Such are the curious coincidences and such is the peculiar ability, always sharpening and being improved by practice, and always adapting itself to every variety of circumstances, and opposing itself to every new device that perverted ingenuity can invent, for which this important social branch of the public service is remarkable! For ever on the watch, with their wits stretched to the utmost, these officers have, from day to day and year to year, to set themselves against every novelty of trickery and dexterity that the combined imaginations of all the lawless rascals in England can devise, and to keep pace with every such invention that comes out. In the Courts of Justice, the materials of thousands of such stories as we have narrated—often elevated into the marvellous and romantic, by the circumstances of the case—are dryly compressed into the set phrase, “in consequence of information I received, I did so and so.” Suspicion was to be directed, by careful inference and deduction, upon the right person; the right person was to be taken, wherever he had gone, or whatever he was doing to avoid detection: he is taken; there he is at the bar; that is enough. From information I, the officer, received, I did it; and, according to the custom in these cases, I say no more. These games of chess, played with live pieces, are played before small audiences, and are chronicled nowhere. The interest of the game supports the player. Its results are enough for Justice. To compare great things with small, suppose LEVERRIER or ADAMS informing the public that from information he had received he had discovered a new planet; or COLUMBUS informing the public of his day that from information he had received, he had discovered a new continent; so the Detectives inform it that they have discovered a new fraud or an old offender, and the process is unknown. Thus, at midnight, closed the proceedings of our curious and interesting party. But one other circumstance finally wound up the evening, after our Detective guests had left us. One of the sharpest among them, and the officer best acquainted with the Swell Mob, had his pocket picked, going home! HEALTH BY ACT OF PARLIAMENT. There was a story current in the city of Mosul, about the time that the first edition of “The Hundred and One Nights” began to be popular in Oriental society, of a certain Prince who was taken ill of the plague. Though his retinue was large, he was the only person who was in imminent danger. The Court physician was also at death’s door, and a strange doctor was sent for, who pronounced the Great Man to be in a fearful state of debility, but retired without prescribing. The Prince waited long and anxiously for remedies, but in vain. He clapped his hands to summon a slave. “Where,” he exclaimed, “is the physic?” “Sun of the Earth,” exclaimed the Nubian, “it is all taken!” “And who has dared to swallow the medicine designed for the anointed of Allah?”