Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 by Various

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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXXXV. SEPTEMBER, 1843. VOL. LIV.

* * * * *

"WE ARE ALL LOW PEOPLE THERE."

A TALE OF THE ASSIZES.

IN TWO CHAPTERS.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

Some time ago, business of an important character carried me to the
beautiful and populous city of ----. I remember to have visited it when I
was a child, in the company of a doating mother, who breathed her last
there; and the place, associated with that circumstance, had ever
afterwards been the gloomiest spot in the county of my birth. A calamity
such as that to which I have alluded leaves no _half_ impressions. It
stamps itself deep, deep in the human heart; and a change, scarcely less
than organic, for good or ill, is wrought there. Agreeably with this
fact, the scene itself of the event becomes at once, to the survivor,
either hallowed and beloved, or hated and avoided. Not that natural
beauty or deformity has any thing to do in the production of such
feelings. They have a mysterious origin, and are, in truth, not to be
accounted for or explained. A father sees the hope and joy of his manhood
deposited amongst the gardens of the soil, and from that moment the
fruitful fields and unobstructed sky are things he cannot gaze upon;
whilst the brother, who has lived in the court or alley of a crowded city
with the sister of his infancy, and has buried her, with his burning
tears, in the dense churchyard of the denser street, clings to the
neighbourhood, close and unhealthy though it be, with a love that renders
it for him the brightest and the dearest nook of earth. He cannot quit
it, and be at peace. Causes that seem alike, are not always so in their
effects. For my own part, for years after the first bitter lesson of my
life became connected with that city, I could not think of it without
pain, or hear its name spoken without suffering a depression of spirits,
as difficult to throw off as are the heavy clouds that follow in the
track, and hide the little light of a December sun. At school, I remember
well how grievously I wept upon the map on which I first saw the word
written, and how completely I expunged the characters from the paper,
forbidding my eyes to glance even to the county from which I had erased
them. Time passes, hardening the heart as it rolls over it, and we afford
to laugh at the strong feelings and extravagant views of our youth. It is
well, perhaps, that we do so; and yet on that subject a word or two of
profitable matter might be offered, which shall be withholden now. For
many years I have battled through the world, an orphan, on my own
account; and it is not surprising that the vehemence of my early days
should have gradually sobered down before the stern realities that have
at every step encountered me. Long before I received the unwelcome
intelligence, that it was literally incumbent upon me to revisit the spot
of my beloved mother's dissolution, the mention of its name had ceased to
evoke any violent emotion, or to affect me as of old. I say _unwelcome_,
because, notwithstanding the stoicism of which I boast, I felt quite
uncomfortable enough to write to my correspondent by the return of post,
urging him to make one more endeavour to complete my business without my
aid, and to spare, if possible, my personal attendance. I gave no reason
for this wish. I did not choose to tell a falsehood, and I had hardly
honesty to acknowledge, even to myself--the truth. I failed, however, in
my application, and with any but a cheerful mind, I quitted London on my
journey. Thirty years before I had travelled to ---- in a stupendous
machine, of which now I recollect only that it seemed to take years out
of my little life in arriving at its destination, and that, on its broad,
substantial rear, it bore the effigy of "_an ancient Briton_." Locomotion
then, like me, was in a state of infancy. On the occasion of my second
visit to the city, I had hardly time to wonder at the velocity with which
I was borne along. Distance was annihilated. The two hundred miles over
which _the ancient Briton_ had wearisomely laboured, were reduced to
twenty, and before I could satisfy myself that our journey was more than
begun, my horseless coach, and fifty more besides, had actually gone over
them. I experienced a nervous palpitation at the heart as I proceeded
from the outskirts of the city, and grew more and more fidgety the nearer
I approached the din and noise of the prosperous seat of business. I
could not account for the feeling, until I detected myself walking as
briskly as I could, with my eyes fixed hard upon the ground, as though
afraid to glance upon a street, a house, an object which could recall the
past, or carry me back to the first dark days of life. Then it was that I
summoned courage, and, with a desperate effort to crush the morbid
sensibility, raised myself to my full height, gazed around me, and awoke,
effectually and for ever, from my dream. The city was not the same. The
well-remembered thoroughfares were gone; their names extinct, and
superseded by others more euphonic; the buildings, which I had carried in
my mind as in a book--the thought of meeting which had given me so much
pain, had been removed--destroyed, and not a brick remained which I could
call a friend, or offer one warm tear, in testimony of old acquaintance.
A noble street, a line of palaces--merchants' palaces--had taken to
itself the room of twenty narrow ways, that, in the good old times, had
met and crossed in close, but questionable, friendship. Bright stone,
that in the sunlight shone brighter than itself, flanked every broad and
stately avenue, denoting wealth and high commercial dignity. Every
venerable association was swept away, and nothing remained of the
long-cherished and always unsightly picture, but the faint shadow in my
own brain--growing fainter now with every moment, and which the
unexpected scene and new excitement were not slow to obliterate
altogether. I breathed more freely as I went my way, and reached my
agent's house at length, lighter of heart than I had been for hours
before. Mr Treherne was a man of business, and a prosperous one too, or
surely he had no right to place before the dozen corpulent gentlemen whom
I met on my arrival--a dinner, towards which the viscera of princes might
have turned without ruffling a fold of their intestinal dignity. I
partook of the feast--that is to say, I sat at the groaning table, and,
like a cautious and dyspeptic man, I eat roast beef--_toujours_ roast
beef, and nothing else--appeased my thirst with grateful claret, and
retired at last to wholesome sleep and quiet dreams. Not so the corpulent
guests. It may be to my dyspeptic habit, which enables me to be virtuous
at a trifling cost, and to nothing loftier, that I am bound to attribute
the feeling with which I invariably sit down to feasting; be this the
fact or not, I confess that a sense of shame, uneasiness, and dislike,
renders an affair of this kind to me the most irksome and unpleasant of
enjoyments. The eagerness of appetite that one can fairly see in the
watery and sensual eyes of men to whom _eating_ has become the aim and
joy of their existence--the absorption of every faculty in the gluttonous
pursuit--the animal indulgence and delight--these are sickening; then the
deliberate and cold-blooded torture of the creatures whose marrowy bones
are _crunched_ by the epicure, without a thought of the suffering that
preceded his intensely pleasurable emotions, and the bare mention of
which, in this narrative, is almost more than sufficient, then, worst of
all, the wilful prodigality and waste--the wickedness of casting to the
dogs the healthy food for which whole families, widows, and beggared
orphans are pining in the neighbouring street--the guilty indifference of
him who finds the wealth for the profusion, and the impudent recklessness
of the underling who abuses it. Such are a few of the causes which concur
in giving to the finest banquet I have seen an aspect not more odious
than humiliating; and here I dwell upon the fact, because the incident
which I shall shortly bring before the reader's eye, served to confirm
the feelings which I entertain on this subject, and presented an
instructive contrast to the splendid entertainment which greeted my
immediate arrival.

I slept at the house of Mr Treherne, and, on the following morning, was an
early riser. I strolled through the city, and, returning home, found my
active friend seated at his breakfast-table, with a host of papers, and a
packet of newly-arrived letters before him. The dinner was no more like
the breakfast, than was my friend in the midst of his guests like my
friend alone with his papers. His meal consisted of one slice of dry
toast, and one cup of tea, already cold. The face that was all smile and
relaxation of muscle on the preceding evening, was solemn and composed.
You might have ventured to assert that tea and toast were that man's most
stimulating diet, and that the pleasures of the counting-house were the
highest this world could afford him. I, however, had passed the evening
with him, and was better informed. Mr Treherne requested me to ring the
bell. I did so, and his servant speedily appeared with a tray of garnished
dainties, of which I was invited to partake, with many expressions of
kindness uttered by my man-of-business, without a look at me, or a
movement of his mind and eye from the pile of paper with which he was
busy. In the course of half an hour, I had brought my repast to a close,
and Mr Treherne was primed for the conflict of the day. His engagements
did not permit him to give me his assistance in my own matters until the
following morning. He begged me to excuse him until dinner-time--to make
myself perfectly at home--to wile away an hour or so in his library--and,
when I got tired of that, to take what amusement I could amongst the lions
of the town--offering which advice, he quitted me and his house with a
head much more heavily laden, I am sure, than any that ever groaned
beneath the hard and aching knot. Would that the labourer could be taught
to think so!

After having passed an unsatisfactory hour in Mr Treherne's library, in
which the only books which I cared to look at were very wisely locked up,
on account of their rich binding, too beautiful to be touched, I sauntered
once more through the broad streets of the city, and, in my solitary walk,
philosophized upon the busy spirit of trade which pervaded them. It is at
such a time and place that the quiet and observant mind is startled by the
stern and settled appearance of reality and continuance which all things
take. If the world were the abiding-place of man, and life eternity, such
earnestness, such vigour, such intensity of purpose and of action as I saw
stamped upon the harassed brows of men, would be in harmony with such a
scene and destination. HERE such concentration of the glorious energies of
man is mockery, delusion, and robs the human soul of--who shall say how
much? Look at the stream of life pouring through the streets of commerce,
from morn till night, and mark the young and old--yes, the youngest and
the oldest--and discover, if you can, the expression of any thought but
that of traffic and of gain, as if the aim and end of living were summed
up in these. And are they? Yes, if we may trust the evidence of age, of
him who creeps and totters on his way, who has told his threescore years
and ten, and on the threshold of eternity has found the vanity of all
things. Oh, look at him, and learn how hard it is, even at the door of
death, to FEEL the mutability and nothingness of earth! Palsied he is, yet
to the Exchange he daily hies, and his dull eye glistens on the mart--his
ear is greedy for the sounds that come too tardily--his quick and treble
voice is loud amongst the loudest. He is as quick to apprehend, as eager
now to learn, as ravenous for gain, as when he trusted first an untried
world. If life be truly but a shadow, and mortals but the actors in the
vision, is it not marvellous that age, and wisdom, and experience build
and fasten there as on a rock? Such thoughts as these engaged my mind, as
I pursued my way alone, unoccupied, amongst the labouring multitude, and
cast a melancholy hue on things that, to the eye external, looked bright,
beautiful, and enduring. I was arrested in my meditations at length by a
crowd of persons--men, women, and children--who thronged about the
entrance of a spacious, well-built edifice. They were for the most part in
rags, and their looks betrayed them for poor and reckless creatures all.
They presented so singular a feature of the scene, contrasted so
disagreeably with the solid richness and perfect finish of the building,
that I stopped involuntarily, and enquired into the cause of their
attendance. Before I could obtain an answer, a well-dressed and better-fed
official came suddenly to the door, and bawled the name of one poor
wretch, who answered it immediately, stepped from the crowd, and followed
the appellant, as the latter vanished quickly from the door again. A
remark which, at the same moment, escaped another of the group, told me
that I stood before the sessions'-house, and that a man, well known to
most of them, was now upon trial for his life. He was a murderer--and the
questionable-looking gentleman who had been invited to appear in court,
had travelled many miles on foot, to give the criminal the benefit of his
good word. He was the witness for the defence, and came to speak to
_character_! My curiosity was excited, and I was determined to see the end
of the proceeding. It is the custom to pay for every thing in happy
England. I was charged _box-price_ for my admittance, and was provided
with as good a seat as I could wish, amongst the _elite_ of the assembly.
Quick as I had been, I was already too late. There was a bustle and buzz
in the court, that denoted the trial to be at an end. Indeed, it had been
so previously to the appearance of the devoted witness, whose presence had
served only to confirm the evidence, which had been most damnatory and
conclusive. The judge still sat upon the bench, and, having once perceived
him, it was not easy to withdraw my gaze again. "The man is surely
guilty," said I to myself, "who is pronounced so, when that judge has
summed up the evidence against him." I had never in my life beheld so much
benignity and gentleness--so much of truth, ingenuousness, and pure
humanity, stamped on a face before. There was the fascination of the
serpent there; and the longer I looked, the more pleasing became the
countenance, and the longer I wished to protract my observation and
delight. He was a middle-aged man--for a judge, he might be called young.
His form was manly--his head massive--his forehead glorious and
intellectual. His features were finely formed; but it was not these that
seized my admiration, and, if I dare so express myself, my actual love,
with the first brief glance. The EXPRESSION of the face, which I have
already attempted faintly to describe, was its charm. Such an utter, such
a refreshing absence of all earthiness--such purity and calmness of
soul--such mental sweetness as it bespoke! When I first directed my eye
to him, it seemed as if his thoughts were abstracted from the
comparatively noisy scene over which he presided--busy it might be, in
reviewing the charge which he had delivered to the jury, and upon the
credit of which the miserable culprit had been doomed to die. I do not
exaggerate when I assert, that at this moment--during this short
reverie--his face, which I had never seen before, seemed, by a miracle,
as familiar to me as my own--a fact which I afterwards explained, by
discovering the closest resemblance between it and a painting of our
Saviour, one of the finest works of art, the production of the greatest
genius of his time, and a portrait which is imprinted on my memory and
heart by its beauty, and by repeated and repeated examination. The
touching expressiveness of the countenance would not have accorded with
the stern office of the judge, had not its softness been relieved by a
bold outline of feature, and exalted by the massy formation of the head
itself. These were sufficient to command respect--_that_ made its way
quickly to the heart. An opportunity was soon afforded me to obtain some
information in respect of him. I was not surprised to hear that his name
and blood were closely connected with those of a brilliant poet and
philosopher, and that his own genius and attainments were of the highest
character. I was hardly prepared to find that his knowledge as a lawyer
was profound, and that he was esteemed erudite amongst the most learned
of his order. My attention was called reluctantly from the judge to the
second case of the day, which now came for adjudication. The court was
hushed as a ruffian and monster walked sullenly into the dock, charged
with the perpetration of the most horrible offences. I turned
instinctively from the prisoner to the judge again. The latter sat with
his attention fixed, his elbow resting on a desk, his head supported by
his hand. Nothing could be finer than the sight. Oh! I would have given
much for the ability to convey to paper a lasting copy of that
countenance--a memorial for my life, to cling to in my hours of weakness
and despondency, and to take strength and consolation from the spectacle
of that intelligence, that meekness and chastity of soul, thus allied and
linked to our humanity.

It was instructive to look alternately at the criminal and at him who
must award his punishment. There they were, both men--both the children
of a universal Father--both sons of immortality. Yet one so unlike his
species, so deeply sunken in his state, so hideous and hateful as to be
disowned by man, and ranked with fiercest brutes; the other, as far
removed, by excellence, from the majority of mankind, and as near the
angels and their ineffable joy as the dull earth will let him. Say what
we will, the gifts of Heaven are inscrutable as mysterious, and education
gives no clue to them. The business of the hour went on, and my attention
was soon wholly taken up in the development of the gigantic guilt of the
wretched culprit before me. I could not have conceived of such atrocity
as I heard brought home to him, and to which, miserable man! he listened,
now with a smile, now with perfect unconcern, as crime after crime was
exhibited and proved. His history was a fearful one even from his
boyhood; but of many offences of which he was publicly known to be
guilty, one of the latest and most shocking was selected, and on this he
was arraigned. It appeared that for the last few years he had cohabited
with a female of the most disreputable character. The issue of this
connexion was a weakly child, who, at the age of two years, was removed
from her dissolute parents through the kindness of a benevolent lady in
the neighbourhood, and placed in the care of humble but honest villagers
at some distance from them. The child improved in health and, it is
unnecessary to add, in morals. No enquiry or application was made for her
by the pair until she had entered her fifth year, and then suddenly the
prisoner demanded her instant restoration. The charitable lady was
alarmed for the safety of her _protegee_, and, with a liberal price,
bought off the father's natural desire. He duly gave a receipt for the
sum thus paid him, and engaged to see the child no more. The next morning
he stole the girl from the labourer's cottage. He was seen loitering
about the hut before day-break, and the shrieks of the victim were heard
plainly at a considerable distance from the spot where he had first
seized her. Constables were dispatched to his den. It was shut up, and,
being forced open, was found deserted, and stripped of every thing. He
was hunted over the county, but not discovered. He had retired to haunts
which baffled the detective skill of the most experienced and alert. This
is the first act of the tragedy. It will be necessary to stain these
pages by a description of the last. The child became more and more
unhappy under the roof of her persecutors, as they soon proved themselves
to be. She was taught to beg and to steal, and was taken into the
highways by her mother, who watched near her, whilst, with streaming
eyes, the unhappy creature now lied for alms, now pilfered from the
village. Constant tramping, ill treatment, and the wear and tear of
spirit which the new mode of existence effected, soon reduced the child
to its former state of ill health and helplessness. She pined, and with
her sickness came want and hunger to the hut. The father, affecting to
disbelieve, and not listening to the sad creature's complaint, still
dismissed her abroad, and when she could not walk, compelled the mother
to carry her to the public road, and there to leave her in her agony, the
more effectually to secure the sympathy of passengers. Even this
opportunity was not long afforded him. The child grew weaker, and was at
length unable to move. He plied her with menaces and oaths, and, last of
all, deliberately threatened to murder her, if she did not rise and
procure bread for all of them. She had, alas! no longer power to comply
with his request, and--merciful Heaven!--the fiend, in a moment of
unbridled passion, made good his fearful promise. With one blow of a
hatchet--alas! it needed not a hard one--_he destroyed her_. I caught the
judge's eye as this announcement was made. It quivered, and his
countenance was pale. I wished to see the monster _too_, but my heart
failed me, and my blood boiled with indignation, and I could not turn to
him. The short account which I have given here does bare justice to the
evidence which came thick and full against the prisoner, leaving upon the
minds of none the remotest doubt of his fearful criminality. The mother,
and a beggar who had passed the night in the hut when the murder was
perpetrated, were the principal witnesses against the infanticide, and
their depositions could not be shaken. I waited with anxiety and great
irritability for the sentence which should remove the prisoner from the
bar. The earth seemed polluted as long as he breathed upon it; he could
not be too quickly withdrawn, and hidden for ever in the grave. The case
for the prosecution being closed, a young barrister arose, and there was
a perfect stillness in the court. My curiosity to know what this
gentleman could possibly urge on behalf of his client was extreme. To me
"the probation bore no hinge, nor loop to ban a doubt on." But the
smoothfaced counsellor, whose modesty had no reference to his years,
seemed in no way burdened by the weight of his responsibility, nor to
view his position as one of difficulty and risk. He stood, cool and
erect, in the silence of the assembly, and with a self-satisfied _smile_
he proceeded to address the judge. Yes, he laughed, and he had heard that
heart-breaking recital; and the life of the man for whom he pleaded was
hardly worth a pin's fee. The words of the poet rushed involuntarily to
my mind. "Heaven!" I mentally exclaimed, "_Has this fellow no feeling of
his business--he sings at grave-making_!" He made no allusion to the
evidence which had been adduced, but he spoke of INFORMALITY. I trembled
with alarm and anger. I had often heard and read of justice defeated
by such a trick of trade; but I prayed that such dishonour and public
shame might not await her now. Informality! Surely we had heard of the
cold-blooded cruelty, the slow and exquisite torture, the final
deathblow; there was no informality in these; the man had not denied his
guilt, his defender did not seek to palliate it. Away with the juggle, it
cannot avail you here! But in spite of my feverish security, the shrewd
lawyer--well might he smile and chuckle at his skill--proceeded calmly to
assert the prisoner's right to his immediate _discharge! There was a flaw
in the declaration, and the indictment was invalid_. And thus he proved
it. The man was charged with murdering his child--described as his, and
bearing his own name. Now, the deceased was illegitimate, and should have
borne its mother's name. He appealed to his lordship on the bench, and
demanded for his client the benefit which law allowed him. You might have
heard the faintest whisper in the court, so suspended and so kept back
was every drop of human breath, whilst every eye was fixed upon the
judge. The latter spoke. "_The exception was conclusive; the prisoner
must be discharged_." I could not conceive it possible. What were truth,
equity, morality--Nothing? And was murder _innocence_, if a quibble made
it so? The jailer approached the monster, and whispered into his ear that
he was now at liberty. He held down his head stupidly to receive the
words, and he drew it back again, incredulous and astounded. Oh, what a
secret he had learned for future government and conduct! What a friend
and abettor, in his fight against mankind, had he found in the law of his
land! I was maddened when I saw him depart from the well-secured bar in
which he had been placed for trial. There he had looked the thing he
was--a tiger caught, and fastened in his den. Could it do less than chill
the blood, and make the heart grow sick and faint, to see the bolts drawn
back--the monster loosed again, and turned unchained, untamed, fiercer
than ever, into life again? Legislators, be merciful to humanity, and
cease to embolden and incite these beasts of prey! Melancholy as the
above recital is, it is to be considered rather as an episode in this
narration, than as the proper subject of it. Had my morning's adventure
finished with this disgraceful acquittal, the reader would not have been
troubled with the perusal of these pages. My vexation would have been
confined to my own breast, and I should have nourished my discontent in
silence. The scene which immediately followed the dismissal of the
murderer, is that to which I have chiefly to beg attention. It led to an
acquaintance, for which I was unprepared--enabled me to do an act of
charity, for which I shall ever thank God who gave me the power--and
disclosed a character and a history to which the intelligent and
kind-hearted may well afford the tribute of their sympathy. It was by way
of contrast and relief, I presume, that the authorities had contrived
that the next trial should hardly call upon the time and trouble of the
court. It was a case, in fact, which ought to have been months before
summarily disposed of by the committing magistrate, and one of those too
frequently visited with undue severity, whilst offences of a deeper dye
escape unpunished, or, worse still, are washed away in _gold_. A poor man
had stolen from a baker's shop a loaf of bread. _The clerk of the
arraigns_, as I believe he is called, involved this simple charge in many
words, and took much time to state it but when he had finished his
oration, I could discover nothing more or less than the bare fact. A few
minutes before the appearance of the delinquent, I remarked a great
bustle in the neighbourhood of the young barrister already spoken of. A
stout fresh-coloured man had taken a seat behind him with two thinner
men, his companions, and they were all in earnest conversation. The stout
man was the prosecutor--his companions were his witnesses--and the
youthful counsellor was, on this occasion, retained _against_ the
prisoner. I must confess that, for the moment, I had a fiendish delight
in finding the legal gentleman in his present position. "It well becomes
the man," thought I, "through whose instrumentality that monster has been
set free, to fall with all his weight of eloquence and legal subtlety
upon this poor criminal." If he smiled before, he was in earnest now. He
frowned, and closed his lips with much solemnity, and every look bespoke
the importance of the interests committed to his charge.--A beggar!--and
to steal a loaf of bread! Ay, ay! society must be protected--our houses
and our homes must be defended. Anarchy must be strangled in its birth.
Such thoughts as these I read upon the brow of youthful wisdom. Ever and
anon, a good point in the case struck forcibly the lusty prosecutor, who
communicated it forthwith to his adviser. _He_ listened most attentively,
and shook his head, as who should say "Leave that to me--we have him on
the hip." The witnesses grew busy in comparing notes, and nothing now was
wanting but the great offender--the fly who must be crushed upon the
wheel--and he appeared. Reader, you have seen many such. You have not
lived in the crowded thoroughfares of an overgrown city, where every
grade of poverty and wealth, of vice and virtue, meet the eye, mingling
as they pass along--where splendid royalty is carried quicker than the
clouds adown the road which palsied hunger scarce can cross for lack of
strength--where lovely forms, and faces pure as angels' in their innocent
expression, are met and tainted on the path by unwomanly immodesty and
bare licentiousness--amongst such common sights you have not dwelt, and
not observed some face pale and wasted from disease, and want, and
sorrow, not one, but all, and all uniting to assail the weakly citadel of
flesh, and to reduce it to the earth from which it sprung. Such a
countenance was here--forlorn--emaciated--careworn--every vestige of
human joy long since removed from it, and every indication of real misery
too deeply marked to admit a thought of simulation or pretence. The eye
of the man was vacant. He obeyed the turnkey listlessly, when that
functionary, with a patronizing air, directed him to the situation in the
dock in which he was required to stand, and did not raise his head to
look around him. A sadder picture of the subdued, crushed heart, had
never been. Punishment! alack, what punishment could be inflicted now on
him, who, in the school of suffering, had grown insensible to torture?
Notwithstanding his rags, and the prejudice arising from his degraded
condition, there was something in his look and movements which struck me,
and secured my pity. He was very ill, and had not been placed many
minutes before the judge, when he tottered and grew faint. The turnkey
assisted the poor fellow to a chair, and placed in his hands, with a
rough but natural kindness, which I shall not easily forget, a bunch of
sweet-smelling marjoram. The acknowledgement which the miserable creature
attempted to make for the seasonable aid, convinced me that he was
something better than he seemed. A shy and half-formed bow--the impulse
of a heart and mind once cultivated, though covered now with weeds and
noxious growths--redeemed him from the common herd of thieves. In the
calendar his age was stated to be thirty-five. Double it, and that face
will warrant you in your belief. Desirous as I was to know the
circumstances which had led the man to the commission of his offence, it
was not without intense satisfaction that I heard him, at the
commencement of the proceedings, in his thin tremulous voice, plead
_guilty_ to the charge. There was such rage painted on the broad face of
the prosecutor, such disappointment written in the thinner visage of the
counsellor, such indignation and astonishment in those of the witnesses,
that you might have supposed those gentlemen were interested only in the
establishment of the prisoner's innocence, and were anxious only for his
acquittal. For their sakes was gratified at what I hoped would prove the
abrupt conclusion of the case. The prisoner had spoken; his head again
hung down despondingly--his eyes, gazing at nothing, were fixed upon the
ground; the turnkey whispered to him that it was time to retire--he was
about to obey, when the judge's voice was heard, and it detained him.

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