They tell me that the Highest One
   Will fill me with His grace,
And cause about my path to shine
   The brightness of His face,
And give me, though so stained with sin.
   In Heaven a dwelling-place.

But did He mean that human hearts
   Should feel such bitter pain,
That human love should spring and grow,
   And yet be all in vain;
Or worse, by hard and cruel blow,
   Be smitten down and slain?

Hush! sinful thoughts and murmuring words!
   Peace! restless soul, be still!
Some wise and holy end is wrought
   From every grief and ill.
And sorrow is an Angel sent
   To do God's blessed will.

OLD STORIES RE-TOLD.

THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF FAUNTLEROY.

IN one point, a cynic once said, we in these
later days have materially gone back in
civilisation: we now only transport bankers who
turn thieves. Formerly we used to hang them.

Any day towards the close of the London
season of 1824, persons turning into Berners-
street out of the din and jostle of Oxford-
street, would have seen on the door of Number
Six an oblong brass plate, and engraved upon
it, in free cursive letters,
MARSH, STACEY, FAUNTLEROY, AND GRAHAM,
names great on 'Change, potent in the Bank
parlour, and influential in Lombard-street.

A rapid glance through the thin veil of a
dark wire blind, bordered with white, would
have shown well-dressed, taciturn young men
busy at ledgers, ruffling silvery bundles of
bank-notes, or shovelling sovereigns in golden
showers from drawer to counter, from counter
to drawer. Had a glass door at the back of
the room at that moment opened, it might have
disclosed a thin-faced, elderly man, with neat
powdered hair, and a dress of black, cut in the
most perfect—but quiet—fashion. It might
have been that the very moment the door opened,
that grave intensely respectable and appreciated
person, that delight of society, had just,
with a sigh, completed the writing of a certain
memorable document, and enclosed it in a tin
box, sighing as he turned the key quickly and
suspiciously in the lock: then carefully depositing
it in a desk, locked the desk with another
key which hung among his costly bunch of
watch-seals.

Persons living in that street, struggling in
small businesses and just turning their money,
must have often looked up at the sumptuous
apartments on the first floor at Number Six,
and have envied that pale grave man, whose
anxious face they could sometimes see looking
through the windows. Hackney-coachmen on
the rank in Berners-street, as they screwed
down the tobacco in their oily pipes, and
discussed the world over the tops of their coaches,
must have often pointed with the butt-end of
their whips surreptitiously to the glittering
windows at Number Six, when Mr. Fauntleroy
was conspicuously "at home." "Rich as
Creases!" may have been said, more than once,
on such occasions.

Punctual as the Horse Guards' clock, Mr.
Fauntleroy came in from his Brighton villa,
turned the corner from Regent-circus, and
solemnly pushed open the bank doors, hushing
at once all chatter of clerks, their snatches of
songs, and their theatrical and sporting
reminiscences.

To have impugned that house upon 'Change
would have been to incur the penalty of being
pumped on, and afterwards of being beaten
dry with a horsewhip; an action for libel, with
swinging damages, would have then, without
doubt, taken all the remainder of your breath
out of you, and embittered the rest of your
life with the disgrace of bankruptcy. The
British Constitution was not more stable than
Fauntleroy's house; Magna Charta not more
venerated.

Yet, remarkable to state, on the afternoon
of that bright and pleasant autumn day—
September 10th—Samuel Plank, a hard-faced
police-officer from Marlborough-street, suddenly
entered the neat bank parlour, laid his large
brawny hands on Mr. Fauntleroy's shoulder,
and apprehended him, on a charge of forging
powers of attorney, by which he had disposed
of three hundred and sixty thousand pounds'
worth of other people's Bank of England
stock. The old clerks almost fainted; the young
clerks derided the charge in a tremulous way;
the partners sympathised; stray persons in the
bank on business were horrified, and almost
thought the end of the world had come. On
those thin, white, perhaps rather mischievous
hands the grim bright steel handcuffs, as
bracelets, must have looked sadly unfitting.
It was remarkable, however, that considering
the worthy and most respectable banker's
perfect and palpable innocency, Mr. Fauntleroy
seemed to expect the unpleasant visit,
and locked the desk at which he sat with
considerable care just as the police-officer entered
the sacred room. The key was taken from the
banker's watch-chain at the Marlborough-street
office, and was found to lead to most important
discoveries, affecting, indeed, half the commercial
interest of London.

A palsy of horror aud fear seized the tenants
of bank parlours the next morning, when, throwing
carelessly open the wet and flowing sheet
of the Times, their eyes fell on a paragraph in
large type, headed in thrilling capitals:

"Arrest of Mr. FAUNTLEROY, the eminent
banker, on a charge of FORGERY!!!"

What pallor must have fallen on respectable
grave faces! How many gold spectacles must
have been taken off as if to get more air! What
stimulants of snuff must have been inhaled!
How many grey heads must have met with
ominous looks over ledgers!

In the City such catastrophes as this produce
a horrible feeling of alarm, suspicion, and