agony of
womanly shame--of matronly dignity--of insulted innocence, from every
mode and shape of public display. Combine all these circumstances and
elements of the case, and you may faintly enter into the situation of my
poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring
to the case of a young female Christian martyr, in the early ages of
Christianity, exposed in the bloody amphitheatre of Rome or Verona to
'fight with wild beasts,' as it was expressed in mockery--she to fight!
the lamb to fight with lions! But in reality the young martyr _had_ a
fight to maintain, and a fight (in contempt of that cruel mockery)
fiercer than the fiercest of her persecutors could have faced
perhaps--the combat with the instincts of her own shrinking, trembling,
fainting nature. Such a fight had my Agnes to maintain; and at that time
there was a large party of gentlemen in whom the gentlemanly instinct
was predominant, and who felt so powerfully the cruel indignities of her
situation, that they made a public appeal in her behalf. One thing, and
a strong one, which they said, was this:--'We all talk and move in this
case as if, because the question appears doubtful to some people, and
the accused party to some people wears a doubtful character, it would
follow that she therefore had in reality a mixed character composed in
joint proportions of the best and the worst that is imputed to her. But
let us not forget that this mixed character belongs not to her, but to
the infirmity of our human judgments--_they_ are mixed--_they_ are
dubious--but she is not--she is, or she is not, guilty--there is no
middle case--and let us consider for a single moment, that if this young
lady (as many among us heartily believe) _is_ innocent, then and upon
that supposition let us consider how cruel we should all think the
public exposure which aggravates the other injuries (as in that case
they must be thought) to which her situation exposes her.' They went on
to make some suggestions for the officers of the court in preparing the
arrangements for the trial, and some also for the guidance of the
audience, which showed the same generous anxiety for sparing the
feelings of the prisoner. If these did not wholly succeed in repressing
the open avowal of coarse and brutal curiosity amongst the intensely
vulgar, at least they availed to diffuse amongst the neutral and
indifferent part of the public a sentiment of respect and forbearance
which, em