Mr. Garrow's countenance stands him in no stead: it is long and unmarked; eye-brows or eye-lashes he has none; and his eye is peculiarly leaden and unexpressive: he seems aware of this, and never affects to pierce a witness with its lightnings, as Sir Vicary Gibbs does, with a better right to do so; but he as often looks at the jury or the cieling, when he asks a witness a question, as at the witness himself. This sometimes leads the latter to believe that the question is not addressed to him, and puts a poor devil off his guard as soon as any thing. Sir Vicary Gibbs himself has often recourse to this practice.

Mr. Alley, in what Mrs. Clarke's book (for one truth) called "his gingerbread speech," on Colonel Wardle's indictment of that lady and her upholsterers for a conspiracy, hoped, not very politely in Mr. Garrow's presence, that he should steer clear of the Garrownian quicksands: if by these he meant the vices, which I have feebly attempted to point out in that advocate's practice, I offer up the same wish on behalf of the whole bar.

The great dearth of talent within the bar of the Court of King's Bench, which the secession of Lord Erskine has occasioned, has brought into the third degree of practice in this Court, for want of a better, Mr. Park. This advocate is very well acquainted with the common routine of business, and is the author of the Treatise on the Law of Insurance. He is a painful and injudicious speaker; he presses every point alike, weak or strong, and upon all occasions says all he has gotten to say; he is never eloquent, except when he can lash himself into tears. He sadly fails in humour; and, as I have before hinted, falls short of Mr. Garrow in those qualifications which he has condescended to imitate from that powerful cross-examiner, a warning, I hope, to all young barristers to be cautious how they copy what they had better not possess. Mr. Park is, however, a gentlemanlike man, and is particularly courteous in his behaviour to the Bench.

If Mr. Park be eloquent only in tears, Mr. Topping, the next silk gown at this bar, is eloquent only in anger. He must be irritated before he become animated. He has lately given great satisfaction to the whole bar, by the quotation from Shakspeare, with which he set down the Attorney-General, and he has since quoted the same poet with success, upon the strength of it. Mr. Topping is understood to be a gentleman of considerable private property, for which I am very glad, since I do not think he will ever acquire a fortune at the bar.

Mr. Jekyll, Mr. Jervis, and Mr. Clarke, (he who so ably "bettered the instructions" of his great original, the AttorneyGeneral, in the criminal information, at the last Lincoln assizes, against Mr. Drakard for the libel in the Stamford News, on mi

litary flogging), the remaining three counsel within the bar of this Court, have so little London practice, that I am unable to form a judgment of their merits: but, upon some occasions, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Dauncey, of the Court of Ex. chequer, have come within this bar with better promise than they. The first of these gentlemen is Chief Justice of Chester, and the last two are eminent upon their respective circuits. I heard Mr. Dallas defend Alexander Davison and Valentine Jones with con. siderable pleasure: his manner is accomplished, his language ele. gant, and his eloquence, though heavy, in the best taste: he is a learned and an able advocate.

Behind the bar of the Court of King's Bench, the talent seems various and promising. The lawyers and scholars are numerous and acute: the men of eloquence are rarer. Mr. Clifford's defence of Messrs. Hart and White, for libel, was a most masterly and spirited piece of history and argument; and Mr. Brougham has very recently brought himself into great and deserved estima. tion, by his judicious and eloquent defence of Messrs. IIunt, and by his still more elaborate and beautiful one of Mr. Drakard, from a similar charge. The sanguine hail in him a second Erskine. Mr. Adolphus is fluent as an inexhaustible fountain; but his uninterrupted stream of words washes down his arguments in its course, and leaves our minds, at the end of his harangue, one smooth, blank sand. If I be not greatly mistaken, there is much more talent at, or coming to, the bar, and yet unknown to fame, than has ever coetaneously adorned the profession; and we may, therefore, yet hope, that the Court of King's Bench shall one day be again as strong as the Court of Common Pleas, to which it is at present decidedly inferior, and must be so as long as we have only the names of Gibbs and Garrow to oppose to those of Cockell, Shepherd, Williams, and Best. To these, and to the other eminent serjeants, I must refrain from introducing you till my next letter, having room in this only to tell you that I am,

My dear Friend, your's, &c.

ART. XII.-On the Inconveniences resulting from being hanged,

SIR,

TO THE EDITOR OF THE REFLECTOR.

I am one of those unhappy persons whose misfortunes, it seems, do not entitle them to the benefit of pure pity. All that is bestowed upon me of that kindest alleviator of human miseries, comes dashed with a double portion of contempt. My griefs have nothing in them that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction in truth of the deepest grain. The heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw, as long as that fatal mark

I

Why was I ever born? Why was innocence in my person suffered to be branded with a stain which was appointed only for the blackest guilt? What had I done, or my parents, that a disgrace of mine should involve a whole posterity in infamy? am almost tempted to believe, that, in some pre-existent state, crimes to which this sublunary life of mine hath been as much a stranger as the babe that is newly born into it, have drawn down upon me this vengeance, so disproportionate to my actions on this globe.

My brain sickens, and my bosom labours to be delivered of the weight that presses upon it, yet my conscious pen shrinks from the avowal. But out it must

O, Mr. Reflector! guess at the wretch's misery who now writes this to you, when, with tears and burning blushes, he is obliged to confess, that he has been

HANGED

Methinks I hear an involuntary exclamation burst from you, as your imagination presents to you fearful images of your correspondent unknown,-hanged!

Fear not, Mr. Editor. No disembodied spirit has the honour of addressing you. I am flesh and blood, an unfortunate system of bones, muscles, sinews, arteries, like yourself.

Then, I presume, you mean to be pleasant-That expression of yours, Mr. Correspondent, must be taken somehow in a metaphorical sense

In the plainest sense, without trope or figure-Yes, Mr. Editor! this neck of mine has felt the fatal noose,-these hands have tremblingly held up the corroborative prayer-book,-these lips have sucked the moisture of the last consolatory orange,

this tongue has chaunted the doleful cantata which no performer was ever called upon to repeat,—this face has had the veiling night, cap drawn over it

But for no crime of mine.-Far be it from me to arraign the justice of my country, which, though tardy, did at length recognise my innocence. It is not for me to reflect upon judge or jury, now that eleven years have elapsed since the erroneous.sentence was pronounced. Men will always be fallible, and perhaps circumstances did appear at the time a little strong

Suffice it to say, that after hanging four minutes, (as the spec tators were pleased to compute it, a man that is being strangled, I know from experience, has altogether a different measure of time from his friends who are breathing leisurely about him,-I suppose the minutes lengthen as time approaches eternity, in the same manner as the miles get longer as you travel northward-), after hanging four minutes, according to the best calculation of the bystanders, a reprieve came, and I was CUT DOWN———

Really I am ashamed of deforming your pages with these technical phrases if I knew how to express my meaning

shorter

But to proceed.-My first care after I had been brought to myself by the usual methods, (those methods that are so interesting to the operator and his assistants, who are pretty numerous on such occasions, but which no patient was ever desirous of undergoing a second time for the benefit of science), my first care was to provide myself with an enormous stock or cravat to hide the place you understand me;-my next care was to procure a residence as distant as possible from that part of the country where I had suffered. For that reason I chose the metropolis, as the place where wounded honour (I had been told) could lurk with the least danger of exciting enquiry, and stigmatised innocence had the best chance of hiding her disgrace in a crowd. I sought out a new circle of acquaintance, and my circumstances happily enabling me to pursue my fancy in that respect, I endea voured, by mingling in all the pleasures which the town affords, to efface the memory of what I had undergone.

But alas! such is the portentous and all-pervading chain of connection which links together the head and members of this great community, my scheme of lying perdu was defeated almost at the outset. A countryman of mine, whom a foolish law-suit had brought to town, by chance met me, and the secret was soon blazoned about.

In a short time, I found myself deserted by most of those who ʼnad been my intimate friends. Not that any guilt was supposed to attach to my character. My officious countryman, to do him justice, had been candid enough to explain my perfect innocence.

But,

But, somehow or other, there is a want of strong virtue in man. kind. We have plenty of the softer instincts, but the heroic character is gone. How else can I account for it, that of all my numerous acquaintance, among whom I had the honour of ranking sundry persons of education, talents, and worth, scarcely here and there one or two could be found, who had the courage to associate with a man that had been hanged.

Those few who did not desert me altogether, were persons of strong but coarse minds; and from the absence of all delicacy in them I suffered almost as much as from the superabundance of a false species of it in the others. Those who stuck by me were the jokers, who thought themselves entitled by the fidelity which they had shewn towards me to use me with what familiarity they pleased. Many and unfeeling are the jests that I have suffered from these rude (because faithful) Achateses. As they past me in the streets, one would nod significantly to his companion and say, pointing to me, Smoke his crayat, and ask me if I had got a wen, that I was so solicitous to cover my neck. Another would enquire, What news from *** Assizes? (which you may guess, Mr. Editor, was the scene of my shame), and whether the Sessions was like to prove a maiden one? A third would offer to ensure me from drowning. A fourth would teaze me with enquiries how I felt when I was swinging, whether I had not something like a blue flame dancing before my eyes? A fifth took a fancy never to call me any thing but Lazarus. And an eminent bookseller and publisher,---who, in his zeal to present the public with new facts, had he lived in those days, I am confident, would not have scrupled waiting upon the person himself last mentioned, at the most critical period of his existence, to solicit a few facts relative to resuscitation,---had the modesty to offer me guineas per sheet, if I would write, in his Magazine, a physiological account of my feelings upon coming to myself.

But these were evils which a moderate fortitude might have enabled me to struggle with. Alas! Mr. Editor, the women,whose good graces I had always most assiduously cultivated, from whose softer minds I had hoped a more delicate and generous sympathy than I found in the men,the women began to shun me this was the unkindest blow of all.

--

But is it to be wondered at? How couldst thou imagine, wretchedest of beings, that that tender creature Seraphina would fling her pretty arms about that neck which previous circumstances had rendered infamous ? That she would put up with the refuse of the rope, the leavings of the cord? Or that any analogy could subsist between the knot which binds true lovers, and the knot which ties malefactors?

I can forgive that pert baggage Flirtilla, who, when I compli

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