written, and inquired whether a letter in the same handwriting had not been lately received by the authorities? On comparing it with the letter from Rotterdam, it was found that they were written by the same person, and the schoolmaster gave the following explanation, which materially altered the whole affair.

In his village there was a deaf and dumb boy, whom the parish had given him as a boarder. He had succeeded in teaching the unfortunate to write, and he had brought it to such perfection that he was employed by many persons, even the burgomaster of the village, in preparing documents. A short time back, an unknown person had come to the village during the schoolmaster's absence, had asked for the deaf and dumb boy, as frequently happened, and taken him with him to the inn. There he ordered a private room and a bottle of wine. He then begged the lad to copy him a letter which he wrote on his slate. The boy did so at first without suspicion: still the contents of the letter appeared singular to him, and the demeanour of the unknown revealed fear and anxiety. But when he was directed to write the address, "To the Burgomaster of M‚” he refused to comply at first, and was only induced to do so by the pressing entreaties of the stranger, who gave him a florin, and recommended him to preserve strict silence. The boy was at first inclined to do so, for he knew he had done something wrong; but he at length confessed to his master, who immediately perceived that this mysterious affair was in close connexion with the universally-spoken-of trial. He went to the landlord of the inn, and asked him if he remembered a stranger, who had brought the deaf and dumb boy to his house? The landlord recalled the circumstance, but did not know the man; his wife, however, called to mind that she had seen him speaking familiarly with another wellknown man from the town, the miller Overblink, who had just stopped with his waggon before the door. They shook hands on parting, and called one another by name. The schoolmaster inquired further. He went directly to Overblink and asked the name of the man. remembered the circumstance perfectly, and said that the man was no other than his old acquaintance, the baker H, of that very town. The schoolmaster, after recommending the miller to observe the strictest secresy, had then come straight to the police.

The miller

The baker was immediately arrested and examined. He must have given some important information, for the woolspinner Leendert van N- and his wife were also imprisoned during the course of the day. These were the persons who had first raised suspicion against the Blue Dragoon, and had made such a well-founded denunciation against him before the authorities. The crime of which they were accused was quite a different one from the preceding, and had as little connexion with the carpenter and his accomplices, as the latter with the Blue Dragoon and his relatives. Without the robbery, however, in which the last persons arrested were no participators, this dark crime would hardly have been detected.

We find in the dirty low room of the woolspinner Leendert van Non the evening of the 29th June, a company of card-players, who, as regarded their antecedents, had not much to reproach each other with. The players were Corporal Rühler, the baker H- and Leendert van They were well acquainted, though they hated and detested each other, but a common criminal interest connected them together. The baker and corporal were old allies; the former baked the bread for the

N

garrison, and the latter had the duty of receiving it from him. The baker employed the common trick of rendering the bread the proper weight by mixing deleterious ingredients in the dough. The corporal detected it, and gave the baker the choice of being denounced or bribing him. He chose the latter. The corporal, however, treated him harshly, and he, consequently, hated him. The enmity between the corporal and the woolspinner was still more violent. The latter had formerly had the privilege of supplying the garrison with gaiters, but the corporal had lately deprived him of it. He had lost considerably by it, and he was furious. The corporal, however, had power in his hands, and could deprive them both of other advantages which they derived from the garrison. They were, therefore, forced to suppress their passion, suffer his arbitrary treatment, and feel honoured when he visited them.

They were playing cards together. Without such deeply-rooted enmity, cards in such places, and with people of this class, are often the provocative of violent disputes. They began quarrelling on this evening. The corporal employed threats. From words they proceeded to blows; and the result was that they fell on the corporal in a body, and killed him. During the night they were too terrified to proceed in removing the traces of the deed, and in the morning, to their horror, a disturbance broke out in their immediate vicinity. Madame Andrecht had returned, and the news of the great robbery spread like wildfire through the town. What was more natural than that the nearest houses would be searched? The woolspinner's was the very next, and the boards were still wet with blood, and the corporal's corpse lay in the cellar. This must be prevented, and suspicion cast on some one, till they found time to remove the traces.

The woolspinner's wife had the honour of devising the devilish scheme, which seemed to save them. The Blue Dragoon might be the culprit, for he had so often secretly climbed over their hedge. At the same time he had forgotten a handkerchief in her house, long before, which she had not returned him. Both circumstances tallied. The handkerchief might be laid somewhere in the neighbourhood, and suspicion would arise spontaneously. The baker's inventive talent came to the woman's aid, and one idea produced the other. One sign was not sufficient; a second must betray the dragoon's presence in the house. On a market-day the baker had completed a bargain with a peasant just before the Blue Dragoon's house. He had to settle with the peasant, and asked the landlord for a piece of paper. The latter gave him an old declaration to write his accounts on the back of it. This paper the baker still had in his pocket-book. His name, however, was on the back, and the account and his name were burned off. The baker followed the police into the house, threw this paper into a corner, and then was the first to pick it up and hand it to the officers.

They had, however, acted too cleverly, and their extreme caution brought about the discovery, as is so frequently the case with criminals. Had they let the woolspinner's wife write the letter to the burgomaster, as she offered-she went afterwards to Rotterdam to post it-suspicion would hardly have been aroused against them. The deaf and dumb boy betrayed them, and their fear soon drew the most ample confession from them. On the day that Isaac van C- and his accomplices were hanged, the same fate befel the baker H- and the woolspinner Leendert van N

"SYMBOLISM.". -“THE LAVANDA.”

"HIGH SYMBOLISM" and high Infallibility are alike subject to this common danger-that if not well sustained and consistently carried out, they inevitably topple over into the ridiculous! "La Sua Santita" will never get over the blunder of having condemned, as theological errors, the philosophic truths of Gallileo; and the subterfuge by which ultramontane professors teach the "Newtonian Philosophy," with a salvo to the "never wrong" and "not-to-be-questioned" decisions of the "Chair of Peter," is as miserable a rat-hole as ever obstinacy crept into, to escape conviction or avoid confession of a mistake.

So, likewise, with high transcendental Symbolism. "The Pope and Sacred College" combine theoretically into the Symbolic Exponent of perfect Ecclesiastical Government, in which "God's Vicar on Earth" is supposed to sit in an interior calm of guidance and direction, the Princes of the Church being, symbolically, the hinges (Cardinales, quasi Cardines) on which the outer, or manifested, Church is to turn and move in harmonious action. The Papacy, of course, endeavours to make this theory objective, in all possible modes of its external action, and to exhibit it as the leading idea (understood where not expressed) in all those “funzioni” which constitute its dazzling and captivating ceremonial. Yet it is in the progress of these very functions that incongruities and absurdities do so frequently creep in, that while they are intended to express very high and transcendental spiritualities, they in truth do but impress upon the beholders the axiom that "from the sublime to the ridiculous," is—not even a step, but—a slide-an insensible transition.

Before I proceed to "high places" for my exemplars, I must explain my meaning by an illustration which presented itself, "long, long ago," years before I dreamed that I should ever have an opportunity of studying "Symbolism" "ad limina Apostolorum." I went one day into a fine old church in Brittany, in order to examine some of the details of its architecture. My visit was in the early morning; yet, early as it was, I found the church occupied. A funeral service was going on; the coffin lay within the choir and before the high altar, which was hung with black drapery, "semé de gouttes de larmes," symbolical of the Church's weeping for the departed; the priests, "in long array," moved processionally round the bier, giving with their united voices effect to the solemn "office for the dead;" a few friends, in mourning habits, drooped and wept in the stalls of the choir-otherwise, the great church was empty-and I, considering that in such a scene, to walk about tablet and pencil in hand, copying inscriptions and sketching mouldings, would be symbolical of a disrespect I did not feel, I quietly slid into a seat, and waited the termination of the service. It ended; the priests filed off in solemn train into the vestry to disrobe themselves; the mourners departed, leaving the coffin on its tressels before the altar until evening, when the true "enterrement" was to take place, and I remained alone with the dead, not a living soul, to my apprehension, within the vast temple but myself. I felt all the "religio loci et rei”. the Majesty of Death doing homage to HIM who "must reign until he hath put all things under his feet." It is not all at once that one can

turn from such thoughts and associations to trivial occupation or a mere tourist's objects of interest, and I was in profound thought, when I heard the door of the sacristy open, and after an "adieu" to his brother priests departing by an outer door at the opposite side, "Monsieur le Curé" came into the church. He had been pointed out to me some days before, and with "Sentimental Journey"-ism in my head, I had entered his in my tablets of memory as "one of those countenances Guido loved to paint-mild, pale, penetrating." He had just retired from a solemnising service; he was quite unaware of my presence-of the presence of any one-and on leaving the sacristy he took the passage between the high altar and the "Ladye Chapel" (that chapel which, in the language of Symbolism, is understood to symbolise a "power behind the throne," practically greater than the throne itself in the estimation of many). In the "Ladye Chapel" stood a "faire statue" of the · Virgin and Child"—that incitement to devotion which acts so powerfully on the sympathies of mothers and the young instincts of childhood-there it stood, soliciting that devotion which the Church of Rome so sedulously inculcates, and Monsieur le Curé, who at first appeared disposed to pass without offering his homage, as if on sudden recollection, stopped, returned, and knelt down to pay it.

As he knelt there, in the still, solitary church, in his black, close-fitting, graceful dress, his hands clasped, his head gently inclined to one side, as in rapt contemplation of the object before, if not to, which he was praying, to me, sitting in shade in the distance, the whole was an imposing picture, most artistically grouped, and in every feature, attitude, accompaniment, symbolising profound contemplative devotion ! "Well, certainly," I was saying to myself, "this Church of Rome does know how to express, however it may feel, abstracted seraphic piety; surely yonder kneeling man is at least absorbed in his devotional contemplations." As I spoke, or rather thought this, the clasped hands unclosed-one of them stole down to a side-pocket, the head remaining still in its position of intense adoration-I saw the loosened hand uplifted, and presently!-death to symbolism, seraphic abstraction, and seriousness all at one blow!-I saw the head incline a little more from the devotional angle, and the hand administer a-pinch of snuff!—yes, a pinch of snuff, given and received with as much seeming gusto as ever confirmed snuff-taker afforded to "Scotch high dried" or "Irish blackguard"-the dream was at an endand I fear, when soon after Monsieur le Curé passed me by, with composed countenance and "stepping mincingly," he saw a most heretical smile on my face. Such was my first esoteric lesson into the illusions of Symbolism! I had subsequently, and elsewhere, many others; for instance, when I have seen the confessor, sitting in open court in the "chair of penance," interrupt the outpourings of some burthened spirit, kneeling, grovelling, at his side, to have a "chat, and shake hands" with a passing acquaintance! or a preacher in the pulpit break off in an impassioned apostrophe to "Notre Dame de Pitié et de Secours," to-spit! These were rather rough and coarse exemplifications of how Rome works out its Symbolism. "But (I said) surely these are poor-these are foolish.” "I will get me to the great men.' I did so at last, and it remained for St. Peter's and its "high ceremonies," in long years after, to complete the disenchantment.

St. Peter's is so specially the theatre of the "High Ceremonies" of the

Roman Church, that, except for them, it is, as a place of worship, comparatively useless. For personal devotions, the Pope has his Sistine Chapel. The Chapter of St. Peter's "fulfil the order of their course" in the "Capella del Coro" (the "Choir Chapel," spacious enough for a large parish church), in a side aisle of the great temple below. Individual worshippers at all times "drop in," and drop down to pay their private homage at the illuminated shrine of the Apostles in the centre; and there is ever a stream of votaries, who with forehead and lip rub away some infinitesimal portion of the disappearing toe of the "Pietro Sedentè"-alias the "Jupiter Capitolinus"*-at the right hand of the nave. These are all but driblets of devotion trickling into the "mare magnum" of that vast nave, and for all practical uses the high altar of St. Peter's, except on "high days," is as though it were not. It stands, "simplex munditiis," without a gaud to attract the gazing multitude-the plainest piece of furniture of "the altar pattern" in all Rome. Indeed, it may be well questioned whether it were not better that, like other movables of the "fittings up" of St. Peter's, it could be put aside when the exhibition for which it is used is over. They take down and fold up the silk hangings, remove the galleries, roll the organ (itself as large as a chapel of ease) out of sight, and leave the magnificent nave " alone in its glory,"-they would improve it amazingly by making the central bulk a "movable fixture" alsofor it is voted, without a dissentient voice, that the high altar, with Bernini's fantastic Baldachino over it, greatly impair (they cannot destroy) the effect of the noble temple in which they stand.

Into St. Peter's, on "high days," Symbolism forbids his Holiness to enter except in such a fashion as shall exhibit him to the admiring worshippers as raised above all possibility of being compromised in the discharge of any of the ordinary functions or agencies of humanity. Should the Pope, on a "high day," walk into St. Peter's like an ordinary mortal, and happen to knock his toe!-that toe to be presently saluted as the symbol of his Infallibility-against any of the fractured

It is sometimes mockingly asserted that the St. Peter of the Vatican is the very Jupiter of the Capitol, converted from a Pagan deity into a Christian saint by merely new naming him; much as an English sign-post, which figured as "Prince Eugene" or the "Markis o' Granby" in one generation, used to become the "Duke of York" or "Duke of Wellington" of a succeeding one, merely by changing the name underneath. Others, however, maintain that the identity consists in having the same metal recast and consecrated. I incline to this last opinion; the peculiar position of the right hand, with the thumb and two forefingers held up, symbolising "the Trinity" as invoked in the act of blessing, seems to indicate that the statue must have been originally designed for a Christian use, unless, indeed, the right arm be a "restoration!" for it is well known that an old mutilated statue may be, and has been, "restored," so as to be utterly unlike in attitude and expression what it was originally.

† I fear I must have an eye for minute defects. One day, observing the several lengths of the noblest buildings in the world, as they are measured off by brass indicators let into the unequalled length of St. Peter's nave, it suddenly struck me how many of the great marble flags which form its floor were broken-some by many cracks, others by fewer. At length, on closer examination, I came to the conclusion that not one single flag in the whole surface had escaped fracture. I had never seen the fact noticed before, nor could I ever learn a reason for it. It would seem to indicate a violence and desecration to which St. Peter's was never exposed, that I am aware of. The "stabling of horses" (such as some of our cathedrals were subjected to in the excesses of Puritanism) would account for it, but the "measured tramp" of armed men, or the pressure of multitudes, such as throng the building on high days, are scarce adequate causes. The fact is certain -the cause inexplicable to me.