h a man can achieve is over himself, by which is meant those
unruly passions which are not convenient to the time and place. David
did not do this; he gave the reins to his wild heart, instead of curbing
it, and became a robber, and, alas! alas! he shed blood--under peculiar
circumstances, it is true, and without _malice prepense_--and for that
blood he eventually died, and justly; for it was that of the warden of a
prison from which he was escaping, and whom he slew with one blow of his
stalwart arm.

Tamerlane and Haggart! Haggart and Tamerlane! Both these men were
robbers, and of low birth, yet one perished on an ignoble scaffold, and
the other died emperor of the world. Is this justice? The ends of the
two men were widely dissimilar--yet what is the intrinsic difference
between them? Very great, indeed; the one acted according to his lights
and his country, not so the other. Tamerlane was a heathen, and acted
according to his lights; he was a robber where all around were robbers,
but he became the avenger of God--God's scourge on unjust kings, on the
cruel Bajazet, who had plucked out his own brothers' eyes; he became to a
certain extent the purifier of the East, its regenerator; his equal never
was before, nor has it since been seen. Here the wild heart was
profitably employed, the wild strength, the teeming brain. Onward, Lame
one! Onward, Tamur--lank! Haggart. . . .

But peace to thee, poor David! why should a mortal worm be sitting in
judgment over thee? The Mighty and Just One has already judged thee, and
perhaps above thou hast received pardon for thy crimes, which could not
be pardoned here below; and now that thy feverish existence has closed,
and thy once active form become inanimate dust, thy very memory all but
forgotten, I will say a few words about thee, a few words soon also to be
forgotten. Thou wast the most extraordinary robber that ever lived
within the belt of Britain; Scotland rang with thy exploits, and England,
too, north of the Humber; strange deeds also didst thou achieve when,
fleeing from justice, thou didst find thyself in the Sister Isle; busy
wast thou there in town and on curragh, at fair and race-course, and also
in the solitary place. Ireland thought thee her child, for who spoke her
brogue better than thyself?--she felt proud of thee, and said, "Sure,
O'Hanlon is come again." What might not have been thy fate in the far
west in America, whither thou hadst turned thine