erself to Sir Morgan morning, noon, and night. The lad was her darling
child; indeed her other son, Tom, was then only an infant; and, as the
time drew near for his execution, she was like a mad thing. Never was
there such an agony of intercession. She wept, and prayed, and clung
about Sir Morgan's knees, and tore her hair: she rushed through all the
servants, ran up stairs, and found out lady Walladmor's room: lady
Walladmor was then ill, and sitting in her dressing-room: but she (God
love her!) was the kindest creature in the world: and she was easily
won to come and beg for the poor distracted mother. In the great hall
she kneeled to Sir Morgan: but all wouldn't do. I have heard Sir Morgan
say that his heart relented even at that time: and he had a sort of
misgiving upon him that night, as he looked back upon the frantic woman
from the head of the great stair-case, that all could not go right--and
that some evil would fall upon him for standing out against such
pleadings as he had just heard. Still his sense of duty, according to
the notion he then had of his duty, obliged him to persist: and besides
he told them both that, after what had been said to the council, it was
now impossible to make another application on the case--unless some new
circumstance in the boy's favor had come out. This was very unadvised
in Sir Morgan: for it confirmed the mother in her belief that it was
_his_ representations which had determined the fate of her son.

"Mr. Bertram, you have read Virgil: and in that fine episode of
Mezentius, which we all admire so much (and which, by the way, seems to
me finer even than the 'Shield of AEneas,' or with the critics' leave
than any thing in the sixth book), there are two grand hemistichs
applied to the case of Mezentius in the moment of his mounting his
horse to avenge the death of his gallant son who (you will remember)
had fallen a sacrifice to his filial piety:

"----mixtoque insania luctu,
Et furiis agitatus amor----"

"I remember them well," said Bertram "and Virgil has reflected rather a
weakening effect on them by afterwards applying the same words to a
case of inferior passion."

"He has so. But, to return to the case of Mrs. Godber, these fine words
of the Roman poet may convey some picture of her state of mind; it was
truly the state of Mezentius--'mixtoque insania luctu'--frenzy mixed
with grief; and the tenderness of maternal love, that love which is
taken in Scripture