The peculiar and powerful interest attaching to narratives of remarkable crimes, and of their judicial investigation, is abundantly evidenced by the avidity with which that class of literature is invariably pounced upon by the public. Independently of the romance incidental to the subject, of the doubts and intricacies and conflicting circumstances of extraordinary criminal trials, well calculated to captivate the imagination of the vulgar, and rivet attention on their recital,—such cases possess a psychological interest, making itself felt by the least intelligent of readers, appealing with almost equal force to the scantily educated and to the scholar, to inexperienced youth and thoughtful age. By the former, it is true, the exact process by which such narratives lay hold upon the feelings and imagination, may not be easily detected, but the charm, if unseen, is not the less potent. The great success and enduring reputation of books of this kind, are the best proof of their strong and universal fascination. Whilst the legal works of GAYOT DE PITAVAL are long since shelved and forgotten, the title of his _Causes Célébres_[1] continues as familiar to our ear as those of the most notable literary productions of our own century; the book itself—of frequent reference, and found in every library of importance—has obtained the honours of repeated translation, and of reproduction in numerous forms. Those twenty volumes, it might be thought, were an ample supply of this species of reading, sufficient to stock the world and blunt the public appetite for such records. But the varieties of the subject are inexhaustible, as much so as the infinite shades and capricious directions of human passions, the unceasing diversity and perverse ingenuity of human crime. And Richer’s continuation of what Pitaval began, found as eager readers as its compiler could reasonably desire. In later times, two Germans, Messrs Hitzig and Häring, have edited with considerable success a work of a similar nature.[2] Others doubtless will appear. There can be no lack of materials. Each successive half-century yields matter for a new and lengthy series. Meanwhile, and although civilisation, impotent wholly to check crime, is also unable to strip its annals of novelty and pungency, the remarkable criminal records of ruder ages are frequently recurred to and reproduced, as wilder and more romantic in their nature than those of a recent day. Alexander Dumas has collected from various quarters a voluminous work of this nature; and, although its greater portion was already a thrice-told tale, the book is one of the most popular of his multifarious productions. Feuerbach the celebrated jurist, the impartial narrator and critic of the extraordinary history of Caspar Hauser, the indefatigable labourer in the arid vineyard of the law, whose lightest literary pastime would to most men have been toil,[3] deemed it not unworthy his learned pen to collate and comment two volumes of