as a felon--ungrateful, foolish, fiendish--a creature of dishonest
passions, and mad and merciless in their exercise!

The tide of thought which bore to his consciousness all these harrowing
convictions, was sudden as the wing of the lightning, and nearly
shattered, in that single instant, the towering manhood whose high
reachings had attracted it. But the pride consequent to his education,
and the society in which he had lived, came to his relief; and, after
the first dreadful agony of soul, he again stood erect, and listened,
seemingly unmoved, to the defences set up by his counsel.

But how idle, even to his mind, desirous as he must have been of every
species of defence, were all the vainglorious mouthings of the
pettifogger! He soon discovered that the ambition of Pippin chiefly
consisted in the utterance of his speech. He saw, too, in a little
while, that the nonsense of the lawyer had not even the solitary
merit--if such it be--of being extemporaneous; and in the slow and
monotonous delivery of a long string of stale truisms, not bearing any
analogy to the case in hand, he perceived the dull elaborations of the
closet.

But such was not the estimate of the lawyer himself. He knew what he was
about; and having satisfied himself that the case was utterly hopeless,
he was only solicitous that the people should see that he could still
make a speech. He well knew that his auditory, perfectly assured with
himself of the hopelessness of the defence, would give him the credit of
having made the most of his materials, and this was all he wanted. In
the course of his exhortations, however, he was unfortunate enough to
make an admission for his client which was, of itself, fatal; and his
argument thence became unnecessary. He admitted that the circumstances
sufficiently established the charge of killing, but proceeded, however,
to certain liberal assumptions, without any ground whatever, of
provocation on the part of Forrester, which made his murder only matter
of self-defence on the side of the accused, whose crime therefore became
justifiable: but Ralph, who had for some time been listening with
manifest impatience to sundry other misrepresentations, not equally evil
with this, but almost equally annoying, now rose and interrupted him;
and, though the proceeding was something informal, proceeded to correct
the statement.

"No one, may it please your honor, and you, gentlemen, now presiding
over my fate, can be more c