from Lord Yarmouth, descriptive of some
beautiful specimens of amber received from
the Baltic; out my lord goes on to
observe that a Mr. Henshaw  "confesseth he
was like to have been cheated by a merchant
with a piece that had somewhat included in
it, which he found to be rosin; and we have
a way to counterfeit it very handsomely,
which he has taught me; and if we had a
workman to help us, might do many pretty
things of that nature."

No doubt. There are many ways to do
"pretty things," and to "counterfeit very
handsomely" with sham amber. The
beautiful blade varnish used by coachmakers, and
the lighter  amber varnish used for woodwork,
and the amber-oil and succinic-acid
employed in medicine and chemical processes
are probably made from real amber; but the
pieces kept as specimens, and especially
those which contain insects, are more likely
to comprise a few of those which have been
doctored "very handsomely." An insect can
be put into a bit of copal and made a "pretty
thing." However, we will not suppose that
this fraud is very frequently committed.

THE HERMIT OF DAMBURGVILLE.

NOT very long ago the course of duty
carried me abroad, and I spent some time in
a little continental town which, if you please,
I will call Damburgville-Cittapoli, although
it may have been neither in Holland,
Germany, France, Italy nor Greece. I am
about to tell the true tale of a person living
in that town, and wish so to do without
directing anybody's eyes towards him.

In the parish church of Damburgville-
Cittapoli mass is celebrated—so much I am
obliged to say—and at that church I was in
the habit of attending pretty regularly. I
used to see there a very devout-looking man
who was never absent from his place, and
whose humility of bearing and extreme
seriousness of demeanour fixed upon him a good
deal of attention. He had the figure and
the movements of a tolerably young man, at
any rate of a man under forty, but he seemed
to be sixty years old in the face, I thought,
when I used to meet him for the sake of
looking at him in the porch. His dress was
too coarse to belong to a gentleman, and
yet was remarkable for a gentleman's neatness.
He spoke to no one, and once or twice shrank
back against the wall that he might not be
touched by me when I was passing him. He
used to wear gloves too when all other hands
were bare, at the communion.

I made inquiries and obtained no clue to the
knowledge I desired; nobody seemed to know
who the man was, except one friend who
supposed it must be "Vat you call the
Jack Ketch." I said that he was not at all
that sort of person. Then I was advised to
ask the priest concerning him, "for he knew
everybody."

I had made friends with the priest, and
did not hesitate to take my friend's advice.
His reverence infomed me that from my
description the person who had excited my
curiosity must be——what shall I take for
a name— Bertram de' Medici.

"De' Medici!" I said; "surely I have
heard of that name before,"

"Probably," said the priest. "It is one of
our historic names. The person of whom
you speak belongs to an illustrious family."

"And yet he is unknown here."

"His history is strange, and it is not
unknown here. He has no associates." The
good old gentleman then eased my mind by
telling me the story upon the getting of
which my heart had long been set.

Bertram would have been born with all
possible advantages, if, as the father said, he
had not possessed an innate propensity for evil.
His nurses despaired of him, his mother grieved
for him, at school he was the leader of every
rebellion. He was clever, but misused his
abilities. As a young man he learnt what he should
have shunned—sympathised with what he
should have hated, and by the time he had
become fairly a man he was a perfect villain.
Master of his property, he wasted it—he
became estranged, and at last wholly cut off
from his family, and the tribunals of justice
grew to be more and more familiar with
his face. He endured many short imprisonments
under feigned names; at last, for a
capital crime, he was condemned to death,
but his sentence was commuted, and in the
flower of his years he was sent for life to
the galleys.

His fate did not cow or alter him. The
convicts spend much of their time in work.
Galleys are legal fictions now-a-days. The
men work on the roads or in the dockyards.
Their hard labour is aggravated by a heavy
chain fastened from the waist to the ankle;
sometimes two prisoners are chained together,
and are thus for years compelled into association.
Bertram was strong—easily performed
his work—liked the society of criminals, and
was a pattern to them all of carelessness;—
he was the man to cheer despondency or to
put down remorse in others. This courage
lasted till the list of men, who were older
prisoners than himself, became shorter and he
approached the distinction of being senior
among those about him who were undergoing
punishment for life. Then he became restless,
envied those who went out after short
probations into the gay world again; he became
melancholy. He felt no remorse, but he
was weary of monotony; of the walls and
the sea, the bed and the chain. He wanted
liberty.

One day as he sat on his bed knitting, the
soldier in charge of the ward called him by
name. He rose, and having answered, found
that he had not been called alone; five other
prisoners were summoned. The six men were
led under guard to a room in which sat the