unlocked a desk which stood on one of the safes,
and drawn forth a thick volume, the contents
of which were protected by a clasp and lock.
Strahan proceeded to open this lock by one of
a bunch of keys, which he said had been found
on Sir Philip's person.

"There, Allen, this is the memoir. I need
not tell you what store I place on it; not,
between you and me, that I expect it will warrant
poor Sir Philip's high opinion of his own scientific
discoveries. That part of his letter seems
to me very queer, and very flighty. But he
evidently set his heart on the publication of his
work, in part if not in whole. And, naturally,
I must desire to comply with a wish so distinctly
intimated by one to whom I owe so much. I
beg you, therefore, not to be too fastidious.
Some valuable hints in medicine, I have reason
to believe, the manuscript will contain, and those
may help you in your profession, Allen."

"You have reason to believe! Why?"

"Oh, a charming young fellow, who, with most
of the other gentry resident at L——, called on
me at my hotel, told me that he had travelled in
the East, and had there heard much of Sir
Philip's knowledge of chemistry, and the cures it
had enabled him to perform."

"You speak of Mr. Margrave. He called on
you?"

"Yes."

"You did not, I trust, mention to him the
existence of Sir Philip's manuscript."

"Indeed I did; and I said you had promised
to examine it. He seemed delighted at that,
and spoke most highly of your peculiar fitness for
the task."

"Give me the manuscript," said I abruptly,
"and, after I have looked at it to-night, I may
have something to say to you to-morrow in
reference to Mr. Margrave."

"There is the book," said Strahan; "I have
just glanced at it, and find much of it written
in Latin; and I am ashamed to say that I have
so neglected the little Latin I learned in our
college days, that I could not construe what I
looked at."

I sat down and placed the book before me;
Strahan fell into a doze, from which he was
wakened by the housekeeper, who brought in
the tea-things.

"Well," said Strahan, languidly, " do you find
much in the book that explains the many puzzling
riddles in poor Sir Philip's eccentric life and
pursuits?"

"Yes," said I. "Do not interrupt me."

Strahan again began to doze, and the house-
keeper asked if we should want anything more
that night, and if I thought I could find my way
to my bedroom.

I dismissed her impatiently, and continued to
read.

Strahan woke up again as the clock struck
eleven, and finding me still absorbed in the
manuscript, and disinclined to converse, lighted his
candle, and telling me to replace the manuscript
in the desk when I had done with it, and be sure
to lock the desk and take charge of the key,
which he took off the bunch and gave me, went
up-stairs, yawning.

I was alone, in the wizard Forman's chamber,
and bending over a stranger record than had ever
excited my infant wonder, or, in later years,
provoked my sceptic smile.

THE YELLOW PAMPHLET.

THERE is not a German prince more
deservedly popular with Fatherland in general,
and more undeservedly unpopular with his own
subjects in particular, than the Duke Ernest of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, brother of our Prince
Consort. Duke Ernest means well and does well.
Scorning the make-believes of petty royalty, he
determines to work out liberal political ideas
upon the home material, as well as utter them
in the way of abstract speculation. But the
fact that he does so to the great disgust of the
said home material, one of his friends has
declared lately in print, and he, in a reply also
printed, has himself confessed and endeavoured
to explain. The declaration, with the ducal
confession and interpretation, form together a little
yellow pamphlet, that has this year given its
extra tinge of yellow to the faces of the
Fatherlandic aristocrats and bureaucrats wherever
German is a spoken tongue, and that must have
given a few very bilious headaches to the august
personage who lately, with great solemnity,
picked his crown up from a table, as a sign of
his divine right thereto, and of the instinctive
belief, doubtless, that an august headship like
his can only be shown taking its origin from
something wooden. So he preferred the wood
of an altar to the flesh and blood of an
archbishop as giver of the crown by which he
declared himself ligneal and irresponsible king of
a great people. Within the yellow cover, Duke
Ernest, a German prince, higher than the best
emperor in family connexions, laughs at the
"right divine." After 1848, he says, when his
stupid people rose for what, during the previous
years, they had been resisting his attempts to
give them, "I ordered the formula 'by the
grace of God' to be struck from the head of the
amnesties. This departure from custom, this
open ideal rupture with what they call
sovereignty by grace of God, was reckoned against
me as a great offence." The most graciously
divine of Prussia gave this bold duke a few side
hits in form of compliment at a review the other
day.

But the Duke Ernest does not flinch from
any sort of hitting; he is a frank, generous
man, whom any wholesome Englishman,
concerned in public life, given to hard work and
active relaxation, rigid in fair discharge of his
duty, and eager with his gun on the moors,
making a home of his house and impartial in
his hospitality, at once can understand.
Nevertheless, in Gotha, at least, there are many to
whom his character is a vexatious puzzle. His
people will be wise enough in time, no doubt,