ir, cannot be at the trouble of going to see Macbeth or
Othello--he will sup full of horrors from his own stores. Accordingly he
takes down an unseemly volume, characterised by a flabby obesity by
reason of the unequal size of the papers contained in it, all being
bound to the back, while the largest only reach the margin. The first
thing at opening is the dingy pea-green-looking paragraph from the
provincial newspaper, describing how the reapers, going to their work at
dawn, saw the clay beaten with the marks of struggle, and, following the
dictates of curiosity, saw a bloody rag sticking on a tree, the leaves
also streaked with red, and, lastly, the instrument of violence hidden
in the moss; next comes from another source the lamentations for a young
woman who had left her home--then the excitement of putting that and
that together--the search, and the discovery of the body. The next
paragraph turns suspense into exulting wrath: the perpetrator has been
found with his bloody shirt on--a scowling murderous villain as ever was
seen--an eminent poacher, and fit for anything. But the next paragraph
turns the tables. The ruffian had his own secrets of what he had been
about that night, and at last makes a clean breast. It would have been a
bad business for him at any other time, but now he is a revealing angel,
for he noted this and that in the course of his own little game, and
gives justice the thread which leads to a wonderful romance, and brings
home desperate crime to that quarter where, from rank, education, and
profession, it was least likely to be found. Then comes the trial and
the execution; and so, at a sitting, has been swallowed all that
excitement which, at some time long ago, chained up the public in
protracted suspense for weeks.

The reader will see, from what I have just been saying, that I am not
prepared to back Charles Lamb's Index Expurgatorius.[49] It is
difficult, almost impossible, to find the book from which something
either valuable or amusing may not be found, if the proper alembic be
applied. I know books that are curious, and really amusing, from their
excessive badness. If you want to find precisely how a thing ought not
to be said, you take one of them down, and make it perform the service
of the intoxicated Spartan slave. There are some volumes in which, at a
chance opening, you are certain to find a mere platitude delivered in
the most superb and amazing climax of big words, and others in w