mingled his image with our
remembrance of the Spires of Oxford.

CYRIL WILDE.

For some reason which it does not concern us now to investigate,
Kentucky, under the dominion of the white man, has continued to justify
its native name of "Dark and Bloody Ground," in being the scene of a
remarkable number of tragedies in real life.

One of these, less known to the public in later times, we think
transcends all the others in boldness of conception, regularity of plot,
variety of passion and character displayed, and horror and pathos of
catastrophe. It might have furnished a worthy subject to the pen of
Sophocles or Shakespeare, one that they would have found already cast
into a highly dramatic form, requiring only fitting words to convey the
passions of the actors. Little invention of situation or incident
would have been needed, for neither could be imagined more intensely
interesting; nor could the most finished artist have constructed a plot
more coherent in all its details, or more strictly in accordance with
the rules of composition,--even to the preservation of the Aristotelian
unities of time and place. So perfect, indeed, does it seem, that,
were it not substantiated in every point by the records of a judicial
tribunal, it might well be taken for the invention of some master of
human nature and the dramatic art.

Captain Cyril Wilde, the hero, or rather the victim, of the events we
are about to narrate, was one of those perfectly happy men whom every
one has learned to regard as favorites of Fortune, and on whom no one
ever expects disaster to fall, simply because it never has done so. Well
descended, at a period when good birth was a positive honor in itself,
and connected, either by affinity or friendship, with the best society
of Kentucky, he held, by hereditary right, a high position among that
old aristocracy which then and for a long time afterward stoutly
maintained its own against the encroaching spirit of democratic
equality, and whose members still kept in mind many of the traditions,
honored in their own persons the dignity, and strove to preserve in
their households somewhat of the manners, of the Cavaliers of the Old
Dominion. Nor was wealth wanting to complete his happiness,--at least,
such wealth as was needed by one of his simple tastes and unostentatious
habits. He was rich beyond his disposition to spend, but not beyond his
capacity to enjoy,--a capacity multiplied by as many times as h