sometimes out of breath. But I have never met with an obstacle, which has not given way; and often things, which at first appeared most to oppose me, have proved to be the most useful assistants. I really have never yet met with a single piece of evidence, or a single argument, which seems to me seriously to oppose my theory. Yet I do not pretend to demonstrate the truth of it. On these subjects proof can very seldom be had. A high probability is all that can be expected. Since I thought I had finished my volume, that is the general arrangement of it, I have found what has induced me to add another book, which will treat of the microcosms of the ancients and the feodal tenures. At first I thought these subjects would not be connected with one another, or with my subject, in any way whatever, but to my great surprise I have found that they are not only connected together, but with my subject most intimately, when they come to be examined to their foundation. They in fact form a key-stone to my arch.

I do not write this letter at home, but at my neighbour Mr Cooke's of Ouston, where I have come to dine, and I have made a mistake of an hour in the time of dinner, and while all the party are dressing, I have determined to inflict this letter upon you, as I can get Robert King, Lady Helena's brother, to frank it.

I think I recollect in your last letter, which I have not here, you name Clarkson's lectures on Egyptian antiquities. Are they published, by whom, and what price? I shall be in London on the first of June, and remain there till the sixteenth, when I go to the meeting of philosophers at Oxford on the 18th always heard of at the Oriental club. I hope your ladies all continue in the best health, to whom I beg my best respects. As I go to London I wish to visit the churches of the Templars at Cambridge, Maplestead, and Northampton. Do you know of any thing Templar about Saxmundam in your county? I am convinced the Templars are much older than the eleventh century and were then only brought into notice in the West. Yours truly G. Higgins.

XLVI. Letter from Boissonade.

BARKERO BOISSONADE S.-Dum sævit Cholera, proximo jam ardente Ucalegone, literis vacamus, dulcibus ægrimonia alloquiis.

Iniquior est Kiddius in Miscellaneorum Menagii editorem, querens quod præfationem et versiculos Annæ Fabri inscriptos omiserit. Menagius ipse fuit editor, nec omisit quæ nondum scripserat. Tres sunt Menagii de Terentiana Heautontimorumeno Dissertationis editiones. Prima anni 1640 puto vel 1641; secunda anni 1652, Miscellaneis juncta; tertia anni......, cum præfatione, et versibus Annæ Fabræ inscriptis, (quæ fæmina non Kiddio vocanda fuit vernacule Anna Fabre, sed Anne Lefevre; filia scilicet Taneguy Lefevre; et uxor Horatii interpretis Andrea Dacier.) Tertiam editionem, principalem quidem ipsam, non vidi, sed ejus repetitionem, eamque inventu facilem, in tomo secundo libri Abbatis D'aubignac, cui titulus: La pratique du theâtre par l'abbé D'aubignac, &c. Amsterdam, 3 vol, 12mo, 1716.

Campolongi Litholexicon Neapoli prodiit, a. 1782. Lusum esse hominis otio abutentis ne dubites.

Inchoatam epistolam diu seposui, turbis publicis et amicorum calamitatibus distractus. Ad te redeo. Anecdotorum volumen quartum ad te nuper per Treuttelium ac Valpyum curavi. In quinto totus nunc sudo.

Eunapii exemplar cum notis A. Fumæi possidet bibliotheca regia, a tuo, puto, non diversum.

Bibliothecæ Instituti custos mihi promisit se Websterianum Supplementum esse empturum.

Tertius Thesauri Stephaniani fasciculus mox prodibit. Tam lente editores procedunt, ut de voce kaniso ante sex annos tibi non sit cogitandum.

Quod memoras Cantabrigiense museum nondum vidi : interrupto Valpyano Diario, interruptum est meum cum Anglicana philologia commercium.

Vale, vir doctissime. Valpyum nostrum meis verbis salutes rogo. Lutet. d. 5 Jul. '32.

E. Henr. Barkero viro doctissimo, Thetfordiam.

XLVII. Bentley-Walker-Pope.

"But BENTLEY had taken good care that this office should be filled by his zealous partisan, the associate of his literary labors, the obsequious RICHARD WALKER, immortalized in those well-known lines of POPE, where our hero is made to exclaim :

WALKER, our hat!'-nor more he deign'd to say,

But, stern as AJAX' spectre, strode away.'

The Quarterly Review of Monk's life of BENTLEY, Vol. 46, 1832.p. 158.

XLVIII. Anecdotes of Eugene Aram.

1. "The remarkable name of Eugene Aram, belonging to a man of unusual talents and acquirements, is unhappily associated with a deed of blood as extraordinary in its details as any recor ded in our calendar of crime. In the year 1745, being then an Usher, and deeply engaged in the study of Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Celtic dialects for the formation of a Lexicon, he abruptly turned over a still darker page in human knowledge, and the brow, that learning might have made illustrious, was stamped ignominious for ever with the brand of CAIN. To obtain a trifling property, he concerted with an accomplice, and with his own hand effected, the violent death of one DANIEL CLARKE, shoemaker of KNARESBOROUGH, in Yorkshire. For fourteen years nearly the secret slept with the victim in the earth of ST. ROBERT's Cave, and the manner of its discovery would appear a striking example of the Divine justice, even among

those marvels narrated in that curious old volume, alluded to in the Fortunes of Nigel, under its quaint title of God's Revenge against Murther. The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and emphatic declaration of ARAM's accomplice, that it could not be that of CLARKE, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was wrought to a confession of their deposit. The learned homicide was seized and arraigned; and a trial of uncommon interest was wound up by a defence as memorable as the tragedy itself for eloquence and ingenuity;

too ingenious for innocence and eloquent enough to do credit even to that long premeditation, which the interval between the deed and its discovery had afforded. That this dreary period had not passed without paroxysms of remorse, may be inferred from a fact of affecting interest. The late ADMIRAL BURNEY was a scholar at the School at Lynn, in Norfolk, where ARAM was an Usher, subsequent to his crime. The ADMIRAL stated that ARAM was beloved by the boys, and that he used to discourse to them of murder, not occasionally, as I have written elsewhere, but constantly; and in somewhat of the spirit ascribed to him in the Poem. For the more imaginative part of the version I must refer back to one of those unaccountable visions, which come upon us like frightful monsters thrown up by storms from the great black deeps of slumber. A lifeless body, in love and relationship the nearest, and dearest, was imposed upon my back, with an overwhelming sense of obligation,— not of filial piety merely, but some awful responsibility equally vague and intense, and involving, as it seemed, inexpiable sin, horrors unutterable, torments intolerable, to bury my dead, like ABRAHAM, out of my sight. In vain I attempted, again and again, to obey the mysterious mandate, by some dreadful process the burden was replaced with a more stupendous weight of injunction, and an appalling conviction of the impossibility of its fulfilment. My mental anguish was indescribable; the mighty agonies of souls tortured on the supernatural racks of sleep are not to be penned, and if in sketching those, that belong to bloodguiltiness, I have been at all successful, I owe

it mainly to the uninvoked inspiration of that terrible dream. THOMAS HOOD'S Preface to the Dream of EUGENE ARAM, Lond. 1831. 12mo.

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2. SEPT. 4, 1832. I dined at Kilverstone, and met there Captain Davy, the Nephew of Dr Davy, who resides near Heacham. He says that he has heard much of Eugene Aram from Dr Weatherhead of Heacham. Aram was staying with Dr Wea. and working with him in the garden during the winter-vacation on a very cold morning, cheifly to keep themselves warm, when a horse-dealer from Yorkshire presented himself, and asked to look at a horse, which Dr W. wished to sell. The horse-dealer observed that he knew the gentleman, who was working in the garden over the hedge; surely his name is Aram; Dr W. replied, Yes, it is. The dealer said. nothing more, but, when the dealer returned to Yorkshire, he reported the circumstance, and a warrant was sent for his apprehension. Dr W. said that he could not help observing that Mr. Aram, in turning up the soil, carefully put aside the worms, that he might not injure them, and he was astonished to find a man of so much humanity charged with murder. Captain Davy has heard Dr Parr speak of Aram's Defence in the highest terms of approbation for eloquence and reasoning.

3. When I was at Norwich, Mr Kidd observed that Kippis has in the Biographia Britannica assigned a long article to Aram it is the fullest account, and when some one remarked to him that a murderer should not have had a place there, he said that Aram was entitled to it as a literary character.

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4. The account in the Annual Register seems to be wholly made up from the printed account of the Trial without any fresh information.

5.Eugene Aram.

Paley, as Mr Kidd told to me Aug. 7., was 17, when he