it Fig. 524, No. 2. Fig. 525. No. 11. Fig. 526. No. 12. For the description of these various instruments, for the ingenious processes by which some of them were constructed, and especially for the manner in which certain among them were used, we must refer to Dr. Wilde's own most interesting pages. From some of them, strange as may appear, it is impossible, by any hitherto devised effort, to extract a musical sound. And it has come to be regarded as certain that their use was rather as speakingtrumpets, to be employed as a means of transmitting signals of command in the uproar of battle, or through the distant windings of the chace. In closing our Notice of this portion of Dr. Wilde's Catalogue, we cannot forbear expressing our earnest hope that he may before long be induced to extend his labours to the objects in the precious metals, and especially to the sacred antiquities, in which the Museum is peculiarly rich. Dr. Wilde, in alluding to the subject of costume, expresses an earnest wish that Dr. Petrie, whom he truly describes as the one man qualified to produce a monograph on the sculptured crosses of Ireland worthy of so various and so noble a theme, could be induced to undertake the subject of ancient Irish costume, in so far as it is illustrated by these sculptures. While we cordially join in this wish, we cannot help adding, that we shall be greatly disappointed if, with the materials which this present catalogue either contains or indicates, Dr. Wilde himself will not undertake the whole subject of Irish costume, as illus trated from all the various sources of information of which he is so clearly master. Such a work would take its place with the highest class of antiquarian literature in our own or any other European language. ART. V.-1. Recollections of a Detective Police Officer. By "Waters." London: J. & C. Burn & Co. Ave Maria Lane. 1856. 2. Same. Second Series. London: W. Kent & Co. Paternoster 3. Diary of an Ex-Detective. Edited by Charles Martel. London: Ward & Lock, 158, Fleet Street. 1859. 4. The Detective's Note-Book. Edited by Charles Martel. London: Ward & Lock, 158, Fleet Street. 1860. 5. The Irish Police Officer. Comprising the Identification and other Tales, founded upon remarkable trials in Ireland. By Robert Curtis, County Inspector of the Irish Constabulary. London: Ward & Lock, 158, Fleet Street. 1861. THE HE omniscient Ruler looking down from above searches every corner of the rolling earth, and with mingled pity and contempt views the efforts made by the guilty man to cloak his crime. The black curtain of the night-the solitude of the lonely waste the thickest walls-the securest doors-avail nothing for concealment from that penetrating glance which searches not only the acts but the innermost thoughts of men. The malefactor may exhaust his ingenuity to weave around him, as he fondly hopes, an impervious web of mystery; he may accumulate precaution upon precaution, and heap falsehood upon falsehood-in an instant, at the appointed hour, the web is rent asunder, and the truth as beheld from the first by the all-seeing Eye, is now uncovered to the general gaze by the Omnipotent arm. So wills the fierce avenging sprite, The range of human vision, is however, limited, and the war of human wits is waged on more equal grounds. A solitary wretch contends against the united vigilance and penetration of a host of foes, and single-handed, frequently conquers in the fight. Uneducated and untrained in all save guilt, and in that, alas! too finished an adept―ignorant, brutal, and depressed, he baffles every effort that refined intelligence, superior skill, and the strength of a righteous cause, can bring to bear against him, and finally succeeds in preserving from the grasp of the law that existence which the sting of remorse has, in many instances, rendered an intolerable burthen. No lesson, surely, can be more powerful to teach man the fallibility of his own judgment, than the success so frequently attending these efforts on the part of guilt to baffle and mislead. What more stern warning against rash conclusions! How frequently have we seen a chain of circumstances pointing, apparently, with irresistible force to some particular conclusion, suddenly disjoined and scattered by the eliciting of a new fact by which the pursuit is instantly led away into a wholly different direction! Most of us in our own persons, at some period of our lives, must have winced under the sharp infliction of an unjust accusation, and seen a number of circumstances of a perfectly innocent character, marshalled against us as conclusive of our guilt; and when all were stated and arrayed, felt our very belief in our innocence staggered, by the powerful effect produced on even our own informed minds. We have then felt how clear our guilt must have appeared to others who, unable to read the secrets of hearts, judged from the facts before them; and the bitterness of our feeling of injustice has been moderated, and our wounded self-esteem solaced if not cured, by the reflection. As we have advanced in life our experience of the world and the results of observation and reflection, have taught us still greater tolerance of such apparent injustice. We are, under such circumstances, partaking merely of the common lot, and suffering the effects of the general infirmity of Human Nature, which condemns us on such proofs, as we in our turn would think a full justification to ourselves for concluding another guilty. Thus indeed does the judge often, equally with the accused, become the victim 1 of circumstances, and probably in many instances suffer more in mind when convinced of his mistake than the supposed criminal has done from the injustice done him; and amongst men of right feeling, few would be found who would not prefer to have suffered from the unjust accusation than to have been the prosecutor of the injustice, no matter how fully every principle of human law and natural equity might have warranted the presumption of guilt. 66 Providence, in its wisdom, has seen fit to limit man's mental vision, and has made many things mysterious to him. It has allowed the hand of the assassin to cut short many a virtuous and valuable life, and permitted the crime to pass, in this world at least, undetected and unpunished, and has even permitted the criminal to pass through life without one compunctious visiting," one qualm of conscience. Mocking, as it were, the wisdom of man, it has suffered life to be taken away in the broad glare of noon, in the middle of a crowded city, in the heart of a skilfullytrained police, without the faintest clue to trace the murderer, and on the other hand it has given to the criminal the silence of midnight, the solitude of the forest or plain, the absence or deep repose of man, and every aid, as it were, to concealment and escape, and suddenly with out a stir on the part of human justice, has laid a denouncing finger on the guilty head, and pointed it out to the world, where most unsuspected and unsought. One slays his victim almost in the face of the ministers of justice, and escapes without haste or rapid flight. Another adopts numerous precautions, and exhausts ingenuity in devising plans of concealment, and is detected with his victim's blood warm upon his hands. How powerless are the most elaborate devices for concealment when the hand of heaven is raised to expose the guilt! everything appears perfect, nothing seems to have been neglected, but just at the proper moment, some apparently trifling omission or commission, some seemingly unimportant safeguard omitted, is disclosed, leading like the clue of silk to the inmost recessess of the labyrinth. Let us not be taken, however, as suggesting the total inutility of human investigation in circumstances of mysterious guilt. On the contrary, we believe that in most instances a key to the whole complication is available, when sought for in a spirit of logical and philosophical enquiry. This is not the spirit in which such enquiries are pursued in this country. The detection of crime is committed to persons of inferior education and imperfect training, who pursue their investigations after a certain fashion which they seldom in the least improve. There is no responsible and superior head charged with the task and whose reputation for sagacity and skill is at stake on each occasion, and consequently many crimes escape detection, and the system continues imperfect and inefficient. Some time ago Mr. Charles Dickens gave us in the pages of "Household Words" a series of narratives communicated to him, as he tells us, by certain astute London detectives. We are bound, of course, to accept these narratives as principally, if not wholly founded upon fact, though at the time at which we read them, it struck us that there was more delicate and refined detective reasoning power exhibited by the officers than we should have been disposed to think they possessed. In truth we think that the every day expression of the policeman in the witness-box, "from information which I have received," is the key to the whole system, which depends almost entirely for its support upon the aid of informers. The haunts and associates of each notorious criminal are well known to the police, and let but circumstances once fasten suspicion on an individual, and persevering enquiries, aided by pecuniary inducements, will soon satisfy the officer if his suspicions are well founded. It is true even in the case of crimes committed by persons whose lives are not devoted to crime, that the modern detective is generally at fault. This seems to be the case in the Road Murder, which was evidently not the work of a regular criminal. Here was a mystery the only chance of solving which, lay in the application to the peculiar circumstances of the case, of certain well-known rules familiar to persons experienced in the detection of crime. We shall presently see how in other cases the truth has been elicited through the application of such rules by the superior intelligence of an acute observer seizing upon apparently an unimportant fact. Just now books of narratives of detectives and ex-detectives are all the fashion. Diaries, note-books, and confessions issue from the press in shoals, and one would naturally expect to find amongst them a complete disclosure of an ingenious and successful system. With, howhowever, one or two exceptions, there is evidently no |