r noted persons
who have suffered the sentence of the law for criminal offences." By far
the most luxurious book of this kind, however, in the English language,
is Captain Johnston's Lives of Highwaymen and Pirates. It is rare to
find it now complete. The old folio editions have been often mutilated
by over use; the many later editions in octavo are mutilated by design
of their editors; and for conveying any idea of the rough truthful
descriptiveness of a book compiled in the palmy days of highway robbery,
they are worthless.

All our literature of that nature must, however, yield to the French
Causes Celebres, a term rendered so significant by the value and
interest of the book it names, as to have been borrowed by writers in
this country to render their works attractive. It must be noted as a
reason for the success of this work, and also of the German collection
by Feuerbach, that the despotic Continental method of procedure by
secret inquiry affords much better material for narrative than ours by
open trial. We make, no doubt, a great drama of a criminal trial.
Everything is brought on the stage at once, and cleared off before an
audience excited so as no player ever could excite; but it loses in
reading; while the Continental inquiry, with its slow secret development
of the plot, makes the better novel for the fireside.

There is a method by which, among ourselves, the trial can be imbedded
in a narrative which may carry down to later generations a condensed
reflection of that protracted expectation and excitement which disturb
society during the investigations and trials occasioned by any great
crime. This is by "illustrating" the trial, through a process resembling
that which has been already supposed to have been applied to one of
Watts's hymns. In this instance there will be all the newspaper
scraps--all the hawker's broadsides--the portraits of the criminal, of
the chief witnesses, the judges, the counsel, and various other
persons,--everything in literature or art that bears on the great
question.

He who inherits or has been able to procure a collection of such
illustrated trials, a century or so old, is deemed fortunate among
collectors, for he can at any time raise up for himself the spectre as
it were of the great mystery and exposure that for weeks was the
absorbing topic of attraction for millions. The curtains are down--the
fire burns bright--the cat purrs on the rug; Atticus, soused in his
easy-cha