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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



A FOEEIGN LESSON' AXD A DOMESTIC 

 APPLICATION. 



THE celebrated Ticliborne case, now 

 closed in England, has one aspect 

 wliicli is as full of instruction for us as 

 for the people among T^'hom it occurred. 

 The leading facts have been often 

 printed, but, as the proceedings dragged 

 through several years, it may be well to 

 make a brief summary of the main facts 

 involved in it. Koger Charles Tich- 

 borne was born in 1829, and was heir 

 to a baronetcy and an immense English 

 estate, yielding a revenue of $100,000 a 

 year. His parents were an ill-assorted 

 couple, of English origin and French 

 connection, habitation, and language. 

 The father is represented as weak, and 

 the mother indolent, selfish, and willful. 

 The family was Eoman Catholic, and 

 the boy passed through the hands of 

 priests and tutors in Paris, and after- 

 ward attended school at Stonyhurst. 

 He then entered the army, where he 

 remained three years, when, tired of 

 home, he resolved to travel, and, after 

 visiting various ports in South America, 

 disappeared, and is supposed to have 

 been lost by the sinking of a ship at 

 sea in the spring of 1854. His person- 

 ality was peculiar and marked. Slen- 

 der in j)Ai/si^w^, and with the manners 

 of a gentleman, he had a half-French 

 and half-English education, and "his 

 examinations, his regiments, his bar- 

 racks, his instructions, his drills, his 

 peculiarities on parade, in the mess- 

 room, or in quarters, his favorite nov- 

 els, his amusements, his French songs, 

 his topics of conversation, his associates, 

 the cut of his clothes, the style of his 

 boots, his whips, his fowling-pieces, his 

 tobacco-pipes, his days of leave, his 

 twitching, and his peculiar rendering 

 of the words of command," were well 

 known, and perfectly remembered by 



his associates. He was, besides, a copi- 

 ous letter-writer, and when in the New 

 "World kept a full journal, often copying 

 it several times, and sending it home in 

 the form of letters to his mother and 

 aunt. " There was no change notice- 

 able in him before leaving home, or 

 any tendency to alteration of person, 

 gait, or expression, nor any symptom 

 that he was becoming less of a gentle- 

 man, or inclined to descend to a lower 

 and freer social stratum." 



The disappearance and supposed 

 death of Roger placed his proud and 

 willful and half-insane mother in an 

 unpleasant position in regard to the 

 estate, which would go to the child of 

 a detested daughter-in-law. The dis- 

 appointment became a possession, a 

 frenzy, and she was determined not to 

 endure it. She accordingly advertised 

 in Australia for information regarding 

 the missing heir of the Tichborne estate. 

 It was a promising region in which to 

 find one : as tlie London Times remarks. 

 " A very large class there are more or 

 less adventurous, taking the license and 

 claiming the immunities of that charac- 

 ter. Often changing employment and 

 companionship, and filling up the gaps 

 as they know best, they meet at sta- 

 tions, at diggings, at the bars of hotels, 

 hearing and telling wild, disjointed, 

 strangely-transmuted legends of that 

 old home in the ISTorthern Hemisphere, 

 to them a wonder-land, a romance, and 

 a tradition. It is always the strangest 

 that travels the farthest, and what they 

 do hear of the Old Country is just that 

 which we regard as the least fair sample 

 of it. They are also great novel-read- 

 ers, and, while they read in shilling 

 volumes numerous stories of patrimo- 

 nies going a-begging, heirs lost and 

 found, and clever men making their 

 way to the palace from the dunghill, 



