d for the balance of his actions, order. Even where he
had deemed himself most oppressively made the martyr,--namely, in the
profession of mere political opinions,--Walter Ardworth had but followed
out into theory the restless, uncalculating impatience which had brought
adversity on his manhood, and, despite his constitutional cheerfulness,
shadowed his age with remorse. The death of the child committed to his
charge long (perhaps to the last) embittered his pride in the son whom,
without merit of his own, Providence had spared to a brighter fate. But
for the faults which had banished him his country, and the habits which
had seared his sense of duty, could that child have been so abandoned,
and have so perished?

It remains only to cast our glance over the punishments which befell
the sensual villany of Varney, the intellectual corruption of his fell
stepmother.

These two persons had made a very trade of those crimes to which man's
law awards death. They had said in their hearts that they would dare
the crime, but elude the penalty. By wonderful subtlety, craft, and
dexterity, which reduced guilt to a science, Providence seemed, as in
disdain of the vulgar instruments of common retribution, to concede to
them that which they had schemed for,--escape from the rope and gibbet.
Varney, saved from detection of his darker and more inexpiable crimes,
punished only for the least one, retained what had seemed to him the
master boon,--life. Safer still from the law, no mortal eye had plumbed
the profound night of Lucretia's awful guilt. Murderess of husband and
son, the blinded law bade her go unscathed, unsuspected. Direct, as from
heaven, without a cloud, fell the thunderbolt. Is the life they have
saved worth the prizing? Doth the chalice, unspilt on the ground, not
return to the hand? Is the sudden pang of the hangman more fearful than
the doom which they breathe and bear? Look, and judge.

Behold that dark ship on the waters! Its burdens are not of Ormus and
Tyre. No goodly merchandise doth it waft over the wave, no blessing
cleaves to its sails; freighted with terror and with guilt, with remorse
and despair, or, more ghastly than either, the sullen apathy of souls
hardened into stone, it carries the dregs and offal of the old world
to populate the new. On a bench in that ship sit side by side two men,
companions assigned to each other. Pale, abject, cowering, all the
bravery rent from his garb, all the gay insolence va