ame having been taken some years after. This is
another instance of the literary perils to which imaginative authors may
be subject; for _litera scripta manet_, especially if in printer's ink,
and, for aught I know, that offhand word might be held a continuous
libel. For all else, by way of notice, the stories speak for themselves;
as, Covetousness was the text for "The Crock of Gold," while Concealment
and False Witness are severally the _morale_ of "The Twins" and "Heart."
I once meditated ten tales, on the Ten Commandments, these three being
an instalment; and I mentally sketched my fourth upon Idolatry, "The
Prior of Marrick," but nothing came of it. The Decalogue hangs together
as a whole, and cannot be cut into ten distinct subjects without
reference to one another.

In the chapter headed "The find of the Heartless," I find a manuscript
note perhaps worth printing here:

"If I had been gifted with the true prophetic power, hereabouts should
my heartless hero have stumbled on a big nugget of gold (I wrote before
the Australian gold discovery), even as the shrewd Defoe invented for
his Robinson Crusoe in Juan Fernandez, where gold has not yet been
found, though it may be. However, I did not originally make the splendid
guess, and will not now in a future edition surreptitiously interpolate
such a suggestive incident, after the example of dishonest Murphy in his
prognostic of that coldest January 7th. It may be true enough that, for
my story's sake, I may wish I had thought of such a not unlikely find:
for the uselessness of the mere metal to a positively starving man in
the desert might have furnished comment analogous to what was uttered by
Timon of Athens; and would have been picturesque enough and
characteristic withal."

Here may follow a bit of notice for each tale from two critics of
eminence,--as copied from one of my Archive-books, for memory is
treacherous, and I must not invent. Of the "Crock of Gold" Mr. Ollier
wrote as follows:--

"A story of extraordinary power, and, which is a still greater eulogy,
of power devoted to a great and beneficent purpose. Mr. Martin Tupper
(the author) is already known to the world by his 'Proverbial
Philosophy,' and other works which indicate an extraordinarily gifted
mind and an originality of conception and treatment rare indeed in these
latter days,--but he has never demonstrated these qualities to such
perfection as in his present deeply interesting work, wherein ro