and shook his head, as who should say "Leave that to me--we have him on
the hip." The witnesses grew busy in comparing notes, and nothing now was
wanting but the great offender--the fly who must be crushed upon the
wheel--and he appeared. Reader, you have seen many such. You have not
lived in the crowded thoroughfares of an overgrown city, where every
grade of poverty and wealth, of vice and virtue, meet the eye, mingling
as they pass along--where splendid royalty is carried quicker than the
clouds adown the road which palsied hunger scarce can cross for lack of
strength--where lovely forms, and faces pure as angels' in their innocent
expression, are met and tainted on the path by unwomanly immodesty and
bare licentiousness--amongst such common sights you have not dwelt, and
not observed some face pale and wasted from disease, and want, and
sorrow, not one, but all, and all uniting to assail the weakly citadel of
flesh, and to reduce it to the earth from which it sprung. Such a
countenance was here--forlorn--emaciated--careworn--every vestige of
human joy long since removed from it, and every indication of real misery
too deeply marked to admit a thought of simulation or pretence. The eye
of the man was vacant. He obeyed the turnkey listlessly, when that
functionary, with a patronizing air, directed him to the situation in the
dock in which he was required to stand, and did not raise his head to
look around him. A sadder picture of the subdued, crushed heart, had
never been. Punishment! alack, what punishment could be inflicted now on
him, who, in the school of suffering, had grown insensible to torture?
Notwithstanding his rags, and the prejudice arising from his degraded
condition, there was something in his look and movements which struck me,
and secured my pity. He was very ill, and had not been placed many
minutes before the judge, when he tottered and grew faint. The turnkey
assisted the poor fellow to a chair, and placed in his hands, with a
rough but natural kindness, which I shall not easily forget, a bunch of
sweet-smelling marjoram. The acknowledgement which the miserable creature