sable on the part of the soldiers, left on his mind
a deep and burning impression of revenge. Justice (as they termed it)
was demanded by strong bodies of the people upon the soldiers; but the
administration, deeming it politic rather to awe than to conciliate, so
far from censuring the military, approved their exertions.

From that time Wolfe appears to have resolved upon the execution of a
design which he had long imperfectly and confusedly meditated.

This was no less a crime (and to him did conscientiously seem no less
a virtue) than to seize a favourable opportunity for assassinating the
most prominent member of the administration, and the one who, above all
the rest, was the most odious to the disaffected. It must be urged,
in extenuation of the atrocity of this design, that a man perpetually
brooding over one scheme, which to him has become the very sustenance of
existence, and which scheme, perpetually frustrated, grows desperate by
disappointment, acquires a heat of morbid and oblique enthusiasm, which
may be not unreasonably termed insanity; and that, at the very time
Wolfe reconciled it to his conscience to commit the murder of his fellow
creature, he would have moved out of his path for a worm. Assassination,
indeed, seemed to him justice; and a felon's execution the glory of
martyrdom. And yet, O Fanatic, thou didst anathematize the Duellist as
the Man of blood: what is the Assassin?

CHAPTER LXXXI.

And thou that, silent at my knee,
Dost lift to mine thy soft, dark, earnest eyes,
Filled with the love of childhood, which I see
Pure through its depths,--a thing without disguise.
Thou that hast breathed in slumber on my breast,
When I have checked its throbs to give thee rest,
Mine own, whose young thoughts fresh before me rise,
Is it not much that I may guide thy prayer,
And circle thy young soul with free and healthful air?--HEMANS.

The events we have recorded, from the time of Clarence's visit to
Mordaunt to the death of Lord Ulswater, took place within little more
than a week. We have now to pass in silence over several weeks; and
as it was the commencement of autumn when we introduced Clarence and
Mordaunt to our reader, so it is the first opening of winter in which we
will resume the thread of our narration.

Mordaunt had removed to London; and, although he had not yet taken
any share in public business, he was only watching the opportunity to
commence a career the br