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"I am perfectly willing to take advice, and to pay for it. I would really give fifty thousand francs to any one who would aid me in the matter."

"In that case," replied Dupin, opening a drawer and producing a cheque-book, "you may as well fill me up a check for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter."

covering himself in some measure, he seized a pen, and after several pauses and vacant stares, finally filled up and signed a cheque for fifty thousand francs, and handed it across the table to Dupin. The latter examined it carefully, and deposited it in his pocket-book; then, unlocking an escritoire, took thence a letter and gave it to the prefect. I was astounded. The prefect appeared absolutely This functionary grasped it in a perfect agony of thunderstricken. For some minutes he remained joy, opened it with a trembling hand, cast a rapid speechless and motionless, looking incredulously glance at its contents, and then, scrambling and at my friend with open mouth, and eyes that seemed struggling to the door, rushed at length uncerestarting from their sockets; then, apparently re-moniously from the room, and from the house,

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter, than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search.

without having uttered a syllable since Dupin had requested him to fill up the cheque.

When he had gone my friend entered into some To be sure, it was-to all appearance-radically explanations.

"The Parisian police," he said, "are exceedingly able in their way. They are persevering, ingenious, cunning, and thoroughly versed in the knowledge, which their duties seem chicfly to demand. Thus, when G― detailed to us his mode of searching the premises at the Hotel D—, I felt entire confidence in his having made a satisfactory investigation, so far as his labours extended. But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, and discriminating ingenuity of D- -; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand, if he intended to use it to good purpose; and upon the decisive evidence obtained by the prefect, that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search, the more satisfied I became that, to conceal this letter, the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all. Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called, one fine morning, quite by accident, at the ministerial hotel. I found Dat home, yawning, lounging, and dawdling as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is, perhaps, the most really energetic human being now alive, but that is only when nobody sees him.

"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes, and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I curiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only on the conversation of my host.

"I paid especial attention to a large writingtable upon which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instruments, and a few books. Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion.

"At length my eyes, in going the circuit of the room, fell upon a trumpery filagree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two across the middle-as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless, had been altered or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal, bearing the D- cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed, in a diminutive female hand, to D, the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uttermost divisions of the rack.

different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D--- cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S― family. Here the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription to a certain royal personage was markedly bold and decisive; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But, then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive-the dirt; the soiled condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document; these things, together with the hyper-obtrusive situation of this document, full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived; these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the intention to suspect.

"I protracted my visit as long as possible; and while I maintained a most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination, I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack, and also fell, at length, upon a discovery which set at rest whatever doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinising the edges of the paper, I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appear. ance seen when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is re folded in a reverse direction in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, re-directed, and re-scaled. I bade the minister good morning, and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.

D

"The next morning I called for the snuff-box, when we resumed quite eagerly the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the window of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified mob. rushed to a casement, threw it open, and looked out. In the meantime I stepped to the card-rack, took the letter, put it in my pocket, and replaced it by a fac-simile (so far as regards externals), which I had carefully prepared at my lodgings, imitating the D- cipher very readily by means of a seal formed of bread.

THE IDIOT.

"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behaviour of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lunatic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object. in view. Soon afterwards I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay."

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"But," I asked, "would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have seized the letter openly, and departed?"

"D" replied Dupin, "is a desperate man, and a man of nerve. His hotel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more."

ABOU BEN ADHEM [LEIGH HUNT, born at Southgate, Middlesex, October 19, 1784.

ANGEL.

AND THE Educated at Christ's Hospital. Imprisoned for two years for a satire on the Prince Regent. Died August 29, 1859.]

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel, writing in a book of gold.
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem- bold,
And to the presence in the room he said-

Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one ?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still, and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow-men."
The angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,

"What writest thou ?" The vision raised its head, And showed the names whom love of God had blest; And, with a look made of all sweet accord,

And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest.

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POOR widow, in a small town in the north of England, kept a booth or stall of apples and sweetmeats. She had an idiot child, so utterly helpless and dependent, that he did not appear to be ever alive to anger or selfdefence. He sat all day at her feet, and seemed to be possessed of no other sentiment of the human kind than confidence in his mother's love, and a dread of the schoolboys, by whom he was often annoyed. His whole occupation, as he sat on the ground, was in swinging backwards and forwards, singing "pal-lal" in a low pathetic voice, only interrupted at intervals on the appearance of any of his tormentors, when he clung to his mother in alarm. From morning till evening he sung his plaintive and aimless ditty; at night, when his poor mother gathered up her little wares to return home, so deplorable did his defects appear, that, while she carried her table on her head, her stock of little merchandise in her

lap, and her stool in one hand, she was obliged to lead him by the other. Ever and anon, as any of the schoolboys appeared in view, the harmless thing clung close to her, and hid his face in her bosom for protection. A human creature so far below the standard of humanity, was nowhere ever seen: he had not even the shallow cunning which is often found among these unfinished beings; and his simplicity could not even be measured by the standard that would apply to the capacity of a lamb. Yet it had a feeling rarely manifested even in the affectionate dog, and a knowledge never shown by any mere animal. He was sensible of his mother's kindness, and how much he owed to her care. At night, when she spread his humble pallet, though he knew not prayer, nor could comprehend the solemnities of worship, he prostrated himself at her feet; and as he kissed them, mumbled a kind of mental orison, as if in fond and holy devotion. In the morning, before she went abroad to resume her station in the market-place, he peeped anxiously out to reconnoitre the street; and as often as he saw any of the schoolboys in the way, he held her firmly back, and sung his sorrowful "pal-lal."

One day the poor woman and her idiot boy were missed from the market-place, and the charity of some of the neighbours induced them to visit. her hovel. They found her dead on her sorry

couch, and the boy sitting beside her, holding her hand, swinging and singing his pitiful lay more sorrowfully than he had ever done before. He could not speak, but only utter a brutish gabble; sometimes, however, he looked as if he comprehended something of what was said. On this occasion, when the neighbours spoke to him, he looked up with the tear in his eye; and clasping the cold hand more tenderly, sunk the strain of his mournful "pal-lal" into a softer and sadder

key. The spectators, deeply affected, raised him from the body; and he surrendered his hold of the earthly hand without resistance, retiring in silence to an obscure corner of the room. One of them, looking towards the others, said to them, "Poor wretch! what shall we do with him?" At that moment he resumed his chant; and, lifting two handfuls of dust from the floor, sprinkled it on his head, and sung with a wild and clear heartpiercing pathos, “Pal-lal, pal-lal.”

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"Some thief, whom a halter will throttleSome scoundrel has cut off the head of my horse, While I was engaged at the bottle, Which went gluggity, gluggity, glug, glug, glug!"

The tail of the steed pointed south on the dale,

"Twas the friar's road home straight and true, sir; But, when spurred, a horse follows his nose, not his tail,

So he scampered due north like the deuce, sir. "This new mode of docking," the friar then said,

"I perceive doesn't make a horse trot ill; And 'tis cheap,-for he never can eat off his head, While I am engaged at the bottle, Which goes gluggity, gluggity, glug, glug, glug!"

The steed made a stop; in a pond he had got,

He was rather for drinking than grazing; Quoth the friar, ""Tis strange headless horses should trot;

But to drink with their tails is amazing!" Turning round to see whence this phenomenon

rose,

In the pond fell this son of a pottle; Quoth he, "The head's found, for I'm under his

nose;

I wish I were over a bottle,

Which goes gluggity, gluggity, glug, glug, glug!"

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[Mr. EDWARD CAPERN, originally a postman at Bideford. His charming lyrics obtained for him-not so soon as they should have done some small recognition in the shape of a Government pension, and he has since been enabled to relinquish the severe daily labour, in which his ardent love of Nature must have been a support and consolation.]

I WOULD the world could see thee as I behold thee, | I would all ears could listen to thy merrymaking, May,

With eyes like sapphires gleaming through the orchards by the way;

With the campion and the crowfoot on thy daisy. jewell'd vest,

May,

Could listen as I listen to thy happy roundelay;

Then a louder song would greet us from thy orchestra of leaves,

And a wreath of apple-blossoms dropping down For fewer birds would break their hearts because upon thy breast.

I would all eyes could see thee as I behold thee

now,

With the woodruff and the bluebell, and the lily on thy brow;

With thy kirtle richly purpled with the gorse's golden boss,

And the orchis and the violet, the primrose and

the moss.

VOL. I.

of little thieves.

A form of life and beauty, I see thee, lovely
May,

Breathing balm upon the meadows from each
sweetly-scented spray;

From the lilac and the hawthorn, and the furze upon the down,

And the wallflower by the waysido in its dress of cottage brown.

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