Page:Paul Clifford Vol 3.djvu/154

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146
PAUL CLIFFORD.

ledge, and in admiring the manner in which the peculiar functions of his novel dignity were discharged. No juvenile lawyer brow-beat—no hackneyed casuist puzzled him; even his attention never wandered from the dullest case subjected to his tribunal. A painter, desirous of stamping on his canvass the portrait of an upright Judge, could scarcely have found a finer realization for his beau idéal than the austere, collected, keen, yet majestic countenance of Sir William Brandon, such as it seemed in the trappings of office, and from the seat of justice.

The newspapers were not slow in recording the singular capture of the notorious Lovett. The boldness with which he had planned and executed the rescue of his comrades, joined to the suspense in which his wound for some time kept the public, as to his escape from one death by the postern gate of another, caused a very considerable ferment and excitation in the popular mind; and, to feed the impulse, the journalists were little slothful in retailing every anecdote, true or false, which they could collect, touching the past adventures of the daring highwayman. Many a good story