"
The idea here is, that the figure in the cloak is the phantom or
reduplication of Sir William Howe, but in an article called "William
Wilson," one of the "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque," we have
not only the same idea, but the same idea similarly presented in
several respects. We quote two paragraphs, which our readers may
compare with what has been already given.
"The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been sufficient
to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangement at the
upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror, it appeared to me,
now stood where none had been perceptible before: and as I stepped
up to it in extremity of terror, mine own image, but with features all
pale and dabbled in blood, advanced with a feeble and tottering gait
to meet me.
"Thus it appeared I say, but was not. It was Wilson, who then
stood before me in the agonies of dissolution. Not a line in all the
marked and singular lineaments of that face which was not even
identically mine own. His mask and cloak lay where he had thrown them,
upon the floor."
Here it will be observed, not only are the two general conceptions
identical but there are various points of similarity. In each case the
figure seen is the wraith or duplication of the beholder. In each case
the scene is a masquerade.
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