"A duel was now a matter of course. Sir Alexander left a paper behind him, confessing that the meeting was inevitable, and Mr. Stuart made all his preparations for death. One stands amazed in the presence of such horrible play, such terrific childishness. The parties met; they fired together, and Sir Alexander fell. Boswell, who would not allow that he had written a squib, proudly fired in the air; Mr. Stuart took no aim, and yet killed his man. When the deed was done, the murderer, frantic, and 'dissolved in all the tenderness of an infant,' reproached himself with exquisite simplicity that he had not taken aim, '_for if he had, he was certain he would have missed him!_' whilst the dying man expressed a corresponding anxiety lest 'he had not made his fire in the air appear so decided as he could have wished.' So men speak and act who take leave of their reason to play the fool in the high court of honor! A line tells the rest of the history. Sir Alexander is removed from the field and taken to the house of a friend. Mr. Stuart flies to the house of his friend, runs into a room, shuts the door, sits down in agony of mind, and bursts into tears. In due time he is put on his trial for murder, the jury unanimously find him _Not Guilty_, and Lord Chief Justice Clerk congratulates him on the verdict, although five minutes before he had deliberately stated that 'duels are but illustrious murders,' and that 'no false punctilio or notion of honor can vindicate an act which terminates fatally to another fellow-creature.'" THE LATE DR. TROOST. We recently noticed the death of the excentric German professor, Dr. Troost, of Tennessee. His passion for all animals of the serpent kind was well known, and we find it illustrated in this anecdote, related by Sir Charles Lyell: