tempted the violator and murderer-suppose | had forsaken. As free from sin himself as him both-yea, that man at the bar-sworn to might be mortal and fallen man-mortal be by all the parish, if need were, as a man of tenderest charities, and generosity unbounded -in the lust of lucre, consequent on the satiating of another lust-to rob his victim of a few trinkets! Let loose the wildest imagination into the realms of wildest wickedness, and yet they dared not, as they feared God, to credit for a moment the union of such appalling and such paltry guilt, in that man who now trembled not before them, but who seemed cut off from all the sensibilities of this life by the scythe of Misery that had shorn him down! But why try to recount, however feebly, the line of defence taken by the speaker, who on that day seemed all but inspired. The sea may overturn rocks, or fire consume them till they split in pieces; but a crisis there sometimes is in man's destiny, which all the powers ever lodged in the lips of man, were they touched with a coal from heaven, cannot avert, and when even he who strives to save, feels and knows that he is striving all in vain-ay, vain, as a worm-to arrest the tread of Fate about to trample down its victim into the dust. All hoped-many almost believed-that the prisoner would be acquitted-that a verdict of "Not Proven," at least, if not of "Not Guilty," would be returned; but they had not been sworn to do justice before man and before God—and, if need were, to seal up even the fountains of mercy in their hearts-flowing, and easily set a-flowing, by such a spectacle as that bar presented-a man already seeming to belong unto the dead! In about a quarter of an hour the jury returned to the box-and the verdict, having been sealed with black wax, was handed up to the Judge, who read, "We unanimously find the prisoner Guilty." He then stood up to receive the sentence of death. Not a dry eye was in the court during the Judge's solemn and affecting address to the criminal-except those of the Shadow on whom had been pronounced the doom. Your body will be hung in chains on the moor-on a gibbet erected on the spot where you murdered the victim of your unhallowed lust, and there will your bones bleach in the sun, and rattle in the wind, after the insects and the birds of the air have devoured your flesh; and in all future times, the spot on which, God-forsaking and God-forsaken, you perpetrated that double crime, at which all humanity shudders, will be looked on from afar by the traveller passing through that lonesome wild with a sacred horror!" Here the voice of the Judge faltered, and he covered his face with his hands; but the prisoner stood unmoved in figure, and in face untroubled-and when all was closed, was removed from the bar, the same ghostlike and unearthly phantom, seemingly unconscious of what had passed, or even of his own existence. Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once more only-only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom now all the world cause fallen-he knew from Scripture and from He No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning-(where he had been all night never was knownthough it was afterwards rumoured that one like him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of the murder)wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round and round about, like a man stricken with blindness, and vainly seeking to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes-blind and dumb he sat where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs-though stone. blind at least to all real things-beneath them flashing fire. He had borne up bravely-almost to the last-but had some tongue syllabled his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten him! Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake his convic. tion of his innocence-tnough he had always forborne speaking about the circumstances of the murder-and had communicated to nobody any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless; and though trouble in his eyes often gave the lie to his lip There was no bell to toll there-but at the very moment he was ascending the scaffold, a black cloud knelled thunder, and many hundreds of people all at once fell down upon their knees. The man in white lifted up his eyes, and said, "O Lord God of Heaven! and Thou his blessed Son, who died to save sinners! accept this sacrifice!" when he used to say to the silent neighbours, | any thing could have beer. seen, had been shnt "We shall soon see him back at Moorside." fast against all horrid sights-and the horses' Had his belief in his Ludovic's innocence, and hoofs and the wheels must have been muffled his trust in God that that innocence would be that had brought that hideous Framework to the established and set free, been so sacred, that Moor. But there it now stood-a dreadful he blow, when it did come, struck him like a Tree! The sun moved higher and higher up hammer, and felled him to the ground, from the sky, and all the eyes of that congregation which he had risen with a riven brain? In were at once turned towards the east, for a dull whatever way the shock had been given, it had sound, as of rumbling wheels and trampling been terrible; for old Gilbert Adamson was feet, seemed shaking the Moor in that direcnow a confirmed lunatic, and keepers were in tion; and lo! surrounded with armed men on Moorside-not keepers from a mad-house-for horseback, and environed with halberds, came his daughter could not afford such tendence- on a cart, in which three persons seemed to be but two of her brother's friends, who sat up sitting, he in the middle all dressed in whitewith him alternately, night and day, while the the death-clothes of the murderer-the unpityarms of the old man, in his distraction, had to ing shedder of most innocent blood. be bound with cords. That dreadful moaning was at an end now; but the echoes of the hills responded to his yells and shrieks; and people were afraid to go near the house. It was proposed among the neighbours to take Alice and little Ann out of it; and an asylum for them was in the Manse; but Alice would not stir at all their entreaties; and as, in such a case, it would have been too shocking to tear her away by violence, she was suffered to remain with him who knew her not, but who often-it was said-stared distractedly upon her, as if she had been some fiend sent in upon his insanity from the place of punishment. Weeks passed on, and still she was there-hiding herself at times from those terrifying eyes; and from her watching corner, waiting from morn till night, and from night till morn-for she seldom lay down to sleep, and had never undressed herself since that fatal sentence-for some moment of exhausted horror, when she might steal out, and carry some slight gleam of comfort, however evanescent, to the glimmer or the gloom in which the brain of her Father swam through a dream of blood. But there were no lucid intervals; and ever as she moved towards him, like a pitying angel, did he furiously rage against her, as if she had been a fiend. At last, she who, though yet so young, had lived to see the murdered corpse of her dearest friend-murdered by her own only brother, whom, in secret, that murdered maid-given over for lost the glorious boy, with an en had most tenderly loved-that murderous infant in his arms, while the flames seemed to brother loaded with prison-chains, and con- eddy back, that they might scathe not the head demned to the gibbet for inexpiable and unpar- of the deliverer, and a shower of blessings fell donable crimes-her father raving like a de- upon him as he laid it in its mother's bosom, mon, self-murderous were his hands but free, and made the heart of the widow to sing for nor visited by one glimpse of mercy from Him joy? It is he. And now the executioner pulls who rules the skies-after having borne more down the cord from the beam, and fastens it than, as she meekly said, had ever poor girl round the criminal's neck. His face is already borne, she tock to her bed quite heart-broken, covered, and that fatal handkerchief is in his and, the night before the day of execution, hand. The whole crowd are now kneeling, died. As for poor little Ann, she had been and one multitudinous sob convulses the air;— wiled away some weeks before; and in the when wild outcries, and shrieks, and yells, are blessed thoughtlessness of childhood, was not at that moment heard from the distant gloom without hours of happiness among her play-of the glen that opens up to Moorside, and mates on the braes. Not one in all that immense crowd coula have known that that white apparition was Ludovic Adamson. His hair, that had been almost jet-black, was now white as his faceas his figure, dressed, as it seemed, for the grave. Are they going to execute the murderer in his shroud? Stone-blind, and stonedeaf, there he stood-yet had he, without help, walked up the steps of the scaffold. A hymn of several voices arose-the man of God close beside the criminal, with the Bible in his uplifted hands; but those bloodless lips had no motion-with him this world was not, though yet he was in life-in life, and no more! And was this the man who, a few months ago, flinging the fear of death from him, as a flash of sunshine flings aside the shades, had descended into that pit which an hour before had been bellowing, as the foul vapours exploded like cannons, and brought up the bodies of them who had perished in the womb of the earth? Was this he who once leaped into the devouring fire, and re-appeared, after all had three figures, one far in advance of the others, The Morning of that Day arose, and the come flying, as on the wings of the wind, to Moor was all blackened with people round the gibbet. Hundreds started to their feet, and the tall gibbet, that seemed to have grown, ""Tis the maniac-'tis the lunatic!" was the with its horrid arms, out of the ground during cry. Precipitating himself down a rocky hillthe night. No sound of axes or hammers had side, that seemed hardly accessible but to the been heard clinking during the dark hours-goats, the maniac, the lunatic, at a few despe nothing had been seen passing along the road; rate leaps and bounds, just as it was expected the windows of all the houses from which he would have been dashed in pieces, alighted unstunned upon the level greensward; and | once that now indeed they looked on the mur now, far ahead of his keepers, with incredible derer. The dreadful delusion under which all swiftness neared the scaffold-and the dense their understandings had been brought by the crowd making a lane for him in their fear and power of circumstances, was by that voice astonishment, he flew up the ladder to the hor- destroyed-the obduracy of him who had been rid platform, and grasping his son in his arms, about to die was now seen to have been the howled dreadfully over him; and then with a most heroic virtue-the self-sacrifice of a son loud voice cried, "Saved-saved-saved!" to save a father from ignominy and death. So sudden had been that wild rush, that all "O monster, beyond the reach of redempthe officers of justice—the very executioner- tion! and the very day after the murder, while stood aghast; and now the prisoner's neck is the corpse was lying in b'ood on the Moor, he free from that accursed cord his face is once was with us in the House of God! Tear him more visible without that hideous shroud-and in pieces-rend him limb from limb-tear him he sinks down senseless on the scaffold. into a thousand pieces!" "The Evil One had “Seize him-seize him!" and he was seized-power given him to prevail against me, and I but no maniac-no lunatic-was the father fell under the temptation. It was so written in now-for during the night, and during the the Book of Predestination, and the deed lies dawn, and during the morn, and on to midday at the door of God!" "Tear the blasphemer on to the HOUR OF ONE-when all rueful pre- into pieces! Let the scaffold drink his blood!" parations were to be completed-had Provi--" So let it be, if it be so written, good people. dence been clearing and calming the tumult in that troubled brain; and as the cottage clock struck ONE, memory brightened at the chime into a perfect knowledge of the past, and prophetic imagination saw the future lowering upon the dismal present. All night long, with the cunning of a madman-for all night long he had still been mad-the miserable old man had been disengaging his hands from the manacles, and that done, springing like a wild beast from his cage, he flew out of the open door, nor could a horse's speed on that fearful road have overtaken him before he reached the scaffold. Satan never left me since the murder till this day—he sat by my side in the kirk—when 1 was ploughing in the field-there-ever as I came back from the other end of the furrowhe stood on the headrig—in the shape of a black shadow. But now I see him not-he has returned to his den in the pit. I cannot imagine what I have been doing, or what has been done to me, all the time between the day of trial and this of execution. Was I mad? No matter. But you shall not hang Ludovic-he, poor boy, is innocent;-here, look at him-hereI tell you again-is the Violator and the Murderer!" But shall the men in authority dare to stay the execution at a maniac's words? If they dare not-that multitude will, now all rising together like the waves of the sea. "Cut the cords asunder that bind our Ludovic's arms" No need was there to hold the miserable man. He who had been so furious in his manacles at Moorside, seemed now, to the people at a distance, calm as when he used to sit in the elder's seat beneath the pulpit in that small kirk. But they who were near or on the scaf--a thousand voices cried; and the murderer, fold, saw something horrid in the fixedness of his countenance. "Let go your hold of me, ye fools!" he muttered to some of the mean wretches of the law, who still had him in their clutch-and tossing his hands on high, cried with a loud voice, "Give ear, ye Heavens! and hear, O Earth! I am the Violator-I am the Murderer!" The moor groaned as in earthquake-and then all that congregation bowed their heads with a rustling noise, like a wood smitten by the wind. Had they heard aright the unimaginable confession? His head had long been gray -he had reached the term allotted to man's mortal life here below-threescore and ten. Morning and evening, never had the Bible been out of his hands at the hour set apart for family worship. And who so eloquent as he in expounding its most dreadful mysteries? The unregenerate heart of man, he had ever said-in scriptural phrase-was "desperately wicked." Desperately wicked indeed! And now again he tossed his arms wrathfully-so the wild motion looked-in the wrathful skies. "I ravished-I murdered her-ye know it, ye evil spirits in the depths of hell!" Consternation now fell on the minds of all-and the truth was clear as light-and all eves knew at unclasping a knife, that, all unknown to his keepers, he had worn in his breast when a maniac, sheared them asuuder as the sickle shears the corn. But his son stirred not-and on being lifted up by his father, gave not so much as a groan. His heart had burst-and he was dead. No one touched the gray-headed murderer, who knelt down-not to pray-but to look into his son's eyes-and to examine his lips-and to feel his left breast-and to search out all the symptoms of a fainting-fit, or to assure himself-and many a corpse had the plunderer handled on the field after hush of the noise of battle-that this was death. He rose; and standing forward on the edge of the scaffold, said, with a voice that shook not, deep, strong, hollow, and hoarse-"Good people! I am likewise now the murderer of my daughter and of my son! and of myself!" Next moment the knife was in his heart-and he fell down a corpse on the corpse of his Ludovic. All round the sultry horizon the black clouds had for hours been gathering-and now came the thunder and the lightning-and the storm. Again the whole multitude prostrated themselves on the moor-an 'he Pastor, bending over the dead bodies, said, "THIS IS EXPIATION!" MORNING MONOLOGUE. "KNOWLEDGE is Power." So is Talent-so | sing "many a lovely lay," that perished lika is Genius-so is Virtue. Which is the great- the flowers around them, in praise of the est! It might seem hard to tell; but united, Power at whose footstool they "stooped their they go forth conquering and to conquer. Nor anointed heads as low as death." Even then is that union rare. Kindred in nature, they has Genius been honoured, because though it love to dwell together in the same "palace of ceased to be august, still it was beautiful; it the soul." Remember Milton. But too often seemed to change fetters of iron into bands of they are disunited; and then, though still roses, and to halo with a glory the brows of Powers, they are but feeble, and their defeats slaves. The wine-cup. mantled in its light; are frequent as their triumphs. What is it and Love forgot in the bower Poetry built for so even with Virtue? It is, and it is not. bliss, that the bride might be torn from the Virtue may reign without the support of Ta- bridegroom's bosom on her bridal night by a lent and Genius; but her counsellor is Con- tyrant's lust. Even there Genius was happy, science, and what is Conscience but Reason and diffused happiness; at its bidding was rich by birthright in knowledge directly de- heard pipe, tabor, and dulcimer; and to his rived from the heaven of heavens beyond all lips" Warbling melody" life floated by, in the the stars? midst of all oppression, a not undelightful dream! And may Genius and Talent indeed be, conceive, and execute, without the support of Virtue? You will find that question answered in the following lines by Charles Grant, which deserve the name of philosophical poetry:— Talents, 'tis true, quick, various, bright, has God And all the dread sublimities of Song- Such is the natural constitution of humanity; and in the happiest state of social life, all its noblest Faculties would bear legitimate sway, each in its own province, within the spirit's ample domains. There, Genius would be honoured; and Poetry another name for religion. But to such a state there can, under the most favouring skies, be no more than an approximation; and the time never was when Virtue suffered no persecution, Honour no shame, Genius no neglect, nor fetters were not imposed by tyrannous power on the feet of the free. The age of Homer, the age of Solon, the age of Pericles, the age of Numa, the age of Augustus, the age of Alfred, the age of Leo, the age of Elizabeth, the age of Anne, the age of Scott, Wordsworth, and Byron, have they not been all bright and great ages? Yet had they been faithfully chronicled, over the misery and madness of how many despairing spirits fraught with heavenly fire, might we not have been called to pour forth our unavailing indignations and griefs! But how has it been with us in our Green Island of the West! Some people are afraid of revolutions. Heaven pity them! we have had a hundred since the Roman bridged our rivers, and led his highways over our mountains. And what the worse have we been of being thus revolved? We are no radicals; but we dearly love a revolution-like that of the stars. No two nights are the heavens the same-all the luminaries are revolving to the music of their own spheres-look, we beseech you, on that new-risen star. He is elected by universal suffrage-a glorious representative of a million lesser lights; and on dissolution of that Parlia ment-how silent but how eloquent!-he is sure of his return. Why, we should dearly love the late revolution we have seen belowit is no longer called Reform-were it to fling up to free light from fettered darkness a few fine bold original spirits, who might give the whole world a new character, and a more ma jestic aspect to crouching life. But we look abroad and see strutting to and fro the sons of little men blown up with vanity, in a land where tradition not yet old tells of a race of giants. We are ashamed of ourselves to think we feared the throes of the times, seeing not portentous but pitiable births. Brush these away; and let us think of the great dead-let us look on the great living--and, strong in memory and hope, be confident in the cause of Freedom. "Great men have been among us— better none;" and can it be said that now there is "a want of books and men," or that those we have, are mere dwarfs and duodecimos? Is there no energy, no spirit of adventure and enterprise, no passion in the character of our country? Has not wide over earth "England sent her men, of men the chief, Under despotic governments, again, such as have sunk deep their roots into Oriental soils, and beneath Oriental skies prosperously expanded their long-enduring umbrage, where might is right, and submission virtue, noble-To plant the Tree of Life, to plant fair Freedom's Tree 1" minded men-for sake of that peace which is Has not she, the Heart of Europe and the ever dearest to the human heart, and if it de- Queen, kindled America into life, and raised scend not a glad and gracious gift from Heaven, up in the New World a power to balance the will yet not ungratefully be accepted when Old, star steadying star in their unconflicting breathed somewhat sadly from the quieted bo- courses? You can scarce see her shores for som of earth by tyranny saved from trouble-ships; her inland groves are crested with have submitted, almost without mourning, to towers and temples; and mists brooding at in tervals over her far-extended plains, tell of ❘ of Peer to that of Beggar. To live is the rost "Have bow'd their knees To despicable gods;" Yet still the patriot cry is of sinecures. Let the few sluggards that possess but cannot enjoy them, doze away on them till sinecures Yet base, blind and deaf (and better dumb) and sinecurists drop into the dust. Shall such must be he who would deny, that here Genius creatures disturb the equanimity of the maghas had, and now has her noblest triumphs; nanimous working-classes of England? True that Poetry has here kindled purer fires on to themselves in life's great relations, they loftier altars than ever sent up their incense need not grudge, for a little while longer, the to Grecian skies; that Philosophy has sounded paupers a few paltry pence out of their earndepths in which her torch was not extinguish-ings; for they know a sure and silent deathed, but, though bright, could pierce not the "heart of the mystery" into which it sent some strong illuminations; that Virtue here has had chosen champions, victorious in their martyrdom; and Religion her ministers and her servants not unworthy of her whose title is from heaven. Causes there have been, are, and ever will be, why often, even here, the very highest faculties "rot in cold obstruction." But in all the ordinary affairs of life, have not the best the best chance to win the day? Who, in general, achieve competence, wealth, splendour, magnificence, in their condition as citizens? The feeble, the ignorant, and the base, or the strong, the instructed, and the bold? Would you, at the offstart, back mediocrity with alien influence, against high talent with none but its own-the native "might that slumbers in a peasant's arm," or, nobler far, that which neither sleeps nor slumbers in a peasant's heart? There is something abhorrent from every sentiment in man's breast to see, as we too often do, imbecility advanced to high places by the mere accident of high birth. But how our hearts warm within us to behold the base-born, if in Britain we may use the word, by virtue of their own irresistible energies, taking precedence, rightful and gladly granted of the blood of kings! Yet we have heard it whispered, insinuated, surmised, spoken, vociferated, howled, and roared in a voice of small-beer-souring thunder, that Church and State, Army and Navy, are all officered by the influence of the Back-stairs-that few or none but blockheads, by means of brass only, mount from the Bar which they have disturbed to that Bench which they disgrace; and that mankind intrust the cure of all diseases their flesh is heir to, to the exclusive care of every here and there a handful of old women. Whether overstocked or not, 'twould be hard to say, but all professions are full-from that blow has been struck against that order of things by the sense of the land, and that all who receive wages must henceforth give work. All along that has been the rule-these are the exceptions; or say, that has been the lawthese are its revolutions. Let there be high rewards, and none grudge them-in honour and gold-for high work. And men of high talents-never extinct-will reach up their hands and seize them, amidst the acclamations of a people who have ever taken pride in a great ambition. If the competition is to be in future more open than ever, to know it is so will rejoice the souls of all who are not slaves. But clear the course! Let not the crowd rush in-for by doing so, they will bring down the racers, and be themselves trampled to death. Now we say that the race is-if not always -ninety-nine times in a hundred-to the swift. and the battle to the strong. We may have been fortunate in our naval and military friends; but we cannot charge our memory with a single consummate ass holding a distinguished rank in either service. That such consummate asses are in both, we have been credibly informed, and believe it; and we have sometimes almost imagined that we heard their bray at no great distance, and the flapping of their ears. Poor creatures enough do rise by seniority or purchase, or if anybody knows how else, we do not; and such will be the case to the end of the chapter of human accidents. But merit not only makes the man, but the officer on shore and at sea. They are as noble and discontented a set of fellows all, as ever boarded or stormed; and they will continue so, not till some change in the Admiralty, or at the Horseguards, for Sir James Grahame does his duty, and so does Lord Hill. but till a change in humanity, for 'tis no more than Adam did, and we attribute whatever may be amiss or awry, chiefly to the Fall. Let the |