Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine | Page 7

visited with undue severity, whilst offences of a deeper dye escape unpunished, or, worse still, are washed away in gold. A poor man had stolen from a baker's shop a loaf of bread. _The clerk of the arraigns_, as I believe he is called, involved this simple charge in many words, and took much time to state it but when he had finished his oration, I could discover nothing more or less than the bare fact. A few minutes before the appearance of the delinquent, I remarked a great bustle in the neighbourhood of the young barrister already spoken of. A stout fresh-coloured man had taken a seat behind him with two thinner men, his companions, and they were all in earnest conversation. The stout man was the prosecutor--his companions were his witnesses--and the youthful counsellor was, on this occasion, retained against the prisoner. I must confess that, for the moment, I had a fiendish delight in finding the legal gentleman in his present position. "It well becomes the man," thought I, "through whose instrumentality that monster has been set free, to fall with all his weight of eloquence and legal subtlety upon this poor criminal." If he smiled before, he was in earnest now. He frowned, and closed his lips with much solemnity, and every look bespoke the importance of the interests committed to his charge.--A beggar!--and to steal a loaf of bread! Ay, ay! society must be protected--our houses and our homes must be defended. Anarchy must be strangled in its birth. Such thoughts as these I read upon the brow of youthful wisdom. Ever and anon, a good point in the case struck forcibly the lusty prosecutor, who communicated it forthwith to his adviser. He listened most attentively, and shook his head, as who should say "Leave that to me--we have him on the hip." The witnesses grew busy in comparing notes, and nothing now was wanting but the great offender--the fly who must be crushed upon the wheel--and he appeared. Reader, you have seen many such. You have not lived in the crowded thoroughfares of an overgrown city, where every grade of poverty and wealth, of vice and virtue, meet the eye, mingling as they pass along--where splendid royalty is carried quicker than the clouds adown the road which palsied hunger scarce can cross for lack of strength--where lovely forms, and faces pure as angels' in their innocent expression, are met and tainted on the path by unwomanly immodesty and bare licentiousness--amongst such common sights you have not dwelt, and not observed some face pale and wasted from disease, and want, and sorrow, not one, but all, and all uniting to assail the weakly citadel of flesh, and to reduce it to the earth from which it sprung. Such a countenance was here--forlorn--emaciated--careworn--every vestige of human joy long since removed from it, and every indication of real misery too deeply marked to admit a thought of simulation or pretence. The eye of the man was vacant. He obeyed the turnkey listlessly, when that functionary, with a patronizing air, directed him to the situation in the dock in which he was required to stand, and did not raise his head to look around him. A sadder picture of the subdued, crushed heart, had never been. Punishment! alack, what punishment could be inflicted now on him, who, in the school of suffering, had grown insensible to torture? Notwithstanding his rags, and the prejudice arising from his degraded condition, there was something in his look and movements which struck me, and secured my pity. He was very ill, and had not been placed many minutes before the judge, when he tottered and grew faint. The turnkey assisted the poor fellow to a chair, and placed in his hands, with a rough but natural kindness, which I shall not easily forget, a bunch of sweet-smelling marjoram. The acknowledgement which the miserable creature attempted to make for the seasonable aid, convinced me that he was something better than he seemed. A shy and half-formed bow--the impulse of a heart and mind once cultivated, though covered now with weeds and noxious growths--redeemed him from the common herd of thieves. In the calendar his age was stated to be thirty-five. Double it, and that face will warrant you in your belief. Desirous as I was to know the circumstances which had led the man to the commission of his offence, it was not without intense satisfaction that I heard him, at the commencement of the proceedings, in his thin tremulous voice, plead guilty to the charge. There was such rage painted on the broad face of the prosecutor, such disappointment written in the thinner visage of the counsellor, such indignation and astonishment in those of the witnesses, that you might have supposed those