and his wife returned to her household affairs. It was only remarked that she always looked pale and pensive. But she was more kind to all, even than before; and her pensiveness seemed rather the result of some great internal thought, than of unhappiness.

For a year or two, the Bavarian retained the better temper which he acquired. His fortunes flourished beyond his earliest ambition; the most amiable as well as noble persons of the district were frequent visitors; and people said, that to be at Otto's house, must be the next thing to being in heaven. But by degrees his self-will returned with his prosperity. He never vented impatience on his wife; but he again began to shew, that the disquietude it gave her to see it vented on others, was a secondary thing, in his mind, to the indulgence of it. Whether it was, that his grief for her loss had been rather remorse than affection, and so he held himself secure if he treated her well; or whether he was at all times rather proud of her, than fond; or whatever was the cause which again set his antipathies above his sympathies, certain it was, that his old habits returned upon him ; not so often indeed, but with greater violence and pride, when they did. These were the only times, at which his wife was observed to shew any ordinary symptoms of uneasiness.

At length, one day, some strong rebuff which he had received from an alienated neighbour threw him into such a transport of rage, that he gave way to the most bitter imprecations, crying with a loud voice

went.

"This treatment to me too! To me! To me, who if the world knew all"At these words, his wife, who had in vain laid her hand upon his, and looked him with dreary earnestness in the face, suddenly glided from the room. He, and two or three who were present, were struck with a dumb horror. They said, she did not walk out, nor vanish suddenly; but glided, as one who could dispense with the use of feet. After a moment's pause, the others proposed to him to follow her. He made a movement of despair; but they There was a short passage, which turned to the right into her favourite room. They knocked at the door twice or three times, and received no answer. At last, one of them gently opened it; and looking in, they saw her, as they thought, standing before a fire, which was the only light in the room. Yet she stood so far from it, as rather to be in the middle of the room; only the face was towards the fire, and she seemed looking upon it. They addressed her, but received no answer. They stepped gently towards her, and still received none. and unmoved. At last, one of them went round in front, and instantly fell on the floor. The figure was without body. A hollow hood was left instead of a face. The clothes were standing upright by themselves.

The figure stood dumb

That room was blocked up for ever, for the clothes, if it might be so, to moulder away. It was called the Room of the Lady's Figure. The house, after the gentleman's death, was long uninhabited, and at

length burnt by the peasants in an insurrection. As for himself, he died about nine months after, a gentle and child-like penitent. He had never stirred from the house since; and nobody would venture to go near him, but a man who had the reputation of being a reprobate. It was from this man that the particulars of the story came first. He would distribute the gentleman's alms in great abundance to any strange poor who would accept them; for most of the neighbours held them in horror. He tried all he could to get the parents among them to let some of their little children, or a single one of them, go to see his employer. They said he even asked it one day with tears in his eyes. But they shuddered to think of it; and the matter was not mended, when this profane person, in a fit of impatience, said one day, that he would have a child of his own on purpose. His employer, however, died in a day or two. not believe a word he told them of all the Bavarian's gentleness, looking upon the latter as a sort of ogre, and upon his agent as little better, though a good natured-looking earnest kind of person. It was said many years after, that this man had been a friend of the Bavarian's when young, and had been deserted by him. And the young believed it, whatever the old might do.

They did

XX.-THIEVES, ANCIENT AND MODERN.

HAVING met in the Harleian Miscellany with an account of a pet thief of ours, the famous Du Vall, who flourished in the time of Charles the Second, and wishing to introduce him worthily to the readers, it has brought to mind such a number of the lightfingered gentry, his predecessors, that we almost feel hustled by the thoughts of them. Our subject, we may truly fear, will run away with us. We feel beset, like poor Tasso in his dungeon; and are not sure that our paper will not suddenly be conveyed away from under our pen. Already we miss some excellent remarks, which we should have made in this place. If the reader should meet with any of that kind hereafter, upon the like subject, in another man's writings, twenty to one they are stolen from us, and ought to have enriched this our plundered exordium. He that steals an author's purse, may emphatically be said to steal trash; but he that filches from him his good things-Alas, we thought our subject would be running away with us. We must keep firm. We must put something heavier in our remarks, as the little thin Grecian philosopher used to put lead in his pockets, lest the wind should steal him.

The more ruffianly crowd of thieves should go first, as pioneers; but they can hardly be looked upon as progenitors of our gentle Du Vall; and be

sides, with all their ferocity, some of them assume a grandeur, from standing in the remote shadows of antiquity. There was the famous son, for instance, of Vulcan and Medusa, whom Virgil calls the dire aspect of half-human Cacus-Semihominis Caci facies dira. (Æneid, b. vIII, v. 194.) He was the rawhead-and-bloody bones of ancient fable. He lived in a cave by Mount Aventine, breathing out fiery smoke, and haunting king Evander's highway like the Apollyon of Pilgrim's Progress.

Semperque recenti

Cæde tepebat humus; foribusque adfixa superbis
Ora virum tristi pendebant pallida trabo.

The place about was ever in a plash

Of steaming blood; and o'er the insulting door
Hung pallid human heads, defaced with dreary gore.

He stole some of the cows of Hercules, and dragged them backwards into his cave to prevent discovery; but the oxen happening to low, the cows answered them; and the demigod, detecting the miscreant in his cave, strangled him after a hard encounter. This is one of the earliest sharping tricks upon record.

Autolycus, the son of Mercury (after whom Shakspeare christened his merry rogue in the Winter's Tale) was a thief suitable to the greater airiness of his origin. He is said to have performed tricks which must awake the envy even of horse-dealers; for in pretending to return a capital horse which he had stolen, he palmed upon the owners a sorry jade