do for me; but it is not less your duty to do that little. May that God
who is the fountain of honour and good prosper and protect you! The man
who now stands before you is devoted to perpetual barrenness and blast!
He has nothing to hope for beyond the feeble consolation of this day!"

"You will easily imagine that Mr. Falkland was discharged with every
circumstance of credit. Nothing is more to be deplored in human
institutions, than that the ideas of mankind should have annexed a
sentiment of disgrace to a purgation thus satisfactory and decisive. No
one entertained the shadow of a doubt upon the subject, and yet a mere
concurrence of circumstances made it necessary that the best of men
should be publicly put on his defence, as if really under suspicion of
an atrocious crime. It may be granted indeed that Mr. Falkland had his
faults, but those very faults placed him at a still further distance
from the criminality in question. He was the fool of honour and fame: a
man whom, in the pursuit of reputation, nothing could divert; who would
have purchased the character of a true, gallant, and undaunted hero, at
the expense of worlds, and who thought every calamity nominal but a
stain upon his honour. How atrociously absurd to suppose any motive
capable of inducing such a man to play the part of a lurking assassin?
How unfeeling to oblige him to defend himself from such an imputation?
Did any man, and, least of all, a man of the purest honour, ever pass in
a moment, from a life unstained by a single act of injury, to the
consummation of human depravity?

"When the decision of the magistrates was declared, a general murmur of
applause and involuntary transport burst forth from every one present.
It was at first low, and gradually became louder. As it was the
expression of rapturous delight, and an emotion disinterested and
divine, so there was an indescribable something in the very sound, that