rence to our judicial proceedings. The Law
Courts are the bulwark of our liberties, our life, and our property.
Our welfare would be jeopardized, indeed, if you dismiss what takes
place in them as 'familiar jargon.'

"The question is whether the charge has been so reasonably brought
home to the prisoner as to lead you in your consciences to believe
that he is guilty. If so, it is your duty to God, your duty to
society, and your duty to yourselves, to say so."

Such was the summing up that was arraigned by the humanitarian
partisans of the prisoner. If a Judge may not deal with the fallacies
of a defence by placing before the jury the true trend of the
evidence, what other business has he on the Bench? And it was for thus
clearly defining the issue that some one suggested a petition for a
reprieve, on the ground that the evidence was _purely circumstantial_,
and that my "summing up was against _the weight of the evidence_."
Truly a strange thing that circumstances by themselves shall have no
weight.

But there was another strange incident in this remarkable trial: _the
jury thanked me for the pains I had taken in the case_. I told them I
looked for no thanks, but was grateful, nevertheless.

I have learnt that the jury, on retiring, deposited every one on a
slip of paper the word "Guilty" without any previous consultation--a
sufficient indication of their opinion of the _weight_ of the
evidence.

This was the last case of any importance which I tried on circuit, and
if any trial could show the value of circumstantial evidence, it was
this one. It left the identity of the prisoner and the conclusion of
fact demonstrable almost to mathematical certainty.

A supposed eye-witness might have said: "I saw him write the paper,
and I saw him administer the poison." It would not have added to the
weight of the evidence. The witness might have lied.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

A NIGHT AT NOTTINGHAM.

Ever since the establishment of itinerant justices, now considerably
over seven hundred years, going circuit has been an interesting and
important ceremony, attended with great pomp and circumstance. I had
intended to give a sketch of my own drawing of this great function,
but an esteemed friend, who is a lover of the picturesque, has sent me
an interesting description of one of my own itineraries, and I insert
it with the more pleasure because I could not describe things from
his point of view, and even if I could, might lay