bewilderment to his country friends, who have
no sooner learnt the 19, Belle Vue Road,
Hampstead, than they have to take pains to
forget that address, and to remember the
27½, Upper Brown Street, Camberwell; and
so on, till I would rather learn a page of
"Walker's Pronouncing Dictionary," than try
to remember the variety of directions which I
have had to put on my letters to Mr. B.
during the last three years. Last summer it
pleased him to remove to a beautiful village
not ten miles out of London, where there is a
railway station. Thither his friend sought
him. (I do not now speak of the following
scent there had been through three or four
different lodgings, where Mr. B. had been
residing, before his country friend ascertained
that he was now lodging at R——- .) He spent
the morning in making inquiries as to Mr. B.'s
whereabouts in the village; but many gentlemen
were lodging there for the summer, and
neither butcher nor baker could inform him
where Mr. B. was staying; his letters were
unknown at the Post-office, which was
accounted for by the circumstance of their
always being directed to his office in town.
At last the country friend sauntered back to
the railway-office, and while he waited for the
train he made inquiry, as a last resource, of
the book-keeper at the station. " No, sir, I
cannot tell you where Mr. B. lodges — so many
gentlemen go by the trains; but I have no
doubt but that the person standing by that
pillar caa inform you." The individual to
whom he directed the inquirer's attention had
the appearance of a tradesman — respectable
enough, yet with no pretensions to "gentility,"
and had, apparently, no more urgent employment
than lazily watching the passengers who
came dropping in to the station. However,
when he was spoken to, he answered civilly
and promptly. "Mr. B.? tall gentleman with
light hair? Yes, sir, I know Mr. B. He
lodges at No. 8, Morton Villas — has done these
three weeks or more; but you 'll not find him
there, sir, now. He went to town by the
eleven o'clock train, and does not usually
return until the half-past four train."

The country friend had no time to lose in
returning to the village, to ascertain the truth
of this statement. He thanked his informant,
and said he would call on Mr. B. at his office
in town; but before he left R——- station, he
asked the book-keeper who the person was
to whom he had referred him for information
as to his friend's place of residence. " One of
the Detective Police, sir," was the answer.
I need hardly say, that Mr. B., not without
a little surprise, confirmed the accuracy of the
policeman's report in every particular.

When I heard this anecdote of my cousin
and his friend, I thought that there could be
no more romances written on the same kind
of plot as Caleb Williams; the principal
interest of which, to the superficial reader,
consists in the alternation of hope and fear,
that the hero may, or may not, escape his
pursuer. It is long since I have read the
story, and I forget the name of the offended
and injured gentleman, whose privacy Caleb
has invaded; but I know that his pursuit of
Caleb— his detection of the various hiding-
places of the latter — his following up of slight
clues — all, in fact, depended upon his own
energy, sagacity, and perseverance. The
interest was caused by the struggle of man
against man; and the uncertainty as to which
would ultimately be successful in his object;
the unrelenting pursuer, or the ingenious
Caleb, who seeks by every device to conceal
himself. Now, in 1851, the offended master
would set the Detective Police to work; there
would be no doubt as to their success; the
only question would be as to the time that
would elapse before the hiding-place could be
detected, and that could not be a question
long. It is no longer a struggle between man
and man, but between a vast organised
machinery, and a weak, solitary individual;
we have no hopes, no fears — only certainty.
But if the materials of pursuit and evasion, as
long as the chase is confined to England, are
taken away from the store-house of the
romancer, at any rate we can no more be
haunted by the idea of the possibility of
mysterious disappearances; and any one who
has associated much with those who were alive
at the end of the last century, can testify that
there was some reason for such fears.

When I was a child, I was sometimes
permitted to accompany a relation to drink tea
with a very clever old lady, of one hundred and
twenty — or, so I thought then; I now think
she, perhaps, was only about seventy. She was
lively and intelligent, and had seen and known
much that was worth narrating. She was a
cousin of the Sneyds, the family whence Mr.
Edgeworth took two of his wives; had known
Major Andrè; had mixed in the old Whig
Society that the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire
and " Buff and Blue Mrs. Crewe"
gathered round them; her father had been
one of the early patrons of the lovely Miss
Linley. I name these facts to show that she
was too intelligent and cultivated by association,
as well as by natural powers, to lend an
over-easy credence to the marvellous; and
yet I have heard her relate stories of
disappearances which haunted my imagination
longer than any tale of wonder. One of her
stories was this:—Her father's estate lay in
Shropshire, and his park-gates opened right
on to a scattered village of which he was landlord.
The houses formed a straggling irregular
street — here a garden, next a gable-end of a
farm, there a row of cottages, and so on.
Now, at the end house or cottage lived a very
respectable man and his wife. They were
well-known in the village, and were esteemed
for the patient attention which they paid to
the husband's father, a paralytic old man. In
winter, his chair was near the fire; in summer,
they carried him out into the open space
in front of the house to bask in the sunshine,