"abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial, and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma that metaphor or simile may be made to strengthen an argument as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertia, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a smaller one, and that its subsequent momentum is commensurate with this difficulty, than it is in the latter that intellects of the vaster capacity, while more forcible, more constant and more eventful in their movements than those of inferior grade, are yet the less readily moved, and more embarrassed and full of hesitation in the first few steps of their progress. Again, have you ever noticed which of the street signs over the shop doors are the most attractive of attention?"

"I have never given the matter a thought " I said.

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per

There is a game of puzzles," he resumed, "which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word -the name of town, river, state or empire, any word, in short, upon the motley and plexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names, but the adept selects such words as stretch in large characters from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations

which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident. But this is a point, it appears, somewhat above or beneath the understanding of the prefect. He never once thought it probable or possible that the minister had deposited the letter immediately beneath the nose of the whole world by way of best preventing any portion of that world from perceiving it.

1

"But the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing and discriminating ingenuity of D- upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand if he intended to use it to good purpose, and upon the decisive evidence obtained by the prefect that it was not hidden within the limits of that dignitary's ordinary search,—the more satisfied I became that to conceal this letter the minister had resorted to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.

"Full of these ideas, I prepared myself with a pair of green spectacles, and called one fine morning, quite by accident, at the ministerial hôtel. I found Dat home. yawning, lounging and dawdling as usual, and pretending to be in the last extremity of ennui. He is perhaps the most really energetic human being now alive, but that is only when nobody sees him.

"To be even with him, I complained of my weak eyes and lamented the necessity of the spectacles, under cover of which I cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation of my host.

"I paid especial attention to a large writing-table near which he sat, and upon which lay confusedly some miscellaneous letters and other papers, with one or two musical instru

ments and a few books.

Here, however, after a long and very deliberate scrutiny, I saw nothing to excite particular suspicion. "At length my eyes in going the circuit of the room fell upon a trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece. In this rack, which had three or four compartments, were five or six visiting-cards and a solitary letter. This last was much soiled and crumpled. It was torn nearly in two, across the middle, as if a design, in the first instance, to tear it entirely up as worthless had been altered or stayed in the second. It had a large black seal bearing the D-cipher very conspicuously, and was addressed in diminutive female hand to D, the minister himself. It was thrust carelessly, and even, as it seemed, contemptuously, into one of the uppermost divisions of the rack.

"No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was to all appearance radically different from the one of which the prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S family. Here the address to the minister was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription to a certain royal personage was markedly bold and decided the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But then the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive-the dirt, the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D-- and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the docu

ment-these things, together with the hyperobtrusive situation of this document full in the view of every visitor, and thus exactly in accordance with the conclusions to which I had previously arrived, these things, I say, were strongly corroborative of suspicion in one who came with the intention to suspect.

"I protracted my visit as long as possible, and, while I maintained a most animated discussion with the minister upon a topic which I knew well had never failed to interest and excite him, I kept my attention really riveted upon the letter. In this examination I committed to memory its external appearance and arrangement in the rack, and also fell at length upon a discovery which set at rest whatever trivial doubt I might have entertained. In scrutinizing the edges of the paper I observed them to be more chafed than seemed necessary. They presented the broken appearance which is manifested when a stiff paper, having been once folded and pressed with a folder, is refolded in a reversed direction in the same creases or edges which had formed the original fold. This discovery was sufficient. It was clear to me that the letter had been turned, as a glove, inside out, redirected and resealed. I bade the minister good-morning and took my departure at once, leaving a gold snuff-box upon the table.

"The next morning I called for the snuffbox, when we resumed, quite eagerly, the conversation of the preceding day. While thus engaged, however, a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hôtel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams and the shoutings of a terrified mob. Drushed to a casement, threw it open and looked out. In