which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. He never once thought it probable or possible that the minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world by way of best preventing any portion of that world from per

"abounds with very strict analogies to the
immaterial, and thus some color of truth has
been given to the rhetorical dogma that met-
aphor or simile may be made to strengthen
an argument as well as to embellish a de-
scription. The principle of the vis inertia,
for example, seems to be identical in physics
and metaphysics. It is not more true in the
former that a large body is with more diffi-ceiving it.
culty set in motion than a smaller one, and
that its subsequent momentum is commen-
surate with this difficulty, than it is in the
latter that intellects of the vaster capacity,
while more forcible, more constant and more
eventful in their movements than those of in-
ferior grade, are yet the less readily moved,
and more embarrassed and full of hesitation
in the first few steps of their progress. Again,
have you ever noticed which of the street
signs over the shop doors are the most at-
tractive of attention?"

"I have never given the matter a thought" I said.

"There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word -the name of town, river, state or empire, any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names, but the adept selects such words as stretch in large characters from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations

"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing and discriminating ingenuity of D—, upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand if he intended to use it to good purpose, and upon the decisive evidence obtained by the prefect that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search,—the more satisfied I became that to conceal this letter the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.

"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the ministerial hôtel. I found Dat home, yawning, lounging and dawdling as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is perhaps the most really energetic human being now alive, but that is only when nobody sees him.

"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.

I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instru

ments and a few books.

Here, however, ment-these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived, these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the intention to suspect.

after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. "At length my eyes in going the circuit of the room fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless had been altered or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal bearing the D-cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed in diminutive female hand to D, the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack, and also fell at length upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected and resealed. I bade the minister good-morning and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was to all appearance radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arins of the Sfamily. Here the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription to a certain royal personage was "The next morning I called for the snuffmarkedly bold and decided the size alone box, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the formed a point of correspondence. But then conversation of the preceding day. While the radicalness of these differences, which thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if was excessive-the dirt, the soiled and torn of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the windows of the hôtel, and was succeeded the true methodical habits of D—and so by a series of fearful screams and the shoutsuggestive of a design to delude the beholder ings of a terrified mob. D― rushed to a into an idea of the worthlessness of the docu-casement, threw it open and looked out. In

bread.

the mean time, I stepped to the card-rack, | Thus will he inevitably commit himself at took the letter, put it in my pocket and re- once to his political destruction. His downplaced it by a fac-simile-so far as regards fall, too, will not be more precipitate than externals—which I had carefully prepared awkward. It is all very well to talk about at my lodgings, imitating the D-cipher the facilis descensus Averni, but in all kinds very readily by means of a seal formed of of climbing, as Catalani said of singing, it is far more easy to get up than to come down. In the present instance I have no sympathy -at least, no pity-for him who descends. He is that monstrum horrendum an unprin cipled man of genius. cipled man of genius. I confess, however, that I should like very well to know the precise character of his thoughts when, being defied by her whom the prefect terms ‘a certain personage,' he is reduced to opening the letter which I left for him in the cardrack."

"The disturbance in the street had been occasioned by the frantic behavior of a man with a musket. He had fired it among a crowd of women and children. It proved, however, to have been without ball, and the fellow was suffered to go his way as a lun tic or a drunkard. When he had gone, D came from the window, whither I had followed him immediately upon securing the object in view. Soon afterward I bade him farewell. The pretended lunatic was a man in my own pay."

"But what purpose had yout," I asked, "in replacing the letter by a fac-simile? Would it not have been better, at the first visit, to have seized it openly and departed?"

"How? Did you put anything partic

ular in it?"

"Why, it did not seem altogether right to leave the interior blank that would have been insulting. DDat Vienna once did me an evil turn, which I told him, quite good-humoredly, that I should remember. So, as I knew he would feel some curiosity in regard to the identity of the person who had outwitted him, I thought it a pity not to give him a clue. He is well acquainted with my MS., and I just copied into the middle of the blank sheet the words,

replied Dupin, “is a desperate man, and a man of nerve; his hôtel, too, is not without attendants devoted to his interests. Had I made the wild attempt you suggest, I might never have left the ministerial presence alive. The good people of Paris might have heard of me no more. But I had an object apart from these considerations. You know my political prepossessions. In this matter I act as a partisan They are to be found in Crébillon's Atrée.”

of the lady concerned. For eighteen months the minister has had her in his power. She has now him in hers, since, being unaware that the letter is not in his possession, he will proceed with his exactions as if it was.

"Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyesté.'

*

EDGAR ALLAN POE.

*"A design so fatal.

If not worthy of Atreus, is of Thyestes." Atreus and Thyestes were sons of Pelops--fratricides and seducers meeting with just retribution.

SKELETONS.

RIENDS, the foot-way is steep | Close your eyes, but you see them still; Turn your head, they are there the same;

Harder and wearier day by Fly, they follow, go where you will

E'en could we cast these Ghosts of the perished joys of old,

Terrible burdens, alas! are Phantoms of dead loves, stark and cold,

The promised joys of life's unmeasured way; If the friend who embraced in prosperity's Thus from afar each dim-discovered scene