of a slate and slate-pencil which he always carried about with him. He also wrote so fair a hand, that he was employed by many persons, and even sometimes by the authorities, to transcribe or copy writings for them. Some time before, an unknown person had appeared in the village, had inquired after the deaf and dumb young man in the schoolmaster's absence, and had taken him with him to the alehouse to write out something for him. The unknown had called for a private room, ordered a bottle of wine, and, by means of the slate, gave him to understand that he wanted him to make a clean copy of the draft of a letter which he produced. Hechting did so at once without suspicion. Still, the contents of the letter appeared to him of a peculiar and questionable kind, and the whole demeanour of the stranger evinced restlessness and anxiety. When he came, however, to add the address of the letter, "To Herr Van der R, Burgomaster of M," he hesitated to do so, and yielded only to the pressing entreaties of the stranger, who paid him a gulden for his trouble, requesting him to preserve strict silence as to the whole affair. The deaf and dumb young man, when he began to reflect on the matter, felt more and more convinced that he had unconsciously been made a party to some illegal transaction. He at last confessed the whole to his instructor, who at once perceived that there existed a close connexion between the incident which had occurred and the criminal procedure in the noted case of the robbery. The letter of the corporal had already got into circulation in the neighbourhood, and was plainly the one which his pupil had been employed to copy. The schoolmaster, at his own hand, set on foot a small preliminary inquiry. He hastened to the innkeeper of the village inn, and asked him if he could recollect the stranger who some days before had ordered a private room and a bottle of wine, and who had been for some time shut up with the deaf and dumb lad. The host remembered the circumstance, but did not know the man. His wife, how ever, recollected that she had seen him talking on terms of cordial familiarity with the corn-miller, Overblink, as he was resting at the inn with his carts. The schoolmaster repaired on the spot to Overblink, inquired who was the man with whom he had conversed and shaken hands some days before at the inn; and the miller, without much hesitation, answered, that he remembered the day, the circumstance, and the man, very well; and that the latter was his old acquaintance the baker, H-, from the town. The schoolmaster hastened to lay these particulars before the authorities. How, then, was the well-known baker, H- implicated in this affair, which seemed gradually to be expanding itself so strangely? The facts as to the robbery itself seemed exhausted by the confessions of the carpenter and his associates. They alone had broken into the house-they alone had carried off and appropriated the stolen articles. And yet, if the baker was entirely unconnected with the matter, what could be his motive for mixing himself up with the transaction, and writing letters, as if to avert suspicion from those who had been first accused? Was his motive simply compassion? Was he aware of the real circumstances of the crime, and its true perpetrators? Did he know that the Blue Dragoon was innocent? But if so, why employ this mysterious and circuitous mode of assisting him? Why resort to this anxious precaution of employing a deaf and dumb lad as his amanuensis? why such signs of restlessness and apprehension,-such anxious injunctions of silence? Plainly the baker was not entirely innocent: this was the conviction left on the minds of the judges; for it was now recollected that this baker was the same person who, on the morning when the robbery was detected, had contrived to make his way into the house along with the officers of justice. It was he who had lifted from the ground the match containing the half-burnt receipt, and handed it to the officers present. His excessive zeal had even attracted attention before. Had he, then, broken into the house independently of the carpenter? Had he, too, committed a robbery-and was he agitated by the fear of its detection? But all the stolen articles had been recovered, and all of them had been found with the carpenter. The mystery, for the moment, seemed only increased; but it was about to be cleared up in a way wonderful enough, but entirely satisfactory. While the schoolmaster and the miller Overblink were detained at the Council-Chamber, the baker Hwas taken into custody. A long and circumstantial confession was the result, to the particulars of which we shall immediately advert. From his disclosures, a warrant was also issued for the apprehension of the woolspinner, Leendert Van N- and his wife -the same who had at first circulated the reports and suspicions against the dragoon; and who had afterwards given such plausible, and, as it appeared, such frank and sincere information against him before the court. Both had taken the opportunity of making off: but the pursuit of justice was successful---before evening they were brought back and committed to prison. The criminal procedure now proceeded rapidly to a close, but it related to a quite different matter from the robbery. This third association of culprits, it appeared, had as little to do with the carpenter and his comrades as these had with the dragoon and his inmates. But for the housebreaking, in which the persons last arrested had no share, the real crime in which they were concerned would, in all human probability, never have seen the light. The following disclosures were the result of the confessions of the guilty, and of the other witnesses who were examined. On the evening of the 29th June, there were assembled in the low and dirty chamber of the woolspinner, Leendert Van N, a party of cardplayers. It has already been mentioned that this quarter of the town was in a great measure inhabited by the disreputable portion of the public only a few houses,like those of Madame Andrecht, being occupied by the better classes. The gamblers were the Corporal Ruhler, of the company of Le Lery, then lying in garrison in the place, the master baker H. and the host himself, Leendert Van N but a community of interests and pursuits drew them together. The baker and corporal had been long acquainted; the former baked the bread for the garrison company, the latter had the charge of receiving it from him. The corporal had soon detected various frauds committed by the baker, and gave the baker the choice of denouncing them to the commanding officer, or sharing with him the profits of the fraud. The baker naturally chose the latter, but hated the corporal as much as he feared him; while the latter made him continually feel how completely he considered him in his power. A still deadlier enmity existed between the corporal and the woolspinner and his wife. The latter had formerly supplied the garrison with gaiters and other articles of clothing, and he had reason to believe that the corporal had been the means of depriving him of this commission, by which he had suffered materially. But the corporal had still a good deal in his power; he might be the means of procuring other orders, and it was necessary, therefore, to suppress any appearance of irritation, and even to appear to court his favour. Such an association as that which subsisted among these comrades, where each hates and suspects the other, and nothing but the tie of a common interest unites them, can never be of long duration. The moment is sure to arrive when the spark falls upon the mine which has been so long prepared, and the explosion takes place, the more fearful the longer it has been delayed. These worthy associates were playing cards on the evening above-mentioned: they quarrelled; and the quarrel became more and more embittered. The long-suppressed hatred on the part of the baker and the woolspinner burst forth. The corporal retorted in terms equally offensive; he applied to them the epithets which they deserved. From words they proceeded to blows, and deadly weapons were laid hold of on both sides. But two male foes and a female fury, arrayed on one side, were too much even for a soldier. The corporal, seized and pinioned from behind by the woman, fell under the blows of the woolspinner. As yet the baker had rather hounded on the others than actually interfered in the scuffle; but when the corporal, stretched on the ground, and his head bleeding from a blow on the corner of the table, which he had received in falling, began to utter loud curses against them, and to threaten them all with public exposure -particularly that deceitful scoundrel the baker-the latter, prompted either by fear or hatred, whispered to the woolspinner and his wife that now was the time to make an end of him at once; and that if they did not, they were ruined. The deadly counsel was adopted: they fell upon the corporal: with a few blows life was extinct; the corpse, swimming in blood, lay at their feet. The deed was irrevocable; all three had shared in it; all were alike guilty, and had the same reason to tremble at the terrors of the law. With the body still warm at their feet, they entered into a solemn mutual engagement to be true to each other; to preserve inviolable secresy as to the crime; and to extinguish, so far as in them lay, every trace of its commission. On the night of the murder, they had devised no plan for washing out the blood, and removing the body, which of course required to be disposed of, so that the disappearance of Ruhler might cause no suspicion. The terrors of conscience, and the apprehension of the consequences of their crime, had too completely occupied their minds for the moment. The next morning, however, they met again at the woolspinner's house to arrange their plans. Suddenly a noise was heard in the street,-it was the commotion caused by the news of the discovery of the robbery at Madame Andrecht's. The culprits stood pale and confounded. What was more probable than that an immediate search in pursuit of the robbers, or of the stolen articles, would take place into every house of this suspected and disreputable quarter. The woolspinner's house was the next to that which had been robbed; the flooring was at that moment wet with blood; the body of the murdered corporal lay in the cellar. Immediate measures must be resorted to, to stop the apprehended search, till time could be found for removing the body. The object, then, was to give to the authorities such hints as should induce them to pass over the houses of the baker and the woolspinner. The woolspinner's wife had the merit of devising the infernal project which occurred to them. The Blue Dragoon was to be the victim. A robbery had taken place. Why might he not have been the criminal? He had often scaled the hedge-had often entered the house at night during his courtship. But then a corroborating circumstance might be required to ground the suspicion. It was supplied by the possession of a handkerchief which he had accidentally dropt in her house, and which she had not thought it necessary to restore to him. It might be placed in any spot they thought fit, and the first links in the chain of suspicion were clear. The invention of the baker came to the aid of the woolspinner's wife. One token was not enough; a second proof of the presence of the dragoon in Madame Andrecht's house must be devised. The baker had, one day, been concluding a bargain with a peasant before the house of the dragoon. He required a bit of paper to make some calculation, and asked the host for some. who handed him an old excise permit, telling him to make his calcu lations on the back. This scrap of paper the baker still had in his pocketbook. This would undoubtedly compromise the dragoon. But then it bore the name and handwriting of the baker on the back. This portion of it was accordingly burnt; the date and the signature of the excise officer were enough for the diabolical purpose it was intended to effect. It was rolled up into a match, and deposited by the baker (who, as already said, had contrived to make his way along with the police into the house) upon the floor, where he pretended to find it, and delivered it to the authorities. The machinations of these wretches were unconsciously assisted by those of the carpenter and his confederates. The suspicion which the handkerchief and the match had originated, the finding of the pocket-book within the house of the dragoon appeared to confirm and complete, an accidental concurrence of two independent plots, both resorted to from the principle of self-preservation, and having in view the same infernal object. But this object, so far as concerned the baker and the woolspinner, had been too effectually attained. They had wished to excite suspicion against Nicholas, only with the view of gaining time to remove the corpse, and efface the traces of the murder. This had been effected--their intrigue had served its purpose; and they could not but feel some remorse at the idea that an innocent person should be thereby brought to ruin. The strange intervention of chance—the finding of the pocket-book, the accusation by the carpenter, filled them with a secret terror; they trembled their consciences again awoke. The thought of the torture, which awaited the unfortunate innkeeper, struck them with horror. It was not the ordinary fear of guilty men, afraid of the disclosures of an accomplice-for the dragoon knew nothing, he could say nothing to compromise them, it was a feeling implanted by a Divine power, which seemed irresistibly to impel them to use their endeavours to avert his fate. They met, they consulted as to their plans. A scheme occurred to them which promised to serve a double purpose, by which delay might be obtained for Nicholas, while at the same time it might be made the means of permanently ensuring their own safety. To resuscitate the murdered Corporal Ruhler in another quarter, and to charge him with the guilt of the robbery, might serve both ends. It gave a chance of escape to Nicholas: it accounted for the disappearance of the corporal. Hence the letter which represented him as alive, as the perpetrator of the robbery, and as a deserter flying to another country; which they thought would very naturally put a stop to all further inquiry after him. But their plan was too finely spun, and the very precautions to which they had resorted, led, as sometimes happens, to discovery. If they had been satisfied to allow the proposed letter to be copied out by the woolspinner's wife, as she offered, to be taken by her to Rotterdam, and put into the post, suspicion could hardly have been awakened against them: the handwriting of the woman, who had seldom occasion to use the pen, would have been unknown to the burgomaster or the court. The deaf and dumb youth, to whom they resorted as their copyist, betrayed them: step by step they were traced out,and, between fear and hope, a full confession was at last extorted from them. Sentence of death was pronounced against the parties who had been concerned in the housebreaking as well as in the murder, and carried into effect against all of them, with the exception of the woolspinner's wife, who died during her imprisonment. The woolspinner alone exhibited any signs of penitence. LAURELS AND LAUREATES. A YOUNG lady of Thessaly, celebrated for her beauty and modesty, was admired by a dissolute young gentleman, a native of the erratic isle of Delos. This roving blade was of high birth and consummate address, yet the nymph was more than coy; she turned from him with aversion, and when he would have pressed his suit, she took to her heels along the banks of the Peneus. The audacious lover darted after her, as a greyhound in pursuit of a hare; and the fugitive, perceiving that she must lose the race, implored the gods to screen her. The breath of the pursuer was fanning her "back hair;" his hands stretched forth to stop her; but as he closed them, instead of the prize that he expected to secure, he embraced an armful of green leaves. The hunter had lost his game in a thicket of bay or female laurel. Inconsolable, he shed some natural tears; but having a conceit in his misery, he twined a branch of the laurel into a wreath, and placed it on his head in memorial of his misadventure. A glance at himself in the nearest pool of the river told him that the glossy ornament was becoming to his fine complexion; and the youth, being a poet and pretty considerably a coxcomb, wore one ever after; and it has been the custom ever since to adorn the brows of all great poets, and of some small ones, with sprigs of laurel. "Tis sung in ancient minstrelsy That Phoebus wont to wear The leaves of any pleasant tree Around his golden hair; Till Daphne, desperate with pursuit Of his imperious love, At her own prayer transform'd, took root A laurel in the grove. Then did the Penitent adorn His brow with laurel green; And mid his bright locks, never shorn, And poets sage through every age So sings our living laureate; and this authentic anecdote, familiar to every schoolboy who studies ancient history in Ovid, shows that the coronatiom of poets was customary long before the age of Homer; and coeval, as it were, with poetry itself. The disappointed lover of Daphne, the first poet, was also the first laureate, and placed the crown on his head with his own hands, as many poets have done since, with a frank Napoleon-like self-appreciation. Having afterwards quarrelled with his father, and been expelled from home for sundry extravagancies, he returned with his lyre and laurel into Thessaly, the land of his first love-primus amor Phœbi, Daphne Peneia-and for nine years served a prince of that country in the double capacity of poet and shepherd. Thus, though the exact date is not ascertained, the original tenure of the honourable office of poet-royal is pretty clearly traced to Apollo himself. But if we proceed from Apollo, our chapter on laureates will be longer than the tail of a comet. We must apply our wise saws to comparatively modern instances, hardly glancing for a moment even as far back as the age of Augustus, to observe that, of his two laurelled favourites, Virgil and Horace, the latter loftily maintains the dignity of the poet's position, when, in his Ode to Lollius, he shows that the alliance between poetic and regal or heroic power, was mutually important from the earliest ages. Kings, wise and great, flourished before Agamemnon, but are utterly forgotten: "Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! con Petrarch is, perhaps, the first eminent poet, among Christians, whose genius is indisputably associated with the laurel crown, which was ferred on him with all form, at Rome, by authority of the king, senate, and people, in especial token of his quality of poet. But the laurel was conspicuously the type of his fame in that character. His mistress was a laurel in name, and a Daphne in nature, if we give credence to his melodious complaints of her coldness. Many persons have doubted the very |