The Sun.
London, England, 1863-11-24 00:00:00

A CRUEL CASE.

Amidst the hush of the whole court-house a poor little
wistful child stands there, neatly combed and tared for,
and in a pretty gay walking dress—God forgive them !
worked by the poor mother's hand. The shrinking child
stood there, altogether fascinated by the scarlet robes of
the judge and his terrible wig. His lordship looked at it
with studied indulgence—so pretty, so bright, and inno-
cent it was—a baby terror iu each round eye. There was
a murmur of sympathy throughout the crowd, and all held
their breath as one man. There were fathers there who
felt an uncomfortable thrill, and unwittingly shook their
heads as they looked at that pretty yellow-haired infant,
and bethought them of the loved little folk at home. What
if one of them stood yonder in the dock f—if young May or
bright-eyed Mat were there in the witness box against
them ?

There was a universal vigil on all the crowd for one im-
minent moment. When will the eyes of the mother and
child meet? Rumour has got about that she has not seen
it for more than a month, and never dreamt she should
meet it thus. Will she scream or faint, or struggle over
towards it? At present she is sitting there with a petrified
gaze of surprise and incredulity. Who brought her child
here? Who dared to bring it here ? Have they trained
the little fawn to snare its father to death? the being he
gave life to brought here to swear his life away ? What
evidence can his child bring against innocence and truth?
" What is your name, dear ?" said the counsel quietly.
The child's eyes were fixed on the scarlet robes of the
judge, who repeated the question soothingly.
After some preliminary questions, he is asked
who he saw in the room, when he awoke, besides
the murdered man.
"I saw papa."
"There ran a shocked murmur through the crowd, po-
pularly called a sensation, and then a freezing silence again.
"'Had your papa anything in his hand ?" came the
velvet question—the judge cooed it out, entrapping the
child on as it faltered and sobbed. It hangs on a hair if
the child will speak. Should its gaze once catch the
mother's starting eye, not four yards from it, it will be
struck dumb.

" Speak the truth, Johnnie," came a low voice from the
duck—a low voice—a home voice. The child's eyes fell
upon its father's face.

" Speak the truth, Johnnie ; don't be afraid."
"He had a hatchet," said the child, and in another
second his eyes, by some strange attraction, were dropped
upon the mother's face. The child quivered as if it had
been suddenly stung, and wailed aloud.
" Oh, mamma I mamma I"
"My lord," said the counsel, amid the buzzing court,
" it is very painful, but really if we arrive at the truth th e
mother must be removed."

Yes, they may remove her now—the worst has been
done, and all is over with her. She was passed along through
them to the door without opposition, and she tottered out
alone. Her shoulders are heaving with hysteric sobs, as
she leans against the pillar, encircled with a greasy sym-
pathy, the villainous pity of the mob, which is shared by
the pickpocket and the felon. The same dirty crowd which
stare at her, and tell her story with rancid pathos, will not
the less throng before the scaffold on which her darling
stands.

A strong pair of shoulders worked through the crowd

towards her. Here comes old Michael, to shield and sup-
port her as well as he can. He gave her his arm and led
her hastily away.
" Bedad," he muttered to himrelf, as he hurried her on,
" bilin' a kid in its mother's milk is nothing at all to this.
Come home, my poor darlint."
This Michael Bryan, who attends on poor Eleanor
in her anxieties, although himself convinced of her
husband's guilt, is a capital character, very happily
described. We have been reluctant, by our extracts,
to spoil the interest of the story, and yet without
quoting some of these passages, we could hardly
do justice to the very forcible and pathetic elo-
quence so conspicuously displayed in these volumes.
We have given but the merest outline, the faintest
sketch of the exquisite tender delineation of the
heroine—" a simple woman"—" a perfect wife."
We commend her story to the lovers of sensation,
and to the lovers of truth, for although a manifest
fiction in its plot, this very powerful novel is true
to nature in its characters and in its emotions.

My Beautiful Lady. By Thomas Woolner. One
Vol., pp. 159. Macmillan.

The author of this most charming production
bids fair to assume the character of a very Crichton
of Art. His reputation is already securely estab-
lished as one of the most gifted sculptors of
his age. By his present venture he has made good
his claim to be regarded not as a versifier, but as a
poet—non fit, sed nascitur. And, having an eye to
the exceeding richness of the colouring, and to the
exceeding music of the sounds in which he has here
celebrated his Beautiful Lady in most sensuous and
melodious song—we might augur well for his future
as a Painter and as a Musician ! That is, if he were
disposed now to throw aside pen and ink,as he has
here abandoned for a while,when writing these pages,
thechisel and mallet, hitherto familiar to his grasp—
and,'in lieu of any of those artistic implements,
were disposed to essume either the brush and mahl-
stick, or the score-paper and pencil. We know
of hardly any one who more signally illustrates in
our day the truth of a very subtle distinction often
before now insisted upon by Sir Bulwer Lytton,
but never more hapily than in the pages of his
newly published and remarkable collection of essays
called " Caxtoniana." The distinction we allude to,
thus, as having been so often before now enforced
by the powerful arguments of that great writer—
(once even it was by him dilated upon by word of
mouth, when he officiated several years back as
chairman at the Farewell Banquet given to Mr.
Macready the " Eminent Tragedian," upon the
occasion of his retirment from the stage)—the sin-
gularly nice distinction between the comprehensive-
ness and what is called the " versatility"
of genius I Illustrating as we may say finally
or conclusively this very admirable and just dis-
tinction in the tenth Essay (vol. 1., p. 160) of
" Caxtoniana."—Sir Bulwer Lytton has just now
remarked in the course of his " Hints on Mental
Culture"—" The wider your range of thought the
greater your chance and choice of original combina-
tions." The philosophic Essayist adding—(he who
is himself Novelist, Poet, Orator, Dramatist, States-
man, Critic, Man of the World, Man of Fashion,
and we know not how many other characters be-
sides)—" The writer who adopts that counsel is
vulgarly called versatile. That is a misno-
mer. It is not that genius is versatile
because the objects within its scope ate
various. If you have twenty thousand a year
instead of one thousand, you are not versatile be-
cause you do a great many things which a man of
a thousand cannot du." And so is it precisely with
Ms. Woolner, we may here very confidently assert.
lu his genius—for genius is his unmistakeably, and
not merely talent even of a high order—in his
genius,Thomas Woolner has so essentially the happy
instincts of a true artist, that, we take it, success
might almost with equal readiness have been his,
whether the whim or the accident prompted him to
the choice of the vehicle for the expression of his
thoughts and emotions as an artist, from among the
materials plastic in the hands of the Sculptor, of the
Poet, of the Painter, of the Musician, meaning by
the last-mentioned either the musical composer or
the musical performer. A Sculptor he
is, and _
endowed with very rare gifts and capacities—as
one_
_
i _
th
many an all but living and breathing block of
marble attests. A Poet this volume before
efore us de-
monstrates at once that he is—every atom as unmis-
takably. Among the very few poets of the day,
and we might number them up, unhappily, almost
upon the fiogers of one hand, he takes hie