hing to find fault with.

Shelley's happiness in his home had been wounded and bruised almost to
death, fifthly, because Harriet narrowly watched a surgical operation
which was being performed upon her child, and, "to the astonishment
of the operator," who was watching Harriet instead of attending to his
operation, she betrayed "not the smallest sign of emotion." The author
of this biography was not ashamed to set down that exultant slander. He
was apparently not aware that it was a small business to bring into his
court a witness whose name he does not know, and whose character and
veracity there is none to vouch for, and allow him to strike this blow
at the mother-heart of this friendless girl. The biographer says, "We
may not infer from this that Harriet did not feel"--why put it in,
then?--"but we learn that those about her could believe her to be hard
and insensible." Who were those who were about her? Her husband? He
hated her now, because he was in love elsewhere. Her sister? Of course
that is not charged. Peacock? Peacock does not testify. The wet-nurse?
She does not testify. If any others were there we have no mention of
them. "Those about her" are reduced to one person--her husband. Who
reports the circumstance? It is Hogg. Perhaps he was there--we do not
know. But if he was, he still got his information at second-hand, as
it was the operator who noticed Harriet's lack of emotion, not himself.
Hogg is not given to saying kind things when Harriet is his subject.
He may have said them the time that he tried to tempt her to soil her
honor, but after that he mentions her usually with a sneer. "Among
those who were about her" was one witness well equipped to silence all
tongues, abolish all doubts, set our minds at rest; one witness, not
called, and not callable, whose evidence, if we could but get it, would
outweigh the oaths of whole battalions of hostile Hoggs and nameless
surgeons--the baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if
we had it it would not do us any good--a furtive conjecture, a sly
insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there,
with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness would
wilt into dubiety.

The biographer says of Harriet, "If words of tender affection and
motherly pride proved the reality of love, then undoubtedly she loved
her firstborn child." That is, if mere empty words can prove it, it
stands proved--and in this way, without commit