--where splendid royalty is carried quicker than the
clouds adown the road which palsied hunger scarce can cross for lack of
strength--where lovely forms, and faces pure as angels' in their innocent
expression, are met and tainted on the path by unwomanly immodesty and
bare licentiousness--amongst such common sights you have not dwelt, and
not observed some face pale and wasted from disease, and want, and
sorrow, not one, but all, and all uniting to assail the weakly citadel of
flesh, and to reduce it to the earth from which it sprung. Such a
countenance was here--forlorn--emaciated--careworn--every vestige of
human joy long since removed from it, and every indication of real misery
too deeply marked to admit a thought of simulation or pretence. The eye
of the man was vacant. He obeyed the turnkey listlessly, when that
functionary, with a patronizing air, directed him to the situation in the
dock in which he was required to stand, and did not raise his head to
look around him. A sadder picture of the subdued, crushed heart, had
never been. Punishment! alack, what punishment could be inflicted now on
him, who, in the school of suffering, had grown insensible to torture?
Notwithstanding his rags, and the prejudice arising from his degraded
condition, there was something in his look and movements which struck me,
and secured my pity. He was very ill, and had not been placed many
minutes before the judge, when he tottered and grew faint. The turnkey
assisted the poor fellow to a chair, and placed in his hands, with a
rough but natural kindness, which I shall not easily forget, a bunch of
sweet-smelling marjoram. The acknowledgement which the miserable creature
attempted to make for the seasonable aid, convinced me that he was
something better than he seemed. A shy and half-formed bow--the impulse
of a heart and mind once cultivated, though covered now with weeds and
noxious growths--redeemed him from the common herd of thieves. In the
calendar his age was stated to be thirty-five. Double it, and that face
will warrant you in your belief. Desirous as I was to know the
circumstances which had led the man to the commission of his offence, it
was not without intense satisfaction that I heard him, at the
commencement of the proceedings, in his thin tremulous voice, plead
_guilty_ to the charge. There was such rage painted on the broad face of
the prosecutor, such disappointment written in the thinner visage of the
counsellor, such