a heap of old hymn books and parish accounts.
Strauss and Company were fairly caught.
They published an acute analysis of the fiction,
and pronounced it to be a genuine chronicle
of the seventeenth century. Dr. Meinhold
having thus trapped his prey, confessed the
deception, and extinguished the authority of
the, till then, dreaded critics.

The forgery of the Shelley letters—so fresh
in the recollection of the public—is one of the
most mischievous examples of the most
mischievous class of literary impostures; and
from various signs of the times not to be
passed unnoticed by those who watch and
weigh, we may expect to see even worse—
that is to say cleverer, scholars of the same
school. The discovery was made accidentally
by Mr. Palgrave, who happened—while
glancing through the volume published by
Mr. Moxon—to detect in a letter supposed to
be written by Shelley, a portion of an article
on Florence written for the Quarterly Review
in 1840, by his father, Sir Francis Palgrave.
This was sufficient to put Mr. Moxon upon
the scent. At the General Post Office the
letters were declared to be genuine, "to the
best of the belief" of the clerks. The postmarks
were then compared with the postmarks of
Byron's genuine letters to Mr. Murray, posted
from the same cities in the same month and
year, and addressed to the same place—
London. Here they failed. Where " Ravenna,"
on a genuine letter, was in a small, sharp
type in the Shelley letter it was a large
uncertain type; and in the letters from Venice
the post-mark was stamped in an italic, and
not, as in the Shelley specimens, in a Roman
letter. In other respects—seals, hand-writing,
manner and even matter—everything seemed
undoubtedly genuine. The onus of the matter
then rested with Mr. White, the publisher,
from whom the letters had been purchased.
Mr. White published a long account of the
manner in which he had purchased them from
"a well-dressed lady-like young person," who
called upon him at different periods, giving
very little account of herself, and still less of
the manner in which the letters had come
into her possession. He was introduced
subsequently, however, to a person who stated
himself to be a son of Byron, and the husband
of the lady; and from him Mr. White
completed his purchases. " It is proper," says
the Athenæum in noticing the above
transactions, " to say thus early that there has been
of late years, as we are assured, a most
systematic and wholesale forgery of letters
purporting to be written by Byron, Shelley,
and Keats; that these forgeries carry upon
them such marks of genuineness as have
deceived the entire body of London collectors;
that they are executed with a skill to which
the forgeries of Chatterton and Ireland can
lay no claim; that they have been sold at
public auctions, and by the hands of
booksellers, to collectors of experience and rank;
and that the imposition has extended to a
large collection of books, bearing not only the
signature of Lord Byron, but notes by him
in many of their pages. . . At the same sale
at which Mr. Moxon bought the Shelley
letters, were catalogued for sale a series of
(unpublished) letters from Shelley to his wife,
revealing the innermost secrets of his heart,
and containing facts, not wholly dishonourable
to a father's memory, but such as a son
would wish to conceal. These letters were
bought in by the son of Shelley—the present
Sir Percy Shelley—and are now proved, we
are told, to be forgeries." Other letters,
however, which seem to have emanated from the
same source, had been previously sold by
public auction. One—the most infamous—
in which Shelley makes an assertion against
the fidelity of his wife, sold, it is said, for six
guineas.

The form of correspondence—especially
when it involves calumnies against the dead
—is the most  dangerous form in which the
literary forger has yet exercised his labours.
That such impositions are active and widely
spread—not only in England, but in many
parts of the Continent—there can be no doubt.

SHADOWS

DAY AND NIGHT

As most of us have our Doubles, so, in
many noticeable lives, there are a Day and
Night so wonderfully contrasted, so strikingly
opposed, so very picturesque in their opposition
to each other, that there can be few more
remarkable subjects for consideration.

Let me recal a few such Days and Nights.

The weather is sultry, scorching, though
there are banks of heavy clouds in the sky. A
hot wind shakes the strangely-shaped leaves of
gaunt trees fitfully to and fro, or agitates tufts
of brushwood and furze, rankly luxuriant,
which grow here and there on the gray rocks.
There are sudden declivities, and more rocks
beyond, furrowed, scarred and seamed by
tears of brine. On every side beyond, as far
as the strained eye can reach, is the
interminable sea. There are birds overhead with
sullen flapping wings, and insects and reptiles
of strange shape beneath. In a mean house
with whitewashed walls and crazy Venetian
blinds, with paltry furniture strangely
diversified by rich pieces of plate and jewellers'
ware, is a man in a bath with a Madras
handkerchief tied round his head. Anon he is
dressed by his servants, with whom he is
peevish and fretful. He grumbles at the
coffee at breakfast, abuses his attendants,
begins a dozen things and does not accomplish
one. Now he is in his garden: you will
observe that he is short, stout, and with a
discontented expression of countenance. He
wears a large straw hat, a white jacket and
trowsers, a check shirt, and has a black
handkerchief knotted round his neck. He takes
up a newspaper and throws it down, a
newspaper and casts it aside. He is idle and