sudden leap upon him, but the tar avoided it, and struck at him with the butt end of his musket, and broke his arm; upon which, with great intrepidity, he got his knife into the other hand, and made another push at the sailor, but with as little success as the former; and by another blow, he was, with the assistance of some other persons who had gathered about him, secured alive. He was immediately brought to trial, and condemned; and next day hung upon a gibbet, in irons, alive, where he continued in the greatest agonies, and shrieking in the most terrible manner, for near three days. His greatest cry was, "Water! water! water!" being extremely hot weather, and the sun full upon him.

THE ASSASSIN OF COLOGNE.

An individual, accused of many murders, was lately arrested at Beul, a village on the right bank of the Rhine, opposite to Bonn. He readily confessed three murders, the recital of which is enough to make the heart shudder. The following is an account of the means by which these atrocious crimes were discovered. An inhabitant of Beul, named Moll, a shoemaker, and Henry Ochs, of Cologne, a tailor, had served together in the same company of the 28th regiment, and were united in the closest bonds of friendship: they returned to their houses after some years' service, and resumed their former occupations. Moll came frequently to visit his friend Ochs, who was married at Cologne. The young married folks always received and treated him with much affection.

The judicial authority took cognizance last year of the double disappearance of Moll's step-mother, twenty-eight years old, and of his own young brother: search was made after their persons, but in vain. Moll, having given rise to some suspicions, was arrested; but for want of sufficient proof was discharged from an arrest, after a detention of some months, and resumed his connections with Ochs as before. The latter wishing to make purchases at the fair of Putzyen, not far from Beul, held on the 8th of Septem

ber, set out on the 7th, having procured sixty Prussian crowns, informing his wife that he would take lodgings at the house of his friend Moll. After she had waited the return of her husband for eight days, she began to feel considerable anxiety, and sent a confidential person to make inquiries for him. This messenger arrived at Beul, on the 18th, and saw Moll wearing the clothes and using the pipe of his friend Ochs; struck with these signs, he returned to Bonn, and communicated them to the officers of justice. The judge instructor instantly despatched the civil power, who, having surrounded Moll's residence, proceeded to make a domiciliary visit. They presently discovered some loose planks on the floor of the work room, on the raising which, they perceived the extremities of mutilated bones sticking out from a hole filled with earth, like those in which peasants usually preserve their potatoes. They dug out three bodies in succession: the first of which was recognized as that of the unfortunate Ochs. While the officers were busy in the work of exhumation, Moll escaped through a window, and baffled the vigilance of the police with such caution, that they were not able to retake him until about nine o'clock at night, when he was discovered in the middle of a field, in which he had laid down through excessive fatigue. He was brought back to the judge's office, where he found before him the three bodies exposed to view; at first he wished to deny every thing, but the impressive and ingenious interrogations of the judge pressed him so closely, that he became confused and inconsistent in his answers, and in the end, the voice of conscience succeeded in wringing from him the horrible confession of his crimes. He then confessed, with a flood of tears, that fifteen months ago he had assassinated his step-mother. He afterwards avowed that he had assassinated his own brother, because he possessed the power of revealing the former deed; he moreover confessed the murder of his friend Ochs, which he committed on the night of the 7th of September, 1823. An inquiry into many other murders now took place, several of which were attributed to this monster. M. Schiller, son to the celebrated poet, was employed in conducting the investigation of this affair, and the assassin was left for execution. The inhabitants of

Beul, fired with detestation of the murderer Moll, assembled before his execution, and destroyed his house, which was situated in an isolated spot at the extremity of the village. After they had demolished it from roof to foundation, they collected the combustible materials, set them on fire, and scattered the ashes to the winds. This act of simultaneous indignation was performed in a moment, and was followed by no other excess.

MICHAEL HOWE THE BUSH-RANGER.

MICHAEL HOWE was the last and the worst of the BushRangers, and by his depredations, he became the terror of Van Dieman's Land. The following account of this outlaw is abridged from the life of Howe, printed at Hobart's Town, in 1818, and was the first child of the press of a state not fifteen years old.

Michael Howe was born at Pontefract, in 1787, and was apprenticed to a merchant vessel at Hull: but "he showed his indentures a fair pair of heels," (as Prince Henry says,) and entered on board a man of war, from which he got away as he could. He was tried at York in 1811, for a highway robbery, and sentenced to seven years transportation. He arrived in Van Dieman's Land in 1812, and was assigned by the government as a servant to a settler; from this service he absconded into the woods, and joined a party of twenty-eight bush-rangers, as they are called. In this profession he lived six years of plunder and cruelty, during which, he appears to have twice surrendered himself to justice, under proclamations of pardon, but was both times unaccountably suffered to escape again to the woods. It is reproachful to the government of the colony, to think that it was after the second of these flights from justice, or at least from confinement, that he committed murder on two men, who had, as they thought, secured him. By this means he again escaped, to be shot at last by a private soldier of the 48th regiment, and another man for so desperate was this villain, that he was only to be taken dead and by stratagem.

Howe was without a spark of even the honor of an outlaw; he betrayed his colleagues upon surrendering himself to government, and he fired upon a native girl, his companion, when she became an impediment to his flight. He was reduced at last to abandonment, even by his own gang; and one hundred guineas, and (if a convict should take him) a free pardon and a passage to England, were set upon his head. He was now a wretched, consciencehunted solitary, hiding in dingles, and only tracked by the sagacity of the native girl to whom he had behaved so ungratefully, and who was now employed by the police to revenge his cruelty to her. His arms, ammunition, dogs, and knapsack, were first taken from him; and in the last was found a little memorandum book of kangaroo skin, written by himself in kangaroo blood. It contained a sort of journal of his dreams, which showed strongly the wretched state of his mind, and some tincture of superstition. It appears that he frequently dreamt of being murdered by the natives, of seeing his old companions, of being nearly taken by a soldier; and in one instance only, humanity asserts itself even in the breast of Michael Howe, for we find him recording that he dreamt of his sister. It also appears from this little book, that he had once an idea of settling in the woods, for it contained long lists of such seeds as he wished to have, vegetables, fruits and even flowers.

These bush-rangers are now exterminated, and the colony on which they were a heavy drawback, is consequently rapidly advancing in numbers and in civilization.

THE SOLITARY SOVEREIGN.

SOME years ago, there was stationed on the island of Ratoneau, (the center of three islands on the coast of Marseilles, and the most deserted of the three,) an invalid of the name of Francœur, who, with his wife and daughter, and another invalid, composed the whole population of the island. Francœur had been once deranged in his mind, and confined in the Hotel de St. Lazare, near Marseilles,

a hospital for the reception of lunatics; but, after a time, was discharged as perfectly cured. His comrade and his wife, however, perceiving that he began to show symptoms of derangement, sent information of it to the Governorgeneral of the three islands, who resided on one of them, named the Chateau d'If. The governor, not choosing to attempt seizing Francœur singly, for fear of incensing him, sent an order for the whole party to appear before him, hoping, in this way, to get the lunatic quietly and without difficulty into his power. Francœur prepared with the rest to obey the summons; but, at the moment of their embarking, when the other invalid was already in the boat, being seized with a sudden phrenzy, he attempted to stab, first his wife, and then his daughter. They both escaped by jumping hastily into the boat; when, pushing off before he had time to follow them, and hastening away to the Chateau d'If, they left him alone on the island.

His first movement, on finding himself without control, was to take possession of a small fort where two or three guns were mounted, with a little powder and ball; and shutting himself up in it, he began a cannonade upon the governor's house, which did some damage. The governor on this sent a boat with five invalids of his own garrison, bearing an order to Francœur to appear before him; but the latter, shut up in his fort, told those who brought the summons to carry back this answer: "That his father was governor of the island of Ratoneau, and being his sole heir, the right of domain there had devolved entirely on him, nor would he yield it up while a drop of blood remained in his veins." He immediately fired on the men, who, not being amused with the joke, hastily withdrew. Francœur then began a second cannonade on the governor's chateau; but, after firing a few shots, he was diverted from this object by perceiving a vessel in the bay within gunshot, to which his battery was now directed. The captain, greatly surprised at finding himself treated in this inhospitable manner, sent to inquire the reason of it, when my lord governor replied, that he wanted a supply of biscuit and wine, and if they were not sent immediately, he would sink the vessel. The captain, glad to compromise matters so easily, sent the supplies required, the weather