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 it—my soul shall drink its radiance—it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name!'

'Well said, Master Poet!' cried he of the spectacles. 'Hide it under thy cloak, say'st thou? Why, it will gleam through the holes, and make thee look like a jack-o'lantern!'

'To think!' ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself, than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse,—'to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of conveying the Great Carbuncle to a garret in Grub street! Have not I resolved within myself, that the whole earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain, but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White Mountains, did the Great Carbuncle hold a place half so honored, as is reserved for it in the hall of the de Veres!'

'It is a noble thought,' said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would