nd takes new lustre from the touch of time;
Its bough owns no December and no May,
But bears its blossom into Winter's clime.

THE DREAM OF EUGENE ARAM.[9]

[Footnote 9: Hood edited _The Gem_, one of the many annuals of
that day, for the year 1829. The volume is memorable for having
contained his fine poem.

"The remarkable name of Eugene Aram, belonging to a man of unusual
talents and acquirements, is unhappily associated with a deed of
blood as extraordinary in its details as any recorded in our
calendar of crime. In the year 1745, being then an usher and deeply
engaged in the study of Chaldee, Hebrew, Arabic, and the Celtic
dialects, for the formation of a lexicon, he abruptly turned over a
still darker page in human knowledge, and the brow that learning
might have made illustrious was stamped ignominious forever with
the brand of Cain. To obtain a trifling property he concerted with
an accomplice, and with his own hand effected the violent death of
one Daniel Clarke, a shoe-maker, of Knaresborough, in Yorkshire.
For fourteen years nearly the secret slept with the victim in the
earth of St. Robert's Cave, and the manner of its discovery would
appear a striking example of the divine justice even amongst those
marvels narrated in that curious old volume alluded to in the
_Fortunes of Nigel_, under its quaint title of 'God's Revenge
against Murther.'

"The accidental digging up of a skeleton, and the unwary and
emphatic declaration of Aram's accomplice that it could not be that
of Clarke, betraying a guilty knowledge of the true bones, he was
wrought to a confession of their deposit. The learned homicide was
seized and arraigned, and a trial of uncommon interest was wound up
by a defence as memorable as the tragedy itself for eloquence and
ingenuity--too ingenious for innocence, and eloquent enough to do
credit even to that long premeditation which the interval between
the deed and its discovery had afforded. That this dreary period
had not passed without paroxysms of remorse may be inferred from a
fact of affecting interest. The late Admiral Burney was a scholar
at the school at Lynn in Norfolk when Aram was an usher, subsequent
to his crime. The Admiral stated that Aram was beloved by the boys,
and that he used to discourse to them of murder, not occasionally,
as I have written els