this was the _ne plus
ultra_ of dramatic invention. Robbers and murderers began to be treated,
after the Catholic fashion, with extreme unction; audiences were
intoxicated with the new drop; sympathy became epidemic; everybody was
bewildered and improved; and nobody went and threw themselves off the
Monument with a copy of the baleful drama in his pocket!

But the magnificence of the discovery was too large to be grasped by even
the gluttonous eye of the managers, The Adelphi might overflow--the Surrey
might quake with reiterated "pitsfull"--still there remained over and
above the feast-crumbs sufficient for the battenings of other than
theatrical appetites. Immediately the press-gang--we beg pardon, the
_press_--arose, and with a mighty throe spawned many monsters. Great
drama! _Greater Press!_ GREATEST PUBLIC!

Now this was all excellent well as far as it went; but still there was
something wanted of more reality than the improvisations of a romancist.
Ainsworth might dip his pen in the grossest epithets; Boz might dabble in
the mysterious dens of Hebrew iniquity; even Bulwer might hash up to us
his recollections of St. Giles's dialogue; and yet it was evident that
they were all the while only "shamming"--only cooking up some dainty dish
according to a _recipe_, or, as it is still frequently pronounced, a
_receipt_,--which last, with such writers, will ever be the guide-post of
their track.

But something more was wanted; and here it is--here, in the Memoirs of
Marie Cappelle.

This lady, perhaps the most remarkable woman of her age, has published a
book--half farce, half novel--in which she treats by turns with the
clap-trap agony of a Bulwer, the quaint sneer of a Dickens, and the
effrontery of an Ainsworth, that serious charge which employed the careful
investigation of the most experienced men in France for many weeks, and
which excited a degree of interest in domestic England almost unexampled
in the history of foreign trials. This work is published by a gentleman
who calls himself "Publisher in ordinary to her Majesty," and may be
procured at any book-seller's by all such as have a guinea and a day's
leisure at the mercy of the literary charlatan who contrived it.

In the strictest confidence we would suggest, that if a treaty could be
ratified with Madame Marie Cappelle Laffarge, we do not doubt that our
nursery--yea, our laundry--maids would learn to spell the precious
sentences, to their own great edifi