where he used the most brutal violence towards her. The extreme poverty
of the parents had enabled him easily to persuade them to hush up the
matter, but something of the story got abroad; the poor girl was marked
out for that gossip and scandal, which among the very lowest classes are
as coarse in the expression as malignant in the sentiment; and in the
paroxysm of shame and despair, the unfortunate girl had that day
destroyed herself. This melancholy event wrung forth from the parents the
real story: the event and the story reached my ears in the very hour in
which my mind was wavering to and fro. Can you wonder that they fixed it
at once, and to a dread end? What was this wretch? aged with vice--
forestalling time--tottering on to a dishonoured grave--soiling all that
he touched on his way--with grey hairs and filthy lewdness, the
rottenness of the heart, not its passion, a nuisance and a curse to the
world. What was the deed--that I should rid the earth of a thing at once
base and venomous? Was it crime? Was it justice? Within myself I felt the
will--the spirit that might bless mankind. I lacked the means to
accomplish the will and wing the spirit. One deed supplied me with the
means. Had the victim of that deed been a man moderately good--pursuing
with even steps the narrow line between vice and virtue--blessing none
but offending none,--it might have been yet a question whether mankind
would not gain more by the deed than lose. But here was one whose steps
stumbled on no good act--whose heart beat to no generous emotion;--there
was a blot--a foulness on creation,--nothing but death could wash it out
and leave the world fair. The soldier receives his pay, and murthers, and
sleeps sound, and men applaud. But you say he smites not for pay, but
glory. Granted--though a sophism. But was there no glory to be gained in
fields more magnificent than those of war--no glory to be gained in the
knowledge which saves and not destroys? Was I not about to strike for
that glory, for the means of earning it? Nay, suppose the soldier struck
for patriotism, a better feeling than glory, would not my motive be yet