teously to the intimation, and drawing a paper
from his pocket, spoke, after a few preliminary words of course, nearly
as follows:--

"I hold in my hand a very acute and eloquent address prepared for me by
one of the able and zealous gentlemen who appears to-day as my counsel,
and which, but for the iniquitous law which prohibits the advocate of a
presumed felon, but possibly quite innocent person, from addressing the
jury, upon whose verdict his client's fate depends, would no doubt have
formed the subject-matter of an appeal to you not to yield credence to
the apparently irrefragable testimony arrayed against me. The substance
of this defence you must have gathered from the tenor of the
cross-examinations; but so little effect did it produce, I saw, in that
form, however ably done, and so satisfied am I that though it were
rendered with an angel's eloquence, it would prove utterly impotent to
shake the strong conclusions of my guilt, which you, short-sighted,
fallible mortals--short-sighted and fallible _because_ mortal!--I mean no
disrespect--must have drawn from the body of evidence you have heard,
that I will not weary you or myself by reading it. I will only observe
that it points especially to the _over_-roof, so to speak, arrayed
against me--to the folly of supposing that an intentional murderer would
ostentatiously persist in administering the fatal potion to the victim
with his own hands, carefully excluding all others from a chance of
incurring suspicion. There are other points, but this is by far the most
powerful one; and as I cannot believe _that_ will induce you to return a
verdict rescuing me from what the foolish world, judging from
appearances, will call a shameful death, but which I, knowing my own
heart, feel to be sanctified by the highest motives which can influence
man--it would be merely waste of time to repeat them. From the first
moment, gentlemen, that this accusation was preferred against me, I felt
that I had done with this world; and, young as I am, but for one beloved
being whose presence lighted up and irradiated this else cold and barren
earth, I should, with little reluctance, have accepted this gift of an
apparently severe, but perhaps merciful fate. This life, gentlemen," he
continued after a short pause, "it has been well said, is but a battle
and a march. I have been struck down early in the combat; but of what
moment is that, if it be found by Him who witnesses the world-unnoticed