rs, who became
clamorous for their money. There was only one way left to satisfy
them, and Amelia, of Derwentwater, took it. The jewels and pictures
were brought to the hammer in an auction-room in Hexham--the countess
disappeared from public ken, and the newspapers ceased to chronicle
her extraordinary movements.

ARTHUR ORTON--WHO CLAIMED TO BE SIR ROGER CHARLES DOUGHTY TICHBORNE,
BART.

The case of Arthur Orton is too recent to need many words of
introduction. We have hardly yet cooled down to a sober realization of
the facts which, as they stand, mark the latest and most bulky of the
claimants, as not only the greatest impostor of modern or perhaps of
any days, the base calumniator who endeavoured to rob a woman of her
fair fame to gratify his own selfish ends, but as a living proof of
the height to which the blind credulity of the public will now and
again elevate itself. Arthur Orton is in prison undergoing what all
thinking men must admit to be a very lenient sentence--a sentence
which in no way meets the justice of the case; for the advent of this
huge carcase lumbering the earth with lies was nothing less than a
misfortune to the people of England. And the word misfortune, if used
even in its highest and widest sense, will in no way imply that which
has happened to a peaceful family, who have been associated with their
lands and titles as long as our history goes back, and who have had
their privacy violated, and the sanctity of their homes invaded; who
have been pilloried before a ruthless and unsympathising mob, who have
had their women's names banded from one coarse mouth to another, and
who--least misfortune of all--have had to expend large sums of money,
and great amounts of time and trouble, to free themselves from a
persecution as unparalleled as it was vicious and cruel. Those who,
having neither fame nor fortune to lose, speak lightly and think not
at all of the sorrows which were launched avalanche-like upon the
devoted heads of the Tichbornes and their connections, would do well
to ponder over what such personation as that of Arthur Orton means to
its immediate victims. It means a sudden derangement of all the ties
and sympathies by which life is made dear, a sudden shock which never
in life will be recovered. There is no member of the community, no
matter how well and how carefully he has chosen his path in life, who
would not fear to have his every action published and criticised, his
ev