engaging to return to the prison at an early hour in the morning to perform his office.

The gaoler is forced to be content, though troubled with great misgivings, the stranger departs, and silence falls upon the prison.

In the morning the sheriff receives a letter from the magistrate in Dublin, stating that up to the last moment he has been unable to obtain a reprieve, and begging the sheriff to delay the execution till the latest instant.

The mysterious executioner is punctual-the hour fixed for the execution arrives and passes-and the multitude assembled to view the awful spectacle begin to grow impatient. The execution can no longer be deferred-the reluctant sheriff is about to give the fatal signal, when, in the outskirts of the crowd a slight commotion is apparent -a cry arises-a horseman dashes through, waving a flag over his head, and bearing a packet in his hand,—a pardon! a pardon! is shouted by the crowd,-the prisoner, with strained eye-balls, and bursting veins, turns towards the sheriff a mute appeal, when suddenly, with a yell of rage, the muffled executioner turns the fatal wheel, and sends the wretched Delany into eternity.

It then transpires that the executioner is O'Connor, who adopts this shocking mode of wreaking his vengeance on the murderer of his child; his intellect gives way under the fearful excitement, and he ends his life within the walls of the prison a raving lunatic.

Mr. Curtis' book is, on the whole, superior to the rest of the batch before us, the names of some of which will be found in the heading of this paper; but none of the number contain any of those thrilling narratives, those hairbreadth escapes, those wily schemes, those clever ruses, those bold attacks, which we should expect to find in fictions of this class; for fictions we must continue to call them, with the qualification regarding Mr. Curtis' volume which we have already made.

The detective system in this country is essentially low and mean, and probably the system is the same in other countries. The boasted skill of the celebrated French police, as it existed under different prefects and chiefs, was nothing after all but an elaborate system of espionage. It was founded on this system under Louis XI., when Tristan, whose name is immortalized by Scott in Quentin Durward, was at its head, and the post-office was invented

in France more as a means of spying over the country rapidly and surely, than for the legitimate object of the transmission of correspondence. The celebrated Sartines carried the spy system to a vast extent, and professed to know, and indeed appears actually to have known, what was passing of importance, not alone in Paris, but in every capital of Europe: but the bitterest commentary on the system was after all his own reply to some person who reproached him for employing repentant thieves and reformed convicts, as police spies, Tell me,' said he, 'of one honest man who will be a police spy?'

As we have already said, we have no desire to depreciate unduly the services of a well organized and trained police, when we remark how entirely the detection of great crimes appears to be exclusively the work of Providence. Every event, of course, which passes around us is ordered and ordained by Providence; and if men were to abandon all exertion and all interest in events, leaving everything to heaven, the result would be confusion and disorder. We have, therefore, no wish to suggest that the investigations undertaken for the discovery of the perpetrators of crime are useless; but it cannot escape observation how little the most elaborate and ingenious enquiry effects. It is indeed, almost invariably, some insignificant fact, some trivial coincidence, that points out the way and leads eventually to the desired conclusion. And when that aid, so granted by the hand of heaven, is, for wise though inscrutable purposes, withheld, the criminal escapes detection, and " sleeps in spite of thunder."

It is difficult to know which most to reverence and admire-the manner in which God uses the most tortuous and deceitful acts of men as the means of eliciting truth, or the awfully solemn silence with which He occasionally regards their crimes, leaving the lifting of the veil to that final Hour of Judgment, when every secret will be revealed, and concealment and mystery will be no more.

In the year 1806 the British Linen Company occupied for the banking part of their business a large house in the old town of Edinburgh. This house had formerly belonged to the Marquis of Tweeddale, and was situated within a spacious court, which was connected with the street by a narrow covered passage about forty feet long, and known as Tweeddale's Close.

About five o'clock in the evening of the 13th of November, 1806, a little girl sent by her mother to procure water from a neighbouring well, stumbled, in the obscure light, over the body of a man lying at the point of death, near the foot of the public stair which opened into the Close. Assistance was procured, and the man raised up, and he proved to be one William Begbie, a porter employed at the bank, and in his heart was found, buried deep up to the haft, a long knife, making a wound which caused his death before he was enabled to speak a word, to account for the catastrophe, to those who came to his assistance.

The blow had indeed been struck home with fatal force and deliberation, and round the handle had been wrapped some soft paper, to prevent, as was conjectured, any sprinkling of blood from reaching the person of the murderer. Begbie had been robbed, it was discovered, of about £4,000 in notes and gold.

All the efforts made, and they were numerous and persevering, to discover the assassin, wholly failed, and though several were from time to time arrested on suspicion, sufficient evidence could not be collected to justify the trial of any individual.

Nearly a year after, some workmen returning from labour, passing through Bellevue Grounds, in the neighbourhood of Elinburgh, found in a hole a parcel containing about £3,000 in large notes, which were identified as a portion of those stolen from Begbie.

The finders returned the notes to the Banking Company, who rewarded them with £200, but the circumstance threw no light upon the dark tragedy, nor has the lapse of time done anything since to clear up the mystery.

So 'murder will not always out,' and the murderer of William Begbie carried his secret to the grave. In the ordinary course of nature he must, probably, by this time have passed to his account. Fifty-five years, if he still survive, must have bent his form and wrinkled his brow, and stolen from him most of that vigour and strength which filled his arm when, with such unerring force, he drove the instrument of death down into his victim's heart. Should he have survived the year 1856, with what feelings must he have heard of the murder of Mr. Little, in our own city.

Like Begbie, Little was deprived of life in the midst of

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a populous city, at the close of day, and whilst men were still in motion to and fro upon their affairs.

Like Begbie he was, when murdered, engaged upon the business, and had the custody of the money of a Public Company. Like Begbie he was deprived of life for the sake of that money, and the same friendly obscurity that enveloped for ever the person of the assassin of Begbie, has shrouded in a like impenetrable gloom the murderer of Little.

One day, too, these two will stand together stripped of concealment, and a measure of justice will be meted to them. In that day, 'dies magna, et amara valde,' the whole world will know the truth; and the murders of Eliza Grimwood, of Lord Norbury, of Mrs. Kelly, and of many others, will no more be hidden things, and the Waterloo Bridge and Road mysteries will be mysteries

no more.

Then will the murderer stand before a Judge who can neither be deceived nor intimidated, and once again look upon his victim's face,-that victim whom, ruthlessly and barbarously, without a warning word, he "sent to his account with all his imperfections on his head."

Till that day comes men must be content to bow to a superior intelligence, and to acknowledge the limited scope of human foresight and knowledge. Would that this acknowledgment were more frequently and sincerely made to temper the zeal and moderate the haste of public prosecutors to cool the judgments and clear the vision of those in whose hands are placed the awful trust and responsibility of disposing of human life, and holding up between the accuser and accused the tremendous balance of the scales of Justice.

Art. VI.-1. Döllinger; Ueber den Kirchenstaat. Allgemeine Zeitung. 7 April, 8 April, 16 April, 17 April, 1861. Augsburg.

2. Le Duxième Lettre à M. le Comte de Cavour, par le Comte de Montalembert, l'un des Quarante de l'Academie Francoise. Lecoffre. Paris, 29, Rue du Vieux-Colombier, 1861.

3. Der Kirchenstaat seit der Französischen Revolution; HistorischStatistische Studien und Skizzen. Von Dr. J. Hergenrother. Freiburg im Breisgau. Herdersche Verlagshandlung. 1860. 4. Devotion to the Church. By Frederick William Faber, D.D. Priest of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri. Second Edition. London, Dublin, and Derby: Richardson and Son, 1861.

ROME

OME is the knot in European politics, and there is none to unravel the entanglement. Rome is the moral Quadrilateral against the daring success of the revolution; therefore against this ancient citadel all the forces of anarchy, fraud, flattery, and corruption are combined. The fortress, if it cannot be stormed, must be undermined. The garrison of the faithful throughout the world must be bribed to betray their trust, and to surrender the keys of Rome into the hands of their enemies. How grand a thing it is, say these opponents of the temporal power of the Popes, addressing themselves to the vain or the visionary among the leaders of the Catholic body, how grand to be superior to the common prejudice of the vulgar, to be gifted with a keener insight into the mysterious future than the rest of mankind, to become the inaugurators of a new epoch which shall eclipse all the former glories of the Papacy. Trust to us, they continue, we shall give liberty to the Church and complete independence to its venerable ruler; we shall reconcile modern modes of thought to ancient dogma, and restore universal liberalism to the enlightened yoke of the Catholic Church. We only demand in exchange for all these great promises, and as a proof of confidence, the keys of the citadel. The wooden horse introduced into the walls of doomed Troy did not contain a greater danger than that concealed under these hollow platitudes. Perfidious Greeks never offered more treacherous gifts. And yet, in the present cessation from active hostilities, liberals of every hue and colour, from the puny and half-fledged trai