This ar­ti­cle has been writ­ten from the point of view of a mere read­er of this un­fin­ished story, and the so­lu­tion here sug­gest­ed is based on in­ter­nal ev­i­dence only. In­deed, the ar­ti­cle it­self is the re­sult of the fas­ci­na­tion the mys­tery had on the writ­er's mind, when he late­ly read it for the first time. He be­lieves that this is the first at­tempt to solve the mys­tery that has con­tent­ed it­self sim­ply and sole­ly with the story as left by Charles Dick­ens, and the writ­er has mere­ly en­deav­oured to do, in the form of a short ar­ti­cle, what every read­er of "Edwin Drood" en­deav­ours to do in his head, viz. to de­duce a cor­rect con­clu­sion from some­what in­com­plete premis­es.

An or­di­nary read­er must come to the con­clu­sion that John Jasper got rid of his nephew, Edwin Drood; and yet, if such be the case, the in­evitable ques­tion aris­es, Where, then, is the mys­tery? The an­swer is, In the man­ner of the rid­dance. So forcibly does in­ter­nal ev­i­dence point to this con­clu­sion, that one feels sus­pi­cious of being en­trapped into an en­tic­ing but nev­er­the­less er­ro­neous so­lu­tion. How­ev­er, the gen­er­al im­pres­sion left by the proof is that Jasper is guilty, all im­pres­sion formed from a touch here, an ex­pres­sion there, till the cir­cum­stan­tial ev­i­dence which in the story tells against Neville Land­less is woven by the read­er round Jasper. The ques­tion—what be­came of Edwin Drood?—will be an­swered anon; but, first, the ap­pear­ances which point to Jasper as the mur­der­er must be briefly sketched.

First of all, Jasper is found in an opium den. That a man should take opium thus is pre­sump­tive ev­i­dence that there is some­thing in or about him dif­fer­ent to other men: it is un­can­ny. But it may be ob­ject­ed, De Quincey took opium. True, but he did so pri­vate­ly, and even De Quincey, we fancy, would have fore­gone the plea­sures—to say noth­ing of the pains—of opium, rather than enter an East-end den for their en­joy­ment. Nor did De Quincey smoke opium, but drink it; so that the cases are not ex­act­ly par­al­lel.

Why does Jasper lis­ten so at­ten­tive­ly to the mut­ter­ings of his three com­pan­ion smok­ers, the woman, Chi­na­man, and Las­car? and why does he say to each that one word "Un­in­tel­li­gi­ble"? This will be ex­plained here­after.

On the evening of that day Jasper and Edwin Drood, uncle and nephew, are to­geth­er, and dur­ing their con­ver­sa­tion the fol­low­ing di­a­logue en­sues:—

Jasper—"You won't be warned, then?"

Ed­win—"No, Jack."

Jasper—"You can't be warned, then?"

Ed­win—"No, Jack, not by you. Be­sides, I don't re­al­ly con­sid­er my­self in dan­ger."

Why should he? and why, hav­ing gone so far, could not Jasper con­fide in his nephew? He warns him against a dan­ger with­out say­ing what the dan­ger is. Is it a warn­ing? Is it not a threat?

Mr. Jasper is scarce­ly the man to be fas­ci­nat­ed by Mr. Sapsea's self-com­pla­cen­cy, and his po­lite­ness to the fu­ture mayor has sure­ly some ob­ject un­der­ly­ing it. Dur­dles, too, is a strange ac­quain­tance to be so en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly taken up, and Jasper seems strange­ly in­ter­est­ed in his keys. There is some­thing which prej­u­dices a read­er against Jasper, and when it is dis­cov­ered from Rosa's con­ver­sa­tion with He­le­na that he loves Rosa, we feel that his ex­traor­di­nary af­fec­tion for his nephew is rather at vari­ance with what we should ex­pect, see­ing that there is so strong a rea­son for jeal­ousy.

The quar­rel be­tween Edwin and Neville in the street is ev­i­dent­ly over­heard by Jasper, who, while pre­tend­ing to be a peace­mak­er by invit­ing them to his hos­pitable gate-house, with truly di­a­bol­i­cal skill turns the con­ver­sa­tion anew on the be­trothal, and the quar­rel breaks out afresh. Not sat­is­fied with an or­di­nary quar­rel, Jasper ag­gra­vates it by drug­ging the wine, there­by caus­ing Neville's pas­sion to blaze out so fu­ri­ous­ly against Edwin. To make this re­sult yet more cer­tain, Jasper look­ing from one to the other in turn as they make ir­ri­tat­ing re­marks, know­ing well that the pres­ence of a third per­son al­ways ag­gra­vates a quar­rel be­tween two oth­ers.

Jasper takes ad­van­tage of the ill-feel­ing be­tween the young men, so as to have at hand an ac­knowl­edged enemy to Edwin, should such be re­quired, and in this spir­it he makes the most of the quar­rel to Mr. Crisparkle that same night, and has­tens next day to in­form Mrs. Crisparkle as well. The lat­ter ac­tion ad­mits of two in­ter­pre­ta­tions, a po­lite and a cun­ning. Mr. Crisparkle would have kept the af­fair se­cret from his moth­er, but Jasper was too quick for him. He wished every one round him to know of Neville's an­i­mos­i­ty against Edwin, aware how great­ly prej­u­dice gov­erns opin­ion, whether it be pub­lic or pri­vate.

Had Rosa's in­ter­view with Mr. Grew­gious been only a tri­fle more con­fi­den­tial on Rosa's part, the whole course of events might have been al­tered. But, as it was, Mr. Grew­gious had no sus­pi­cion of any dis­agree­ment be­tween the be­trothed, and con­se­quent­ly as­sured the white-lipped and anx­ious Jasper that Rosa had hint­ed no wish to be re­leased from Edwin. They sep­a­rate with the full un­der­stand­ing that the mar­riage will take place. Is there any dif­fer­ence be­tween the "God bless them both!" of Mr. Grew­gious and the "God save them both!" of Mr. Jasper? We fear so.

Per­haps the strongest hint in the book as to the mur­der­er is the pas­sage de­scrib­ing Mr. Crisparkle find­ing Jasper asleep on a couch, when he called at the gate-house one evening, viz.: "Long af­ter­wards he had cause to re­mem­ber how Jasper sprang from the couch in a deliri­ous state be­tween sleep­ing and wak­ing, and cry­ing out: 'What is the mat­ter? Who did it?'" The pro­pos­al that he shall make peace be­tween Edwin and Neville per­plex­es Jasper at first, for it is what he scarce­ly de­sires; but he seems to con­sid­er that their meet­ing at his house may be to his own ad­van­tage, and agrees to it. He ex­plains his brief per­plex­i­ty by show­ing some en­tries in his di­ary—made on the night of the quar­rel—which ex­press his fear of Neville's re­sent­ment against Edwin in the strongest lan­guage, and Mr. Crisparkle is sat­is­fied.

The ring, that was to have been Rosa's en­gage­ment-ring, is a rose of di­a­monds and ru­bies del­i­cate­ly set in gold, and is con­tained in an or­di­nary ring-case made for a sin­gle ring. This Mr. Grew­gious de­liv­ers to Edwin, charg­ing him solemn­ly to bring it back to him if any­thing should be amiss be­tween him and Rosa. It is plain that this ring is to be an im­por­tant el­e­ment in the story, es­pe­cial­ly when come these sig­nif­i­cant words, "Let them" (the jew­els in the ring) "be. Let them lie un­spo­ken of in his breast. How­ev­er dis­tinct­ly or in­dis­tinct­ly he en­ter­tained these thoughts, he ar­rived at the con­clu­sion, Let them be. Among the mighty store of won­der­ful chains that are for ever forg­ing, day and night, in the vast iron-works of time and cir­cum­stance, there was one chain forged in the mo­ment of that small con­clu­sion, riv­et­ed to the foun­da­tions of heav­en and earth, and gift­ed with in­vin­ci­ble force to hold and drag." The ori­gin of this mys­te­ri­ous sen­tence is Edwin's act in putting the ring back in his breast, with­out men­tion­ing it to Rosa, when they mu­tu­al­ly break off the en­gage­ment be­tween them. As they said "Good-bye"—lit­tle know­ing all it meant—they kissed each other fer­vent­ly. To them it was a kiss that meant that thence­forth they were to be to one an­oth­er as broth­er and sis­ter only, but to the watch­ful Jasper's jeal­ous eyes it seemed but a lovers' part­ing salu­ta­tion, and from that mo­ment Edwin Drood was doomed.

Just pre­vi­ous to this in­ter­view, Mr. Jasper has had "a night with Dur­dles." The first thing to be no­ticed in a no­table chap­ter is that they pass a mound by the yard-gate, and that Dur­dles warns Jasper to be­ware of it, as it is quick­lime, adding grim­ly, "with a lit­tle handy stir­ring quick enough to eat your bones," which nat­u­ral­ly makes an im­pres­sion on Jasper. En­ter­ing the Cathe­dral they go down into the crypt;, of which Dur­dles has the key. Jasper has brought with him a bot­tle, whose con­tents, what­ev­er they may be, prove at last too strong for Dur­dles, for after as­cend­ing the great tower and de­scend­ing into the crypt again, he sinks down by one of the pil­lars and falls asleep at once. In his sleep he dreams that some­thing touch­es him, and that some­thing falls from his hands, and when he wakes he finds Jasper walk­ing up and down, and sees the key of the crypt door lying at his side. It is two o'clock, so that Dur­dles has had a long sleep—so long that we are in­clined to be­lieve that Jasper has tried his trick of drug­ging again. As they fi­nal­ly emerge from the Cathe­dral, Deputy ap­pears, with his fire of stones aud imp­ish chant, where­at Jasper's rage is un­ac­count­able—ex­cept on the sup­po­si­tion that the ex­pe­di­tion was not so un­ac­count­able after all, and that a wit­ness of it was what John Jasper least ex­pect­ed or de­sired.

On the event­ful Christ­mas Eve, Edwin Drood and Neville Land­less are to meet at the gate-house, and what each does dur­ing the day is of some im­por­tance, in con­se­quence of after event Neville burns his stray pa­pers, pre­pares for a walk­ing ex­cur­sion, and buys a heavy stick: all which cir­cum­stances will be used against him af­ter­wards. Edwin goes into the jew­eller's shop to have his watch set, and the jew­eller tells him of Jasper's re­mark that he (Jasper) knew all the jew­ellery his nephew wore, viz. watch, chain, and shirt-pin; a sub­ject to be re­curred to again. Edwin's sub­se­quent con­ver­sa­tion with the opium woman is, though he knows it not, a ter­ri­ble warn­ing. She tells him that Ned is a dan­ger­ous name, a threat­ened name, to which he light­ly replies, "The proverb says that threat­ened men live long." "Then Ned—so threat­ened is he—should live to all eter­ni­ty," re­torts the woman, and Edwin re­solves to men­tion it to Jack (who alone calls him Ned) to-mor­row. Why not to-day; why not to-day?

Jasper spends the day to some pur­pose, mak­ing much of his af­fec­tion for his nephew to the shop­keep­ers whom he deals with, and call­ing on Mr. Sapsea to men­tion his din­ner party of three that night, and to in­sid­i­ous­ly prej­u­dice him still fur­ther against Neville. Quite dif­fer­ent is his method with Mr. Crisparkle. He as­sures him he has over­come his black hu­mours and fears of Neville, and that he means to burn this year's diary at the year's end. After this, come what may, the Minor Canon can­not pos­si­bly sus­pect Jasper. To-day Jasper has been wear­ing a large black scarf of strong close-wo­ven silk, and be­fore en­ter­ing his gate-house he pulls it off and hangs it in a loop on his arm. "For that brief time, his face is knit­ted and stern. But it im­me­di­ate­ly clears as he re­sumes his singing and his way." And the three meet.

There is a great storm that night, and next morn­ing Edwin Drood has dis­ap­peared. Neville has start­ed on his walk­ing tour, but being sus­pect­ed is brought back. His story is sim­ply that he and Edwin went down to the river at about twelve o'clock to watch the storm, that they stayed for about ten min­utes, and that Edwin fi­nal­ly left him at Mr. Crisparkle's door, say­ing he was going straight back to the gate-house. How­ev­er, Jasper's def­er­ence to Mr. Sapsea now meets with its re­ward, for the mayor by his con­duct cer­tain­ly prej­u­dices opin­ion against Neville, and un­con­scious­ly as­sists Jasper plans.

But when Mr. Grew­gious cold­ly and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly in­forms Jasper that Edwin and Rosa's en­gage­ment was bro­ken off be­fore that ter­ri­ble Christ­mas Eve, and that Edwin had for­borne to tell him of it out of con­sid­er­a­tion for his uncle's feel­ings, Mr. Jasper breaks ut­ter­ly down. To have com­mit­ted mur­der is ter­ri­ble enough to a mur­der­er's mind, but to learn that the mur­der was ut­ter­ly ob­ject­less and fruit­less—to learn it sud­den­ly and with­out a mo­ment's warn­ing—is one of those stun­ning sur­pris­es which even the strongest na­ture can­not en­dure, and hence it is that Jasper swoons away at Mr. Grew­gious' news.

But a man of re­source like Jasper soon re­cov­ers his wits, and, after telling Mr. Grew­gious and Mr. Crisparkle (who has joined them) that no quar­rel took place be­tween Edwin and Neville in his house that night, he starts the the­o­ry that Edwin may have gone away to spare him­self the pain of awk­ward ex­pla­na­tions, fit­ting this the­o­ry in clev­er­ly with what Mr. Grew­gious had just pre­vi­ous­ly told him. That Neville loved Rosa is an­oth­er piece of news to Jasper, which, though scarce­ly like­ly to im­prove the lat­ter's feel­ings to­wards Neville, at once sug­gests a pow­er­ful mo­tive for Edwin's de­struc­tion by his old enemy. Jasper still clings to his new the­o­ry, till, as he had fore­seen, Edwin's watch, chain, and shirt-pin are found at the weir by Mr. Crisparkle, and ev­ery­thing points not to ab­scond­ing but to mur­der. The jew­eller's opin­ion that the watch had not been re-wound since Edwin's visit to his shop (it had cer­tain­ly run down be­fore being cast into the water) jus­ti­fied the hy­poth­e­sis that it was taken from Edwin not long after he left Jasper's house at mid­night with Neville, and had been thrown away after being re­tained some hours. Rosa's ev­i­dence, too, dis­miss­es the the­o­ry of ab­scond­ing, and Jasper shows Mr. Crisparkle an entry in his diary, which de­clares his con­vic­tion that Edwin was mur­dered—a con­vic­tion that we can hard­ly doubt.

Now comes the ques­tion, how did Jasper ef­fect his awful pur­pose? After part­ing with Neville at Mr. Crisparkle's door, Edwin went straight back to the gate-house. Whether Jasper drugged him there under guise of hos­pi­tal­i­ty (and we know him to be a pro­fi­cient in the art), or by a sud­den at­tack ren­dered all re­sis­tance im­pos­si­ble, mat­ters lit­tle. he must have stran­gled him with that great black scarf, and then—how was he to dis­pose of the body? Re­fer­ring to the night ex­pe­di­tion with Dur­dles, it will be re­mem­bered that Dur­dles slept for a long time—prob­a­bly not far short of two hours—in the crypt, and that he dropped the key of the crypt-door from his hand. Thus Jasper had ample time to leave the crypt in order to se­lect a place for the in­ter­ment of his fu­ture vic­tim. The crypt it­self was out of the ques­tion, be­cause not only was Dur­dles then pre­sent, but it was no­to­ri­ous­ly one of the places in which he took a de­light in mak­ing dis­cov­er­ies. Hence any tam­per­ing with the walls or pave­ment would be al­most cer­tain­ly de­tect­ed. But where else?

On this ex­pe­di­tion—as in­deed al­ways—Dur­dles car­ried his din­ner bun­dle, and on a for­mer oc­ca­sion that bun­dle con­tained the key of Mrs. Sapsea's tomb. Pre­sum­ing, as we fair­ly may, that it con­tained this key that night, Jasper, hav­ing the bun­dle, had it in his power ei­ther to take a cast of the key or to sub­sti­tute an­oth­er for it, so as to see for him­self if there were room in the tomb for an­oth­er body. He had care­ful­ly scru­ti­nised the key be­fore: con­se­quent­ly noth­ing would be eas­i­er than to pro­cure a sim­i­lar one and to ap­pro­pri­ate the real key, while sub­sti­tut­ing the false one in Dur­dle's bun­dle. In­deed, if the sub­sti­tut­ed key were not pre­cise­ly sim­i­lar to the real, it would not open the tomb, which would be the more ad­van­ta­geous to Jasper.

Men­tion was also made of a mound of quick­lime they passed by, and it is our opin­ion that ei­ther then (while Dur­dles slept), or on the night of the mur­der, Jasper pro­cured some of this quick­lime, and put it in Mrs. Sapsea's tomb, af­ter­wards in­sert­ing the body of the hap­less Edwin. The quick­lime would speed­i­ly de­stroy the body, and long be­fore the tomb was again opened—which would prob­a­bly not be till Mr. Sapsea's death—all traces would have dis­ap­peared. Jasper had but to carry the body from the gate-house to the tomb, ap­par­ent­ly no great dis­tance; and any risk he ran of being seen was much di­min­ished by the wild­ness of the night. Hav­ing fi­nal­ly dis­posed of his vic­tim, he must have gone to the weir, and clev­er­ly ar­ranged the watch-chain so that it caught in the in­ter­stices of the tim­bers, while he flung the shirt-pin into the water, lest the dis­cov­ery of all these ar­ti­cles at once might arouse sus­pi­cion from the fact of their clum­sy ex­po­sure.

To rid him­self of the corpse, to get to the weir (some two miles off), to ar­range the jew­ellery, and to be safe­ly back in his gate-house again with­out being seen, make up a night's work from which the bold­est crim­i­nal might well shrink; but the fury of the storm favoured the mur­der­er, and but for his col­lapse at Mr. Grew­gious' news Jasper might never have been sus­pect­ed. The scheme by which it falls to Mr. Crisparkle to find the watch, so that he be­comes one of the chief wit­ness­es against Neville, is an ad­mirable stroke on Jasper's part, but it is more than coun­ter­bal­anced by what Mr. Grew­gious saw as he warmed his hands, "a heap of torn and miry clothes upon the floor."

Mr. Datch­ery we take to be a de­tec­tive, em­ployed by Mr. Grew­gious to keep a watch on Jasper. No­tice his look of in­ter­est when Deputy, point­ing to part of the gate-house, says, "That's Jasper's;" also his ex­ces­sive po­lite­ness to Mr. Sapsea, and re­mem­ber that Jasper's po­lite­ness to the same per­son was not with­out an ob­ject. His white hair, too, is un­usu­al­ly thick and ample, and he has black eye­brows, which is strange.

More than half a year has gone since Edwin's dis­ap­pear­ance, and Jasper nat­u­ral­ly con­sid­ers him­self safe, so safe in­deed that, when he avows his love to Rosa, he tells her that had his af­fec­tion for his nephew been one silken thread less strong he would have swept even him from his path. A faint sus­pi­cion of Jasper had be­fore crossed Rosa's mind, and now re­curs with re­dou­bled force, but the only ob­ject for such a crime—to win her—seems al­to­geth­er too slight to ac­count for it; so she hides her sus­pi­cion. If Neville and his sis­ter sus­pect him, they say noth­ing; Mr. Crisparkle is too open and frank to sus­pect any­one, and Mr. Grew­gious ac­knowl­edges that he dis­likes Jasper, but noth­ing more. How is the mur­der­er to be brought to jus­tice?

Old habits can sel­dom be re­lin­quished al­to­geth­er, and we can­not be much sur­prised at find­ing Jasper in the opium den once more. The vi­sion he has, under the in­flu­ence of opium, aud the bro­ken sen­tences ex­tract­ed from him by the woman, speak for them­selves. As he lies in stu­por on the bed the woman ex­claims, "I heard ye say once, when I was lying where you're lying, and you were mak­ing your spec­u­la­tions on me, 'Un­in­tel­li­gi­ble!' I heard you say so, of two more than me. But don't be too sure al­ways; don't ye be too sure, beau­ty!' From which we gath­er, that in the first scene of all, this woman had lis­tened to his com­ment on her­self and com­pan­ions, and had from that time de­vot­ed her­self to learn his se­cret. It ex­plains, too, why she tracked him that Christ­mas Eve, when she un­con­scious­ly warned the gen­er­ous Edwin of his dan­ger, and ex­plains her ex­cla­ma­tion, now, when Jasper leaves her house, "I'll not miss ye twice!"

She fol­lows him to Clois­ter­ham and falls in with Mr. Datch­ery, who ex­tracts in­for­ma­tion from her that rather as­ton­ish­es him. After bar­gain­ing with Deputy to find out where she lives in Lon­don, Mr. Datch­ery in the Cathe­dral next morn­ing sees the woman's threat­en­ing ges­tures at Jasper, and af­ter­wards hears from her own lips that she recog­nis­es him. He re­turns home for break­fast, opens his cup­board door, "takes his bit of chalk from its shelf, adds one thick line to the score, ex­tend­ing from the top of the cup­board door to the bot­tom, and then falls to with an ap­petite."

Here the un­fin­ished story breaks off at an ex­cit­ing mo­ment, and it only re­mains to con­sid­er how Jasper's de­tec­tion was brought about. Mr. Datch­ery doubt­less con­fid­ed all he had learnt to Mr. Grew­gious, and they prob­a­bly pre­vailed on the opium woman to allow them, or one of them, to be pre­sent at Jasper's next visit, the time of which they could as­cer­tain for them­selves. Lieu­tenant Tar­tar, dis­guised as a sailor, might, in the most nat­u­ral man­ner, be pre­sent at the same time in the den, and the woman's ques­tions (sug­gest­ed, maybe, by Mr. Datch­ery) to Jasper, when under the in­flu­ence of opium, might ex­tract valu­able hints as to the man­ner of the crime, the be­stow­al of the body, &c., hints which a clever de­tec­tive like Datch­ery might well piece to­geth­er with the ev­i­dence ob­tain­able from Deputy and Dur­dles. Deputy, be it re­mem­bered, saw Jasper and Dur­dles leav­ing the Cathe­dral on the night—or rather the morn­ing—of their "un­ac­count­able ex­pe­di­tion," and could tes­ti­fy to Jasper's ex­plo­sion of anger at his sud­den ap­pear­ance. Any ac­count given by Dur­dles of what took place that night would be none too clear, but even he could not have for­got­ten drop­ping the key of the crypt-door, and the fact of Jasper hav­ing car­ried the bun­dle.

But what then? Sup­pos­ing Jasper to have let fall a hint as to the buri­al of the body, the crypt would nat­u­ral­ly be first thought of as a like­ly spot. Baf­fled there, for Dur­dles could soon tell if any­thing had been dis­turbed, at­ten­tion would be drawn to the two keys car­ried by Dur­dles, and fi­nal­ly to that which had been in his din­ner bun­dle, viz. the key of Mrs. Sapsea's tomb. But what could be dis­cov­ered on open­ing it? Scarce­ly a body, for more than six months had elapsed since Edwin's dis­ap­pear­ance. Scarce­ly even bones, for, if the hy­poth­e­sis that quick­lime was used be the cor­rect one, no bones would re­main. In­deed, what could re­main? What could re­sist the de­struc­tive prop­er­ties of quick­lime?

The an­swer is—the stones of the ring given by Mr. Grew­gious to Edwin, and never seen since. We know that Jasper (so the jew­eller told Edwin) had a pre­cise knowl­edge of Edwin's jew­ellery, and, ex­act­ly in ac­cor­dance with that knowl­edge, Edwin's watch, chain, and shirt-pin were found at the weir. But Jasper could have had no knowl­edge of this ring, kept as it was in a case in Edwin's breast, un­less, in­deed, he ex­am­ined his pock­ets after despatch­ing him; which is un­like­ly, as plun­der was by no means his ob­ject. It is al­most cer­tain, then, that the ring was buried on the body, and even if the ac­tion of the quick­lime could de­stroy the case and the gold set­ting of the stones, it could not pos­si­bly af­fect the stones them­selves, which were di­a­monds and ru­bies. These, Mr. Grew­gious could read­i­ly iden­ti­fy, and Baz­zard could prove that the ring was de­liv­ered to Edwin. The ring, or the stones, once found and iden­ti­fied, the ac­cu­mu­lat­ed ev­i­dence of Mr. Grew­gious, Mr. Datch­ery, Dur­dles, Deputy, Mr. Crisparkle, Rosa, and the opium woman, would, we think, as­sured­ly con­vict Jasper of Edwin Drood's mur­der, while his con­science-strick­en ap­pear­ance at the prospect of de­tec­tion, when the first breath of sus­pi­cion fas­tened on him, would at once pop­u­lar­ly con­demn him.

In con­clu­sion, let us make a guess at the fu­ture of some of the other char­ac­ters in the book. Mr. Tar­tar and Rosa would ere long be hus­band and wife, and we fancy He­le­na Land­less would be­come Mrs. Crisparkle. Neville, cleared from all sus­pi­cion, would have to begin the world anew: Mr. Datch­ery and Dur­dles must re­main as they are: we would not have them alter one whit. And Deputy? We can, per­haps, imag­ine (but faint­ly) his de­light at "Jarsper's" down­fall, and by using our eyes keen­ly may dis­cern him in­dulging, as once be­fore, "in a slow aud state­ly dance, per­haps sup­posed to be per­formed by the Dean," to more fully ex­press his ec­sta­sy.

* * * * *

The present number of our magazine was of necessity in print before the announcement of Mr. Luke Fildes' paper upon "Edwin Drood;" our contributor, therefore, has had no opportunity of comparing his views with those of one who has had peculiar opportunities of information upon the subject.—Editor of Cornhill Magazine.