pected, further he shuns from sifting! Glance fastens on glance, and then hurries smilingly away. From the cup grins a skeleton, at the board warns a spectre. But how kind still the words, and how gentle the tone; and they lie down side by side in the marriage bed, brain plotting against brain, heart loathing heart. It is a duel of life and death, between those sworn through life and beyond death at the altar. But it is carried on with all the forms and courtesies of duel in the age of chivalry. No conjugal wrangling-no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave-the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. At length a dull torpor creeps over the woman— she feels the taint in her veins-the slow victory is begun. What mattered all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the pangs of the serpent, his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome the viand-that master of the science of murder needs not the means of the burgler!"

Then keen and strong from the creeping lethargy starts the fierce instinct of self, and the ruthless impulse of revenge. Lucretia before it is too late delivers up her husband to the Chouans. He is slain in his own study, and Gabriel is revenged for the murder of his mother.

Again the scene changes, and Lucretia is in England. She has taken to herself a second husband-a puritanical hypocrite by whom she has a son. Braddell the sectarian is not fit company for Lucretia, they quarrel, and Dalibard's chemistry is brought into successful operation, in removing the puritan who, however, at his death, consigned their only child to another care.

Meantime, Mainwaring and his wife have died, leaving one beautiful and innocent child Helen, of whom Lucretia claims the guardianship from the old vicar Fielden, and the serpent and the dove live together in the suburbs of London. Gabriel has turned artist, and is a frequent visitor at Madame Dalibard's, for she has again resumed that name.

Charles Vernon has also been committed to the family vault of the St. Johns, and Percival, the youthful heir, is passing a few weeks in the metropolis, while his mother is on the continent attending a sick relative, when he accidentally falls in with Helen, finds out the connexion that exists between his family and Madame Dalibard and her niece, and as a consequence of a first admiration, increased by subsequent intimacy, gives up his young affections to his deserving cousin. The plan of action adopted under these circumstances by Lucretia and Gabriel suggests itself at once. Remove the lovers, and nothing lies in the way of the succession to the Laughton property but the recovery of her longlost son.

A new character is at the same time brought upon the stage. It is the poor, ragged street-sweeper, in whom the author takes so extraordinary an interest, and around whom he throws a veil of such genuine feeling and sympathy, that it requires no prophet to predict that street crossings will for some time to come be at a premium.

Poor Beck, the hero of the cross-way, dwells at the top of one of those settlements peculiar to the Alsatias of great cities. You go up a ladder and there is no door. There is one begrimed window just above the choked gutter, but rain and wind come in and so do the cats. As for the rats they hold the place as their own. They were the mayors of that palace-he only le roi fainéant." On the floor beneath dwells Nicholas Grabman, attorney-at-law, again beneath that a choleric

resurrectionist, and on the ground-floor Bill the cracksman. Gabriel is taken to this fearful habitation in search of Grabman, who is employed in the discovery of Lucretia's lost son. Unfortunately, the artist disturbs the body-snatcher in his inquiries, and this leads to a scene of fierce recrimination, which terminates prophetically, of a future and terrible meeting.

The progress of affection, meanwhile, between natures like those of Percival and Helen, favoured by free and constant intercourse, is naturally rapid. Madame Dalibard has her chair rolled to the window, whence she can contemplate the young couple as they walk hand-inhand round the small demesnes. For Lucretia has had a paralytic seizure, and still full of vital energy, mobile and restless as a serpent, she is condemned to helpless decrepitude, "a cripple's impotence, and a Titan's will!"

Urged on by Gabriel, who has anticipated part of Helen's legacy, secret and deadly agents are already at work. The bloom forsakes the maiden's cheek, torpor creeps over her frame, a premature decay invades mind and body. Physicians are called in by her anxious lover with no advantage, and at length it is resolved that the maiden and her aunt shall be removed to Laughton for the benefit of change of air and scene. Beck, the ci-devant sweep, accompanies Percival in the character of a domestic, and becomes accidentally witness, in the dead of night, of a strange apparition, no less than the "waking of the serpent.'

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The helpless, paralysed cripple rose-was on her feet-tall, elastic, erect! It was as a resurrection from the grave. Never was change more startling than that simple action effected-not in the form alone, but the whole character of the face. The solitary light streamed upward on a countenance, on every line of which spoke sinister power and strong resolve. If you had ever seen her before, in her false, crippled state, prostrate and helpless, and could have seen her then-those eyes, if haggard still, now full of life and vigour-that frame, if spare, towering aloft in commanding stature, perfect in its proportions as a Grecian image of Nemesis-your amaze would have merged into terror, so preternatural did the transformation appear! so did aspect and bearing contradict the very character of her sex, uniting the two elements, most formidable in man as in fiend-wickedness and power!"

It can be readily imagined, that if a ghost had risen from the dead, it could scarcely have appalled the poor lad more. But the grateful affection that adorned this poor creature's nature, lifts him for the moment out of himself, and he resolves to watch the meaning of these strange midnight rambles of the crippled and the paralytic. The result is the detection of the criminal practices of the infamous Lucretia, too late, however, to save Helen, who falls a sad victim to her unsparing purpose, and the detection itself effected at the price of the poisoner's lost son's life, for finding herself discovered by the boy's agency, this modern Medea inflicts a death-wound by means of a ring, the fatal results of which are untold, before the friendless sweep is ascertained to be the child of the Sectarian Braddell.

It is needless to say that such a discovery brings with it the severest punishment of crime, and that the prophecy of the resurrectionist, that he shall be chained to the artist, is literally fulfilled. It is a sad picture of crime and its inevitable consequences, but never has the public had such

a history presented to it in more eloquent or powerful language, or characterised by more profound sympathy for mankind.

The career of Lucretia might be deemed too thickly strewn with crime, but past history tells us that such is one of the inevitable results of secret poisoning, the very idea of which-that is to say, of a poison which can be administered imperceptibly, and which gradually shortens life like a lingering disease-is one of so fearful and so comprehensive a character -so suggestive of mysterious power of unlimited application, and of unforeseen danger-that it is not to be wondered at, that it has so long attracted the attention of the scientific, or that it has so frequently roused the feelings of the poet and the philosopher, always ready in their wideembracing sympathies to soften the struggles of man against man, by a more genial and Christian-like humanity.

This most cowardly of all modes of attack or of revenge, appears to have been in use, indced, among all nations, and from all times. The discovery of venomous properties of certain plants was probably almost coeval with that of their alimentary qualities. Nature has given to herbiverous animals the instinct of a difference which, calculated to be a most valuable gift, or a fell curse to man, can only be arrived at by him by experience. The Babylonians and Assyrians of old wore talismans to protect themselves against the action of poison, and Avicenna tells us that the Egyptian kings often employed the deadliest drugs. All savages are more or less acquainted with the use of poisons, and they are still much in use among many eastern nations. It is well known that they were also in use among the Greeks and Romans, and that also to a very remarkable extent. Thus, for example, we learn from Pliny, that about two hundred years before the Christian era, above a hundred and fifty ladies of the first families were convicted of poisoning, and punished for the crime. Locusta not only practised poisoning for the benefit of the Cæsars, but was allowed to instruct pupils openly in the art.

The

The art was, however, never employed to so great an extent, and with such fatal success as in the seventeenth century in Italy and France. When the infamous Tophania, or Tufania, was put to the rack, she confessed to having caused the death of not less than 600 persons. almost equally infamous practices of the French Medea, Madame de Brinvilliers, suggested the creation of a particular court called the Chambre de Poison, or Chambre Ardente, for watching, searching after, and punishing poisoners. Many persons of both sexes of the highest rank were implicated by this institution, till becoming itself a political inquisition it was put an end to. The Abbé Gagliani, who was consulted on the occasion of the supposed poisoning of the dauphin, father of Louis XVI., and of the dauphiness, said that there was not at that time a lady at Naples who had not a bottle of aqua di Tufania on her toilet. The celebrated "poudre de succession" was probably not less extensively used.

It is very easy to be sceptical as to the existence of slowly acting poisons, or to ridicule, as Voltaire did, the possible bad effects of diamond dust, the supposed basis of the powder of succession; but the researches of modern physicians have shown that there is as certain a slow but inevitable death in grinding stones and metals without ventilation,* as there is in the

* Dr. Calvert Holland, on Diseases of the Lungs from Mechanical Causes. London, 1844.

long use of certain mineral paints under equally unfavourable circumstances. Observations on the bodies of persons destroyed by slow poisons, have not yet been published in sufficient number to establish a sound basis of investigation. It is an axiom of medical jurisprudence that the professional man cannot affirm poisoning without attesting the presence of poisoning; any other testimonies that he can give are only so many more or less convincing probabilities. This is a very inefficient state of medical science, when it has to rely upon toxicology solely to attest the cause of death. In ancient times, when a few narcotic plants, such as aconite, hemlock, and poppy, or the more subtle ink of the aplysia, were the chief poisonous substances used, or in more modern times, when the neutral salts of arsenic, or solutions of opium and cantharides, constituted the preparations chiefly in use in France and Italy, such means were adequate for detection; but they are no longer so, when the modes of the extraction of the alkaline and other extracts of poisonous plants, and the preservation by trituration of active powers in the decillioneth of a grain, and all the other numerous and varied discoveries in chemical science, can all be brought, in the wake of the more mysterious powers derived from animal magnetism, to produce the same ominous results.

In all times the secret has lain as much in the mode of preparation, as in the thing prepared. Hence it is that secrets of this kind have generally been confined to a few individuals. Aurengzebe caused one of his sons to be poisoned by merely letting the water which he drank in the day stand at night over juice of poppies. Water so prepared is said to be called in India powst. The Aqua Tufania was also tasteless, and limpid as rock water. There must, therefore, have been considerable skill used in the preparation of at least certain varieties of that renowned poison. The adulteration of a food is a frequent cause of slow poisonings. Bread is sometimes adulterated by most pernicious substances, as sulphate of copper, alum, and carbonate of potash. The oil of olives is adulterated with that of poisonous plants. Beer, wine, and spirits, are more frequently adulterated by poisonous substances than any other articles of consumption. A physician lately nearly lost his whole family in this country, by the use of a leaden cistern. It is evident then, notwithstanding the scepticism of some, that if persons can be slowly poisoned accidentally, they can also be so destroyed in a similar manner intentionally.

When it is impossible, then, to blind ourselves to the existence of crime from all times, and to the fact of the occasional strange and obscure paths which it pursues in order to attain its objects, when we see that the very progress of knowledge (as we have witnessed in modern instances in this country), may be made subservient to crime, and that intellect itself may be for good or bad, as it is properly or improperly directed and guided; can there be a higher object for the novelist while he amuses and interests. than to expose the sources and devolopment of evil in contradistinction to the good, and to depict, with an iron pen, the sure chastisement that awaits all deviations from the paths of righteousness and honour?

Such an end has Sir E. Bulwer Lytton accomplished in his last great work, "Lucretia."

LITERATURE.

NATURAL SCENERY OF NEW ZEALAND.*

IT is but a very few years since the celebrated geographer, Charles Ritter, said of New Zealand "that it is a section of the globe where nature has indeed been bountiful, nay, lavish of her choicest gifts, in return for which, however, mankind has hitherto done nothing, beyond the country's first discovery, or rather has abused these gifts in various ways." Since that time, however, government and colonial settlements have been established at various points; the axe and the plough are following fast in the van of missionary zeal into the innermost districts of the northern island; the resources of the country are pretty well known, and with the exception of a few draw-backs always attendant upon a young colonisation, quarrels with the warlike natives, and colonial and government misunderstandings and jealousies, the progress of a permanent and successful civilisation is steady and certain, and the time may be said to be already on the wing, when these harbour-rich islands, which exceed in width the Italian peninsula, and equal in surface England and Scotland conjointly, with a magnificent climate and unbounded fertility of soil, with a richly endowed vegetation and an animal kingdom that bears an idyllic character containing neither beast of prey nor venemous reptiles, shall fulfill its apparent destiny and become the seat of dominion of a great naval power-the Britannia of the Southern Hemisphere.

It is truly delightful to turn from ever-recurring and prolix details concerning rivers and harbours, the superior claims of Wellington or Aukland, debated lands, the wrongs of the Aborigines, the difficulties of colonists, the probable extinction of the whale-fishery, and questions of imports and exports, to accompany Mr. Angas in his wanderings amid savage life and scenes, and to contemplate without the anxiety of a colonist or the prejudice of an official, the natural scenery and peculiar aspect of a country modelled by the Great Creator with a richness of contrasted configuration and a luxuriance of vegetative power almost unequalled.

At the entrance of Cook's Straits, Mount Egmont lifts its crown of perpetual snow like a haughty beacon 8839 feet above the blue Pacific. Beyond this a picturesque and beautiful bay reveals itself backed by thickly wooded mountains, and enlivened with the wooden houses of the settlers. This is Wellington, which now contains three thousand inhabitants, many of whom it appears are of a very miscellaneous class. Several vessels lay at anchor in the bay, and Mr. Angas acknowledges that the appearance of the town from the anchorage was more imposing than he had anticipated. A perfect idea can be obtained both of town and harbour from the sketch in the Hon. H. W. Petre's little book on New Zealand. From Wellington Mr. Angas proceeded on foot, through the virgin forest, knee deep in mud, to Perivua harbour. We wish we

* Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand: being an artist's impressions of countries and people at the Antipodes, with numerous illustrations. By George French Angas. 2 vols. 8vo. Smith, Elder, and Co.