athed in the sea as a relief from the
noon-day heat, and on lifting up his head from the waves found himself
lifting up his head from the basin into which that cursed dervish had
persuaded him to dip. And when he would have cudgelled the holy man for
that long life of misery which had, through _his_ means, been inflicted
upon himself, behold! the holy man proved by affidavit that, in this
world, at any rate (where only he could be punishable), the life had
lasted but thirty-three seconds. Even so do the dark careers of many
amongst our obscure and migratory villains from years shrink up to
momentary specks, or, by their very multitude, altogether evanesce.
Burke and Hare, it is well known, had lost all count of their several
murders; they no more remembered, or could attempt to remember, their
separate victims, than a respectable old banker of seventy-three can
remember all the bills with their indorsements made payable for
half-a-century at his bank; or than Foote's turnpike-keeper, who had
kept all the toll-bar tickets to Kensington for forty-eight years,
pretended to recollect the features of all the men who had delivered
them at his gate. For a time, perhaps, Burke (who was a man of fine
sensibility) had a representative vision of spasms, and struggles, and
convulsions, terminating in a ten-pound note indorsed by Dr. ----. Hare,
on the other hand, was a man of principle, a man that you could depend
upon--order a corpse for Friday, and on Friday you had it--but he had
no feeling whatever. Yet see the unity of result for him and Burke. For
both alike all troublesome recollections gathered into one blue haze of
heavenly abstractions: orders executed with fidelity, cheques on the
bankers to be crossed and passed and cashed, are no more remembered.
That is the acme of perfection in our art.

* * * * *

One great class of criminals I am aware of in past times as having
specially tormented myself--the class who have left secrets, riddles,
behind them. What business has any man to bequeath a conundrum to all
posterity, unless he leaves in some separate channel the solution? This
must have been done in malice, and for the purpose of annoying us, lest
we should have too much proper enjoyment of life when he should have
gone. For nobody knows whether the scoundrel could have solved it
himself--too like in that respect to some charades which, in my boyish
days (but then I had the excuse of youth,