Strange stories could the dark-lantern of old
have told—the lantern by the light of which
Fawkes laid his train, and D'Enghien was
led into the ditch of Vincennes to be shot,
and Pichegru was murdered, and Fletcher
Christian whispered with John Adams; but
the light of the lantern pales before the
mystery of the gas. The gas saw the blood
that was brought from the shambles and
smeared over the pavement of the Paris
Boulevards—the blood on which, next day,
the dynasty of Orleans stumbled and came
headlong down to ruin and death. The gas
shone broadly, brightly, in hall and corridor
and antechamber of the Elysée on the eve of
the second of December. It penetrated into
an inner chamber where one silent man sat,
his feet on the fender, smoking a cigar, who
to fears and questions, and remonstrances,
and doubts, and counsels, had but this one
answer, "Qu'on exécute mes ordres!" The
same gas saw those orders obeyed as the
stealthy hackney coaches went about with
the stealthier Commissaries of Police, to
kidnap the representatives and generals. I
remember passing the Palace of the Elysées
on the night of the third of December, and
seeing the courtyard and windows of this
palace of successful power, one blaze of gas—
blazing on the green liveries of the lacqueys,
and the uniforms of the aides-de-camp, and
the hands and faces of the soldiers hardly yet
cleansed from blood and gunpowder. What
secrets that gas of the Rue St. Honoré—the
same starting from the pert little cupids
quivering in the bonnet-shop opposite—must
have been a trusty listener to, within those
three December nights!

If any man doubt the secrets of the gas,
not only abroad but at home: not only
supposititious and probable, but actual: let him
remember that recent miserable inquiry into
the cruelties and tyrannies of some of our
vaunted, philanthropy-purified, English gaols.
Let him remember among the list of wretches
tied to walls, and strapped to railings, and
whipped, and half throttled with collars, let
him remember those who—as the official
memorandum ran—were to be "deprived of
their bed and gas."  Bless you, the gas
heard all these things while the good
Birmingham people (may there never be worse
people in England!) slept soundly. The gas
knew how many turns of the crank prisoner
No. fifty was short; of how many meals fifty-
one had been muleted; how many lashes
epileptic fifty-two was to receive; how often
fifty-four was to be deprived of his bed and
gas!

As I walk about the streets by night,
endless and always suggestive intercommunings
take place between me and the trusty, silent,
ever watchful gas, whose secrets I know. In
broad long streets where the vista of lamps
stretches far far away into almost endless
perspective; in courts and alleys, dark by day
but lighted up at night by this incorruptible
tell-tale; on the bridges; in the deserted
parks; on wharfs and quays; in dreary suburban
roads; in the halls of public buildings; in
the windows ot late-hour-keeping houses and
offices, there is my gas—bright, silent, and
secret. Gas to teach me; gas to counsel
me; gas to guide my footsteps, not over
London flags, but through the crooked ways
of unseen life and death, of the doings of the
great Unknown, of the cries of the great
Unheard. He who will bend himself to
listen to, and avail himself of, the secrets of
the gas, may walk through London streets
proud in the consciousness of being an
Inspector—in the great police force of
philosophy—and of carrying a perpetual bull's-
eye in his belt. Like his municipal brother
he may perambulate the one-half world,
while

       "Nature seems dark, and wicked dreams abuse
        The curtain'd sleep."

Not a bolt or bar, not a lock or fastening,
not a houseless night-wanderer, not a homeless
dog, shall escape that searching ray of
light which the gas shall lend him, to see and
to know.

The gas on the river. Has it no secrets
to tell there?  On bridge after bridge, the
long rows of lamps mirror themselves in
the dark, still pool of the silent highway,
and penetrate like arrows into the bosom
secrets of the Thames. The gas knows
of the ancient logs of timber, It—and
Wisdom—only know how many centuries
old, strong and seasoned in their grey rottenness,
the logs which the bargemen and
lightermen of Erith and Greenhithe bring
home for fuel, or for garden fences, and
which, for aught we know, may have been in
dead ages remnants of Danish ships, of Roman
galleys, of the primitive skiffs of the old
Britons, may be. Down beneath, where the
glittering arrow of the gas points, there may
be shields, and arrows, and collars of
barbaric gold. There, may be the drinking-
cup of Vortigern, the crown of Canute,
the golden bracelets that Alfred hung up on
the highways, the rings of Roman knights,
and the swords of the Consuls, the amulets
of the Druids, and the jewels of the Saxon
kings. The gas knows of shoals which the
cunningest harbour-masters, the best
conservators of the river, and the mightiest
hydrographers, cannot point out. The gas knows
the weak points of the tunnel; and where the
waters broke in years ago, and where they
may break in again. Down where the gas
points, may be the bones of men and women
drowned before our great grandsires were
born. There, may be Henry the Fourth, flung
coffin and all from the boat in which his
remains were being conveyed for sepulture.
There, may be sailors slain in sudden broils
on board ship, and flung into the river. There,
may be bodies of men murdered by river
pirates, plundered by longshore-men and light-