A crime was committed in London on Monday which might'
have afforded De Quineey a new text for his " Murder Considered as a Fine Art." Mrs. Peake, the wife of a controller of the Ex- cise, was resting on a bed in her house in Trafalgar Road, a much frequented thoroughfare in Lambeth. Her daughter, a girl of fifteen, was in the house with her, her husband was usually at home at that hour, the house is commanded by other houses, and navvies in numbers were working near. Nevertheless, the door of the house was forced by two burglars with a jemmy at half-past two in the afternoon. One of the men entered Mrs. Peake's bed-room, and on her remarking that she supposed he came to rob the house, he struck her on the temple with the jemmy, and again on the head, inflicting frightful wounds. The assault was actually seen as it occurred by a neighbouring servant, who fainted, the navvies near immediately ran up to help ; but it was an hour and a quarter before a policeman could be found, and the burglar has not yet been identified. The idea in this case evidently was, as it was in the case of Williams, De Quincey's favourite, that murder was the safest form of bur- glary. He used to kill all the witnesses, and, in one instance. under the influence of a sort of superfluity of naughtiness, killed a child in the cradle, and so roused all London to a hunt, which at last proved successfuL This man will scarcely escape, for he is curiously like an admirer of the servant girl who saw him.
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