calling not allowing me to leave a fellow-creature thus exposed to the risk of being run over by the first drowsy waggoner who might pass along the thoroughfare, I stooped to rouse and to lift the form. What was my horror when my eyes met the rigid stare of a dead man's. I started, looked again; it was the face of Sir Philip Derval! He was lying on his back, the countenance upturned, a dark stream oozing from the breast-murdered, by two ghastly wounds-murdered not long since; the blood was still warm. Stunned and terror-stricken, I stood bending over the body. Suddenly I was touched on the shoulder.

"Hollo! what is this?" said a gruff voice. "Murder!" I answered, in hollow accents, which sounded strangely to my own ear. "Murder! so it seems." And the policeman who had thus accosted me lifted the body.

"A gentleman, by his dress. How did this happen? How did you come here ?" and the policeman glanced suspiciously at me.

At this moment, however, there came up another policeman, in whom I recognised the young man whose sister I had attended and cured.

"Dr. Fenwick," said the last, lifting his hat respectfully, and at the sound of my name his fellow-policeman changed his manner, and muttered an apology.

ever, was easily and speedily cleared up. A Mr. Jeeves, who was one of the principal solicitors in the town, stated that he had acted as Sir Philip's legal agent and adviser ever since Sir Philip came of age, and was charged with the exclusive management of some valuable house property which the deceased had possessed in L- ; that when Sir Philip had arrived in the town late in the afternoon of the previous day, he had sent for Mr. Jeeves; informed him that he, Sir Philip, was engaged to be married; that he desired to have full and minute information as to the details of his house property (which had greatly increased in value since his absence from England), in connexion with the settlements his marriage would render necessary; and that this information was also required by him in respect to a codicil he desired to add to his will.

He had, accordingly, requested Mr. Jeeves to have all the books and statements concerning the property ready for his inspection that night, when he would call, after leaving the ball which he had promised the mayor, whom he had accidentally met on entering the town, to attend. Sir Philip had also asked Mr. Jeeves to detain one of his clerks in his office, in order to serve conjointly with Mr. Jeeves as a witness to the codicil he desired to add to his will. Sir Philip had accordingly come to Mr. Jeeves's house a little before midnight; had gone carefully through all the statements pre

to his testament, which testament he had in their previous interview given to Mr. Jeeves's care, sealed up. Mr. Jeeves stated that Sir Philip, though a man of remarkable talents and great ac

I now collected myself sufficiently to state the name and rank of the murdered man. The po-pared for him, and had executed the fresh codicil licemen bore the body to their station, to which I accompanied them. I then returned to my own house, and had scarcely sunk on my bed, when sleep came over me. But what a sleep! Never till then had I known how awfully dis-quirements, was extremely eccentric, and of a tinct dreams can be. The phantasmagoria of the naturalist's collection revived. Life again awoke in the serpent and the tiger, the scorpion moved, and the vulture flapped its wings. And there was Margrave and there Sir Philip; but their position of power was reversed. And Margrave's foot was on the breast of the dead man. Still I slept on till I was roused by the summons to attend on Mr. Vigors, the magistrate, to whom the police had reported the murder.

I dressed hastily and went forth. As I passed through the street, I found that the dismal news had already spread. I was accosted on my way to the magistrate by a hundred eager, tremulous, inquiring tongues.

very peremptory temper, and that the importance attached to a promptitude for which there seemed no pressing occasion, did not surprise him in Sir Philip as it might have done in an ordinary client. Sir Philip said, indeed, that he should devote the next morning to the draft for his wedding settlements, according to the information of his property which he had acquired; and after a visit of very brief duration to Derval Court, should quit the neighbourhood and return to Paris, where his intended bride then was, and in which city it had been settled that the marriage ceremony should take place.

Mr. Jeeves had, however, observed to him, that if he were so soon to be married it was better to postpone any revision of testamentary bequests, since after marriage he would have to make a new will altogether.

And Sir Philip had simply answered,

"Life is uncertain; who can be sure of the morrow ?"

The scanty evidence I could impart was soon given. My introduction to Sir Philip at the mayor's house, our accidental meeting under the arch, my discovery of the corpse some hours afterwards on my return from my patient, my professional belief that the deed must have been done a very short time, perhaps but a few minutes, Sir Philip's visit to Mr. Jeeves's house had before I had chanced upon its victim. But, in lasted some hours, for the conversation between that case, how account for the long interval that them had branched off from actual business to had elapsed between the time in which I had left various topics. Mr. Jeeves had not noticed the Sir Philip under the arch, and the time in which hour when Sir Philip went; he could only say the murder must have been committed? Sir that as he attended him to the street door, he obPhilip could not have been wandering through served, rather to his own surprise, that it was the streets all those hours. This doubt, how-close upon daybreak.

I felt my countenance change slightly as I answered, “Yes.”

Sir Philip's body had been found not many | Sir Philip Derval, in his conversation with you, yards distant from the hotel at which he had mention the steel casket which it seems he carried put up, and to which, therefore, he was evidently about with him ?" returning when he left Mr. Jeeves. An oldfashioned hotel, which had been the principal one at L when Sir Philip left England, though now outrivalled by the new and more central establishment, in which Margrave was domiciled.

The primary and natural supposition was, that Sir Philip had been murdered for the sake of plunder; and this supposition was borne out by the fact to which his valet deposed: viz.

That Sir Philip had about his person, on going to the mayor's house, a purse containing notes and sovereigns; and this purse was now missing.

"Did he tell you what it contained ?"
"He said it contained secrets."

"Secrets of what nature, medicinal or chemical? Secrets which a physician might be curious to learn and covetous to possess ?"

This question seemed to me so offensively significant that it roused my indignation, and I answered haughtily, that "a physician of any degree of merited reputation did not much believe in, and still less covet, those secrets in his art which were the boast of quacks and pretenders."

The valet, who, though an Albanian, spoke "My question need not offend you, Dr. FenEnglish fluently, said that the purse had a gold wick. I put it in another shape. Did Sir Philip clasp, on which Sir Philip's crest and initials Derval so boast of the secrets contained in his were engraved. Sir Philip's watch was, how-casket, that a quack or pretender might deem ever, untaken. such secrets of use to him ?"

And, now, it was not without a quick beat of the heart, that I heard the valet declare that a steel casket, to which Sir Philip attached extraordinary value, and always carried about with him, was also missing.

"Possibly he might, if he believed in such a boast."

"Humph-he might if he so believed. I have no more questions to put to you, at present, Dr. Fenwick."

Little of any importance in connexion with the deceased, or his murder, transpired in the course of that day's examination and inquiries.

The Albanian described this casket as of ancient Byzantian workmanship, opening with a peculiar spring, only known to Sir Philip, in whose possession it had been, so far as the servant The next day, a gentleman, distantly related to knew, about three years; when, after a visit the young lady to whom Sir Philip was engaged, to Aleppo, in which the servant had not ac- and who had been for some time in corresponcompanied him, he had first observed it in his dence with the deceased, arrived at L--. He master's hands. He was asked if this casket had been sent for at the suggestion of the Alcontained articles to account for the value Sir banian servant, who said that Sir Philip had Philip set on it-such as jewels, bank-notes, let-stayed a day at this gentleman's house in London, ters of credit, &c. The man replied that it might on his way to L-, from Doyer. possibly do so; he had never been allowed the opportunity of examining its contents; but that he was certain the casket held medicines, for he had seen Sir Philip take from it some small phials, by which he had performed great cures in the East, and especially during a pestilence which had visited Damascus, just after Sir Philip had arrived at that city on quitting Aleppo. Almost every European traveller is supposed to be a physician; and Sir Philip was a man of great benevolence, and the servant firmly believed him also to be of great medical skill. After this statement, it was very naturally and generally conjectured that Sir Philip was an amateur disciple of homoeopathy, and that the casket contained the phials or globules in use among homoeopathists.

Whether or not Mr. Vigors enjoyed a vindictive triumph in making me feel the weight of his authority, or whether his temper was ruffled in the excitement of so grave a case, I cannot say, but his manner was stern and his tone discourteous in the questions which he addressed to me. Nor did the questions themselves seem very pertinent to the object of investigation.

"Pray, Dr. Fenwick," said he, knitting his brows, and fixing his eyes on me rudely, "did

The new comer, whose name was Danvers, gave a more touching pathos to the horror which the murder had excited. It seemed that the motives which had swayed Sir Philip in the choice of his betrothed, were singularly pure and noble. The young lady's father-an intimate college friend-had been visited by a sudden reverse of fortune, which had brought on a fever that proved mortal. He had died some years ago, leaving his only child penniless, and had bequeathed her to the care and guardianship of Sir Philip.

The orphan received her education at a convent near Paris; and when Sir Philip, a few weeks since, arrived in that city from the East, he offered her his hand and fortune. "I know," said Mr. Danvers, "from the conversation I held with him when he came to me in London, that he was induced to this offer by the conscientious desire to discharge the trust consigned to him by his old friend. Sir Philip was still too young to take under his own roof a female ward of eighteen, without injury to her good name. He could only get over that difficulty by making the ward his wife. She will be safer and happier with the man she will love and honour for her father's sake,' said the chivalrous gentle

man, than she will be under any other roof I could find for her.'"

doubt whether any discovery, or hint of discovery, therein contained, would not prove more dangerous than useful to mankind, he shall consult with any other three men of science whose

And now there arrived another stranger to L-, sent for by Mr. 'Jeeves, the lawyer;-a stranger to L-, but not to me; my old Edin-names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge, burgh acquaintance, Richard Strahan.

and according to the best of his judgment, after The will in Mr. Jeeves's keeping, with its such consultation, suppress or publish the passage recent codicil, was opened and read. The will of which he has so doubted. I own the ambition itself bore date about six years anterior to the which first directed me towards studies of a very testator's tragic death: it was very short, and, unusual character, and which has encouraged with the exception of a few legacies, of which me in their pursuit through many years of volunthe most important was ten thousand pounds to tary exile, in lands where they could be best facihis ward, the whole of his property was left to litated or aided-the ambition of leaving behind Richard Strahan, on the condition that he took the me the renown of a bold discoverer in those name and arms of Derval within a year from the recesses of nature which philosophy has hitherto date of Sir Philip's decease. The codicil, added to abandoned to superstition. But I feel, at the the will the night before his death, increased the moment in which I trace these lines, a fear lest, legacy to the young lady from ten to thirty thou- in the absorbing interest of researches which tend sand pounds, and bequeathed an annuity of one to increase to a marvellous degree the power of hundred pounds a year to his Albanian servant. man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may Accompanying the will, and within the same en- have blunted my own moral perceptions; and velope, was a sealed letter, addressed to Richard that there may be much in the knowledge which I Strahan, and dated at Paris two weeks before Sir sought and acquired from the pure desire of inPhilip's decease. Strahan brought that letter to vestigating hidden truths, that could be more me. It ran thus: "Richard Strahan, I advise abused to purposes of tremendous evil than be you to pull down the house called Derval Court, likely to conduce to benignant good. And of and to build another on a better site, the plans this a mind disciplined to severe reasoning, and of which, to be modified according to your own uninfluenced by the enthusiasm which has protaste and requirements, will be found among bably obscured my own judgment, should be the my papers. This is a recommendation, not a unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have coveted command. But I strictly enjoin you entirely and still do covet that fame which makes the to demolish the more ancient part, which memory of one man the common inheritance of was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy all, I would infinitely rather that my name should by fire, without perusal, all the books and manu-pass away with my breath, than that I should scripts found in the safes in my study. I have appointed you my sole executor, as well as my heir, because I have no personal friends in whom I can confide as I trust I may do in the man I have never seen, simply because he will bear my name and represent my lineage. There will be found in my writing-desk, which always accompanies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a record of my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery, in science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will not be surprised that before selecting you as my heir and executor, from a crowd of relations not more distant, I should have made inquiries in order to justify my selection. The result of those inquiries informs me that you have not yourself the peculiar knowledge nor the habits of mind that could enable you to judge of matters which demand the attainments and the practice of science; but that you are of an honest affectionate nature, and will regard as sacred the last injunctions of a benefactor. I enjoin you, then, to submit the aforesaid manuscript memoir to some man on whose character for humanity and honour you can place confidential reliance, and who is accustomed to the study of the positive sciences, more especially chemistry, in connexion with electricity and magnetism. My desire is that he shall edit and arrange this memoir for publication; and that, wherever he feels a conscientious

transmit to my fellow-men any portion of a knowledge which the good might forbear to exercise and the bad might unscrupulously pervert. I bear about with me, wherever I wander, a certain steel casket. I received this casket with its contents from a man whose memory I hold in profound veneration. Should I live to find a person whom, after minute and intimate trial of his character, I should deem worthy of such confidence, it is my intention to communicate to him the secret how to prepare and how to use such of the powders and essences stored within that casket as I myself have ventured to employ. Others I have never tested, nor do I know how they could be re-supplied if lost or wasted. But as the contents of this casket, in the hands of any one not duly instructed as to the mode of applying them, would either be useless, or conduce, through inadvertent and ignorant misapplication, to the most dangerous consequences; so, if I die without having found, and in writing named, such a confidant as I have described above, I command you immediately to empty all the powders and essences found therein into any running stream of water, which will at once harmlessly dissolve them. On no account must they be cast into fire!

"This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come under your eyes in case the plans and the hopes which I have formed for my earthly future should be frustrated by the death on which I do not

calculate, but against the chances of which this will and this letter provide. I am about to re-visit England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be there subjected to some peril which I refuse to have defined, because I am unwilling that any mean apprehension of personal danger should enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I overcome that peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be remodelled; this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form ties which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found, though it is common to all men-the affections of home, the caresses of children, among whom I may find one to whom hereafter I may bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage than my lands. In that case, however, my first care would be to assure your own fortunes. And the sum which this codicil assures to my betrothed, would be transferred to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know why, never having seen you, I thus select you for preference to all my other kindred? Why my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image? Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years older than yourself-you were then a childwas the object of my first love. We were to have been wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she returned my affection. With a rare and noble candour, she herself informed me, that her heart was given to another, who possessed not my worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my claims to her hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own choice. I obtained for her husband the living which he held, and I settled on your sister the dower which at her death passed to you as the brother to whom she had shown a mother's love, and the interest of which has secured you a modest independence.

"If these lines ever reach you, recognise my title to reverential obedience to commands which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational; and repay, as if a debt due from your own lost sister, the affection I have borne to you for her sake."

While I read this long and strange letter, Strahan sat by my side, covering his face with his hands and weeping with honest tears for the man whose death had made him powerful and rich.

himself.

"You will undertake the trust ordained to me in this letter," said he, struggling to compose "You will read and edit this memoir; you are the very man he himself would have selected. Of your honour and humanity there can be no doubt, and you have studied with success the sciences which he specifies as requisite for the discharge of the task he commands."

At this request, though I could not be wholly unprepared for it, my first impulse was that of a vague terror. It seemed to me as if I were becoming more and more entangled in a mysterious and fatal web. But this impulse soon faded in the eager yearnings of an ardent and irresistible curiosity.

I promised to read the manuscript, and in order that I might fully imbue my mind with the object and wish of the deceased, I asked leave to make a copy of the letter I had just read. To this Strahan readily assented, and that copy I have transcribed in the preceding pages.

I asked Strahan if he had yet found the manuscript; he said, "No, he had not yet had the heart to inspect the papers left by the deceased. He would now do so. He should go in a day or two to Derval Court, and reside there till the murderer was discovered, as, doubtless, he soon must be through the vigilance of the police. Not till that discovery was made should Sir Philip's remains, though already placed in their coffin, be consigned to the family vault."

Strahan seemed to have some superstitious notion that the murderer might be more secure from justice if his victim were thrust, unavenged, into the tomb.

LONDON WATER.

IN FOUR CHAPTERS. CHAPTER III.

doubt, a most hazardous speculation; a scheme THE New River project in 1607 was, without largely forced upon the town in advance of the fair commercial demand, by a man of great selfreliance, plausibility, and energy. It was a scheme which the London corporation of the time-a body not at all wanting in public spirit then-refused to carry out, although they had obtained several acts of parliament to enable them, if they thought proper, to bring water into the City from Hertfordshire. Although the enterprise eventually succeeded, and grew gradually, century after century, into one of the most lucrative of joint-stock undertakings, its commercial character from 1608 up to 1633 is shown to be faulty, from the fact that it paid no dividend for twenty years. The ground it gained afterwards, up to and after the abolition of the conduits in 1728, has been a source of wealth and comfort to the shareholders; but the breakdown of Master Hugh Myddelton's golden calculations is hardly concealed by this after success. He was opposed before he undertook the work; he was opposed during its progress; and he was doubtless taunted for years about his unsatisinterest in the concern during its financial factory balance-sheets. He retained a sufficient when the turn in affairs arrived-most probably struggles to make him comparatively wealthy because no one would come forward to purchase his shares. With singular inconsistency, his memory is cherished by many as that of a great public benefactor, while the existing water comin particular, are daily and hourly abused. There panies in general, and his legal representatives prove that he was particularly disinterested in is nothing in the dim fragments of his history to his dealings, or that, beyond painting his enterprise in colours a little too glaring, he carried on his business upon sentimental principles. If Sir Hugh Myddelton, Bart., were really regarded by his contemporaries as it is the fashion to regard him now, it is strange that no one ever stepped

CHAFTER IV.

forward to write his biography. Before he their lower rooms, and lower parts of London turned a sod of his new water channel, he ob- in their higher rooms.' tained a strictly legal conveyance from the London corporation, of all authority vested in them under their several acts of parliament concerning the water supply. In his dealings with water consumers, after his works were finished, and he was established with his partners as a water-seller, he showed no particular sentimental liberality. His bills, no doubt, were punctually delivered; and payment was promptly demanded, on a scale-to judge by specimens preserved in local records-which showed him anxious to get as much money for as little water as possible. In 1616, he granted a lease for twenty-one years to a citizen and his wife of "a pipe or quill of half an inch bore, for the service of their yarde and kitchine, by means of tooe of the smallest swan-necked cockes, in consideration of the yearly sum of twenty-six shillings and eightpence." The water then was accused of being muddy, and several rival schemes were put forward by rival speculators.

THE New River-as the whole works are still popularly called-is no more like it was, than the fancy portrait of Master Hugh Myddelton's character is probably like the original.* One of the ancient springs-the old Amwell spring-has entirely disappeared, having oozed away silently, about 1830, into the bed of the river Lea. The Chadwell spring, that mysterious, circular, chalky pool, in the Hertfordshire valley, which has been the drinking-fountain for centuries of countless thirsty millions, no longer gives forth drink with its accustomed liberality. Springs, like men, must be allowed to grow weary with work and old age, and must submit to see younger followers rising up to supply their place. The old river channel, winding between flowers and grassy slopes, dipping under roadways, flowing past cottages, churchyards, and country taverns, has had its loops cut off, The work he had to do, and the difficulties at different times, until its length has been rehe had to surmount, were, no doubt, enormous, duced to something like twenty-eight miles, and and we may give him credit for the skill, industry, it now only counts as one reservoir amongst and perseverance he displayed, without invest- many. Even the royal partnership was dissolved ing him with imaginary qualities. He had to by Charles the First, who re-granted to Sir Hugh contend against the opposition of certain landed Myddelton, then a baronet, the half-share in the proprietors through whose grounds he wished undertaking, in consideration of an annual payto cut his channel, and against mechanical ob- ment into the Exchequer of five hundred pounds. stacles which the slender engineering skill of At this time the chartered enterprise was at the time scarcely knew how to overcome. This very low-water mark, and the act of "royal is how the New River came to have its chief bounty" may have been a prudent and selfish beauty-its winding course. He had to petition act, produced by an application-or "call”—on the corporation for an extension of the time the part of Sir Hugh for more money. The granted him to complete the undertaking; and seventy-two parts into which the property is this being conceded, he brought the water from now divided, are still counted as thirty-six adthe springs of Chadwell and Amwell in Hert-venturers'," and thirty-six "king's" shares, and fordshire as far as Enfield, when he discovered the royal annuity is still paid out of the profits that his funds were exhausted. He again ap-apportioned to the latter. It is a curious fact plied to the corporation-this time to induce them to take a pecuniary interest in the concern, or to grant him a loan. Both requests were refused, on account of the great cost of the enterprise, and the uncertainty of its profitable results. In his extremity, he applied to King James the First, and succeeded in inducing him to take a half-share in the business, upon condition that the king should pay all the cost of that portion of the work which then remained unexecuted. The firm from that hour became

practically Myddelton and James; and they opened as dealers in water, when the New River entered the reservoir now called the New River Head, in the parish of Clerkenwell, with much music and rejoicing, feasting, processions, and reciting of poems, on the 29th of September,

1613.

Thus was finished one of the most beautiful

of artificial rivers; a winding channel fortyeight miles in length, thirty feet deep in many places, spanned by some eight hundred arches in stone and wood, which had employed six hundred men for more than five years. It was disposed of in underground pipes of lead and wood, "serving the highest parts of London in

that Hugh precluded James from taking any part in the management of the company, although he allowed a person to be present at the meetings, to prevent injustice to his royal principal. This preclusion still extends to the holders of the royal shares. Probably the great water-company projector had no faith in the business talents of kings; or he may have thought that majesty on board days would have shown itself a little too radiant "in the chair."

The original cost of the undertaking has to be guessed, because all the documents of the company were destroyed by a fire at their office in Dorset-street, Fleet-street, in 1769. These guesses have varied from five hundred thousand to one hundred thousand pounds sterling; an estimate of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds being, perhaps, nearest to the mark.

The New River Company still holds the first place in the present water system of London. Its sources of supply are the old Chadwell spring, before alluded to; four Artesian wells

* Mr. Samuel Smiles is preparing an elaborate biography of Sir Hugh, the materials of which have been gathered from unpublished documents. It will probably enlighten the public on this last matter.