sharp. He seemed anxious to have it very sharp. He made no observation whatever. I sold him the knife, and he went away."

"Are you sure that the prisoner now in the dock is the person you allude to?" asked the magistrate.

"I am positive that he is the man," was the reply.

"On your solemn oath, have you any hesitation whatever in pronouncing the prisoner to be the individual who purchased the knife of you on the day in question?"

"I have no hesitation: I am certain that he is the man."

"Could you identify the knife?"

"I could."

"Have you seen it since the day on which you sold it?"

"I have. It was shewn me by a policeman. It is the same knife which was picked up on the spot where the prisoner and the deceased were found. It is stained with blood."

The cross-examination on the part of my legal assistant in no whit shook the fellow's testimony. It was clear and straightforward. The depositions of the other witnesses were read over to them. They acknowledged them to be correct. I was committed to Newgate. When I was being removed from the dock, a piercing shriek rang through the court. It was from my wife, who had fainted.

Night and day to be immured within four stone walls, or allowed only to pace the flag-stones of a paved court-yard, guarded by huge iron spikes, with two gaolers ever at your elbow;-to inhabit a cell, tenanted only by such as had been imprisoned for murder, and had subsequently expiated their crimes on the scaffold,-to eat your meals from the same table from which they had eaten,-to rest your hand on the very spot where their blood-stained hands had rested,-to be yourself considered, to know that you are branded by society, as a murderer, and withal, to be conscious of your innocence,-this would be horrible indeed, you say. Well, the case was mine!

The old Greek drama recognised the notion of destiny as existing apart from all moral agencies. The web of Fate is inextricable. The spider spreads her net, and the fly is entangled therein. Struggle as I might, I felt that I could not escape. How could I baffle the witnesses, who were determined to confound me with the real author of the deed! Did not a handwriting, which was not mine, testify against me, even from the lips of friends? I bore those who had deposed against me no malice. I owed them no ill-will. I felt that they were but instruments in the hand of destiny to accomplish my predetermined end. At times I imagined that I really did commit the terrible act for which I was incarcerated. For how could Providence be unjust? I exclaimed with the author of the Grecian Iphigenia

“ Οὐδενα γὰρ οἷμαι δαιμονων ειναι κακόν.”

It was true I had no recollection of the deed. I had never even seen the victim till I found her weltering in her blood. Yet, through brooding incessantly upon the subject, I came at length to consider myself guilty, and I resolved so to plead upon my trial.

I was not allowed to see either a daily or weekly paper; but I imagined well what they contained. At first there had been two, or perhaps three columns, devoted to the examination and the inquest.

Then the public appetite, previous to the trial, was whetted with short paragraphs containing fresh suspicions against the prisoner-accounts of his deportment in Newgate-a history of his life and connexionssevere strictures on his station in society, concluding with a hope that justice might not thereby be defeated.

My wife had not been to visit me since my committal. She had fallen dangerously ill. My children were withheld from the purlieus of a prison.

Never-never shall I forget the conduct of my fellow-prisoners whenever they were suffered to behold me, which was only when we attended service in the Prison Chapel. The busy whisper, or the vacant inattentive stare, was suddenly changed to silence and solemn attention when I appeared. Even these, hardened as they were—and they comprised characters the most reckless and desperate-seemed to regard me with awe. I was a monster for even them to stare at. He will be hung, they thought. They looked upon transportation, or protracted imprisonment, as their lot.

The sessions at length commenced. The day for my trial arrived. I was led along the malefactor's passage, and placed in the dock. The court was crowded to excess. My friends were there. Two counsellors had been retained for me. The indictment was read over, and I was questioned whether I was guilty or not guilty. "Guilty," I replied. Had a thunderbolt fallen at their feet, my friends could not have been more staggered.

"How!" said the judge, "do you confess yourself guilty of the murder of Hannah Simmons?"

"I am guilty," I answered. "I cut her throat with a knife." There was a murmur in the court, and a thrill of horror seemed to agitate each breast. God knows why I said it. It was untrue.

One of my friends observed aloud, that I must be insane.

"My lord,” I said, addressing the judge, "I am not insane. I am guilty-really guilty of the deliberate murder with which I am charged. I cut the woman's throat with a knife."

"Then," said the judge, "there only remains for me to discharge the painful duty of passing upon you the sentence of the law. In what way the dreadful deed, of which you have acknowledged yourself guilty, was provoked, is known only to yourself. The circumstances attending its commission are hidden in mystery; but let me seriously warn you that in the position in which you stand, and considering the awful fate which shortly awaits you, the urgent duty which you owe to society, as the only reparation, besides your actual punishment, which you can make it, is the full disclosure of all facts connected with your intercourse with the deceased

"My lord," I cried, interrupting him; "I know nothing about her. I never saw her till I did the deed."

The judge remained silent for an instant, and regarding me attentively, said, presently

"The case must be gone into."

"My lord," said my leading counsel, addressing the bench, "it is the opinion of the prisoner's friends that he is not in his right mind. It is true, they are not at present fully prepared to substantiate it. Will your lordship take the probability of such a state into consideration, and postpone the trial?"

I again spoke: "I assure you, my lord," I said, "that I am calm and rational. I am guilty of murder, and fit only for execution. I am not fit to be confined with madmen. I have studied insanity in its various phases; in the practice of my profession I have frequently had to deal with lunatic patients. I know madness when I see it. I am not mad."

"The case must be gone into," said the judge. "I cannot pass sentence of death upon you without a satisfactory inquiry. You state that you never saw the woman you confess to have murdered, till you did the deed. How then could you have previously written to her, alluding in your letter to a former intercourse, and intimating a reconciliation of former differences?"

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My lord," I said, I never saw the woman in my life till I cut her throat with a knife, which was like a pruning-knife. I did not even know her name."

"Can this man be guilty?" exclaimed the judge.

Indeed, and indeed, my lord, I am guilty," I said.

It was proposed by my counsel to examine some of my friends as to their opinion of my state of mind. My brother-in-law was first called. He stated that for three months past he had observed a decided change in my demeanour. I had become abstracted and gloomy; was fond of solitude; and seemed on every occasion to shun company. He said that my wife had grown alarmed thereby, and had several times conferred with him on the point. He did not believe that I had committed the murder; but thought that I had dwelt on the subject of the accusation so long, that I had come to consider myself as really guilty.

Other witnesses followed, whose testimony was to a similar effect. The whole purport of their statements went to establish the insanity of a sane person, for God-He knows that I am no lunatic.

At this point, my footman, who was present in the court, pressed forward, and requested to be heard. With tears in his eyes, he declared that I could be no murderer; for I had the tenderest heart that ever beat, and would not harm a worm. My friends corroborated the poor fellow's statement, and said that I possessed the finest feelings and the most merciful disposition of any of their acquaintance.

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Yes, my lord," said I, interposing; "but you will remember that the schoolmaster, Eugene Aram, was so mercifully disposed that he would turn aside rather than crush a snail, or a beetle, and yet he was tried for murder, condemned, and executed."

"I am convinced in my own mind," said the judge, "that the prisoner is not in a fit state to be entrusted with his own plea. The case must be tried. Where are the witnesses for the prosecution? The counsel for the defence will watch the case. If the evidence of the prisoner's guilt is clear and incontrovertible, it will be for the learned counsel and his friends to establish, if they can, a plea of insanity. If there is a doubt as to his guilt, the prisoner shall have the benefit of it, and be given up to his friends."

The evidence, as it was stated at the magistrate's office, was gone through afresh before the jury. An eloquent defence was set up by my counsel. The judge evidently leaned in my favour when he summed up; but the jury found me-guilty. How could they do otherwise? It was my destiny!

The judge put on his black cap.

At sight of this awful formula, my blood ran cold, and for the first time for many days, I was seized with an instinctive desire to preserve my life.

"Oh, my Lord!" I cried, folding my hands in an attitude of entreaty; "I am not guilty! Indeed, indeed, I am not guilty! I found the woman weltering in her blood; her throat was dreadfully mangled. The knife with which the deed was perpetrated, was lying beside her on the ground."

A tear stood in the judge's eye as he proceeded to pass the sentence. Awful was the silence that reigned throughout the court. A ray of sunshine streamed in at the window that was over the jury-box, and fell upon the countenance of the judge, encircling his head with such a halo, or glory, as we see in the pictures of superior Beings. He seemed a retributive angel. I thought of the Bar before which the Dead shall stand when they are brought up to judgment at the Day of Days.

"You will be taken to the place from whence you came," said the judge," and from thence to the place of execution, where you will be hung by the neck till you are dead."

"Oh God!" I cried; " will no one save me?"

I was removed to the cell which I had quitted. They brought me refreshment. The physicians of the prison felt my pulse, and ordered me wine. I requested to be allowed to see my wife, or at least, my eldest child. Drowsiness overcame me, and I slept.

When I awoke, the apartment was filled with faces, many of which I had formerly known in the exercise of my profession. Two or three individuals pressed forward and shook me by the hand. They regarded me attentively. They seemed to await the arrival of some one of more experience than themselves. They spoke in whispers, and when I uttered a word, they nodded significantly to each other.

He whom they expected came at last. I knew him. He was the physician of Bethlehem Hospital. "Perhaps," I thought," they will save my life by his means. It is a good idea; I will be a madman if they choose!"

I knew they would not hang a lunatic.

He spoke to the sheriff who was present, but I could not catch the purport of his remark. He examined me as I would have examined myself a person suspected to be insane. He questioned me on various subjects, and seemed particularly to note my answers. His medical brethren,-mine also,-listened to him, and were complacent when he consulted them.

I gathered from their conversation that my wife was dead. Again I did not wish to live. I told them that I was not mad. I described the various forms of insanity, and I defied them to prove that I was insane. I prayed that my sentence might be carried into effect. Yes; I looked without horror to the scaffold. I entreated to be allowed to die.

They left me not to myself, for the gaolers were ever with me. There was no poker in the cell, nor was I, on any occasion, allowed a knife.

I sat down and considered the sensations which former prisoners, who had occupied that cell, must have experienced, when they had yet two days to live, when six hours,-when two,-when one.

I endeavoured to recollect a French work which I had recently read, and which described, in his own words, the last six weeks of the life of a criminal condemned to die. It was by Victor Hugo. It ran thus:

"Condamné a mort! Cinq semaines que j'habite avec cette idée .." I could not continue it, but I remembered that the malefactor's little girl, an infant, was allowed to see him, that he might take his leave of her. I wished to see my children.

The day before that appointed for the event, they told me it was not to take place. I had been pronounced insane. I laughed when I heard it. Insane!

I was removed hither, and it is now six years since I have dwelt among madmen. At my earnest request I am allowed at times to discourse with them. It is a province of my profession to observe those who are insane. When they let me free, I shall profit by what I have learned here. From many I have gathered their histories. Rational histories, recorded by insane men. A paradox!

I will publish them hereafter, when they give me my liberty; or, now that I am allowed writing materials, I will commit them to paper while they are fresh in my memory.

A LAPSE OF FORTY YEARS.

BY MADAME DE CHATELAIN.

"GREAT wits jump," it is said—or, to use a more elegant, because exotic phrase, ed anch' io son pittore. The clever, though now halfforgotten author of the "Hermite de la Chaussée d'Antin," tells us that he kept a diary of all his actions, from his youth upwards; in proof whereof, he shews us the frivolous day wasted by the young man, and the soberer, but scarcely less frivolous one got through by the old man, and bids us look " on this picture and on that," and draw our own conclusions. Mine is simply this-that the youth was father But to return to myself, having also kept a journal as diligently as the hermit, and being now sixty-five, and somewhat upwards, what hinders my following his example, and giving my experience to the world? I shall only trouble my readers with a day of each period.

to the man.

"MAY, 1800.-Went to Tattersall's to conclude the purchase of the black pony for Caroline. Fine creature-I mean Caroline, not the pony-and she will look like a queen upon it. Called at Hoby's on the way. The last pair of shoes were too tight, but I shall keep them for chamber use-I mean to lie about in my chambers-they look well. My aunt has promised to come with my cousin Maria to lunch with me, next time she drives into town. Maria is a pretty girl, and seems to like me, but I think I may do better if I resolve to

marry.

"Drove into Bond Street, met Lady R in an open barouche, with her two daughters. The eldest is a very fine girl, but I am afraid