and one of the pleas of their appeal was, that
there had been an unconstitutional prohibition
of the publication of the proceedings of the court
which tried them. Why publicity was more
inconvenient in 1860 than in 1854 the court did
not say; yet not one paragraph, sentence, or
line, of the evidence establishing the innocence of
Baffet and Louarn, was allowed to be published.
The only amends made was the following sentence
from the speech of the imperial procurator: "The
real criminals are to-day in the hands of justice.
They await the chastisement they have so justly
merited. The deaths of Louarn and Baffet make
it impossible to repair the judicial error of which
they were the victims; but the debates of this
trial, and the new verdict of the jury, will be a
brilliant and solemn restoration of their memory."

Very brillant, and very solemn, no doubt.
But hardly satisfactory.

SOLID REASONS.

Ten years ago the mental condition of my
friend Robert Bigge was such as to occasion us
much secret anxiety.

Robert had held office in Downing-street, but
had lately resigned the (wafer) seals of his
department, in consequence of the sudden
abolition of a class of gentlemen known by the
appropriate title of "clerks extraordinary."

The genus being extinct, a few words to
describe it may not be out of place.

In the event of a sudden accumulation of
pressing correspondence, it was customary in
the Yawhaw Office to engage a number of
misguided persons ambitious of becoming public
servants, to place them in an apartment provided
only with such rude furniture as is essential to
the fulfilment of public duty, and to employ
them, so long as the stress continued, in copying
returns and despatches at the remuneration of
fourpence a page. This surplus work (which
usually lasted only a few days, or, at most,
weeks) being concluded, the class was sifted, as
it were, two or three individuals remaining
still attached to the establishment, in readiness
for the next emergency. The remainder were
requested to leave their addresses for the information
of an embarrassed government, and depart.

My friend Robert had been of this fortunate
minority. He had even entertained some secret
hope of struggling fairly on to the "establishment,"
when a few words from a Scotch member of
parliament, in the form of interrogatory, knocked
the "extraordinary" arrangement at once on
the head, and condemned the recognised members
of the Yawhaw Office to the annoyance of doing
their own work themselves.

Robert expressed himself a good deal hurt.
He had "done the State some service." If
they didn't "know it," that was no fault of
Bob's. He had always signed his name in the
attendance-book, and to the receipts for his
stipend, in the very largest characters polite
custom allows. He had dated all his letters
"Downing-street," and, on a certain festive
occasion, had insidiously engaged a friend to
propose the health of her Majesty's "present
advisers," in order that he might respond on behalf
of that body. And so he did.

To be cast aside now, without compliment,
without apology! His "cankered country"
tendered him nothing but his wages. And
what was thirty-seven pounds fourteen shillings
for four mouths' sedentary service, and two
thousand two hundred and sixty-two pages of
manuscript? There was, moreover, another,
and a far more serious claim upon the State;
but of that presently.

Bob was, indeed, at the period I speak of, in
a condition to demand the utmost sympathy and
watchfulness friendship could afford. You might
not unnaturally imagine that Bobby, wounded
by the ungrateful return for his public services—
dismissed into an uncared-for, and, what is ten
times more galling to a sensitive mind,
unpensioned obscurity—was sinking into mental
prostration, tending, it may be, to idiotcy.

It was scarcely so. His mental faculties were
wholly unimpaired. Again, it was abundantly
evident that his bodily health did not suffer. It
was a matter of congratulation among us, that
our friend had of late grown singularly stout.
But that his heart was a prey to some secret
melancholy, had been for a long time a subject
of strong suspicion to those who loved the boy
(Bobby was but twenty-three), and this mystery
I, at the instigation of his aunt, set myself
diligently to fathom. For a while my endeavours
proved fruitless. Hoping to fall in with his
humour, I tried him, in the first place, with a
quiet dinner, finishing the evening at a cheerful
little lecture by Professor Grumbelow, "On the
molecular variations exhibited by the application
of acids to metamorphic rocks."

At the dinner Bobby ate; at the lecture he
slumbered. I myself was not wholly disinclined
to doze. I remember the professor holding up
something that looked like a pink artichoke,
after a pic-nic of caterpillars, which he called a
"fibrous dolomite," and subsequently remarking
that "a crystal of Thompsonite, boiled with
hydrochloric acid, deposited a gelatinous
transparent precipitate of silica." Here, I thought
the lecturer handed round plates filled with
flint broth, wherein floated slices of red
sandstone for bread. Candidly, I believe this must
have been illusion.

Neither these, nor scenes of wilder dissipation,
appeared to answer my end. I sometimes
conducted Bobby, docile enough, poor fellow, to
the theatre, where my reward was to see him
sit through a "screaming" farce without changing
a muscle.

Once, and but once, were my pains rewarded.
It happened in Slangster-square.

We had attended one of the most dismal
dioramas ever, perhaps, designed by artist's
haunted brain. A few mournful creatures moved
stealthily through the building. An invisible
(would I could add inaudible) harmonium
executed a funeral dirge of the days of Queen Anne;
the score of which, with the gifted person who
composed it, should, in rigid justice, have been