ed to send for Clara at my own charge, but he would not hear of it. "I would not have a soul at my bedside, save you, doctor, for worlds," he said. He was quite friendless, too. His chamber was common to five other workhouse folk, but it was a July day, and they were sunning themselves in the paved court outside; the noonday beams which poured into the long bare room found nothing fair to rest upon; no print upon the whitewashed wall, no commonest wild-flower in any of the few drab-colored mugs that strewed the table; no sign of comfort anywhere. The sick man lay upon his little iron bed, and I was sitting upon the wooden stool beside it; his hand lay upon mine, and his face was turned towards the door, listening. I rose, and locked it; and it was then that he began, as I have said, to speak of murder, and his innocence-to ask if it would be dangerous to confess all. I said, "No; nothing can harm you now. What you say to me is a secret as long as you shall live: you may speak as if I was the clergyman"-whom he had refused, for some reason, I knew not what, to see. "If it will ease your mind to tell me anything, say on." "You have known me, doctor, this twenty years, and will easily believe me when I say that I no more expected to become dependent on the parish and to die in this workhouse, than I dreamt of the possibility of my committing any very terrible crime. I was young to the world then, and foolish; and my wife was not older or wiser. We were not strongminded folk-nor, alas! even straightforward; through a plausible story of dear times coming-which may yet have been partly true-we sold many a pound of butter and ounce of tea; and if it was not always a pound nor always an ounce, it was never over the just weight, but under. Spirits, also there being no public-house close by-which we of course had no license to sell, we would let our best customers purchase and drink in our back parlor, which appeared in their weekly bills under the head of candles, or what not; so that speaking before our own children, we had to fabricate strange stories, and give things their wrong names; and many other devices we had, which, though they got us little gains, seemed not much, on the whole, to benefit us. I have purposely told you the worst of us, because it will explain our future conduct the more easi ly; but you must not suppose that we were thieves, or very wicked people; we scarcely knew what wrong we were doing to others, and far less to ourselves; and I don't think in other respects we were a bad pair. I know Sarah loved me, and I her and our two children, dearly. Our shop, as you remember, was between Henborough and Swaffham, which were then quite separate towns, with stragglin houses and long lines of railing to connect them. Our house was the farthest of the last row, not detached." Here the sick man raised himself on his hands, and whispered: "Are you sure there's nobody at the keyhole?-nobody at any crack or cranny, nor at the skylight?” I assured him that there was not; and then the wretched creature pulled out from a sort of opossum pocket in his very skin, and under his flannel vest, a thin piece of paper, folded; keeping it carefully beneath the bedclothes, so as to prevent its being visible from without, he opened it, and I read these printed words: "TWO HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD. "The above will be given to any person not actually concerned in the crime, who shall give such information as shall lead to the discovery of the murderer or murderers of John Spigat, in the Swaffham Road, Henborough, on the night of December the thirty-first, eighteen hundred and thirty-five.” Why, you, Charlton, were one of the jurymen, if I remember right, who were upon the inquest in that matter ?" I said. "I was, doctor; and-are you sure there's nobody under the bed, or in the cupboard, or behind the chimney-board ?—and his murderer also ?" "Good heavens!" I exclaimed. "Why, what a hypocritical ruffian you must have been!" "Doctor, good doctor, have mercy upon me: don't tell, don't tell! and don't think so hardly of me until you have heard me out; I am not so bad as I seem. "It was on a New Year's eve, near twenty years ago, and very late at night close upon twelve-when I had put up my last shutter, and was going to lock the door of my shop, that a stranger called. He had come from the Swaffham end of the road, and I had never seen him before in all my life; he could hardly speak at all, he was so awfully drunk. Red in face, thick in speech, and trembling all over | last, I twined the arms about the bars, and like a leaf, he said he must have more we fled back in silence. Nothing was stirrum. I told him that we only had ginger- ring. We heard the tread of the watchbeer and such like drinks; and, besides, man outside our closed door, and his that it was too late at that time of night" Past twelve o'clock!" die away in the to sell people anything. He swore horri- distance, but we had put out the lights, bly at this, said that my wife (who was and felt certain he had observed nothing still behind the counter in the shop) and unusual-nothing of ours-oh, horror!I were both liars, that we had sold rum dropped in the road, while we had gone often enough to other folks, he knew very about our terrible task. One of the childwell. He managed to stagger up the two ren, Clara, began to cry out, 'Where have stone steps and push in at the door. He you been, mother? She had heard us, should get into the back parlor, and sleep then, leave the house. there all night, he said. I took him by the collar, intending to set him outside the door, but he was a tall and stout-made man, and I could not-he struggled with me in a dull, heavy manner. I had hard matter to thrust him from the parlor. I did do so, and pushed him violently, and he fell on the floor at full length like a log; he never groaned after he had touched the floor, but lay silent and motionless. "My wife cried, 'What have you done, George? You've killed the man.' "Nonsense,' I said; but when we tried to raise him, and saw the glassy look of his eyes, I knew it was true. A hundred horrible thoughts would have crowded into my mind at once, but that, swifter than they, devices for getting the corpse away, and removing suspicion from ourselves had already filled it; the simple honest plan of telling the truth, and calling in the police at once, never so much as suggested itself. What if a neighbor should step in, as this poor murdered man had done, and find him lying there? If one of the children even should be awakened by the noise, and come down into the shop! If the watchman himself, seeing our door yet open at that time of night, should call! There was not a moment to lose; I took the dead man by the head, and my wife, all in a tremble, managed to raise his legs, and shutting the door carefully after us, we bore our dreadful burden about fifty yards along the Swaffham Road; we tried to set it against the railings which ran along both sides of what is now Macartney street, but the inanimate thing slipped down again each time in a mere heap. It was surprising how anxious we were to prop it up, and, although every instant was precious to us, we spent some five minutes in doing so it seemed inhuman, somehow, to leave it on the pavement. In a sort of desperate terror at "I only helped your father to put up the shutters, child,' she answered; and the girl was quieted by the ready lie. We went to bed immediately, but not to sleep; our ears were on the stretch for the moment when the cry should arise, and we should know the body was found. One o'clock, two, three, four: the time crept on with painful slowness, and the hours and quarters seemed to prolong their iron voice horribly. And now the dawn was breaking, and there was light enough for a chance traveller to see the corpse. We saw it all night long, as we were to see it for years, and as I see it now. Five, six; it was time for us to get up and open the shop, lest suspicion should arise that way; and we did so. There was a turn in the Swaffham Road beyond our house, and it was farther than that; and yet I dared not look in that direction as I undid the shutters. "Watch, watch! Help, help!' Then they have found him at last, and the street fills with a hurrying crowd: and I run with them, among the first. But my wife, she is faint with terror, and dares not move, telling the children who have heard the cries, that it is nothing. "It leans against the railing where we set it; but its right hand-yes, by Heaven! it points to me! Nobody saw my face, they were all so horror-struck with the dreadful thing, or I should have been carried off to prison at once, without any further proof, I know. As they were about to take it down, Doctor Scott (your predecessor at the union, sir), who was in the crowd, cried 'Stop! and called attention to the position of the arms: 'I do not think-bear witness all of you-that any fit, or strong convulsion whatsoever, could have thus twisted them.' And I bore witness loudly with the rest. I was, as you have said, sir, upon the jury. I thought it best, safest to be, despite the thing I 6 had to deal with. When all the evidence, which was chiefly medical, had been given, I was with the minority for Wilful murder against some person or persons unknown,' against the rest, who were for 'Death by apoplexy; and we starved the others out. Oh! sir, the shifts and lies I had to invent, the terrors that racked me by night and by day-and all begotten by my cunning, dishonest ways-would have been punishment for a murderer indeed! About this great reward here, of two hundred pounds, there was a ceaseless talk; and the wildest surmises as to how it would be gained, amongst our neighbors. They came into our little back parlor just as usual, and wounded us with every word. 'Now, mark my words,' said one, the fellow will be discovered in the end and hanged;' and 'Ay, ay, murder will out, sooner or later,' said the rest. 'Sooner or later!' Great Heaven! how those words haunted us! for now indeed we had played a part which, if discovered, would have proved us at once guilty: my wife took to her bed, and fairly sickened from sheer anxiety. She had fever, and was delirious for weeks; and I never dared to leave her, or let another watch by her bedside, for fear of what she might When the end came at last, my poor wife wanted to see the clergyman; but I said 'No.' It was for the same reason that I would not send for Mr. Roland here, myself; he was a magistrate. You're not a magistrate?" demanded poor Charlton, suddenly, with the damps of terror mingling with those of death upon his forehead. I quieted him as well as I was able, and begged him to set his mind at ease as to any earthly tribunal. After a little time, and without noticing the warning contained in my last words, he continued: rave upon. "Amongst the folks in our parlor, one man in particular, a tailor, by name Deckham, seemed never weary of talking of Spigat's murder. He was a miserably poor, ill-favored person, who had drilled his way into our company by means of a sharp tongue. One night I told him flatly enough I did not like such mournful talk, and was quite tired of that theme. Why, one would really suppose that you killed the man yourself?" he retorted. It seemed as if an arrow had darted through my brain for a moment, and I could hardly keep upon my legs; but laughed it off as well as I could. He stayed, however, to the very last; and when we two were alone, he drew a small strap, such as fastens trousers at the foot, from an inner pocket, and asked me whether it was mine; for I found it,' said he, 'inside your house, betwixt the back of the door and the wall.' No, it is not,' I replied, but rather hesitatingly, for I saw he had some purpose in the question. I thought so, he went on, for it is the fellow to that found upon John Spigat, the man who was murdered fifty yards from here, in the Swaffham Road.' "I could not speak at first, nor do anything beyond making deprecating and pitiful motions with my hands; but afterwards I made shift to tell this Deckham the whole truth: 'Likely enough, Master Charlton,' he said, quite coolly; atween friends, however, such things looks better than before a judge and jury; I'll put a padlock on this here tongue, safe enough, if you'll fit it, as I am sure like a sensible man you will, with a golden key.' I felt the halter already round my neck-this friend jerking it loosely or tightly as he would; but there seemed to be then no help for it. I paid five pounds that evening-miserable dolt that I was—as a retaining fee to a villain for working my total ruin. Many and many a time did my children and myself go without the barest necessaries that that man might have the means to indulge in debauchery and extravagance. I sold the shop, and removed with my motherless bairns to another part of the town; but Henborough itself my tyrant would not permit me to leave. Loss of custom, loss of health, and almost loss of reason followed, of which you now know the cause. This incubus bestrode me day and night, and wore my very life out. Often and often have I been a murderer at heart because of that mocking fiend; once, indeed, he confessed to me, that a vague suspicion had alone induced him to try me in the matter, and that the strap story was only an ingenious touchstone of his own. Cunning as I was then, I had been overreached; and anxious to efface the very breath of slander, I had given a gratuitous proof of guilt. Here, in this workhouse, friendless, penniless, Í am safe from his persecutions; but I tremble for my children, lest he use them also as his tools." I strove to comfort him, and to represent the folly of having submitted to such a treatment at first: but I was speaking to ears that could not listen. The wifeless, childless man was dying fast, an awful lesson to the crafty and untruthful. What a little leaven of dishonesty had leavened all this lump! How the path of life had been darkened to it for ever by the merest shadow! While I almost doubted whether he was alive or dead, he sprang up once again into a sitting posture, and pressed the paper, which he had concealed so carefully, into my hand. A sudden dread of awakening suspicion, even after death, had nerved dissolving nature for that effort, and hardly did the grey head touch the pillow before his worn heart ceased to beat. Near twenty years, as long as most burn on in fruitless hope, it had throbbed in groundless fear! LITERARY MISCELLANIES. Tender and True, by the author of Clara Morison; Kate Coventry, originally published in Fraser's Maga zine. The list of published books continues to remain as brief as for the past month; it comprises The Dodd Family at Home, complete in 2 vols.; Out on the World, 3 vols.; the Second Part of the Daisy Chain; The Hills of the Shatemuc, by Miss Warner; Cambridge in the 17th Century, containing the Autobiography of Matthew Robinson; Astrology as it is; Lardner's Hand-Book of Astronomy; the Eighth Volume of Orr's Circle of the Sciences; the Second Volume of Russell's Letters to The Times, completing his history of the Crimean Campaign; Aris Willmott's Poets of the 19th Century; Emerson's Eng Next to the old Emperor Napoleon, Prince Talleyrand was one of the most remarkable men of the age and country in which he lived. Possessing eminent talents, consummate ability and sagacity as a statesman, he was the prince of ambassadors and diplomatists. The associate and confidential adviser of kings and emperors when Europe was convulsed to its centre, and thrones and kingdoms crumbled, he exerted an influence on the destinies of France, to which few men have attained. Living amidst the stormiest periods of French history, he rode safely over the tur-lish Traits; Wordsworth, a Biography; Béranger's bulent waves of successive revolutions, and while others were engulphed and perished, his gallant bark kept boldly on its course, steered with masterly skill. For more than half a century he acted a conspicuous part in the history and politics of France, sharing largely in the long panorama of stirring scenes and events of colossal magnitude which marked that period. The life, experience and observation of such a man, cannot fail to be read with interest. Such is Mr. McHarg's book. He has collected and arranged his materials, facts, anecdotes, and illustrations, with much ability. His book is a desideratum. The interest excited by its perusal is cumulative and con tinuous to the end. We remember to have seen Prince Talleyrand leaning on the arm of an attendant, his hair white as wool, and his piercing eyes flashing with diamond-like brilliancy. The portrait is a striking likeness. AMONG the few announcements of new books from the London press, are-The Marquis of Normanby's Year of Revolution; Ivors, by the author of Amy Herbert; The Chronology of Art, by Mr. Geo. Scharf, Jun; England's Greatness, by John Wade; The Theory of War, by Lieut.-Col. Macdougall, of Sandhurst; a new and miniature edition of Moore's Epicurean; Edgar Bardon, by W. Knighton, author of The Private Life of an Eastern King; a new volume of Poems by Gerald Massey; Self and Self-sacrifice, by Anna Lisle; Life in Ancient India, by Mrs. Speir; Songs, translated by Robert Brough; Capt. Stoney's ANOTHER Copy of the quarto edition of Hamlet, (1603,) of which the only other copy at present known is in the possession of the Duke of Devonshire, has lately turned up, and although imperfect in the beginning, supplies at the end that portion of which the Duke's copy is deficient. This copy, which offered to Mr. Halliwell, and to the British Museum, comes from Ireland, was, we learn on good authority, for 50 guineas, and by both refused; it then came into the hands of Messrs. Boone, of Bond street, who have sold it, Sybilline fashion, to Mr. Halliwell, at the advanced price of £120. By their terms of sale, the book remains for three months at Messrs. Boone's, where it may be seen. THE Directors of the Booksellers' Provident Institution, announced at a late meeting, that the income had so far exceeded the demand for relief, that they had been enabled to increase the invested capital of the Institution, which now amounts to £21,610. The relief administered during the past year amount ed to £785. These facts should certainly be additional inducements to those who have not done so to join the Institution, while they should on no account cause the efforts of its active friends to relax. THE Tribunal of Commerce at Paris, has fined a publisher two thousand francs, (£80,) for inserting in a catalogue appended to a work published by him, a deprecatory remark on a rival publication. MR. BENTLEY, the London publisher, has obtained the whole of Horace Walpole's unpublished correspondence with his friend and deputy in the Exchequer, Mr. Grosvenor Bedford. Old Mr. Bedford (the uncle of Southey's correspondent) was the channel of many of Walpole's unknown communications with the public papers, and at times of his many unostentatious charities. "Horry," as Lady Mary Wortley delighted to call him, will be found to have had a heart, after all. His charitable sympathies were chiefly with poor prisoners for debt. This accession will give additional interest to the forthcoming edition of "Walpole's Letters." THE Builder notices an important invention in stereotype: "One of the persons employed in the State printing-office of Vienna, has made the discovery, that plates of plaster of Paris will uniformly contract by a repeated washing with water, and still more if with spirits of wine. On this is based a process to produce both print (drucksachen) and woodcuts in various gradations of type and size, by a calculated diminution of the plaster of Paris plate. Already print and drawings have been made of a twelfth-part size, reduced from three inches to one inch in diameter, and yet even the reduction to the smallest size does not encroach on the perfect correctness of the impression." THE Academie Française, at its sitting on the 28th of August, announced its prizes for last year. Amongst them is one of 2000 francs, (£80,) for a poem on the Eastern War; another, of the same amount, for a Eulogium of Regnard, the dramatic poet; and a third, of £120, which has been more than once offered, and offered in vain, for the best treatise "On the State of Letters, and the Progress of Intelligence in France in the first part of the Seventeenth Century, before the tragedy of the Cid, and Descartes' treatise on Method." Finally, the Académie announces that in 1858, it will give £120 for the best treatise "On the Historical and Oratorical Genius of Thucydides." | WE hear that the object of the preservation of the house in which Shakspeare is said to have been born, is about to be effectually accomplished, by the bounty of a gentleman of the name of John Shakspeare, (who claims to be descended collaterally from the poet,) resident not far from the neighborhood of Stratfordupon-Avon. He has given no less a sum than between £2000 and £3000, in order that the small edifice in Henley street may be separated from other buildings, and put in a condition to resist, as far as possible, the inroads of time. The money has actually, as we hear, been paid over to certain trustees, we believe forming at present the principal members of the corporation of Shakspeare's native town. 66 THE booksellers of Sweden, Norway and Denmark, have just held a Congress" at Copenhagen. They decided in it, after due deliberation, to petition the King of Denmark to cause the Diet to adopt laws for protecting literary property, increasing postal com munications between the Scandinavian kingdoms, and reducing the postage on letters and books; they also decided on founding a central Scandinavian library, on establishing an annual book-fair similar to that of Leipsic, on improving their trade relations, and on getting up a fund for the relief of such of their body as may fall into distress. AT Liege, there was within the last few days, a competition for prizes in poetry in the Walloon language, and the fire and inspiration of the Walloon poets produced such excellent verses, that the judges felt themselves necessitated to award two first and one second prizes. IN our last, we recorded that, amongst the prizes awarded by the Académie Française of Paris, in its last annual sitting, was one to M. Bartholmess, for his "Histoire des Doctrines Religieuses de la Philosophie Moderne." We have now to record the death of this gentleman. The melancholy event took place suddenly, at Nuremburg, a few days ago. The deceased possessed considerable reputation as a philosophical writer on the continent. THOUGH She was little known in the general world of letters, the death of Mrs. Schimmelpenninck, of Clifton, at the age of seventy-eight, claims a record in a literary journal. Her work on "Port Royal and its dependencies, many years ago published and circulated in the sectarian world, besides displaying a thorough knowledge of languages, and of the bearings of the Jesuit and Jansenist controversy, was excellent as a piece of narrative. Her "Theory of Beauty and Deformity," though disfigured by crotchets, was full of ingenious speculation and curious example. She was an eccentric, but a learned and accomplished woman. THE Liverpool Mercury states that the success libraries in Liverpool, is quite unprecedented, and which has attended the formation of the free-lending their increasing usefulness is becoming daily more and more apparent. At present, the issue averages upwards of 4500 volumes per week. The care which is taken of the books, and the punctuality with which they are returned, are remarkable; and although there have been upwards of 350,000 volumes lent since the commencement, only three or four books of trifling value have been really lost to the libraries. In the selection of books, all tastes, as far as practicable, have been consulted; and the readers have now between 13,000 and 14,000 volumes to select from. The high class of reading which the statistics exhibit is most cheering, and the happiest results must necessarily flow from the establishment of such institutions. THE French tribunals have been occupied with a case which seems strongly to illustrate the defective state in which the law of that country is with respect to property in manuscripts. A bookseller, having by purchase come into the possession of certain manuscripts of the late Louis Philippe, communicated the fact to the Orleans family, and gave them the option of purchasing, if so disposed. The Duke D'Aumale, to whom the application was made, took no notice of it; but legal proceedings were commenced by the family to obtain the manuscripts without purchase. The bookseller declares that, whatever may have been the history of the papers, he came by them honestly enough, and defends his rights pertinaciously. The next time he gets such precious wares into possession, he will probably keep his own counsel, and |