Under the rough and homely exterior of the butcher's wife there beat as true and tender an English heart as ever swelled in a Saxon breast; and all that the kind and ministering hand of woman could do was done for poor Mary. The bright fire flickered and gilded the walls of the clean chamber in which she was placed, throwing its changing light upon the gaudy curtains, and upon the snow-white counterpane, and causing you to think of that cheerless, roofless, miserable hovel, with a shivering feeling of dread. And no sound was heard there but the muffled footsteps of the kind woman in attendance, moving noiselessly to and fro over the thick carpets, as she every minute applied some new restorative, or gave utterance to some comforting and endearing expression, which was only answered by the half smothered sob of the sufferer, or the unconscious ejaculation of "Hush, baby, hush!" breathed forth in such a pitiable tone as seemed to make the heart of the hearer bleed. Nor could the deep feelings of the kind woman any longer be controlled, for sitting down on the side of the bed, she raised the checked apron to her eyes, and wept like a child.

On the following day a coroner's inquest sat upon the body of the child, and instead of finding guilty the party who had put into execution so merciless and unfeeling a law, as that which was chiefly instrumental in its death, they returned a verdict of murder against the unfortunate mother: not even qualifying it by an allusion to the state of mind which she had been in for several days before quitting the Union-house. One or two of the villagers carefully examined the spot where the child was found, and although a considerable depth of snow had fallen, there was no doubt on their minds, from the traces which they were enabled to make out, that the poor woman had sat down at the

foot of the guide-post, and probably,-numbed as she must have been with the cold, and weighed down with anguish, and misery, and wretchedness, together with the unsettled, excited, and insane state of mind,-that her own intense agony made her, for a time, forget even her child. There were proofs, though faint and half obliterated, that she had returned to search for the infant; that after wandering for some distance she had turned again, crossed at several angles, and at each turning still gone wider and further from the spot-until she had reached the miserable hovel in which she was found. Even when she partially recovered, though only to the consciousness that she still lived, her first words were such as a mother utters to lull and soothe her child; and such as left no doubt on the mind of the butcher's wife that poor Mary believed her infant was still beside her. Not a syllable of remorse had escaped her lips;-not a sentence was uttered to shew that the memory groaned under the remembrance of guilt, for although it was but the senseless pillow which she pressed, she wasted over it a hundred motherly endearments. Any one who had witnessed that painful scene would have felt convinced that she was no murderer.

Nor was there a mark of violence discovered on the body of the child, to justify the sapient jury in returning such a verdict; and as the medical assistant was the paid parish doctor, he, good forbearing man! had too much sympathy for his employers to state, that any infant who was exposed naked at such a severe season, and in so bleak a situation, must perish through the cold, unless possessed of the strength of a young Hercules. Nor was it until night—when armed with a warrant from a neighbouring magistrate, they came to carry off the poor suffering mother

to a county gaol, and there, in a cold, comfortless cell, to wait her trial at the coming assizes—that she seemed conscious of what had happened. In vain did both the kindhearted butcher and his wife plead the necessity of a sufficient delay to allow for her recovery; stating-and that truly—she was not in a fit state to be removed. All was useless; living or dead, the law must be made secure of its victim, and that without delay; its majesty must be vindicated; the law must have its victim ready in its den to prey upon when it pleaseth. Even had she died by the way, justice must have rested gratified without the satisfaction of killing her.

The many hours through which she had been exposed to the elements on that desolate common, and within the roofless and snow-filled hovel, in addition to the long distance she was removed in the cart at such a season, acted mercifully upon her; and she who would no doubt have been "butchered to make an English holiday," died and disappointed the gaping crowd, who would have come forth from miles around to have glutted their gaze on the handiwork of the moral hangman. She was spared the lingering misery of those moments, every tick of which marches in slow anguish over the heart, counting the consuming hours that elapse between condemnation and death, and which— oh, cruel mercy!—is too often embittered by the longexpected pardon being withheld, even after it is granted; as if the law loved to experimentalise upon the life it cannot in justice take away, so contents itself by administering a few thousands more of its heart-breaking sobs and deep prolonged agonies, compared to the enduring of which death is, indeed, mercy.

Who can tell the sentence that will at last be pro

nounced from the great Tribunal, before which she was summoned, when Justice shall strip all human motives of the blinded trappings which may conceal them from mortal sight, and the naked roots, from which a thousand evils have sprung, are laid bare, and open, and undisguised— when the lips of the paid pleader are mute, and the hired defender of wrong stands silent—when right shall need no advocate, and wrong shall not lack an accuser-when the balance of justice is held even, by an Omnipotent arm, and not a human being dares to tamper with it, or sully its star-like brightness with a breath :-then may the form of Mary, holding up her child, stand high, and with pointed finger mark out those whose cruel laws drove her to seek, through the dark alleys of death, that repose which they denied her here. And if the realms of eternal misery, like those fabled by the old poets, are divided into regions where the bleak winter rages, and the summer burns with a volcanic heat, the avenging spirit need not to inflict on them a sterner doom, nor deal forth a juster punishment, than to turn them abroad, without either food or raiment, on some unbounded and frozen desert, and leave them to the same elements and the same mercy, to which they left poor Mary and her child, the icy torments to which Dante consigned Ugolino and Ruggieri, in his "Inferno.” *

*The fact upon which the story of "Pretty Mary" is founded will be familiar to every reader of the newspapers. So recently as about the time of the opening of Parliament, in 1846, a similar scene was repeated-A poor woman and her infant were sent out of the Union Workhouse at Wootton Basset, Wiltshire, all but naked; the child was picked up dead, and the woman committed to take her trial for murder. It almost seems, on again reading over this portion of the sketch, that I had been adding a chapter to a Romance, instead of merely painting the scenery amid which this terrible tragedy was enacted.

And what thought young farmer Elliston to all this? He cared not; for the law which should have protected Mary and her child was so framed that it could not touch him-was so worded that a woman who had still a remnant of modesty left, shrunk back in disgust from its aid. The fate of the beautiful and broken-hearted girl seemed to concern him not. Beauty seldom exists without vanity; and, in the higher circles of society, women are hemmed in with binding forms and becoming ceremonies; and when this barrier is overleaped, there comes the law, thundering with indignation, and heavy with damages; while the poorer daughter of Eve is compensated with a broken heart, and an early death!

Many a simple country youth and maiden who envied Mary on the day of the statutes, and thought or spoke harshly of her as she passed, were sorry at heart for what they had done, and numberless are the visits which they have since paid to her suffering mother, and many the trifling presents they have made her.

66

66

As for the noble-hearted butcher of Rampton, he came to some arrangement with the master of the Union Workhouse, which stopped the mouth of the law: For," as he said, the thief who would lend himself to turn out a woman and child on such a day as he did, almost naked, and in the midst of a wild common, and all to keep his hateful situation, would, at any time, submit to having his head broken if he could but get a pound or two by it, and the doctor's bill paid; which he was sure to charge over again to the parish."

Both he and his wife, however, bestirred themselves, and through their interference, and the assistance of other friends, the remains of poor Mary were brought back from