d in the "Annual Register," under
Jan. 23, 1833. An inquiry was instituted by order of the Home Secretary
relative to the death of "a person who had been known for years by the
name of Eliza Edwards," but who turned out to be a man.

CHAPTER XIII.

EXTRAORDINARY DISAPPEARANCES.

"O Annie,
It is beyond all hope, against all chance,
That he who left you ten long years ago
Should still be living; well, then--let me speak;
I grieve to see you poor and wanting help:
I cannot help you as I wish to do
Unless--they say that women are so quick--
Perhaps you know what I would have you know--
wish you for my wife."
ENOCH ARDEN.

A glance at the agony columns of our daily newspapers, or the notice
boards of police stations, it has been remarked, shows how many
individuals disappear from home, from their business haunts, and from
the circle of their acquaintances, and leave not the slightest trace
of their whereabouts. In only too many instances, no satisfactory
explanation has ever been forthcoming to account for a disappearance
of this nature, and in the vast majority of cases no evidence has been
discovered to prove the death of such persons. It is well known that
"in France, before the Revolution, the vanishing of men almost before
the eyes of their friends was so common that it scarcely excited any
surprise at all. The only inquiry was, had he a beautiful wife or
daughter, for in that case the explanation was easy; some one who had
influence with the Government had designs upon the lady, and made
interest to have her natural guardian put out of the way while those
designs were being fulfilled." But, accountable as the disappearance
of an individual was at such an unquiet time in French history, such a
solution of the difficulty cannot be made to apply to our own country.
Like other social problems, which no amount of intellectual ingenuity
has been able to unravel, the reason why, at intervals, persons are
missed and never found must always be regarded as an open question.

Thus a marriage is recorded which took place in Lincolnshire, about
the year 1750. In this instance, the wedding party adjourned after the
marriage ceremony to the bridegroom's residence, and dispersed, some
to ramble in the garden and others to rest in the house till the
dinner hour. But the bridegroom was suddenly summoned away by a
domestic, who said that a strange