The next day, as our friend is listlessly engaged in the new court in pulling sprigs of rue to pieces, and scrawling sketches of eminent counsel on the bottoms of the metal inkstands, some learned gentleman with whom he has scraped acquaintance the preceding day, receives a letter which obliges him to proceed at once elsewhere, on some alleged matters of urgent business. Before leaving the court, however, he hastily hands over to Tresham a solitary and dirty looking sheet of paper of huge dimensions, requesting him to look it over and attend to it should the case to which it refers be called on during his absence. Thus adjured, Tresham proceeds to the examination of the brief so suddenly confided to his keeping, and discovers it to be a prisoner's defence, prepared by himself for the enlightenment and amplifications of his counsel. The document runs as follows:

"Please Sir he the persecutor states as he seed me pull the hankercher out of the gents pockt now he knows its false and I'm as innocent as the babe unborn Please your worships I'm a poor lad as runs arrands and as me and another boy was agoing along Cheapside we meets a boy as we never seed afore and as says to me look says he I have picked up this ere take care of it for me and with that he hands me a hankercher and he cuts away and we cuts along after him and just as we turns the corner of Wood Street up comes a Perliceman and takes us into custody but its all a mistake and he nose it and my characters a coming from Whitechapel where I lived along of a butcher and has had two characters a waiting for my trial to come on three days only they didn't no as it would be on to-day and throw myself upon the merciful consideration of the court and leave the rest to my counsel and the genelmen of the Joory."

In the original MS. of the above morceau, every word, without exception, is grossly mispelt: as we do not, however, wish to impose on others the same trouble which Mr. Tresham experienced in decyphering its meaning, we have taken the liberty to rectify a considerable portion of the spelling of it, leaving, however, intact some of its peculiarities of orthography, and all those of style and punctuation. Having carefully made himself master of the contents of the foregoing composition, and rather ineffectually endeavoured to regard as plausible his new client's account of a very suspicious transaction, Tresham inwardly rehearses the observations with which he proposes to trouble the jury on behalf of Isaac Snooks, should the case of that hapless youth be called on before the return of the gentleman first retained to defend him. Such a contingency turns out to be no imaginary one, for some

half-dozen felonies, that stood prior on the list, having been disposed of with marvellous celerity, Snooks makes his appearance at the bar, and the first witness has sworn to the damning fact of having beheld him abstract a silk handkerchief from a gentleman's pocket, which identical handkerchief is produced in court by the policeman who had taken the boy into custody, and found it on his person. Almost before Tresham has collected his faculties for the occasion, Have you any questions to ask this witness ?" demands the judge, and upon Tresham's inability to put any, which can at all shake his testimony, announces that the case for the prosecution is closed. Our friend thereupon gets upon his legs and utters a few rambling sentences which he brings to a speedy conclusion by expressing a hope that he may have the opportunity of examining witnesses as to the previously good character of the prisoner at the bar. To the shout, however, of "Snooks's witnesses," which is heard reverberating through the pur. lieus and passages of the court, not a voice responds; upon which, the common serjeant delivers a charge to the jury somewhat after the following fashion :

son.

"Gentlemen, you have heard the case. The prosecutor sees the prisoner take the handkerchief, and the policeman finds it on his perPrisoner says, a boy gave it him to take care of. The question is, which of the two you believe? That is your business, not mine. Consider your verdict."

And without considering it, the foreman pronounces the word "guilty!" A previous conviction is now brought in judgment against Snooks, the fact of which, in conformity with a recent statute, is likewise submitted to the finding of the jury; after which, the culprit is called up for judgment, and thus addressed.

"Well, Snooks, I knew how it would be; I told you, when you were last at that bar, that we should meet again and here you are. You are a well-known thief. The sentence of the court is that you be sent to such place as her Majesty, by the advice of her privy-council, shall direct and appoint, for the term of fifteen years."

Upon which, Isaac Snooks, with an air of consummate impudence, exclaims," Thankee, your lordship: I wish you may sit there till I come back again !" turns shortly round upon his heel, whistles a lively air, and disappears.

So ends the case of "R. v. Snooks," in its result not quite so fraught with matter for self-congratulation as that of the conviction of Peter

Snubbins; still Tresham has heard his own voice in the first court of criminal judicature in the country, and that is always something.

The next morning, Friday, is, as it were, the gala-day of the Old Bailey and its frequenters. A notorious miscreant is to be tried, who has not only murdered the young woman to whom he was engaged to be married, but cut up her body into small pieces. For weeks, the newspapers have teemed with versions of the tragical occurrence, with particulars relative to the previous biography of the presumed assassin, to his demeanour subsequent to apprehension, to the quantities of porter and coffee which he has been supplied with on occasions of his being examined at the police-office, and to the appetite with which he has actually partaken of bread and cheese, although labouring under the suspicion of so foul a crime! By the oft-repeated detail of the like minutiæ, public curiosity has been raised to a most uneasy pitch, and reaches its climax on the Friday morning that is to decide the fate of the lion-villain of the day. Tresham has, with much difficulty, elbowed his way into the old court, and found it filled with barristers, many of whom never, but on such occasions as the present, assume the forensic costume at all. The Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas has come down on purpose to try the case; a royal duke is sitting at his left hand, and the bench is crowded with women of beauty and fashion. The sheriffs have issued peremptory orders that no more persons shall be admitted into the body of the court, and although every hole and corner of it is already crammed to suffocation, the knowledge of that fact cannot appease the clamours of the multitude without, which besieges every entrance to the Sessions House, while insolent door-keepers, bent upon making hay while the sun shines, are exacting half-a-sovereign a head for admission to the gallery. The Solicitor General conducts the prosecution, Counsellor P. the defence; and with each of those "big wigs' (to use a conventional term) two junior counsel are associated. When the prisoner is brought to the bar, and the clerk of the arraigns commences the reading of the indictment, so profound is the stillness that immediately pervades the court, that the falling of a pin would be heard-all eyes are fixed on the doomed malefactor-all ears opened to listen to the details of horror with which the case abounds.

We are not going to enter with that motley company into the proceedings which so much interest their curiosity, nor follow, step by step, the progressive development of circumstances which, taken together, satisfactorily bring home to the prisoner at the bar the perpetra,

tration of the foul deed with which he is charged. Suffice it to remark that Tresham becomes deeply engaged in marking the conduct of a trial so fraught with interest and instruction, and knows not which most to admire, the calm and dispassionate, yet argumentative mode of conducting the prosecution, adopted by the eminent counsel to whom it has been entrusted, the admirable and seemingly providential means by which minute points of circumstantial evidence are so linked together as to form a chain of irrefragable facts, the learning and acuteness of the distinguished judge who presides, or the ingenuity and eloquence of the great advocate who defends the prisoner.

Not, however, all the Demosthenic oratory of counsellor P. avails to rescue his client from conviction, although the jury, dazzled by his rhetoric, retire for two hours to consider their verdict. A death-like stillness reigns in court, as the clerk of the arraigns, when they return from their deliberations, calls over in succession the names of all the jurors, and then addressing himself to them, utters these words: "How say you, gentlemen of the jury,-is the prisoner at the bar guilty, or not guilty?"" Guilty," replies the foreman, in a low and subdued

voice.

From mouth to mouth, the verdict is rapidly repeated, and in an inconceivably brief space of time confused and fearful yells of applause proclaim the half savage, half virtuous burst of exultation with which its announcement has been welcomed by the assembled thousands without. The wretched culprit is called up for judgment in these words: "Prisoner at the bar, have you anything further to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon you according to law,”— and though he says nothing in reply, a livid paleness blanches his cheek, and a convulsive tremor seems to shake his frame. The judge condemns him to die the death of a felon, and to be buried within the precincts of the gaol. The murderer groans audibly as he is reconducted to his solitary cell; and the court, which for twelve hours has reeked with that dense mass of human beings, at length disgorges them into the gas-lighted streets, a probably neither sadder nor wiser assemblage than they had entered it in the morning.

It is Saturday, and the last day of the Central Criminal Court Session. Many of the leading counsel have taken their leave, and those that remain are hurrying on and expediting the few cases that remain for trial, with a view to conclude the business within the week. Tresham, who, in the course of his few days' attendance at the Old

Bailey, has picked up some practical knowledge of human nature, and a few valuable points of crown law and practice, remains at his post till the last, and is rewarded for his assiduity by an opportunity he enjoys this morning of appreciating the very scientific manner in which youthful disciples of the medical profession are in the habit of tendering evidence upon subjects connected with surgical art.

In the course of a case of assault resulting out of a quarrel between two draymen, an alumnus of Guy's Hospital makes his appearance in the witness-box, and upon being desired to state what has been the amount of personal damage sustained by the prosecutor when brought upon a shutter to the above-mentioned refugium, delivers himself as follows:

"An incised wound had been inflicted on the scalp, denuding the skull of its periosteal covering. The facial integuments were much tumefied, attended by two extensive ecchymoses surrounding each visual organ. A profuse flux of sanguineous fluid from the anterior nares. The incisors molares and cuspidati were driven from their alveolar connexions with the maxilla. The cuticular covering of the right temporal region of the lateral parietes of the head was abraded, involving the dermis and epidermis and rete mucosum with considerable sanguineous effusion in the integuments. The pinna of the right auricle was extensively lacerated, and a severe contused wound was inflicted on the frontal bone near the mesial line."

This elaborate account of a broken head, with its accompaniments of black eyes and bloody nose, positively takes bench, bar, and jury, by surprise.

Having followed Mr. Tresham through the course of his week's attendance at the central criminal court, we may not inappropriately attend him upon the occasion of his going to witness a mournful ceremony that may be said to wind up the business of its session. It is the execution of the convicted murderer, whose trial had excited so much popular interest and curiosity. Until a comparatively recent period, sentence of death was in cases of murder carried into effect within forty-eight hours after it had been passed, unless Sunday intervened, for which reason, Friday had become a conventional day for the trial of such grave offences; since if conviction followed, the culprit gained one day of grace. A most beneficial alteration of this severe law now admits of as much delay in the execution of murderers, as of any other criminals. The purposes of justice and humanity are alike advanced