ings of human nature? May they be swayed by such considerations, without evidence, as matters of common knowledge? Does every juryman know by instinct what a woman would be likely to do, under the circum stances in which Mrs. Maybrick was known to have been placed? Obviously not. If there is no science of human action, it is impossible for a jury of men to judge the probable action of a woman so placed. If there is such a science it is for persons expert in the science, not for persons ignorant of it, to hold and express an opinion; and Mr. Justice Stephen's charge, in the absence of expert opinion on the point, was quite unjus tifiable. If, however, upon proper study an expert opinion can be formed, it is important that we should know it. In no way can the study of this science be better pursued than in the reports of judicial trials. The evidence of acts done in all cir cumstances of life is here preserved; and it is evidence protected, so far as possible, from the possibility of error. It is given under the solemnity of oath, and in open court; it is given under the penalties of perjury; and it is (in England and America) sifted by an immediate open cross-examination. Let us see how far it is possible, by an examination of similar reported trials, to give an expert opinion on the "moral question involved in the Maybrick case. For that purpose it will be better to examine trials in more than one country, and in several centuries. The ex amination should cover all accessible cases of poisonings by women for a motive arising out of the passion of love. In France in the seventeenth century no criminal was more famous than the Marquise de Brinvilliers. The murder of her father, her earliest exploit of the sort, is in point. She was in love with a young man, not her husband; her father objected to the scandal, and she determined to put him out of the way. She accompanied him to the country, and there administered to him a small amount of arsenic in a bowl of soup. He became sick in a few, hours; she attended him
with anxious care, called a physician, finally traveled with him back to Paris, nursed him tenderly until he died after a lingering illness, and showed due grief for his death. The poison she obtained from her paramour. She was not suspected for many years. She was, however, driven by remorse or other feeling to write out a full confession of this and her other crimes, which was placed in a casket with an inscription begging the finder by all his hopes of heaven to burn it unread; and the casket was left with her lover. The lover having died suddenly, she manifested such anxiety to have the casket returned to her as her property that curiosity and sus picion were aroused, the casket opened, and her crimes discovered. She at first denied everything; but was tried and convicted, made a full confession, and met her end with so edifying a piety that she was acclaimed by those present at the execution as a saint! She had, among other crimes, poisoned her father and all her brothers, and attempted to poison her sister. Marie Lafarge was tried in France in 1840 for the murder of her husband. He had been seized with illness while absent from home, after eating a tart sfent him by his wife; he returned home and died after an illness of eleven days. The symptoms were consistent with death from arsenical poisoning or from disease. One examination of the body showed no trace of arsenic; another, by the famous chemist Orfila, showed a trace, barely enough to cloud a test-tube, too small to estimate the amount. Mme. Lafarge had openly bought arsenic shortly before her husband's illness, to kill rats, and a powder had been used for that purpose; analysis, however, showed that the powder so used was not really arsenic. She was seen during his illness putting a white powder in his medicine; the evidence did not show this powder to be arsenic. She nursed him tenderly during his illness, and seemed to feel great grief at his death. Lafarge was a man of lower social rank than his wife; she was almost dowcrless, and
