n a new scene; as it is, what matters the cause
in which I receive my sentence? Nay, it is even better to suffer by the
first than to linger to the last. It is some consolation not again to
stand where I now stand; to go through the humbling solemnities which I
have this day endured; to see the smile of some, and retort the frown of
others; to wrestle with the anxiety of the heart, and to depend on the
caprice of the excited nerves. It is something to feel one part of the
drama of disgrace is over, and that I may wait unmolested in my den
until, for one time only, I am again the butt of the unthinking and the
monster of the crowd. My lord, I have now done! To you, whom the law
deems the prisoner's counsel,--to you, gentlemen of the jury, to whom it
has delegated his fate,--I leave the chances of my life."

The prisoner ceased; but the same heavy silence which, save when broken
by one solitary murmur, had lain over the court during his speech, still
continued even for several moments after that deep and firm voice had
died on the ear. So different had been the defence of the prisoner from
that which had been expected; so assuredly did the more hackneyed part
of the audience, even as he had proceeded, imagine that by some artful
turn he would at length wind into the usual courses of defence,--that
when his unfaltering and almost stern accents paused, men were
not prepared to feel that his speech was finished, and the pause
involuntarily jarred on them as untimeous and abrupt. At length, when
each of the audience slowly awoke to the conviction that the prisoner
had indeed concluded his harangue, a movement, eloquent of feelings
released from a suspense, which had been perhaps the more earnest and
the more blended with awe, from the boldness and novelty of the words on
which it hung, circled round the court. The jurors looked confusedly
at each other, but not one of them spoke, even by a whisper; their
feelings, which had been aroused by the speech of the prisoner, had not
from its shortness, its singularity, and the haughty impolicy of its
tone, been so far guided by its course as to settle into any state of
mind clearly favourable to him, or the reverse; so that each man waited
for his neighbour to speak first, in order that he might find, as it
were, in another, a kind of clew to the indistinct and excited feelings
which wanted utterance in himself.

The judge, who had been from the first attracted by the air and aspect