lover.
_Now_, in a retired house, she probably sometimes muses over the past,
pronouncing, as few with better reason can, 'all the world's a stage,
and all the men and women merely players,' such changes has she
witnessed in the fortunes of the great actors by whom she was once
surrounded. So here were the histories of two of the occupants of our
court. The others may have had experiences no less strange; and in many
another court in this great city, from the stately inclosures of the Rue
de Lille to the squalid dens of the Faubourg St. Antoine, (if the names
have not escaped me,) lives well worth the telling are passing away.
Such is a great city.

THE COUNTRY OF EUGENE ARAM

There is a little river in England called the Nidd, and on its high
banks stand the ruins of a castle. There is much in this part of it to
remind one of the Rhine; the banks rise up in bold, picturesque form;
the river just here is broad and deep, and the castle enough of a ruin
to lead us to invest it with some legend, such as belongs to every
robber's nest on that famous river. No hawk-eyed baron ready to pounce
on the traveler, is recorded as having lived here; all that seems to be
remembered of it is, that the murderers of Thomas A Becket lay secreted
here for a time after that deed of blood, ere they ventured forth on
their pilgrimage, haunted by the accursed memory of it all their lives.
This is something, to be sure, in the way of historic incident, but the
real interest of this immediate region arises from the fact of its being
the home and haunt of Eugene Aram. A great English novelist has woven
such a spell of enchantment around the history of this celebrated
criminal, that I could not help devoting a day to the environs of the
little town of Knaresboro', in and around which the most eventful
portion of Aram's life was passed. A famous dropping-well, whose waters
possess the power of rapidly petrifying every object exposed to them, is
one of the most noticeable things in the neighborhood. There are also
one or two curious rockcut cells, high up on precipitous slopes, which
were inhabited years ago by pious recluses who had withdrawn from the
vanities of the world. Some were highly esteemed here in their lives,
and here their bones reposed; and the fact of their remaining
undiscovered sometimes for many years, was ingeniously used by Aram in
his defense, to account for the discovery of the bones of his victim in
the neighboring c