636 The Little- Go. 



" First on to-morrow's paper," muttered M between his teeth, 



ere the last echoes of the irrestrainable mirth-loving, mad-spirited 

 D'Aubeny had died away on the last flight. " So, the hour of exe- 

 cution is at length arrived, and the culprit about to be dragged forth 

 to suffer. Shall I endure it this agony of presentiment this accu- 

 mulation of suspense, which, like the snow on the isolated peak, has 

 been growing and increasing day by day, till its weight is found suf- 

 ficient to drag it down toppling over all crushing, devastating, 

 slaughtering ? I have dwelt God, that knovvest thou ! dwelt upon 

 the dread of this iniquitous ordeal till its terrors have become magni- 

 fied upon my disturbed brain, and finally extinguished what remained 

 of the little energy I had mustered to undergo this hell of the soul's 

 purgatory, this burning fiery furnance. Can I help the lot that hath 

 fallen to my nature ? Can I blunt the too sensitive, the almost wo- 

 man-like soul with which my mother bare me ? I have tried ; but 

 have I succeeded ? Ye can surely testify to that, ye cold drops that 

 bulge out upon this fevered brow ; and what is it doth make my 

 limbs so to tremble and my heart to quake ? Want of confidence in 

 my own powers? No ; for I feel that I am equal, perhaps moie than 

 equal, in intellect, and in application superior, to many I could name. 

 Put me to the proof. That proof shall be honourable competition in 

 what you will ; and with the world for my judge, and public opinion 

 for my verdict, I shall not flinch from the essay. But, delegate the 

 power of pronouncing sentence, the fiat of doom which shall bless or 

 ruin, blast or save, to a few from out the many ; let them give the 

 standard, let them make the law, and let them apply these according 

 to the dicta of their own caprice, their ignorance, their insufficiency, and 

 then behold the result! Is there justice in these things? Is it rational 

 that man, * the puppet of the thousand thousand wires', should, like the 

 rude ore from out the obscure mine, be scorched and burned in the 

 combustion of an assaying furnace, and the mineral of his spirit be 

 severed by main force from the dross of his body on which it depends, 

 byjthe process of a destructive mordacious menstruum ? What, if my 

 sense of shame be more acute than that of other men ? What, if the 

 iron hand of dishonour gripe with a more deadly, a more corroding 

 gripe upon this fragile and attenuated frame ? Should I not in jus- 

 tice, in right, in natural right, be the one of all others qualified to 

 plead exemption from the trial that must, yes, must expose me to the 

 attack, the conflict, the overthrow, and the disgrace ? I have not 

 nerve ; I know it ; feel it ! I lack it at this very moment, and to- 

 morrow ! where shall I seek it then ? Have I worn my substance 

 away, impaired the little strength in this weakly body (weakly from 

 the cradle upwards), in the gnawing, yearning, deathless, undiminish- 

 ing endeavour towards the light from that lamp whose flame waxeth 

 never dim, whose wick consumeth not away ? For this, for this have 

 I not * outwatched the Bear,' and night after night unspheredjthe 

 solemn spirit of Plato and the mystic worlds as each rolled by in the 

 outspread pageant of harmonious triumph, velut undo, impellitur undd 

 for this have I not drunk thrice deep of the immortal well-spring 

 at the inexhaustible fount of philosophy, and trod the then first trod- 

 den tracks of nature in her wildest, her most solitary, inaccessible 



