sh between the facts and his
impressions of them, and how impossible it often is to make a witness
detail the former without interpolating the latter. But the greatest
risk of all is that the jury themselves may misconstrue the
circumstances, and draw unwarranted conclusions therefrom. It is an
awful assumption of responsibility to leap to conclusions in such cases,
and the leap too often proves to have been made in the dark. God help
the wretch who is arraigned on suspicious appearances before a jury who
believe that "circumstances won't lie"! for the Justice that presides at
such a trial is apt to prove as blind and capricious as Chance herself.
In reviewing the present trial in particular, one may well feel puzzled
to decide which of these deities presided over its conduct. A Greek or
Roman would have said, Neither,--but a greater than either,--Fate; and
we might almost adopt the old heathen notion, as we watch the downward
course of the doomed gentleman from this point, and note how invariably
every attempt to ward off destruction is defeated, as if by the
persevering malice of some superior power. We shall soon see the most
popular and influential attorney of the State driven from the case by an
awkward misunderstanding; another, hardly inferior, expire almost in
the very act of pleading it; and, finally, when the real criminal
comes forward, at the last moment, to avert the ruin which she has
involuntarily drawn down upon the head of her beloved master, and
take his place upon the scaffold, we shall behold her heroic offer of
self-sacrifice frustrated by influences the most unexpected,--political
influences which--with shame be it told--were sufficient to induce a
governor of Kentucky to withhold the exercise of executive clemency, the
most glorious prerogative intrusted to our chief magistrates, and
which it ought to have been a most pleasing privilege to grant: for,
incredible as it may seem, Governor ---- knew, when he signed the
death-warrant, that the man he was consigning to an ignominious grave
was innocent of the crime for which he was to suffer.

The trial was opened in the presence of a crowded assembly, among whom
it was easy to discern that general conviction of the prisoner's guilt
so chilling to the spirits of a defendant and his counsel, and so much
deprecated by the latter, because he knows too well how far it goes
toward a prejudgment of his cause. Several of the most prominent members
of the bar