be appreciated and party hushed! Have I not wrestled with wrong from my
birth? have I not rejected all offers from the men of an impious power?
have I made a moment's truce with the poor man's foe? have I not thrice
purchased free principles with an imprisoned frame? have I not bartered
my substance, and my hopes, and the pleasures of this world for my
unmoving, unswerving faith in the Great Cause? am I not about to crown
all by one blow,--one lightning blow, destroying at once myself and a
criminal too mighty for the law? and shall not history do justice to
this devotedness,--this absence from all self, hereafter--and admire,
even if it condemn?"

Buoying himself with these reflections, and exciting the jaded current
of his designs once more into an unnatural impetus, the unhappy man
ceased and paced with rapid steps the narrow limits of his chamber; his
eye fell upon something bright, which glittered amidst the darkening
shadows of the evening. At that sight his heart stood still for a
moment: it was the weapon of intended death; he took it up, and as he
surveyed the shining barrel, and felt the lock, a more settled sternness
gathered at once over his fierce features and stubborn heart. The pistol
had been bought and prepared for the purpose with the utmost nicety, not
only for use but show; nor is it unfrequent to find in such instances
of premeditated ferocity in design a fearful kind of coxcombry lavished
upon the means.

Striking a light, Wolfe reseated himself deliberately, and began with
the utmost care to load the pistol; that scene would not have been an
unworthy sketch for those painters who possess the power of giving to
the low a force almost approaching to grandeur, and of augmenting the
terrible by a mixture of the ludicrous. The sordid chamber, the damp
walls, the high window, in which a handful of discoloured paper
supplied the absence of many a pane; the single table of rough oak, the
rush-bottomed and broken chair, the hearth unconscious of a fire, over
which a mean bust of Milton held its tutelary sway; while the dull
rushlight streamed dimly upon the swarthy and strong countenance of
Wolfe, intent upon his work,--a countenance in which the deliberate
calmness that had succeeded the late struggle of feeling had in it a
mingled power of energy and haggardness of languor,--the one of the
desperate design, the other of the exhausted body; while in the
knit brow, and the iron lines, and even in the se