fled;
Of neither would I ask the boon
I ask of thee, beloved Night--
Swift be thine approaching flight,
Come soon, soon! 35

--_Percy Bysshe Shelley_

* * * * *

THE OPENING SCENE AT THE TRIAL OF WARREN HASTINGS

From "Essay on Warren Hastings"

On the 13th of February, 1788, the sittings of the Court commenced.
There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more gorgeous
with jewelry and cloth of gold, more attractive to grown-up children,
than that which was then exhibited at Westminster; but, perhaps, there
never was a spectacle so well calculated to strike a highly
cultivated, a reflecting, an imaginative mind. All the various kinds
of interest which belong to the near and to the distant, to the
present and to the past, were collected on one spot and in one hour.
All the talents and all the accomplishments which are developed by
liberty and civilization were now displayed with every advantage that
could be derived both from co-operation and from contrast. Every step
in the proceedings carried the mind either backward, through many
troubled centuries, to the days when the foundations of our
constitution were laid; or far away, over boundless seas and deserts,
to dusky nations living under strange stars, worshipping strange gods,
and writing strange characters from right to left. The High Court of
Parliament was to sit, according to forms handed down from the days of
the Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over
the lord of the holy city of Benares and over the ladies of the
princely house of Oude.

The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of William
Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at the
inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the just
sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall where
the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a
victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where Charles
had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid courage which
has half redeemed his fame.

Neither military nor civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined
with grenadiers. The streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers,
robed in gold and ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter
King-at-Arms. The judges in their vestments of state attended to give
advice on points