under the very roof of virtue, in the presence of a venerable and respected matron, and of that innocent family whom she had reared up in the sunshine of her example, the most abandoned profligate could have plotted his iniquities? Who would not rather suppose that in the rebuke of such a presence, guilt would have torn away the garland from its brow, and blushed itself into virtue? But the depravity of this man was of no common dye; the asylum of innocence was selected only as the sanctuary of his crimes, and the pure, and the spotless, chosen as his associates, because they would be the more unsuspected subsidiaries to prove his wickedness, nor were his manner and his language less suited than his society to the concealment of his objects. If you believed himself, the sight of suffering affected his nerves; the bare mention of immorality smote upon his conscience; an intercourse with the continental courts had refined his mind into a painful sensibility to the barbarisms of Ireland, and yet an internal tenderness towards his native land so irresistibly impelled him to improve it by his residence, that he was a hapless victim to the excess of his feelings, the exquisiteness of his polish, and the excellence of his patriotism! His English estates, he said, amounted to about ten thousand pounds a year, and he retained in Ireland only a trifling three thousand more, as a kind of trust for the necessities of its inhabitants; in short, according to his own description, he was in religion a Saint, and in morals a Stoic; a sort of wandering philanthropist, making like the Sterne who, he confessed, had the honour of his name and his connexion, a Sentimental Journey in search of objects over whom his heart might weep, and his sensibility expand itself. How happy it is, that of the philosophic profligate only retaining the vices and the name, his rashness has led to the arrest of crimes which he had all his turpitude to commit, without any of his talents to embellish.

It was by arts such as I have alluded to-by pretending the most strict morality, the most sensitive honour, the most high and undeviating principles of virtue, that the defendant banished every suspicion of his designs. As far as appearances went, he was exactly what he described himself. His pretentions to morals he supported by the most reserved and respectful behaviour-his hand was lavish in the distribution of his charities; and his splendid equipage, a numerous retinue, a system of the most profuse and prodigal expenditure left no doubt as to the reality of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he found an easy admittance to the house of Mrs. Fallon, and there he had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. Guthrie, for between his family and that of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my client had much anxiety to encrease the connexion. They visited together some of the public amusements, they partook of some of the fetes in the neighborhood of the metropolis-but upon every occasion, Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied by her own mother, and by the respectable females of Mrs. Fallon's family. I say, upon every occasion, and I challenge them to produce one single instance of those innocent excursions upon which the slanders of an interested calumny have been let loose, in which this unfortunate lady was not matronized by her female relatives, and those, some of the most spotless characters in society. Between Mr. Guthrie and the defendant the acquaintance was but slight. Upon one occasion alone they dined together; it was at the house of the plaintiff's father-in-law; and that you may have some illustration of de

fendant's character, I shall briefly instance his conduct at this dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he apologized for any deficiency of etiquette in his visits, declaring that he had been seriously occupied in arranging the affairs of his lamented father, who, though tenant for life, had contracted debts to an enormous amount-he had already paid upwards of ten thousand pounds, which honour and not law compelled him to discharge, as, sweet soul! he could not bear that any one should suffer unjustly by his family. His subsequent conduct was quite consistent with this hypocritical preamble-at dinner he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie, expatiated to her husband upon matters of morality, entering into a high-flown panegyric on the virtues of domestic life and the comforts of connubial happiness. In short, had there been any idea of jealousy, his manner would have banished it, and the mind must have been worse than sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his surface morality. Gracious God, gentlemen, when the heart once admits guilt as its associate, how every natural emotion flies before it! Surely, surely, here was a scene to reclaim, if it were possible, this remorseless defendant; admitted to her father's table, under the shield of hospitality, he saw a young and lovely female surrounded by her parents, her husband, and her children-the prop of those parents' age, the idol of that husband's love, the anchor of those children's helplessness, the sacred orb of their domestic circle, giving their smiles its light, and their bliss its being, robbed of whose beams, the little lucid world of their home must become chill, uncheered, and colourless forever. He saw them happy, he saw them united, blessed with peace and purity, and profusion-throbbing with sympathy and throned in love-depicting the innocence of infancy, and the joys of manhood, before the venerable eye of age, as if to soften the farewell of one world by the pure and pictured anticipation of a better.

Yet, even there, hid in the very sunbeam of that happiness, the dæmon of its destined desolation lurked. Just Heaven! of what materials was that heart composed which could meditate coolly on the murder of such enjoyment--which innocence could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor hospitality appease; but which, in the very beam and bosom of its benefaction, warmed and excited itself into a more vigorous venom? Was there no sympathy in the scene? Was there no remorse at the crime? Was there no horror at its consequences?

"Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exiled?
Was there no pity, no relenting ruth,

To show their parents' fondling o'er their child,
Then paint the ruined pair and their destraction wild."

No, no-he was at that instant planning their destruction, and even within four short days, he deliberately reduced those parents to childlessness, that husband to widowhood, those smiling infants to antici pated orphanage, and that peaceful, hospitable, confiding family, to helpless, hopeless, irremediate ruin.

Upon the first day of the ensuing July, Mr. Guthrie was to dine with the Conaught bar, at the hotel of Portobello. It is a custom, I am told, with the gentlemen of that association to dine together previous to the circuit; of course my client could not have decorously absented himself. Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little feverish, and he re quested that on his retiring, she would compose herself to rest--she promised him she would; and when he departed somewhat abruptly

to put some letters in the post-office, she exclaimed, "What, John, are you going to leave me thus ?" He returned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, even for any time, without that token of affection. I am thus minute, gentlemen, that you may see, up to the last moment, what little cause the husband had for suspicion and how impossible it was for him to foresee a perfidy which nothing short of infatuation could have produced. He proceeded to his companions with no other regret than that necessity for a moment forced him from a home which the smile of affection had never ceased to endear to him. After a day, however, passed, as such a day might have been supposed to pass, in the flow of soul, and the philosophy of pleasure, he returned home to share his happiness with her, without whom no happiness had ever been perfect. Alas! he was never to behold her more! Imagine, if you can, the frenzy of his astonishment, in being informed by Mrs. Porter, the daughter of his former landlady, that about two hours before, she had attended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's 'shop, that a carriage had drawn up at the corner of the street, into which a gentleman, (whom she recognized to be Sterne) had handed her, and they instantly departed! I must tell you there is every reason to believe that this woman was the confidant of the conspiracy. What a pity that the object of that guilty confidence had not something of humanitythat, as a female, she did not feel for the character of her sex-that, as a mother, she did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family! What pangs might she not have spared!

My client could hear no more-even at the dead of night, he rushed into the street, as if, in its own dark hour he could discover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peaceful family of the horror. struck Mrs. Fallon, in vain, with the parents of the miserable fugitive, did he mingle the tears of an impotent distraction; in vain, a miserable maniac, did he traverse the silent streets of the metropolis, affrighting virtue from its slumber with the spectre of its own ruin!

I will not dwell upon that night of horror; I will not harrow you with its heart-rending recital. But, imagine you see him, when the day had dawned, returning wretched to his deserted dwelling-seeing, in every chamber a memorial of his loss, and hearing every tongueless object eloquent in his woe. Imagine you see him in the reverse of his grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a vision; and awakened only to the horrid truth by his helpless children asking him for their mother!-Gentlemen, this is not a picture of the fancy: it literally occurred: there is something less of romance in the reflection which his children awakened in the mind of their afflicted father; he ordered that they should be immediately habited in mourning. How rational sometimes are the ravings of insanity! For all the purposes of mater nal life, poor innocents, they have no mother; her tongue no more can teach, her hand no more can tend them; for them there is not "speculation in her eyes," to them her life is something worse than death; as if the awful grave had yawned her forth, she moves before them, shrouded all in sin, the guilty burden of its peaceless sepulchre. Better, far better, their little feet had followed in her funeral, than that the hour which taught her value should reveal her vice; mourning her loss, they might have blessed her memory, and shame need not have rolled its fires into the fountain of their sorrow.

As soon as his reason became sufficiently collected, Mr. Guthrie

pursued the fugitives; he traced them successively to Kildare, to Carlow, Waterford, Milford Haven, where they embarked-on through Wales, and finally to Ilfracombe, in Devonshire, where the clue was lost. I am glad, that in this route and restlessness of their guilt, as the crime they perpetrated was foreign to our soil, they did not make that soil the scene of its habitation. I will not follow them through this joyless journey: nor brand, by any record, the unconscious scences of its pollution. But philosophy never taught-the pulpit never enforced a more imperative morality than the itinerary of that accursed tour promulgates. Oh! if there be a maid or matron in this island, balancing between the alternative of virtue and of crime, trembling between the hell of the seducer and the adulterer, and the heaven of the parental and the nuptial home, let her pause upon this one out of the many horrors I could depict,-and be converted. I will give you the rela tion in the very words of my brief; I cannot improve upon the sim plicity of the recital:

"On the 7th of July, they arrived at Milford; the Captain of the packet dined with them, and was astonished at the magnificence of her dress." (Poor wretch! she was decked and adorned for the sacrifice!) "The next day, they dined alone. Towards evening, the housemaid, passing near their chamber, heard Mr. Sterne scolding, and apparently beating her. In a short time after, Mrs Guthrie rushed out of her chamber into the drawing room, and throwing herself in agony upon the sofa, she exclaimed-" Oh! what an unhappy wretch I amI left my home where I was happy, too happy, seduced by a man who has deceived me. My poor husband-my dear children-Oh! if they would even let my little William live with me, it would be some consolation to my broken heart."

"Alas! nor children more can she behold,
"Nor friends, nor sacred home,"

Well might she lament over her fallen fortunes-well might she mourn over the memory of the days when the sun of Heaven seemed to rise but for her happiness; well might she recal the home she had endeared-the children she had nursed the hapless husband of whose life she was the pulse. But one short week before, this earth could not have revealed a lovelier vision-Virtue blessed, affection followed, beauty beamed on her the light of every eye, the charm of every heart; she moved along in cloudless chastity, cheered by the song of love, and circled by the splendors she created! Behold her now! the loathsome refuse of an adulterous bed; festering in the very infection of her crimes; the scoff and scorn of their unmanly, merciless, inhuman au→ thor! But thus it ever is with the votaries of guilt-the birth of their crime is the death of their enjoyment, and the wretch who stings his offering on the altar, falls an immediate victim to the flame of his devotion. I am glad it is so-It is a wise, retributive dispensation. bears the stamp of a preventive Providence. I rejoice it is so in the present instance; first, because this premature infliction must ensure repentance in the wretched sufferer; and next, because as this adulter. ous fiend has rather acted on the suggestious of his nature than his shape, by rebelling against the finest impulse of man, he has made himself an out-law from the sympathies of humanity. Why should he expect that charity from you, which he would not spare even to the misfortunes he had inflicted! For the honour of the form under which he

It

is disguised, I am willing to hope he was so blinded by his vice that he did not see the full extent of those misfortunes. If he had feelings capable of being touched, it is not to the faded victim of her own weakness and of his wickedness that I would direct them. There is something in her crime which affrights charity from its commisseration. But, gentlemen, there is one over whom pity may mourn, for he is wretched-and mourn without a blush, for he is guiltless.

How shall I depict to you the deserted husband? To every other object in this catalogue of calamity, there is some stain attached which checks compassion. But here, Oh! if ever there was a man amiable, it was that man; Oh! if ever there was a husband fond, it was that husband; his hope, his joy, his ambition was domestic-his toils were forgotten in the affections of his home, and, amid every adverse variety of fortune, Hope pointed to his children, and he was comforted. By this vile act, that hope is blasted, that house is a desert, those children are parentless. In vain do they look to their surviving parent, his heart is broken, his mind is in ruins, his very form is fading from the earth. He had one consolation--he had an aged mother, on whose life the remnant of his fortunes hung, and on whose protection of his children, his remaining prospects rested; even that is over, she could not survive his shame-she never raised her head-she became hearsed in his misfortune-he has followed her funeral! If this be not the climax of human misery, tell me in what does human misery consist? Wife, parent, fortune, prospects, happiness, all gone at once, and gone forever! For my part, when I contemplate this, I do not wonder at the impression it has produced on him; I do not wonder at the faded form, the dejected air, the emaciated countenance, and all the ruinous and mouldering trophies by which misery has marked its triumph over youth, and health and happiness! I know that in the hordes of what is called fashionable life, there is a sect of philosophers wonderfully patient of their fellow-creature's sufferings, men too insensible to feel for any one, or too selfish to feel for others. I trust there is not one amongst you who can ever hear of such calamities without affliction ; or, if there be, I pray that he may never know their import by experience; that having, in the wilderness of this world, but one dear and darling object, without whose participation bliss would be joyless, and, in whose sympathies, sorrow has found a charm-whose smile has cheered his toil-whose love has pillowed his misfortunes-whose angel spirit, guided him through danger, and darkness, and despair, amid the world's frowns, and the friend's perfidy, was more than friend, and world and all to him! God forbid, that by a villain's wile or a villain's wickedness, he should be taught how to appreciate the woe of others in the dismal solitude of his own. Oh no! I feel that I address myself to human beings, who, knowing the value of what the world is worth, are capable of appreciating all that makes it dear to us.

Observe, however, lest this crime should want any aggravation : observe, I beseech you, the period of its accomplishment. My client was not so young. as that the elasticity of his spirit could rebound and bear him above the pressure of his misfortune, nor was he withered by age into comparative insensibility, but just at that temperate interval of manhood, when passion had ceased to play, and reason begins to operate; when love, gratified, left him nothing to desire; and fidelity long tried left him nothing to apprehend: he was just too, at that pe