attack, Daumer thinks that there is reason to believe Stanhope personally interested.  He thinks that Caspar was the legitimate heir to some great English estate and title, that he was removed in order to make way for some one else, and that his murder was intrusted to some person who had not the courage or the wickedness to perpetrate it, but removed him first to Hungary and afterwards to Germany, and supported him in the manner indicated, hoping that he would not long survive.  When, however, he grew up, his support became irksome and he was cast upon the world.  There he attracted so much attention, that the instigator of the crime, dreading a disclosure, sought his life again.  When this proved unsuccessful, he was removed to Anspach; Feuerbach, who had shown the greatest determination to sound the mystery, was removed from the world, and at last the tragedy was made complete in Caspar’s own death.  All this points to Stanhope.  And yet Daumer has not taken the trouble to inquire whether it agrees with the family history.  It is possible that he may be right; but his story carries with it so much the air of improbability, that we cannot give it credit without further proof.

In the seventh volume of Hitzig’s “Annals of Criminal Jurisprudence,” there is a communication from Lieutenant von Pirch, disclosing Caspar’s acquaintance with certain Hungarian words.  A little while before this announcement was made, a story had gone the rounds of the papers of Germany, that a governess residing in Pesth had fainted away, when the account of Caspar Hauser’s appearance was related to her.  All this naturally attracted attention to Hungary as the probable place of his birth; and it is for these reasons, that Feuerbach, Daumer, and others, suppose that he spent some part of his childhood in that country.  After his death, Stanhope sent Lieutenant Hickel to Hungary to investigate the matter, but no traces were discovered,—­a proof, as Stanhope has it, that these conclusions were groundless, and, according to Daumer, another proof of Stanhope’s complicity.  He believes that the very superficial search made by the order of Stanhope was intended to lull suspicion and prevent a more strict search being made.

To return to the opinion advanced by Merker, and subsequently adopted by Stanhope,—­the thing is simply impossible.  In the first place, it would have been impossible for an impostor to elude discovery.  To trace him would have been the easiest thing in the world.  With a vigilant police, in a thickly settled country, how could a man leave his place of abode, and travel, were it for ever so short a distance, without being known?  But this is the least consideration.  Caspar’s whole life, his intellect, his body, the feats which he accomplished, when submitted to the most searching tests, were a refutation of the charge.  But when it is added that he wounded himself in order to do away with suspicion, the accusation becomes so absurd as scarcely to merit refutation.