order to free the creature, and the advice of Albert Morel, that the operation should be performed by one of the medical fraternity, who might be glad to witness the fact of a rat being imprison ed in a human head, was cheerfully taken. Some, however, objected to its being done, without application for leave having been first made to the Comtesse de Villeroi, as one to whom the proprietorship of her deceased husband's remains naturally and solely appertained, and who might feel it as a cruel insult towards herself, and a sacrilegious violation of the grave of her first lord, the consigning without her knowledge and permission, any part of his body to the hands of a surgeon. "Tush!" quoth old Morel," all nonsense that! for if one may believe what has long been town-talk, 'tis little that madame will care for her dead husband now she has a living one who pleases her better than ever he could do, poor man!"' The sexton's arguments were conclusive, and it was agreed at last, that the skull should be carried to Monsieur Nicolais, the celebrated surgeon, who had unavailingly attempted by bleeding, to recover the late marquess from the apoplexy which carried him off.

A large and brilliant party had assembled at the chateau de Vermont, the residence of the gay and opulent Comte de Villeroi and his lady, to celebrate the christening of their first born, when in the midst of a splendid banquet, an alarm was given that the house was surrounded by police and gens d'armes, who required in the king's name a surrender of the persons of the Comte and Comtesse de Villeroi, they standing attainted of foul and treasonable murder! The confusion and dismay which seized all parties upon this terrible catastrophe, it is impossible to describe; but it suffices to state, that the Comte de Villeroi was impeached for, and fully committed for trial on the charge of having feloniously aided and abetted Victorine de Villeroi, (late Montespan,) in wilfully and maliciously causing the death of her late liege husband, Herbert de Montespan, by thrusting a long pin, or bodkin of gold into his right ear, well knowing that the same entering into his brain, would cause his instantaneous dissolution. Master Nicolais, it appeared, in sawing open the skull of the deceased with anatomical science and precision, had found a pin or Golden Bodkin like that described in the indictment, and like what were at this period much used by ladies in fastening up their hair, bearing the initials, V. M. which he perceived

had been violently thrust through the orifice of the ear, into the brain of the unfortunate victim. This inference as to the fiendish murderer was inevitable, and just; and the horror-struck practitioner scrupled not to incite the relations of the late marquess to summon witnesses, and lay a criminal information against Victorine de Villeroi as principal in, and Armand de Villeroi as accessary to, this abominable transaction. Upon trial, the innocence of the Comte, as to the slightest knowledge of his wife's secret and heinous crime, was so apparent that it ensured him an honourable acquittal; but the guilt of that wretched woman being established beyond all doubt by the evidence of the goldsmith who had made for her, and engraved her initials upon, the Golden Bodkin, of the domestics who had seen her when their master fell asleep during the vespers at St. Genevieve, put her hand beneath his head as if with the intent of waking, and raising him up, and subsequently by her own confession, her guilt was thus incontrovertibly established. She suffered those extreme penalties of the law which the heinous nature of her crime demanded, and fully justified.

This historiette, in the leading incidents of which, every Frenchman at all acquainted with the Causes Cèlèbres of his country, will detect matters of fact, we have "made a prief of in our notebook," as one of those interesting cases, (not less remarkable because of rather frequent occurrence) which incontestably prove, that under the just government of the Omniscient, who hath willed that "Whosoever sheddeth the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed." Murder will out! M. L. B.

The Selector

AND

LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

POLAND.

DR. LARDNER has commenced a "Library," as a kind of succedaneum to his valuable "Cyclopædia. " Both are styled Cabinet, and the first may be considered an amplification of the second. Two of the Cabinet Library volumes contain a Retrospect of Public Affairs for 1831-not a chronology of shreds and patches, but a well-digested review of the great events of the yearand important indeed they are. The work is the quintessence of an "Annual Register :" it is not so porous and

the town-house should be set on fire, and the documents which implicated them in the pillage should be consumed. They agreed to produce this by arming a number of students; and their agent was an officer in the army, known to belong to the secret societies. The sum of 200 ducats in gold was paid him as a reward for anticipated services, and 200 stand of arms was provided him. For such a project this man seemed a fit agent. He tock lodgings in the house where the students met to hold their deliberations, opened to them his revolutionary views, and represented himself as one qualified to rescue their common country from the grasp of despotism. He so far ingratiated himself into their confidence as to obtain some knowledge of the general plan for the freedom of Poland. Circumstances, however, created distrust of this new and overzealous auxiliary; and the students refused to act with him, or to receive the muskets the generals had provided for distribution. Communication having now ceased between Petrikowski and the students, he took lodgings in the next room to that in which they met to hold their deliberations; what he overheard was communicated to the generals; and ten students were in consequence denounced, arrested, and severely flogged (by an arbitrary order of the grand duke,) to make them divulge their associates. Though writhing under the whip of the executioner, not a word escaped their lips to inculpate their friends, or impart a knowledge of the schemes that had so long engrossed their thoughts. The severity of the punishment may be conceived by the fact, that one of the number died soon after its infliction. The students were kept in solitary confinement, and their punishment remained uncertain; universal sympathy was felt for their sufferings by their comrades, coupled with an ardent desire to relieve them; but by this time danger threatened to implicate a great part of their body, and it was ascertained that an order to arrest great number was to take place on the 30th November. On the 27th November, an order arrived in Warsaw from the emperor, to send to Riga with all possible despatch 42,000,000 of florins, equal to 1,050,000l. sterling, of which 2,000,000 were to be furnished from the treasury of the minister of war, 28,000,000 from the government treasury, and 12,000,000 from the bank. These two circumstances concurring, created great activity in all persons connected with the overthrow of despotism and the freedom

a

of their country; and it was determined only on the memorable morning of the 29th to commence their patriotic work in the evening."

The Editor's Conclusion, or Summary of the Year is likewise worthy of extract: "The curtain of the year 1830 dropped on Europe in a state of ferment and agitation, of which it was impossible to check the progress or to foretell the result. The masses of the population had been stirred up from the bottom by the concussion of the French and Belgic revolutions, and could not be expected for a long time to subside into order, or resume a determinate arrangement according to their weight and affinities. The partition wall of privilege, rank, or subordination, interposed between different classes of the European community, had in some cases been for cibly broken down, and in others had been more silently undermined. Antiquity, custom, usage, or legitimacy, which formerly became a shelter to abuses, could not now protect justice and right from threatened innovation. Everywhere power was challenged on its rounds, and compelled to give the popular watchword before it could be allowed to pass. Whether it was a nation that demanded its independence from a foreign power, as in Belgium and Poland; or a people that cashiered their dynasty, as in France and Saxony; or a parliament that changed its administration for a more popular party, as in England; or republics that liberalized their institutions, as in Switzerland,-all was movement and change. The breath of revolution sometimes blew from the suburbs of a capital, as in France; sometimes from the cottages of the peasant, as in the Swiss mountains; but it was every where powerful. No institution was held venerable, no authority sacred, that stood in the way of the popular will. The people had every where got a purchase against their rulers, and had fixed their engines for a further pull. The power of domestic military protection had diminished, in proportion as rulers required its aid; while, at the same time, all Europe seemed arming for a general trial of strength, or a recommencement of conquest. Every kind of reform was the order of the day; financial reform, legal reform, ecclesiastical reform, and parliamentary reform. The year that has just commenced must resolve the character of many of those vague tendencies to change, to war, and confusion, which alarmed some and inspired hope into others at the close of 1830."

Botes of a Reader.

THE DRAMATIC ANNUAL.

MR FREDERICK REYNOLDS, the veteran dramatist, has, by the aid of Mr. W. H. Brooke, produced an amusing and elegant volume of a Playwright's Adventures, under the above title. Mr. Brooke's contributions are a plentiful sprinkling of Cuts, full of point and humour, and dovetailed by the Editor with no lack of ingenuity. The Narrative itself purports to be a series of adventures, or a volume of accidents to a young playwright in quest of dramatic fortune, with a due admixture of love and murder, and "a happy union."These are relieved by pungent attempts at repartee and harmless raillery, so as to make the dialogue portion glide off pleasantly enough. Instead of quoting an entire chapter from the volume, we are enabled to transfer to our pages a few of its epigrammatic illustrations. First, is what Mr. Reynold calls l'auteur

Mr. Reynolds seems to hold with Swift, that the merriest faces are in mourning coaches, for his hero at a funeral introduces one of the best cuts. Thus

On Vivid's return home, his grati fication was soon diminished by the recollections of "existing circumstances," and these caused him to sink into a gloomy and desponding state; when Sam Alltact, rather malapropos, entered with a black-edged card, inviting his master to the funeral of a deceased acquaintance, an eminent young artist, named Gilmaurs, who, never having been an R.A., but simply an engraver of extraordinary genius, was not to be buried under the dome of St. Paul's, but in a village churchyard.

Vivid could not help remarking to a brother mourner, that, in his opinion, the profession of a painter was as much overrated as that of an engraver was underrated: "for," he added, "what real and unprejudiced connoisseur, while contemplating Woollett's Roman Edifices from Claude, and Sir Robert Strange's Titian's Mistress from Titian, with many others, would not acknowledge, that the copy in many instances so rivalled, if not surpassed, the original, that it became a decided question, which artist ought to carry off the palm?"

"Or, at any rate," cried an odd accordant theatrical companion, "the connoisseur might say, with Shakspeare

sifflè, but this, for the sake of comprehensiveness, we style

THE DAMNED AUTHOR.

THE HANGING COMMITTEE.

Which is the merchant here, and which the Jew?'"

"There is no doubt, that in any school of painting," continued our hero, "such men as Reynolds, West, and Lawrence, cannot be too much upheld whilst liv ing or lauded and regretted when dead. There is likewise Wilkie-another Hogarth

"I beg your pardon," rejoined the theatrical gentleman; "but till I can forget the blunderbuss fired from the upsetting coach, the cobweb over the poor's-box, and the gay parson and undertaker at the harlot's funeral, I cannot