Hunted Down.

THIS tale was written specially for "The New-York Ledger," 'n which paper it appeared in the numbers for August 20 and 27 and September 3, 1859 (Vol. XV, No. 24-26), illustrated with seven woodcuts. It was republished in 1860 in “All the Year Round,” 4th and 11th of August (1st series, No. 67 and 58.)

CHARACTERS INTRODUCED.

Adams, Mr. Clerk in the life-assurance office of which Mr. Sampson is the chief manager.

Banks, Major. An old East India Director, who assists Mr. Sampson in rescuing Miss Niner from the toils of Mr. Julius Slinkton.

Beckwith, Mr. Alfred. See MELTHAM, MR.

Meltham, Mr. Actuary of the Inestimable Life-Assurance Com

pany. He falls in love with one of Mr. Julius Slinkton's nieces, a lovely girl, whose life is insured in his office. She soon dies from the effects of a slow poison secretly administered to her by her uncle; and Mr. Meltham, having become thoroughly assured of the villain's guilt, devotes himself thenceforth to the single object of hunting him down. Resigning his situation, he causes a report of his death to be put into circulation; assumes the name of Mr. Alfred Beckwith; takes rooms in the Middle Temple, opposite those of Mr. Slinkton,- to whom he is personally unknown, and makes them a trap for him. Affecting to be a confirmed inebriate, he deludes the murderer into thinking that it would be an easy thing to obtain an insurance on his life for two thousand pounds, and then to do him to death with brandy, or, brandy not

proving quick enough, with something quicker. The plotting however, into which Slinkton is led, is well understood all along, and is counterplotted all along. The fitting time having arrived, he is confronted with the evidences of his guilt, when, finding himself brought to bay, he swallows some of the powerful poison he always carries with him, and falls down a dead man. Niner, Miss Margaret. Mr. Slinkton's niece. She is saved from falling a victim to the wickedness of her uncle by the efforts of Mr. Sampson and Major Banks, who reveal to her his real character, and induce her to leave him for ever.

Sampson, Mr. Chief manager of a life-assurance company, and narrator of the story, in which he is also one of the actors. Slinkton, Mr. Julius. A gentleman, educated, well bred, and agreeable, who professes to be on the point of going into orders, but who is, in reality, a consummate hypocrite and villain. He effects an insurance for two thousand pounds on the life of Mr. Alfred Beckwith, and then attempts to poison him in order to get the money; but, being foiled in his object, he destroys himself.

In this character, Dickens has drawn a portrait, only slightly idealized, of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, well known as a coxcombical writer for "The London Magazine,” under the pseudonym of Janus Weathercock. This monster actually poisoned a number of persons whose lives had been insured for large sums (among them his wife's step-sister and her mother); and in some instances he succeeded in obtaining the money. He was arrested, at last, on a charge of forgery, and sentenced to be transported to Van Diemen's Land, where he died of apoplexy, in 1852, at the age of fifty-seven. Lord Lytton has introduced him into his powerfu novel of “Lucretia; or, the Children of Night.”

Uncommercial Traveller.

...

IN December, 1860, seventeen papers, on a variety of topics, which had previ Onsly appeared at intervals in "All the Year Round," were published in a colleolive form, under the above title, by Chapman and Hall. A second edition, with Illustrations, in which the number of sketches was increased to twenty-eight, was brought out in the latter part of 1868. "There is present" in them, says a recent critic, "a wonderful delicacy of detail colored by a pleasant gayety. It [would not] be easy to analyze the special charm of these cabinet gems. If wit, as we have been told over and over again, consists in the surprise that arises from the discovery of a relation between ideas which have not the least similitude, there is an abundance of wit present in these essays. But there is a good-humored tone of modulated satire, and a charming grotesqueness, without the least violence, which, either by suggestion or shape, link the thousand material objects about us to our mental sympathies, and delightfully bridge over the space between mind and matter."

The Uncommercial Traveller introduces himself to the reader in these words:"I am both a town-traveller and a country-traveller, and am always on the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of Human Interest Brothers, and have rather a large connectic in the fancy goods way. Literally cpeaking, I am always wandering uere and there from my rooms in Covent Garden, London,—now about the city streets, now about the country by-roads, -seeing many little things, and some great things, which, because they interest me, I think may interest others."

CHARACTERS INTRODUCED.

Anderson, John.

A tramp, whose only improvidence appears to have been that he has spent the last of his little "all" upon soap

XI. Tramps.

Anderson, Mrs. His wife; a woman spotless to behold. XI.

Tramps. Antonio. A swarthy young Spanish guitar-player. V. Poor Mercantile Jack. Battens, Mr. A virulent old pensioner at Titbull's. XXVII. Tit bull's Almshouses.

Bones, Mr. Banjo. A comic Ethiopian minstrel, with a blackened face and a limp sugar-loaf hat. V. Poor Mercantile Jack. Bones, Mrs. Banjo. His wife; a "professional" singer. V. Poor Mercantile Jack. Carlavero, Giovanni. Keeper of a small wine-shop, in a certain small Italian town on the Mediterranean. He had been a political offender, sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was afterwards released through the zealous intervention of a generous English nobleman (Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart). Desirous of testifying his gratitude to his benefactor, whom he has not seen since his liberation, he sends him by Mr. Dickens an immense demijohn of wine, the first produce of his little vineyard. With infinite difficulty this frail and enormous bottle, holding some half-dozen gallons, is safely carried to England; but the wine turns to vinegar before it reaches its destination. Yet "the Englishman," says Mr. Dickens, "told me, with much emotion in his face and voice, that he had never tasted wine that seemed to him so sweet and sound; and long afterwards the bottle graced his table." XXVIII. The Italian Prisoner. Chips. A shipwright, who sells himself to the Devil for half a ton of copper, a bushel of tenpenny nails, an iron pot, and a rat that can speak. He gets disgusted with the rat, and tries to kill it, but does not succeed, and is punished by being subjected to a swarm and plague of rats, who finally compass his destruction by eating through the planks of a ship in which he has been "pressed" for a sailor. XV. Nurse's Stories.

Cleverly, Susannah. A Mormon emigrant; a young woman of business. XX. Bound for the Great Salt Lake.

Cleverly, William. Her brother, also a Mormon emigrant.
XX. Bound for the Great Salt Lake.

Dibble, Mr. Sampson. A Mormon emigrant; a very old man,
who is stone-blind. XX. Bound for the Great Salt Lake.
Dibble, Mrs. Dorothy. His wife, who accompanies him. XX
Found for the Great Salt Lake.

Face-Maker, Monsieur the. A corpulent little man with a comical face. He is heralded as "the great changer of countenances, who transforms the features that Heaven has bestowed upon him into an endless succession of surprising and extraordinary visages, comprehending all the contortions, energetic and expressive, of which the human face is capable, and all the passions of the human heart, as love, jealousy, revenge, hatred, avarice, despair.' XXV. In the French-Flemish Country.

Flanders, Sally. A former nurse of the Uncommercial Trav eller, and widow of Flanders, a small master-builder. XXV). Medicine-Men of Civilization.

Flipfield, Mr. A friend of the Uncommercial Traveller's. XIX. Birthday Celebrations.

Flipfield, Mrs. His mother. XIX. Birthday Celebrations. Flipfield, Miss. His elder sister. She is in the habit of speaking to new acquaintances, in pious and condoning tones, of all the quarrels that have taken place in the family from her infancy. XIX. Birthday Celebrations.

Flipfield, Mr. Tom, called THE LONG-LOST. A brother of Mr. Flipfield's. After an absence of many years in foreign parts, he returns home, and is warmly welcomed by his family and friends; but he proves to be "an antipathetical being, with a peculiar power and gift of treading on everybody's tenderest place;" and everybody wishes that he could instantly be transported back to the foreign parts which have tolerated him so long. XIX. Birthday Celebrations.

Globson, Bully. A schoolmate of the Uncommercial Traveller's; a big fat boy, with a big fat head, and a big fat fist. XIX. Birthday Celebrations.

Grazinglands, Mr. Alexander. A midland county gentleman, of a comfortable property, on a visit to London. VI. Refreshments for Travellers.

Grazinglands, Mrs. Arabella. His wife; the pride of her division of the county. VI. Refreshments for Travellers.

Head, Oakum. A refractory female pauper, who "would be very thankful to be got into a place, or got abroad." III. Wapping Workhouse.

Jack, Dark. A simple and gentle negro sailor. V. Poor Mer cantile Jack.