own, that under other circumstances, it might have been otherwise. I will candidly avow, that I might have then used such means as your law awards me, to procure an acquittal, and to prolong my existence—though in a new scene! as it is, what matters the cause in which I receive my sentence? Nay, it is even better to suffer by the first, than to linger to the last. It is some consolation, not again to stand where I now stand; to go through the humbling solemnities which I have this day endured; to see the smile of some, and retort the frown of others; to wrestle with the anxiety of the heart, and to depend on the caprice of the excited nerves. It is something to feel one part of the drama of disgrace is over, and that I may wait unmolested in my den, until, for one time only, I am again the butt of the unthinking, and the monster of the crowd. My Lord, I have now done! to you, whom the law deems the Prisoner's Counsel,—to you, Gentlemen of the Jury, to whom it has delegated his fate, I leave the chances of my life."
The Prisoner ceased; but the same heavy silence which, save when broken by one solitary mur-
