sive Charity Symons. The suddenness of the shock overcame him, and he fainted..

Mary Lovegrove, whose child had sobbed itself to sleep, was sitting in solitude and darkness in the lower room of the cottage, her head bowed in mute and tearless agony upon the table, when, as on a previous evening, a tap at the back window challenged her attention. It was once more Charity Symons. "What do you here again ?" exclaimed the wretched wife with some asperity of tone: "you no doubt intend well; but you have nevertheless ruined, destroyed me."

"Not so," rejoined the deformed clerk, his pale, uncouth, but expressive features gleaming with wild exultation in the clear starlight. "God has at last enabled me to requite your kindness to a contemned outcast. Fear not for to-morrow. Your husband is safe, and you are rich." With these words he vanished.

On the next morning a letter was placed in the magistrate's hands from Mr. Nichols, stating that circumstances had come to the writer's knowledge, which convinced him that Edward Lovegrove was entirely innocent of the offence imputed to him; that the letter, which he had destroyed, bore quite another meaning from that which he had at first attributed to it; and that he consequently abandoned the prosecution. On further inquiry, it was found that the attorney had left his house late the preceding night, accompanied by his son, had walked to Christchurch, and from thence had set off post for London. His property and the winding up of his affairs had been legally confided to his late clerk. Under these circumstances the prisoner was of course immediately discharged; and after a private interview with Symons, returned in joy and gladness to his now temporary home. He was accompa

nied by the noisy felicitations of his neighbors, to whom his liberation and sudden accession to a considerable fortune had become at the same moment known. As he held his passionately-weeping wife in his arms, and gazed with grateful emotion in her tearful but rejoicing eyes, he whispered, "That kind act of yours towards the despised hunchback has saved me and enriched our child. 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy!"

TALE OF EUGENE ARAM.

In the year 1758, a man digging for limestone, near a place called St. Robert's Cave, in the parish of Knaresborough, county of York, found the bones of a human body. Suspecting these to be the remains of some one who had been murdered, he gave information of his discovery in the town of Knaresborough, where the people thrown into great excitement by the intelligence, endeavored to recollect if any one had of late years been missed from that neighborhood. It was remembered by a particular individual, that one Daniel Clarke, a shoemaker, had disappeared about thirteen years. before, and had never again been heard of. On further inquiry, it was ascertained that he had disappeared under circumstances which occasioned a suspicion of his having acted fraudulently. He had borrowed a considerable quantity of plate, under pretence of being commissioned to collect that article for exportation. Being then just married, he had also borrowed some articles of household furniture and wearing apparel, for the purpose, as he pretended, of giving an entertainment to his friends. After his disappearance, two persons named Houseman and Aram, were suspected of having aided him in the fraud. Their houses were searched, and some of the miscellaneous articles found, but no plate, which it was then supposed that Clarke must have made off with; and thus

the matter ended. It was now recollected that the wife of Aram, who was subsequently deserted by him, had said to some one that she knew what would peril the life of her husband and some other persons. An inquest being held upon the skeleton, all these circumstances were brought forward as evidence.

To this inquest the coroner summoned Richard Houseman, one of the individuals suspected at the time of having assisted Clarke in his fraud. This man entered the room in a state of great agitation, and with strong marks of fear in his countenance and voice. Taking up one of the bones, he used the remarkable expression, "This is no more Dan. Clarke's bone than it is mine;" which convinced the jury that he knew something more about the matter. He was ultimately prevailed on to acknowledge that he was privy to the murder of Clarke, and that his bones were buried in St. Robert's Cave, not far from the place where those now before the jury had been found. On a search being made, the bones were found exactly in the place and posture which he described. He stated the actual murderer to be his former friend Eugene Aram, who now acted as usher in the school of Lynn, in Norfolk. A warrant was immediately sent off for the apprehension of Aram, who was found peacefully engaged in his ordinary business. The profession of this man, his mature age, and the reputation which he bore for great learning, conspired to render his apprehension as a murderer a matter of the greatest surprise to the inhabitants of the place where he lived. He at first denied that he had ever been at Knaresborough, or knew Daniel Clarke, but, on the introduction of a person who was acquainted with him at that town, he saw fit to acknowledge his former residence in it.

Eugene Aram was a native of Yorkshire, and connected by birth with some of the families of gentry in that county. The circumstances of his parents are not stated, but he appears to have entered life in the character of a poor scholar. Having adopted the business of teaching, he devoted himself to the acquisition of knowledge with an ardor equalling that of the most distinguished scholars. After acting as an usher in various situations, he had settled in 1734 at Knaresborough, where, eleven years after, he committed the crime for which he was now apprehended. By an early and imprudent marriage, he had added to the embarrassment of his circumstances; yet his pursuit of knowledge continued unabated. When we learn that the man who associated with such low persons as Clarke and Houseman, was deeply skilled in the ancient and modern languages, including the Hebrew, Arabic, and Celtic, and was alike conversant in the belles letters, in antiquities, and in several branches of modern science, our wonder amounts almost to disbelief: yet there can be no doubt of the fact. He had even, before his apprehension, advanced a great way in a comparative polyglot lexicon, upon a new, and for that age, profound plan, in which it seems not unlikely, that, if it had been carried into effect, he might have anticipated some of the honors of the German philologists. had also composed several tracts upon British antiquities. In a fiction grounded upon his story by one of the most delightful of modern novelists, his thirst for knowledge is seized with admirable art as a means of palliating his crime: he is there represented as entering into the base plans of his accomplices, for the purpose of supplying the means of study. But no such motive can be traced in his real story, which simply sets him down as a remarkable example of capacity and talent,

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