The judge, glancing over the note, inclined his head gravely to the earl,
who withdrew; and in one minute afterwards, a heavy and breathless
silence fell over the whole court. The prisoner was called upon for his
defence: it was singular what a different sensation to that existing in
their breasts the moment before crept thrillingly through the audience.
Hushed was every whisper, vanished was every smile that the late cross-
examination had excited; a sudden and chilling sense of the dread
importance of the tribunal made itself abruptly felt in the minds of
every one present.

Perhaps, as in the gloomy satire of Hogarth (the moral Mephistopheles of
painters), the close neighbourhood of pain to mirth made the former come
with the homelier shock to the heart; be that as it may, a freezing
anxiety, numbing the pulse and stirring through the air, made every man
in that various crowd feel a sympathy of awe with his neighbour,
excepting only the hardened judge and the hackneyed lawyers, and one
spectator,--an idiot who had thrust himself in with the general press,
and stood, within a few paces of the prisoner, grinning unconsciously,
and every now and then winking with a glassy eye at some one at a
distance, whose vigilance he had probably eluded.

The face and aspect, even the attitude, of the prisoner were well fitted
to heighten the effect which would naturally have been created by any man
under the same fearful doom. He stood at the very front of the bar, and
his tall and noble figure was drawn up to its full height; a glow of
excitement spread itself gradually over features at all times striking,
and lighted an eye naturally eloquent, and to which various emotions at
that time gave a more than commonly deep and impressive expression. He
began thus:--