purposes of fiction. On the whole, I still think that if the crime were
committed by Aram, the motive was not very far removed from one which led
recently to a remarkable murder in Spain. A priest in that country,
wholly absorbed in learned pursuits, and apparently of spotless life,
confessed that, being debarred by extreme poverty from prosecuting a
study which had become the sole passion of his existence, he had reasoned
himself into the belief that it would be admissible to rob a very
dissolute, worthless man if he applied the money so obtained to the
acquisition of a knowledge which he could not otherwise acquire, and
which he held to be profitable to mankind. Unfortunately, the dissolute
rich man was not willing to be robbed for so excellent a purpose; he was
armed and he resisted. A struggle ensued, and the crime of homicide was
added to that of robbery. The robbery was premeditated; the murder was
accidental. But he who would accept some similar interpretation of Aram's
crime must, to comprehend fully the lessons which belong to so terrible a
picture of frenzy and guilt, consider also the physical circumstances and
condition of the criminal at the time,--severe illness, intense labor of
the brain, poverty bordering upon famine, the mind preternaturally at
work devising schemes and excuses to arrive at the means for ends
ardently desired. And all this duly considered, the reader may see the
crime bodying itself out from the shades and chimeras of a horrible
hallucination,--the awful dream of a brief but delirious and convulsed
disease. It is thus only that we can account for the contradiction of one
deed at war with a whole life,--blasting, indeed, forever the happiness,
but making little revolution in the pursuits and disposition of the
character. No one who has examined with care and thoughtfulness the
aspects of Life and Nature but must allow that in the contemplation of
such a spectacle, great and most moral truths must force themselves on
the notice and sink deep into the heart. The entanglements of human
reasoning; the influence of circumstance upon deeds; the perversion that