crown lawyer varied the charge perhaps through forty counts. The law laid
its guns so as to rake the accused at every possible angle. Whilst the
indictment was reading, he seemed a monster of crime in his own eyes; and
yet, after all, the poor fellow had but committed one offence, and not
always _that_. N.B.--Not having the French original at hand, I make my
quotations from a friend's copy of Mr. Walter Kelly's translation, which
seems to me faithful, spirited, and idiomatically English--liable, in fact,
only to the single reproach of occasional provincialisms.



THE ENGLISH MAIL-COACH;

OR,

THE GLORY OF MOTION.


Some twenty or more years before I matriculated at Oxford, Mr. Palmer,
M.P. for Bath, had accomplished two things, very hard to do on our little
planet, the Earth, however cheap they may happen to be held by the
eccentric people in comets: he had invented mail-coaches, and he had
married the daughter[1] of a duke. He was, therefore, just twice as great a
man as Galileo, who certainly invented (or _discovered_) the satellites of
Jupiter, those very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital
points of speed and keeping time, but who did _not_ marry the daughter of a
duke.

These mail-coaches, as organized by Mr. Palmer, are entitled to a
circumstantial notice from myself--having had so large a share in