habitual, in fact-in which such Midsummer Madness

had been penned:

'When the doors have closed behind us, and the voices died away,

Do the singers cease their singing, and the children end their play?
Do the words of wisdom well no more through the calm lips of age?
Are the fountains dried whence the young draw hopes too deep for the
faith of the sage?

And, like the flower that closes up when the East begins to glow,
Doth the maiden's beauty fade from off her tender cheek and brow?
Are they all but subtle spirits changing into those and these,
To vex us with a feigned sorrow, or to mock us while they please?
All this world a scene phantasmal, shifting aye to something strange,
Such as, if but disenchanted, one might mark in act to change.
See the unembodied beings that we hold of our own kind,
Friend and Foe, and Kin and Lover, each a help to make us blind,
Set to watch our lonely hours, ambushing about our path,

That our eyes may never open till their lids are closed in Death;
And when so closed, will these things be as though we had ne'er been

born,

And e'en without those tears which are dried swift as the dews by the

Morn,

That makes us feel these Fancies more, so strange doth it appear,
How the memory of a dead man dies with those he held most dear,
As though there was an end, with Life, of the mockery that beguiles
Our every act, tricks out our woes, and cheats us of our smiles,
And makes to love, and scorn, and hate, and parts and reconciles.'

"Gentlemen of the jury, we have caused twelve copies,

of this most extraordinary production to be printed, which will be placed in your hands, lest you may imagine that any latent meaning in the verses may have escaped you through my delivery of them. What would have been your state of mind, I ask, upon finding that any son of your own-of whom, too, you had entertained high hopes-had composed such a piece of writing? Fine pieces of poetry have before now been composed by poets absolutely insane, and even in confinement, but when has there been such a piece of poetry as this, composed by a sane mind? I have said that no meaning whatever can be found in it; but I correct myself thus far, and own that there is this much to be gathered from it-the incontestable fact of the insanity of the writer. I will put aside the inexplicable allusions to the Singers and the Children, the Fountains and the Flower, and even the totally unexpected reference to the Maiden (Good Heavens ! what maiden?) and confine myself to the mention of the "subtle Spirits," changing into "those and these" (these what?), and mocking him-the prisoner at the

bar. Why, was not this notion of being haunted by spirits one of the most common forms of mental delusion? As for this world being nothing but a 'scene phantasmal'--the time, gentlemen of the jury, has arrived when it is customary for the court to take some slight refreshment, and I will not detain you any longer over a subject upon which you are as capable of exercising as sound a judgment as myself, question, could a sane man write such verses? is not one which requires any technical knowledge of any sort to answer it, but demands a reply in the negative from every person endowed with common sense,

The

CHAPTER XVII.

WHAT ONE'S FRIENDS REALLY THINK OF ONE.

AFTER an adjournment of half an hour, the court resumed its sittings, and the following witnesses were called by Mr. Griffiths.

The Rev. Robert Morrit deposed. The prisoner at the bar is my sister's son. I have had a very intimate acquaintance with him up to within the last two years. He was singular in his habits and behaviour; something more than merely eccentric. He was exceedingly clever, but remarkably deficient in judgment. His nature was singularly gentle, kind, and humane: but he was subject to fits of passion. Nothing could control these ebullitions; even when he was quite a child. Although a tolerable scholar, and an insatiable reader of books of a certain sort, he took great pleasure, even

up to the age of seventeen, in trolling a hoop. He would sometimes amuse himself in that manner for an entire day. The books that he studied for his own pleasure were of an imaginative kind—poetry, romances, and the like. He wrote a great deal of poetry, and much of it was similar to that entitled "The Frequent Thought," read in court (as he understood), that day. He (witness) was well acquainted with English poetry, and he had never read anything at all like his nephew's poetry in any other author. It was not the poetry of a sane man. A relative of the prisoner, one Mr. Thomas Morrit, had gone out of his mind. He was the prisoner's cousin. He was under confinement at the present moment in a lunatic asylum. He (witness) had not been intimate with the prisoner at the bar within the last two years. The intimacy had been intermitted through the unreasonable conduct of the prisoner, and upon no other account. Having been intrusted by the late Dr. Galton with the control of his son's money-affairs, he had not thought himself justified in allowing him such an income as he would have allowed