violated the confidence of his friend in his dearest domestic relations. This friend had the happiness to die before a discovery was made, which would have served to have brought him brokenhearted to the grave, being one of the most sensitive and amiable of human beings. He happened to be buried in the vaults of a church in a distant part of which have the strange power of naturally mummyizing the bodies placed there, so that after a few months the coffins might be opened for the inspection of friends who may again wish to see them. The individual who had thus so deeply injured him was travelling in company with a legal friend in the neighbourhood; and, mind you, was ignorant of the place of his victim's burial. These two, actuated by curiosity, paid a visit to those remarkable vaults. The very first vault they entered contained a single coffin-it was his !

"There lies Mr. S!" said the sexton.

This was the second part of the accomplished fact. In six months afterwards this gentleman was discovered in a fresh intrigue with a member of a family, for whom his friend and travelling companion acted as solicitor, and this very man was employed to sue him for damages, and ruin him! Were these facts in themselves trivial, or rather did they not regularly harmonise and revolve upon themselves;-commencing, connecting, and concluding? Was it not as if the spirit of the injured man had given into the hands of his stranger visitant his case, to prosecute and procure vengeance for his wrongs?

James N- was a member of the bar, of agreeable manners, fine talents, and generally accomplished. He was also a man of good family, and possessed of good fortune. All these advantages were thrown away. He aimed at companionship with the highest society, where he was only tolerated for his convivial qualities. He gambled-he lost all principle-he was ruined. The razor was snatched from his throat by a friend who discovered his intended suicide in time-he was privately smuggled out of the country, and went to Constantinople. He became a favourite in high quarters there was offered promotion in that State, if he renounced Christianity. He did he became an Apostate, and was rewarded. Years rolled on, and thoughts of the past and yearnings for the future returned upon him; he privately made an engagement with the master of a trading vessel, at Constantinople, to return to his own country. His abandoned faith had embit tered his happiness, and he purposed to return to it again. His

secret was betrayed. He received the fatal message, for which, in that country, there is but one interpretation; and passing along one of the corridors of the seraglio, he was met by the two mutes, who threw him down and strangled him. The application of this fait accompli to my theory is equally plain, though not in its inferences so personal. We must therefore leave it to work its way upon the mind, in confirmation of our positions, especially as it is liable to more mysterious application than it is our present purpose to discuss.

It is with no intention of being tedious that we reiterate isolated and independent examples, but merely to establish a chain of argument, and to give others some data to guide them in the inquiry as one of great interest; and, therefore, we offer another case, still, as we think it necessary again to affirm, of our own knowledge.

A gentleman, a distiller by trade, had raised himself from being a poor, shoeless boy, to great opulence and importance in his county. Having arrived at the pinnacle of his position, he seemed quite intoxicated with success, and lost altogether the sense of his own true position in society. I believe there is no more dangerous nor abandoned state of mind. He lived in high society, who were necessarily, by county interests and county business, brought into communication with him; but his natural vulgarity, instead of being checked and controlled into meanness, as having yet his fortune to make, now exhibited itself in full-blown, dictatorial, low-languaged insolence. He was given to drinking, but, though a distiller, no spirit ever passed his lips: he used to drink wine by tumblers-full. This fact is necessary to be stated. Ostentatious in his connexions with the great, and his expenditure to entertain them, he was a man fond of money, and not inclined to show leniency to the poor or those under him. Having thus pourtrayed his circumstances and his character, I proceed, briefly, to state his warnings and his fate, and describe the wheel of circumstances that, as I contend, bore him upon its periphery to his final fate.

One Sunday, he made his appearance in his seat at church in the inflated pride of wealth, and surrounded by his happy, handsome family; after church he received a letter announcing to him the failure of a merchant who was indebted to him five hundred pounds. This was nothing to him as a loss in a pecuniary way, but it served to irritate and inflame his passion, and drove him still oftener to the wine-bottle for the ensuing week. The second

Sunday saw him again in his place, he rode there and from it in his carriage; he had again his retinue of family and servants about him on this Sunday he was called out of church to inform him that the extensive cattle-sheds on his country estate, a few miles out of the town, were on fire; these were all consumed, together with forty head of cattle. This loss was severe, it amounted to more than a thousand pounds, but still it could neither affect his credit or his comfort this was not the purpose of the cycle of visitation. It happened however, unfortunately, that in his avarice he was seized with the dreadful idea of making that a case of incendiarism, (in order to recover from the county,) which was plainly and publicly known to be mere accident, and took an oath, as necessary to that effect. The third Sunday he was dead—and died in so remarkable a manner as to make a great impression in his neighbourhood. His free living had considerably injured his general habit of body. On some slight illness he had retired to his room, and there received a remarkable and unusual wound, which ended his existence quickly by supervening mortification. Here also is an example of the trilogistic revolutions of circumstances, although its orbit is smaller and the time of motion quicker, but doubtless its accomplished fact having fulfilled its own mission, served, and indeed, did eventually serve, to set a new cycle in motion with respect to the fate and fortunes of his surviving family.

I shall add another example, and I do it gladly from the public journals of the day; First, to preserve a strange instance of the theory I have propounded; and Secondly, because it has been already noticed in several papers and attracted public attention, so that there will be double effect in my application of what has already interested them, though but as passing incident of

human existence.

A young man, in service, of good abilities and good character, is sent by his mistress, residing in the country, to a jeweller's in a neighbouring town, to bring her a diamond ring. He procures it and returns, and in crossing a wooden bridge, he drops the ring among some brushwood on the brink of the river. He searches and cannot find it: stupified with astonishment and affright, he dreads to meet his mistress lest he should be suspected of a theft. He flies, visits India, brings his abilities and integrity into play, makes a fortune, and after the lapse of many years, returns to England; his first honest and kind-hearted intention being to visit his former mistress, bringing her a ring equal in value to the one he had so strangely

lost. He reaches the neighbouring village, and takes his way by the very same fatal spot. A stranger meets him, who, attracted by his manner, asks him does anything affect him; he then details the history of the ring, its loss, his flight, his wanderings, his success in life, his return, and his present purpose. "Perhaps,' said the stranger, "the ring may be there still," and putting down his stick into the hollow of an old tree that impeded the stream, he draws out the ring that had been lost. His honesty was guaranteed, and he had been raised in the world; and now, having fulfilled his own mission, and perhaps given new impulses of thought, feeling, and action to others, he had returned to reap the fruit of his labours, and to find himself independent and happy. On reading this narration, of the truth of which there can be no reasonable doubt, one is immediately reminded of Parnell's tale of "the Hermit," and tempted to think, almost, that the stranger who met him must have been an angel in disguise; but passing this as impertinent to our theory, the whole statement serves strongly to maintain and confirm it, and we doubt not it will so appear to the unprejudiced inquirer.

When

A gentleman of my acquaintance, when a very young lad, paid a visit late one evening, to a house immediately adjoining a Cathedral, the whereabouts of which it is unnecessary to mention. The house was the official residence of the sacristan, who was a shoe-maker by trade; the lad went to get a pair of shoes. While he was waiting, there was word brought to the sacristan that there were robbers in the vaults. He got torches and pistols, and accompanied by his two sons, strong and brave young men, went to the vaults in the performance of his duty. The lad earnestly requested to accompany them; the younger son took charge of him. they entered the vaults, they proceeded at once to one which was termed "the Royal," where a great many persons of rank were buried, as it was supposed the robbers would seek that vault for the purpose of stealing the lead. On entering this vault, a sad and disgusting spectacle presented itself: the robbers had indeed been there: the rich velvet palls had been carried off, the leaden coffins had been sawn asunder, and the bodies, in various stages of decomposition, were lying on the ground. In one corner of the vault had lain for years, a remarkable lead coffin; it was not exactly what we call a coffin, but it appeared as if sheet-lead had been rolled round the body, still preserving the shape of the poor human frame that mouldered within it. The report ran, for there

was no record of its burial, that it contained the body of some person of consequence who had died in France, that it had been sunk in the sea, attached by ropes, and thus brought over; but who he was, or why buried there, nobody could tell. The lad, in surveying the body thus so strangely buried, and so strangely exhumed, kicked something with his foot; he picked it up, and found that it was a small leaden case with a lid, and the sacristan sagely supposed that it had contained the gentleman's heart, (I have omitted to mention that the body was embalmed): this, with a few strange-looking French artificial flowers that had decked the corpse, was all that they discovered. The robbers had made good their retreat.

Years rolled on, and the boy had become a man; the memory of his night's adventure, when a youth, was almost forgotten; he had been at a great school, he had graduated at Oxford, he had been called to the bar, and in the heart of this great city he was toiling honourably, but hardly, for advancement. At this time, in the circle of his acquaintance, he continually heard a great deal of the beauty and accomplishments of a young French girl, Mademoiselle Melanie de R—, she was an orphan, and had come over with the children of a respectable English family, more in the light of a companion than governess. She herself had English blood in her veins, but she was ignorant of her connexions, if any existed. She had been told by her mother that she ought to be in possession of some inheritance, but her information on that point was scanty, and though hope and imagination gave many pleasing pictures to her young and innocent mind, it was more than probable that they were untrue as indistinct. However, she was a very charming girl, her friends could not think of parting with her, and they were sure, that, at any time when absolutely necessary for her settlement in life, she could obtain an advantageous establishment. It happened that our young advocate was introduced to Mademoiselle Melanie, and, ardent and impassioned in all his thoughts and feelings, he no sooner saw her than he loved her, and not to tire my readers in a philosophical paper with a tedious description of courtship, for a true tale, he married her. He had a small independence; he had a good profession; and with love, health, and talent, he could see no cloud gathering athwart his career of honourable ambition.

Such are generally the feelings of youth; but however pleasing to run into debt to Hope, it only adds to the fell power of Despair when he forecloses the mortgage. My friend had miscalculated;