a very rare kind indeed, are permitted to write nonsense with impunity; it pleases them, and does us little harm; but we may as well pause to ask what there is of "superhuman power" in a millionaire, the son of a

lucky city merchant, spending his money foolishly, and hastening to a rotten and unfinished completion a building which fell to decay before the paint was well dry, on its rococo and false decorations? Beckford seems to have been a second hand Horace Walpole, plus two millions of money, minus what wit the gossiping Horace had. The master threw off as a tour de force a somewhat rubbishing gothic romance, the "Castle of Otran... to;" his imitator did, in a like manner, produce "Vathek." Both romances have little moral, and are written with insufficient knowledge of time or place, yet both are so distant that the reader fails to detect incongruities, and the books form pleasant reading. Both authors claim to have merely played with letters. Walpole kept himself awake with strong coffee, and wrote his story "all at once." "Vathek" was also written "at one sitting." Walpole did not even know there was a castle at Otranto. Beckford was equally ignorant of the localities described in "Vathek." Walpole was, however, fonder of his child than Beckford; probably he was more truly the parent of his curiosity of literature, not the least curious part being that both books should become in some sort classics. Beckford even carried his imitation so far as to give in some respect a reproduction of Strawberry Hill at Fonthill. These details are characteristic of Mr. Beckford, and form an interesting illustration of his peculiar taste and genius.

In 1783, after three years of married life, his first wife died, and he immediately united himself to Lady Margaret Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Aboyne, a lady of wonderful sweetness of disposition, whom he met at Bath. He was then only twenty-four.

"His manners," says Cyrus Redding, speaking of him near the close of his long life, "his manners were those