sketched a figure in the imagined attitude, on one of the boards of the book he had been reading. Pleased with his idea, he transferred it to his pocket-book. A few days after his arrival in London, he was introduced to our celebrated countryman, Wilkie, who, with his accustomed kindness, showed him his portfolios. Mr. Thom's surprise may be imagined, when in one of these he found a sketch of Old Mortality, almost identical with his own, executed by Wilkie several years before. The same thought had struck both, and almost in the same manner. [Footnote 1: There are now five sets; three of which are the size of life, and two, four and twenty inches high. One set is, or is to be deposited at the temple called the tomb of Burns, in Ayrshire.--Another belongs to Lord Cassili. The third is in this country.] [Footnote 2: Since the above has been published, Thom has nearly finished his Old Mortality in a block too small for his conception, and which will oblige him to execute an entirely new figure.] [We extract the following affecting story from the "_Western Monthly Magazine_." Though written in the form of romantic narrative, it presents one of the strongest cases we recollect to have seen, in which innocence is overborne by powerful but false appearances of guilt. It is certainly a strong illustration of the danger of convicting a fellow creature, upon what is technically called _presumptive evidence_, a topic upon which the gentlemen of the bar are furnished with as wide a field for the display of professional ingenuity, as upon any other in the whole compass of jurisprudence. That it is often safe, and indispensably necessary however to rely upon such kind of evidence, is so obvious in itself--and so well established as a legal maxim--that the danger of sometimes convicting, upon a train of specious but deceptive circumstances, is less than the evil of acquittal in the absence of positive, conclusive, and infallible testimony.] CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE. A TALE FOUNDED ON FACT. The circumstances which I am about to relate, are familiar to many now living. In some particulars I have varied from the truth; but if in the relation of an event which excited intense interest, at the time of its occurrence, I shall succeed in impressing upon any one, the delusive character of circumstantial evidence, my object will be attained.