ings!-the exquisiteness of his polish!--and the excellence of his patriotism! His English estates, he said, amounted to about 10,000l. a-year; and he retained in Ireland only a trifling 3000l. more, as a kind of trust for the necessities of its inhabitants!-In short, according to his own description, he was in religion a saint, and in morals a stoic!a sort of wandering philanthropist! making, like the Sterne who, he confessed, had the honour of his name and his connexion, a sentimental journey in search of objects over whom his heart might weep, and his sensibility expand itself!

How happy it is, that, of the philosophic profligate only retaining the vices and the name, his rashness has led to the arrest of crimes, which he had all his turpitude to commit, without any of his talents to embellish.

It was by arts such as I have alluded to by pretending the most strict morality, the most sensitive honour, the most high and undeviating principles of virtue, that the defendant banished every suspicion of his designs. As far as appearances went, he was exactly what he described himself. His pretensions to morals he supported by the most reserved and respectful behaviour; his hand was lavish in the distribution of his charities; and a splendid equipage, a numerous retinue, a system of the most profuse and prodigal expenditure, left no doubt as to the reality of his fortune. Thus circumstanced, he found an easy admittance to the house of Mrs. Fallon, and there he had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. Guthrie; for, between his family and that of so respectable a relative as Mrs. Fallon, my client had much anxiety to increase the connexion. They visited together some of the public amusements: they partook of some of the fetes in

the neighbourhood of the metropolis; but upon every occasion, Mrs. Guthrie was accompanied by her own mother, and by the respectable females of Mrs. Fallon's family. I say, upon every occasion: and I challenge them to produce one single instance of those innocent excursions, upon which the slanders of an interested calumny have been let loose, in which this unfortunate lady was not matronized by her female relatives, and those some of the most spotless characters in society. Be tween Mr. Guthrie and the defendant, the acquaintance was but slight. Upon one occasion alone they dined together; it was at the house of the plaintiff's father-in-law; and, that you may have some illustration of the defendant's character, I shall briefly instance his conduct at this dinner. On being introduced to Mr. Warren, he apologized for any deficiency of etiquette in his visits, declaring that he had been seriously occupied in arranging the affairs of his lamented father, who, though tenant for life, had contracted debts to an enormous amount. He had already paid upwards of 10,000l. which honour and not law compelled him to discharge; as, sweet soul ! he could not bear that any one should suffer unjustly by his family! His subsequent conduct was quite consistent with this hypocritical preamble: at dinner, he sat at a distance from Mrs. Guthrie ; expatiated to her husband upon matters of morality; entering into a high-flown panegyric on the virtues of domestic life, and the comforts of connubial happiness. In short, had there been any idea of jealousy, his manner would have banished it; and the mind must have been worse than sceptical, which would refuse its credence to his surface morality. Gracious God! when the heart

once admits guilt as its associate, how every natural emotion flies before it! Surely, surely, here was a scene to reclaim, if it were possible, this remorseless defendant,-admitted to her father's table, under the shield of hospitality, he saw a young and lovely female, surrounded by her parents, her husband, and her children; the prop of those parents' age; the idol of that husband's love; the anchor of those children's helplessness; the sacred orb of their domestic circle; giving their smile its light, and their bliss its being; robbed of whose beams the little lucid world of their home must become chill, uncheered, and colourless for ever. He saw them happy, he saw them united; blessed with peace, and purity, and profusion; throbbing with sympathy and throned in love; depicting the innocence of infancy, and the joys of manhood, before the venerable eye of age, as if to soften the farewell of one world by the pure and pictured anticipation of a better. Yet, even there, hid in the very sun-beam of that happiness, the demon of its destined desolation lurked. Just Heaven! of what materials was that heart composed, which could meditate cooly on the murder of such enjoyments; which innocence could not soften, nor peace propitiate, nor hospitality appease; but which, in the very beam and bosom of its benefaction, warmed and excited itself into a more vigorous venom? Was there no sympathy in the scene? Was there no remorse at the crime? Was there no horror at its consequences ?

"Were honour, virtue, conscience, all exil'd! Was there no pity, no relenting ruth,

To show the parents fondling o'er their child,

Then paint the ruin'd pair and their distraction wild !"

Burns.

a

No! no! He was at that instant planning their destruction; and, even within four short days, he deliberately reduced those parents to childishness, that husband to widowhood, those smiling infants to anticipated orphanage, and that peaceful, hospitable, confiding family, to helpless, hopeless, irremediable ruin!

Upon the first day of the ensuing July, Mr. Guthrie was to dine with the Connaught bar, at the hotel of Portobello. It is a custom, I am told, with the gentlemen of that association to dine together previous to the circuit; of course my client could not have decorously absented himself. Mrs. Guthrie appeared a little feverish, and he requested that, on his retiring, she would compose herself to rest; she promised him she would; and when he departed, somewhat abruptly, to put some letters in the post-office, she exclaimed, "What! John, are you going to leave me thus ?" He returned, and she kissed him. They seldom parted, even for any time, without that token of affection. I am thus minute, gentlemen, that you may see, up to the last moment, what little cause the husband had for suspicion, and how impossible it was for him to foresee a perfidy which nothing short of infatuation could have produced. He proceeded to his companions with no other regret than that necessity, for a moment, forced him from a home, which the smile of affection had never ceased to endear to him. After a day, however, passed, as such a day might have been supposed to pass, in the flow of soul, and the philosophy of pleasure, he returned home to share his happiness with her, without whom no happiness ever had been perfect. Alas! he was never to behold her more! Imagine, if you can, the phrenzy of his astonishment, in

being informed by Mrs. Porter, the daughter of the former landlady, that about two hours before, she had attended Mrs. Guthrie to a confectioner's shop; that a carriage had drawn up at the corner of the street, into which a gentleman, whom she recognised to be a Mr. Sterne, had handed her, and they instantly departed. I must tell you, there is every reason to believe, that this woman was the confidant of the conspiracy. What a pity that the object of that guilty confidence had not something of humanity; that, as a female, she did not feel for the character of her sex; that, as a mother, she did not mourn over the sorrows of a helpless family! What pangs might she not have spared? My client could hear no more: evenat the dead of night he rushed into the street, as if in its own dark hour he could discover guilt's recesses. In vain did he awake the peaceful family of the horror-struck Mrs. Fallon; in vain with the parents of the miserable fugitive, did he mingle the tears of an impotent distraction; in vain, a miserable maniac, did he traverse the silent streets of the metropolis, affrighting virtue from its slumber, with the spectre of its own ruin. I will not harrow you with its heart-rending recital. But imagine you see him, when the day had dawned, returning wretched to his deserted dwelling; seeing in every chamber a memorial of his loss, and hearing every tongueless object eloquent of his wo. Imagine you see him, in the reverie of his grief, trying to persuade himself it was all a vision, and awakened only to the horrid truth by his helpless children asking him for their mother!— Gentlemen, this not a picture of the fancy; it literally occurred: there is something less of romance in the reflection, which his children