f the swiftly approaching death of _my_
child, and that yours had been carefully kept beyond the reach of
contagion. The letter you received was written without my knowledge or
consent. True it is that, terrified by my husband's threats, and in
some measure reconciled to the wicked imposition by knowing that,
after all, the right child would be in his right place, I afterwards
lent myself to Danby's evil purposes. But I chiefly feared for my son,
whom I fully believed he would not have scrupled to make away with in
revenge for my exposing his profitable fraud. I have sinned; I can
hardly hope to be forgiven, but I have now told the sacred truth.'

All this was uttered by the repentant woman, but at the time it was
almost wholly unheard by those most interested in the statement. They
only comprehended that they were saved--that the child was theirs in
very truth. Great, abundant, but for the moment, bewildering joy! Mr
Arbuthnot--his beautiful young wife--her own true boy (how could she
for a moment have doubted that he was her own true boy!--you might
read that thought through all her tears, thickly as they fell)--the
aged and half-stunned rector, whilst yet Mrs Danby was speaking, were
exclaiming, sobbing in each other's arms, ay, and praising God too,
with broken voices and incoherent words it may be, but certainly with
fervent, pious, grateful hearts.

When we had time to look about us, it was found that the felon had
disappeared--escaped. It was well, perhaps, that he had; better, that
he has not been heard of since.

THE TAXES ON KNOWLEDGE.

To all appearance, the abolition of the taxes on the spread of
knowledge through the press is only a matter of time. The principal of
these taxes is the Excise-duty on paper, which, as we have repeatedly
urged, acts most detrimentally on the issue of a cheap class of
publications. The duty next in importance is that which is charged on
advertisements. Our belief is, that a relief from this taxation would
be a prodigious advantage to all departments of trade and commerce, as
well as to various social interests. That the sum of eighteenpence
should be exacted by the state from every person--a poor housemaid,
for example--on advertising for a situation, is, to say the least of
it, inexpressibly shabby. The stamp-duty of one penny on each
newspaper is reckoned to be the third of these taxes on knowledge.
There can be no doubt that this duty is a tax, as applied to those