and contents. These, like city cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.

IT

LONDON

From The Worthies of England'

Tis the second city in Christendom for greatness, and the first for good government. There is no civilized part of the world but it has heard thereof, though many with this mistake: that they conceive London to be the country and England but the city therein.

Some have suspected the declining of the lustre thereof, because of late it vergeth so much westward, increasing in buildings, Covent Garden, etc. But by their favor (to disprove their fear) it will be found to burnish round about with new structures daily added thereunto.

It oweth its greatness under God's divine providence to the well-conditioned river of Thames, which doth not (as some tyrant rivers of Europe) abuse its strength in a destructive way, but employeth its greatness in goodness, to be beneficial to commerce, by the reciprocation of the tide therein. Hence it was that when King James, offended with the city, threatened to remove his court to another place, the Lord Mayor (boldly enough) returned that "he might remove his court at his pleasure, but could not remove the river Thames."

Erasmus will have London so called from Lindus, a city of Rhodes; averring a great resemblance betwixt the languages and customs of the Britons and Grecians. But Mr. Camden (who no doubt knew of it) honoreth not this his etymology with the least mention thereof. As improbable in my apprehension is the deduction from Lud's-Town,-town being a Saxon, not British termination; and that it was so termed from Lan Dian, a temple of Diana (standing where now St. Paul's doth), is most likely in my opinion.

MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS

Is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in; yea, they which play with the Devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword; and from making of sport they come to doing of mischief.

A public office is a guest which receives the best usage from them who never invited it.

Scoff not at the natural defects of any, which are not in their power to amend. Oh! 'tis cruel to beat a cripple with his own crutches.

Learning has gained most by those books by which the printers have lost.

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues.

To smell to a turf of fresh earth is wholesome for the body; no less are thoughts of mortality cordial to the soul.

The lion is not so fierce as painted.

Their heads sometimes so little that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long that there is no wit for so much

room.

Often the cock-loft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high.

The Pyramids themselves, doting with age, have forgotten the names of their founders.

One that will not plead that cause wherein his tongue must be confuted by his conscience.

But our captain counts the image of God-nevertheless his image cut in ebony as if done in ivory; and in the blackest Moors he sees the representation of the King of Heaven.

ÉMILE GABORIAU

(1835-1873)

O SPEAK of the detective novel is to speak of Gaboriau. He cannot be called the father of it; but the French novelist made his field so peculiarly his own, developed its type of human nature so painstakingly, created so distinctive a reputation associated with it, that it is doubtful whether any one can be said to have outrivaled him.

Born at Saujon, in the Department of the Charente-Inférieure, in 1835, Gaboriau drifted from school into the cavalry service; then into three or four less picturesque methods of keeping body and soul together; and finally, by a kind of literary accident, he became the private secretary of the Parisian novelist Paul Féval. His first successful story ran as a continued one in a journal called Le Pays. It was 'The Lerouge Affair,' but it did not even under newspaper circumstances find any considerable favor until it caught the eye of the astute Millaud, the founder of the Petit Journal. Millaud recognized in the fiction a new note in detective-novel making. He transferred it to another journal, Le Soleil. There it made an instant and tremendous success.

From that moment Gaboriau's career was determined and fortunate. In rapid succession followed 'The Crime of Orcival' (1867); 'File No. 113' (1867); the elaborate 'Slaves of Paris' (1869); M. Lecoq' (1869),—in which title appears the name of the moving spirit of almost all the other stories; The Infernal Life' (1870); and four or five others. All these stories have been translated into almost every modern language that has a reading public. They brought Gaboriau a large income during his lifetime, and they are still valuable literary properties. Their author died in Paris, his health broken in consequence of incessant overwork, in September 1873.

Gaboriau elevated the detective story to something like a superior plane in popular fiction. It is a question whether he did not say in a large measure the strongest word in it, and to all intents and purposes the last word. His books all have a certain resemblance, in that we start into a complex drama with a riddle of crime. The unfolding always brings us sooner or later to a dramatic family secret, of which the original crime has only been an outside detail. The

secret is the mainspring of the book, and about the middle of it the reader finds himself chiefly absorbed by it. Indeed, Gaboriau's novels have often been spoken of as "told backward." Most of the novels too gain their movement from one source the wonderful shrewdness and audacity of a certain M. Lecoq of the Paris detective service. M. Lecoq was really an exaggeration of the well-known and wonderfully able Paris detective, M. Vidocq; and there are dozens of episodes in the course of Vidocq's brilliant professional career which Gaboriau did not dress up so very much in introducing them into his stories. There is an individuality to each novel, in spite of the family likeness. Occasionally, like Dickens, the author attacked abuses with effect; as in 'The Infernal Life' and 'The Slaves of Paris,' and other books where he has set forth the merciless system of private blackmailing in Paris with little exaggeration.

As to literary manner, Gaboriau was not a writer of the first order, even as a French popular novelist. But he knew how to write; and there is a correctness of diction and a nervous vivacity that is much to his credit, considering the rapidity with which he produced his work, and the fact that he had no sufficient early training for his profession. He is seldom slipshod, and he is never really negligent. He has been criticized for making his dénouements too simple, if one regards them as a whole process; but his details are full of variety, and the reader of Gaboriau never is troubled to keep his attention on the author's pages, even in the case of those stories that are not of the first class among his works. Perhaps the best of all the novels is one of the shorter ones, File No. 113.'

THE IMPOSTOR AND THE BANKER'S WIFE: THE ROBBERY

From File No. 113'

AOUL SPENCER, supposed to be Raoul de Clameran, began to

R triumph over his instincts of revolt.

and rang the bell. It opened.

He ran to the door

"Is my aunt at home?" he asked the footman.

"Madame is alone in the boudoir next her room," replied the

servant.

Raoul ascended.

Clameran had said to Raoul, «Above all, be careful about your entrance; your appearance must express everything, and thus you will avoid impossible explanations."

The suggestion was useless.

When Raoul entered the little reception-room, his pale face and wild eyes frightened Madame Fauvel, who cried:

"Raoul! What has happened to you?"

The sound of her gentle voice produced upon the young vagrant the effect of an electric shock. He trembled from head to foot: yet his mind was clear; Louis had not been mistaken in him. Raoul continued his rôle as if on the stage, and as assurance came to him his knavery crushed his better nature.

«< Mother, the misfortune which has come to me," he replied, "is the last one."

Madame Fauvel had never seen him like this. Trembling with emotion, she rose and stood before him, with her tender face near his. She fixed in a steady gaze the power of her will, as if

she meant to read the depths of his soul.

What is it?" she insisted. "Raoul, my son, tell me." He pushed her gently away.

"What has happened,” he replied in a choked voice which pierced the heart of Madame Fauvel, "proves that I am unworthy of you, unworthy of my noble and generous father."

She moved her head in protestation.

"Ah!" he continued, "I know and judge myself. No one could reproach my own infamous conduct so cruelly as my own conscience. I was not born wicked, but I am a miserable fool. I have hours when, as if in a vertigo, I do not know what I am doing. Ah! I should not have been like this, mother, if you had been with me in my childhood. But brought up among strangers, and left to myself without any guides but my own instincts, I am at the mercy of my own passions. Possessing nothing, not even my stolen name, I am vain and devoured by ambition. Poor and without resources but your help, I have the tastes and vices of a millionaire's son. Alas! when I recovered you, the harm was done. Your affection, your maternal tenderness which have given me my only days of happiness, could not save me. I who have suffered so much, who have endured so many privations, who have known hunger, have been spoiled by this new luxury with which you have surrounded me. I threw myself into pleasure as a drunkard rushes for the strong drink of which he has been deprived."

Raoul expressed himself with such intense conviction and assurance that Madame Fauvel did not interrupt.

Mute and terrified, she dared not question him, fearful of learning some horrible news.