a day. Such a crime cannot, therefore, be committed under the resistless dominion of sudden infirmity; it must be deliberately, wilfully, and wickedly committed.-The defendant could not possibly have incurred the guilt of this adultery, without often passing through his mind (for he had the education and principles of a gentleman)-the very topics I have been insisting upon before you for his condemnation. Instead of being suddenly impelled towards mischief, without leisure for such reflexions, he had innumerable difficulties and obstacles to contend with.-He could not but hear, in the first refusals of this unhappy lady, every thing to awaken conscience, and even to excite horror.-In the arguments he must have employed to seduce her from her duty, he could not but recollect, and wilfully trample upon his own. He was a year engaged in the pursuit-he resorted repeatedly to his shameful purpose, and advanced to it at such intervals of time and distance, as entitle me to say, that he determined in cold blood to enjoy a future and momentary gratification, at the expense of every principle of honour which is held sacred amongst gentlemen, even where no laws interpose their obligations or restraints.' p. 183-186.

The jury gave 7000l. damages, supposed to be equal to the defendant's whole property.

The other speech which we proceed to notice is of the same exalted character. It was delivered in behalf of a gentleman of high family, who having been attached to a young lady of equal rank, was prevented from marrying her by the interested views of her relations, who preferred an alliance with one of the greatest houses in the kingdom. The marriage was an unhappy one: the original attachment seems never to have been replaced by any other-it revived after an interval of misery and separation -and produced the elopement which occasioned the present action. It is quite impossible, we think, for human ingenuity. and eloquence to have turned those circumstances to better account than Mr Erskine's did in this exquisite speech.

The counsel for the plaintiff having dwelt on the loss of domestic happiness occasioned by the seduction, Mr Erskine meets him here at once.

In order, therefore, to examine this matter (and I shall support every syllable that I utter, with the most precise and uncontrovertible proofs); I will begin with drawing up the curtains of this blessed marriage-bed, whose joys are supposed to have been nipped in the bud, by the defendant's adulterous seduction. Nothing, certainly, is more delightful to the human fancy, than the possession of a beautiful woman in the prime of health, and youthful passion It is, beyond all doubt, the highest enjoyment which God in his benevolence, and for the wisest purposes, has bestowed upon his own image: I reverence, as I ought, that mysterious union of

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mind

mind and body, which, while it continues our species, is the source of all our affections; which builds up and dignifies the condition of human life; which binds the husband to the wife, by ties more indissoluble than laws can possibly create; and which, by the reciprocal endearments arising from a mutual passion, a mutual interest, and a mutual honour, lays the foundation of that parental affection which dies in the brutes with the necessities of nature, but which reflects back again upon the human parents, the unspeakable sympathies of their offspring, and all the sweet, delightful relations of social existence.--While the curtains, therefore, are yet closed upon this bridal scene, your imaginations will naturally represent to you this charming woman, endeavouring to conceal sensations which modesty forbids the sex, however enamoured, too openly to reveal; wishing, beyond adequate expression, what she must not even attempt to express; and seemingly resisting what she burns to enjoy. Alas, Gentlemen! you must now prepare to see in the room of this a scene of horror, and of sorrow; you must prepare to see a noble lady, whose birth surely required no further illustration; who had been courted to marriage before she ever heard even her husband's name; and whose affections were irretrievably bestowed upon, and pledged to my honourable and unfortunate client; you must behold her given up to the plaintiff by the infatuation of parents, and stretched upon this bridal bed as upon a rack ;---torn from the arms of a beloved and impassioned youth, himself of noble birth, only to secure the honours of a higher title; a legal victim on the altar of heraldry!' pp. 201, 202, 203.

He then goes into the particular facts which are to support this description, and works them up to a purpose bold indeedbut not rash ;-he contrives to make the parties change places, and represents the seducer as the injured person.

To all this it will be said by the plaintiff's counsel (as it has indeed been hinted already), that disgust and alienation from her husband could not but be expected; but that it arose from her affection for Mr B.-Be it so, gentlemen.-I readily admit, that if Mr B.'s acquaintance with the lady had commenced subsequent to the marriage, the argument would be irresistible, and the criminal conclusion against him unanswerable: But has Mr H. a right to instruct his counsel to charge my honourable client with seduction when he himself was the SEDUCER? My learned friend deprecates the power of what he terms my pathetic eloquence: Alas, gentlemen! if I sessed it, the occasion forbids its exertion, because, Mr B. has only to defend himself, and cannot demand damages from Mr H. for depriving him of what was his by a title superior to any law which man has a moral right to make. Mr H. was NEVER MARRIED. God and nature forbid the banns of such a marriage.-If, therefore, Mr B. this day could have, by me, addressed to you his wrongs in the character of a plaintiff demanding reparation, what damages might I not

have asked for him-and, without the aid of this imputed eloquence, what damages might I not have expected?

I would have brought before you a noble youth, who had fixed his affections upon one of the most beautiful of her sex, and who enjoyed hers in return.-I would have shown you their suitable condition;-I would have painted the expectation of an honourable union, and would have concluded by showing her to you in the arms of another, by the legal prostitution of parental choice in the teeth of affection with child by a rival, and only reclaimed at last, after so cruel and so afflicting a divorce, with her freshest charms despoiled, and her very morals in a manner impeached, by asserting the purity and virtue of her original and spotless choice.-Good God! imagine my client to be PLAINTIFF, and what damages are you not prepared to give him? and yet he is here as DEFENDANT, and damages are demanded against HIM.-Oh, monstrous conclusion!' p. 204, 205.

After this, he says he considers his client as perfectly safe in the hands of the jury; and may spare a moment to render his cause beneficial to the public. It might be supposed that he is in reality going to lecture upon some general topics arising out of the cause; not for the sake of really edifying his audience, but for relieving their attention, and displaying Rhetoric.- No such thing-these are arts of lesser rhetoricians. He enlarges on such points indeed, and persuades his hearers that he is instructing them, and stepping aside for their improvement; but after thus getting the more complete and unsuspecting possession of them, he speedily, but not abruptly, turns all he has been saying to the account of his cause, by a transition perfectly natural, and indicating the purpose for which the supposed digression was indulged in.

It involves in it an awful lesson; and more instructive lessons are taught in courts of justice than the church is able to inculcate.-Morals come in the cold abstract from pulpits; but men smart under them practically when we lawyers are the preachers. Let the aristocracy of England, which trembles so much for itself, take heed to its own security: let the nobles of England, if they mean to preserve that preeminence which, in some shape or other, must exist in every social community, take care to support it by aiming at that which is creative, and alone creative, of real superiority. Instead of matching themselves to supply wealth, to be again idly squandered in debauching excesses, or to round the quarters of a family shield; instead of continuing their names and honours in cold and alienated embraces, amidst the enervating rounds of shallow dissipation, let them live as their fathers of old lived before them ;-let them marry as affection and prudence lead the way; and in the ardours of mutual love, and in the simplicities of rural life, let them lay the foundation of a vigorous race of men, firm in their bodies, and moral from early habits; and instead of wasting their fortunes and their strength in the tasteless circles of debauchery, let them

light up their magnificent and hospitable halls to the gentry and peasantry of the country, extending the consolations of wealth and influence to the poor.-Let them but do this,--and instead of those dangerous and distracted divisions between the different ranks of life, and those jealousies of the multitude so often blindly painted as big with destruction; we should see our country as one large and harmonious family,-which can never be accomplished amidst vice and corruption, by wars or treaties, by informations ex officio for libels, or by any of the tricks and artifices of the state :--would to God this system had been followed in the instance before us!-Surely the noble house of F. needed no further illustration; nor the still nobler house of H., with blood enough to have inoculated half the kingdom. p. 205-207.

The speech concludes with such a representation of the defender's circumstances as might conduce to the same end—the diminution of damages. Whether he was successful or not, the reader may judge, when he learns, that only 500l. were given ;barely enough to cover an application for a divorce bill.

We shall now close this article, which we trust will not be thought tedious, however extended in length, by such as have read the extracts, which give it the whole value it possesses. It is too late to indulge in general reflexions upon a professional career, about which the world has long since made up its mind. Nothing now remains but to admire its lustre, and to lament that it has been terminated,—not indeed by events which took Mr Erskine from a new sphere, to which the habits of his previous life were little adapted, and in which he could have experienced no great comfort, however necessary for his fame and for the honour of the profession his elevation to it might have been. Nor yet do we mourn because the prospect of his return to the same sphere has been overcast. But we may be allowed to express a sincere, though unavailing regret, that the strange and humiliating events which have recently inflicted such injuries on the country, should have deprived it of the services which Lord Erskine might still render, in returning to the courts of common law, and filling a high magisterial station in those scenes where his life was spent.

In concluding these reflexions, we cannot avoid recurring to the topic with which our former article on the same subject was wound up. To hold up Lord Erskine's skill and eloquence to the younger members of the profession for their models, might be in most instances unavailing. But every one, however slenderly gifted, may follow him close in the path of pure honour and unsullied integrity;-above all-of high and unbending independence, incapable of being seduced or awed, either by the

political

political or judicial influence of the times. Had he not been the first in this path-had his powers been exerted in obsequiousness to the government, or in time-serving or timid submission to the courts of justice, we, at least, should not have stept aside to attempt the task of praising his eloquence. He might have spoken with the tongue of an angel, if his cause had not been that of the people-and conducted with dauntless resistance to power-unceasing enmity to every kind of oppression, by whomsoever attempted. Covered over with honours (as they are called) satiated with wealth-bepraised in every court and assembly within the realm-one thing he would still have found beyond the reach either of his talents or his power:-the humble, but honest, and therefore not worthless, tribute of praise which we have given, not to the orator, but to the friend of the people.

ART. V. Select Letters of Tippoo Sultan; arranged and translated by Colonel WILLIAM KIRKPATRICK. With Notes and Observations, and an Appeudix, containing several original Documents never before published. 4to. London. 1811.

THE

'HE letters of a real sultan may fairly be reckoned among the curiosities of literature; and will be eagerly glanced at, in a review, by many who would have shrunk from the perusal of the original quarto. Witty letters from witty ladies, affected letters from affected ones, trifling letters from great authors, and dull letters from learned divines, the public have long possessed. The writer of the epistles before us, however, never heard of such persons as M. de Bussi Rabutin, or Madame de Sevigné. He was not in the habit of collecting the best company in Srirungapatan at his suppers, and retailing their bon-mots in his correspondence; and had quite as little taste for sentimental poetry, and fine descriptions.

Tipu Sultan, in short, from the time of his ascending the throne, had two great objects in view; the aggrandisement of his dominions, and the extension of the Mahomedan faith. As each of these materially promoted the success of the other, it is not easy to say which was nearest his heart. He was very ambitious, and very fanatical. The end, in his opinion, completely sanctified the means; and the shortest road was always the best. Off with such a one's head-the ears of anotherand the nose of a third,-is the laconic and original style of this oriental letter-writer. The sultans of the French tales are good sort of credulous people, with a slight predilection for cut