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been satisfactorily explained, that the lady recovered her good humour. While the captain was thus employed with Mrs. Ferguson, Newton, although it was not necessary, explained the mystery to Miss Revel, who, with Mrs. Ferguson, soon after quitted the deck.

"The sights taken proved the ship to be to the eastward of her reckoning; the other ships in company had made the same discovery, and the course was altered one quarter of a point. In two days, they dropped their anchor n Funchal Roads.'-Newton Forster, vol. i. pp. 191-197.

There is a very fair share of comic matter of this description throughout these volumes, and though we confess it is not much to our taste, yet there may be many other readers who are not quite so fastidious.

Those who have read Moore's Memoirs, or, indeed, any other Memoirs of Lord Byron, are already acquainted with the story of Norman Abbey. It is, in truth, nothing more than a clever translation of the characters and facts detailed in that work, into a romance. Evelyn de Fontayne performs the part of the noble bard; Bertha de Fontayne, his cousin, that of Miss Chaworth; and Lucy Temple that of Lady Byron. The tale, however, very wisely ends, as all romances should end, with the marriage of the parties, and does not lift up the veil of their history beyond that happy period. The character of Lord Byron seems to us to be exceedingly well sustained, except that he appears now and then more of a philosopher than he really was. The work displays considerable abilities; we could only wish that they had been bestowed upon an original theme.

We look upon Eugene Aram,' as the very best of Mr. Bulwer's productions. It has not a particle of his characteristic affectation. His mind seems to have been thoroughly full of the story of that unhappy person, while engaged upon his work; and hence his style is clear, expressive, and frequently beautiful-more beautiful, for being perfectly natural. He, of course, enters fully into the history of his hero, and interweaves in it a love affair, which forms a conspicuous and interesting portion of the tale, and tends not a little to deepen the tragic catastrophe with which it terminates. The first accidental meeting of Aram and Madeline Lester-the progress of their mutual affection-the habits of the recluse enthusiastic, in the pursuit of knowledge-his occasional remorse for the murder, to which he had been a party-the sophistries by which he, from time to time, endeavoured to stifie the small still voice of conseience-are all depicted with consummate ability. We should very willingly, if our space admitted of it, go into an enlarged view of this production, in order to display its various excellences. But we can find room only for two or three extracts. The following observations upon the wonderful facility with which the human mind acquiesces in the decrees of Providence, however afflicting, breathe a fine, as well as a true tone, of Christian philosophy.

* In our estimate of the ills of life, we never sufficiently take into our

consideration the wonderful elasticity of our moral frame, the unlooked for, the startling facility with which the human mind accommodates itself to all change of circumstance, making an object, and even a joy, from the hardest and seemingly the least redeemed conditions of fate. The man who watched the spider in his cell, may have taken, at least, as much interest in the watch, as when engaged in the most ardent and ambitious objects of his former life; and he was but a type of his brethren; all in similar circumstances would have found some similar occupation. Let any man look over his past life, let him recall not moments, not hours of agony, for to them custom lends not her blessed magic; but let him single out some lengthened period of physical or moral endurance; in hastily reverting to it, it may seem at first, I grant, altogether wretched; a series of days marked with the black stone,-the clouds without a star;— but let him look more closely, it was not so during the time of suffering; a thousand little things, in the bustle of life dormant and unheeded, then started forth into notice, and became to him objects of interest or diversion; the dreary present, once made familiar, glided away from him, not less than if it had been all happiness; his mind dwelt not on the dull intervals, but the stepping-stone it had created and placed at each; and by that moral dreaming, which for ever goes on within man's secret heart, he lived as little in the immediate world before him, as in the most sanguine period of his youth, or the most scheming of his maturity.

So wonderful in equalizing all states and all times in the varying tide of life, are these two rulers, yet levellers of mankind, Hope and Custom, that the very idea of an eternal punishment includes that of an utter alteration of the whole mechanism of the soul in its human, and no effort of an imagination, assisted by past experience, can conceive a state of torture which custom can never blunt, and from which the chainless and immaterial spirit can never be beguiled into even a momentary escape.'-- Eugene Aram, vol. iii. pp. 158-160.

Aram's defence, which is still extant, is incorporated in the present work. It is, perhaps, the most ingenious and able production of the kind, that ever was prepared by or for a prisoner, placed under such circumstances. Though counsel could not be heard in his defence, yet it is impossible to believe that he had not the best professional assistance on the occasion. The reader would, doubtless, desire to see a specimen of that able paper.

"My Lord, the tenor of my life contradicts this indictment. Who can look back over what is known of my former years, and charge me with one vice--one offence? No! I concerted not schemes of fraudprojected no violence-injured no man's property or person. My days were honestly laborious-my nights intensely studious. This egotism is not presumptuous-is not unreasonable. What man, after a temperate use of life, a series of thinking and acting regularly, without one single deviation from a sober and even tenor of conduct, ever plunged into the depth of crime precipitately, and at once? Villany is always progressive. We decline from right-not suddenly, but step after step.

"If my life in general contradicts the indictment, my health at that time in particular contradicts it yet more. A little time before I had been confined to my bed, I had suffered under a long and severe disorder. The

distemper left me but slowly, and in part. So far from being well at the time I am charged with this fact, I never, to this day, perfectly recovered. Could a person in this condition execute violence against auother? I, feeble and valetudinary, with no inducement to engage, no ability to accomplish, no weapon wherewith to perpetrate such an act; without interest, without power, without motives, without means!

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My Lord, Clarke disappeared: true; but is that a proof of his death? The fallibility of all conclusions of such a sort, from such a circumstance, is too obvious to require instances. One instance is before you this very castle affords it.

"In June, 1757, William Thompson, amidst all the vigilance of this place, in open daylight, and double-ironed, made his escape; notwithstanding an immediate enquiry set on foot, notwithstanding all advertisements, all search, he was never seen or heard of since. If this man escaped unseen through all these difficulties, how easy for Clarke, whom no difficulties opposed. Yet what would be thought of a prosecution commenced against any one seen last with Thompson ?

"These bones are discovered! Where? Of all places in the world, can we think of any one, except, indeed, the church-yard, where there is so great a certainty of finding human bones, as a hermitage? In times past, the hermitage was a place, not only of religious retirement, but of burial. And it has scarce, or never been heard of, but that every cell now known, contains, or contained, these relics of humanity, some mutilated, some entire! Give me leave to remind your Lordship, that there sat SOLITARY SANCTITY, and here the hermit and the anchorite hoped that repose for their bones when dead they here enjoyed when living. I glance over a few of the many evidences that these cells were used as repositories of the dead, and enumerate a few of the many caves similar in origin to St. Robert's, in which human bones have been found."

Here the prisoner instanced, with remarkable felicity, several places in which bones had been found, under circumstances and in spots analogous to those in point. And the reader, who will remember that it is the great principle of the law, that no man can be condemned for murder unless the body of the deceased be found, will perceive at once how important this was to the prisoner's defence. After concluding his instances with two facts of skeletons found in fields in the vicinity of Knaresbro', he burst forth

"Is then the invention of those bones forgotten, or industriously concealed, that the discovery of those in question may appear the more extraordinary? Extraordinary, yet how common an event! Every place conceals such remains. In fields, in hills, in high-way sides, on wastes, on commons, lie frequent and unsuspected bones. And mark, no example. perhaps, occurs of more than one skeleton being found in one cell. Here you find but one, agreeable to the peculiarity of every known cell in Britain. Had two skeletons been discovered, then alone might the fact have seemed suspicious and uncommon. What! have we forgotten how difficult, as in the case of Perkin Warbeck and Lambert Symnell, it has been sometimes to identify the living; and shall we now assign personality to bones-bones which may belong to either sex ? How know you that this is even the skeleton of a man? But another skeleton was discovered by some labourer ! Was not that averred to be Clarke's full as confidently as this?

"My Lord, my Lord, must some of the living be made answerable for all the bones that the earth has concealed and chance exposed. The skull that has been produced has been declared fractured. But who can surely tell whether it was the cause or the consequence of death. In May, 1732, the remains of William Lord, Archbishop of this province, were taken up, by permission, in their cathedral; the bones of the skull were found broken as these are. Yet he died by no violence! by no blow that could have caused that fracture. Let it be considered how easily the fracture on the skull produced is accounted for. At the dissolution of religious houses, the ravages of the times affected both the living and the dead. In search after imaginary treasures, coffins were broken, graves and vaults dug open, monuments ransacked, shrines demolished. Parliament itself was called in to restrain these violations. And now are the depredations, the iniquities, of those times, to be visited on this? But here, above all, was a castle vigorously besieged; every spot around was the scene of a sally, a conflict, a flight, a pursuit. Where the slaughtered fell, there were they buried. What place is not burial earth in war? How many bones must still remain in the vicinity of that siege, for futurity to discover! Can you, then, with so many probable circumstances, choose the one least probable? Can you impute to the living what zeal in its fury may have done; what nature may have taken off and piety interred, or what war alone may have destroyed, alone deposited?"'—Eugene Aram, vol. iii. pp. 205-211.

We shall only add a portion of Aram's confession of the deed, the guilt of which he had thus so skilfully sought to shift from his

hands.

"One day, in passing through the street, though it was broad noon, I encountered Clarke in a state of intoxication, and talking to a crowd he had collected around him. I sought to pass in an opposite direction; he would not suffer me; be, whom I sickened to touch, to see, threw himself in my way, and affected gibe and insult, nay, even threat. But when he came near, he shrunk before the mere glance of my eye, and I passed on unheeding him. The insult galled me; he had taunted my poverty, poverty was a favourite jest with him; it galled me; anger, revenge, no! those passions I had never felt for any man. I could not rouse them for the first time for such a cause; yet I was lowered in my own eyes, I was stung. Poverty! he taunt me! He dream himself on account of a little yellow dust my superior! I wandered from the town, and paused by the winding and shagged banks of the river. It was a gloomy winter's day, the waters rolled on black and sullen, and the dry leaves rustled desolately beneath my feet. Who shall tell us that outward nature has no effect upon our mood? All around seemed to frown upon my lot. I read in the face of heaven and earth a confirmation of the curse which man hath set upon poverty. I leant against a tree that overhung the waters, and suffered my thoughts to glide on in the bitter silence of their course. I heard my name uttered-I felt a hand on my arm, I turned, and Houseman was by my side.

"What, moralizing? said he, with his rude smile.

"I did not answer him.

Look,' said he, pointing to the waters, where yonder fish lies wait

ing his prey, that prey his mind. Coke, you have read nature, is it not so universally?

"I did not answer him.

"They who do not as the rest,' he renewed, fulfil not the object of their existence; they seek to be wiser than their tribe, and are fools for their pains. Is it not so? I am a plain man, and would learn.'

Still I did not answer.

"You are still silent,' said he; do I offend you?' ·

• "No!'

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Now, then,' he continued, strange as it may seem, we, so different in mind, are at this moment alike in fortunes. I have not a guinca in the wide world; you, perhaps, are equally destitute. But, mark the difference, I, the ignorant man, ere three days have passed, will have filled my purse; you, the wise man, will be still as poor. Come, cast away your wisdom,

and do as I do.'

""." How?'

"Take from the superfluities of others what your necessities crave. My horse, my pistol, a ready hand, a stout heart; the se areto me what coffers are to others. There is the chance of detection and of death; I allow it. But is not this chance better than some certainties?'

"I turned away my face. In the silence of my chamber, and in the solitude of my heart, I had thought, as the robber spoke-there was a strife within me.

"Will you share the danger and the booty?' renewed Houseman, in a low voice.

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I turned my eyes upon him. Speak out,' said I;' explain your purpose!'

"Houseman's looks brightened.

"Listen!' said he; Clarke, despite his present wealth lawfully gained, is about to purloin more; he has converted his legacy into jewels; he has borrowed other jewels on false pretences; he purposes to make these also his own, and to leave the town in the dead of night; he has confided to me his intention, and asked my aid. He and I, be it known to you, were friends of old; we have shared together other dangers and other spoils; he has asked my assistance in his flight. Now do you learn my purpose? Let us ease him of his burthen! I offer to you the half; share the enterprize and its fruits.

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I rose, I walked away, I pressed my hands on my heart; I wished to silence the voice that whispered me within. Houseman saw the conflict; he followed me; he named the value of the prize he proposed to gain; that which he called my share placed all my wishes within my reach!-the means of gratifying the one passion of my soul, the food for knowledge, the power of a blessed independence upon myself,-and all were in my grasp; no repeated acts of fraud; no continuation of sin, one single act sufficed! I breathed heavily, but I threw not off the emotion that seized my soul: I shut my eyes and shuddered, but the vision still rose before me.

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Give me your hand,' said Houseman.

"No, no, I said, breaking away from him. I must pause-I must consider-I do not yet refuse, but I will not now decide.'

"Houseman pressed, but I persevered in my determination;-he would have threatened me, but my nature was haughtier than his, and I

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