the other; and even while their fell rage assails with common hate the
peace and virtue of the world, the civil war among their own tumultuous
legions defeats the purpose of the foul conspiracy. These are the Furies
of the mind, my Lords, that unsettle the understanding; these are the
Furies, that destroy the virtue, Prudence,--while the distracted brain
and shivered intellect proclaim the tumult that is within, and bear their
testimonies, from the mouth of God himself, to the foul condition of the
heart."

The part of the Speech which occupied the Third Day (and which was
interrupted by the sudden indisposition of Mr. Sheridan) consists chiefly
of comments upon the affidavits taken before Sir Elijah Impey,--in which
the irrelevance and inconsistency of these documents is shrewdly exposed,
and the dryness of detail, inseparable from such a task, enlivened by
those light touches of conversational humor, and all that by-play of
eloquence of which Mr. Sheridan was such a consummate master. But it was
on the Fourth Day of the oration that he rose into his most ambitious
flights, and produced some of those dazzling bursts of declamation, of
which the traditional fame is most vividly preserved. Among the audience
of that day was Gibbon, and the mention of his name in the following
passage not only produced its effect at the moment, but, as connected
with literary anecdote, will make the passage itself long memorable.
Politics are of the day, but literature is of all time--and, though it
was in the power of the orator, in his brief moment of triumph, to throw
a lustre over the historian by a passing epithet, [Footnote: Gibbon
himself thought it an event worthy of record in his Memoirs. "Before my
departure from England (he says) I was present at the august spectacle of
Mr. Hastings's Trial in Westminster Hall. It was not my province to
absolve or condemn the Governor of India, but Mr. Sheridan's eloquence
demanded my applause, nor could I hear without emotion the personal