had been limited and uniform. I had communed with romancers and
historians, but the impression made upon me by this incident was
unexampled in my experience. My reading had furnished me with no
instance in any degree parallel to this, and I found that to be a
distant and second-hand spectator of events was widely different from
witnessing them myself and partaking in their consequences. My judgment
was, for a time, sunk into imbecility and confusion. My mind was full of
the images unavoidably suggested by this tale, but they existed in a
kind of chaos, and not otherwise than gradually was I able to reduce
them to distinct particulars, and subject them to a deliberate and
methodical inspection.

How was I to consider this act of Clithero? What a deplorable
infatuation! Yet it was the necessary result of a series of ideas
mutually linked and connected. His conduct was dictated by a motive
allied to virtue. It was the fruit of an ardent and grateful spirit.

The death of Wiatte could not be censured. The life of Clithero was
unspeakably more valuable than that of his antagonist. It was the
instinct of self-preservation that swayed him. He knew not his adversary
in time enough to govern himself by that knowledge. Had the assailant
been an unknown ruffian, his death would have been followed by no
remorse. The spectacle of his dying agonies would have dwelt upon the
memory of his assassin like any other mournful sight, in the production
of which he bore no part.

It must at least be said that his will was not concerned in this
transaction. He acted in obedience to an impulse which he could not
control nor resist. Shall we impute guilt where there is no design?
Shall a man extract food for self-reproach from an action to which it is