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Stirn rose from the music-stool, advanced towards Matthews, and desired him to give him his hand; which, when Matthews did, he took it between both of his own, and wrung it. "You are right!" he exclaimed, "I have said the words which you repeat; and mark, here is my hand that I will have revenge of you!"

He then threw the hand of Matthews from him; and followed by the constable, who, however, made no effort to arrest him, walked out into the street.

Where this wayward and unhappy young man passed the night does not appear. Probably he walked the streets, or went forth into the fields, for in those days the green fields were not, as they are now, a good day's journey from Hatton Garden; but however this may be, neither that night nor throughout the following day was he seen by any of his acquaintances. On Friday, the 15th, however, Mr. Crawford met him; and compassionating the dejected and melancholy air of the youth, carried him home with him to dinner. While the meal went forward, no man's behaviour could be more sedate or rational than that of Stirn; but just after the cloth had been removed, he broke out into an abrupt tirade against Matthews, speaking loud, and with a rapid articulation, "Not only an adulterer, but a thief! He called me a thief; can I be expected to bear that?"

So saying, he rose, and went away. The same evening Crawford again met, or rather overtook him going down Cross Street; and the expression of his countenance was so woeworn, that the schoolmaster's heart bled for him. It appeared to him that he certainly meditated self-destruction, which it was said, indeed, that he had attempted unsuccessfully about six months previously. In the hope of diverting him from such a subject of contemplation, Crawford began to speak of the Bible, in which he once took great delight, and of the comforts which arise from religion; but other thoughts were in Stirn's mind. The point of honour was that which he wished to settle; "For," continued he, "if we come short of that, of what benefit will religion be to us? Am I

not an outcast? Who will entertain an adulterer and a thief?"

"No, no,” replied Crawford, “here the tide may have set against you; but England is not the world. Why not return home to your brother? you will find shelter, and a new field of exertion there."

"To my brother!" said Stirn. "No. Neither my brother nor my country can receive me disgraced as I am with the imputation of crimes so heinous."

As he uttered these words he burst into tears; and Crawford, no longer able to sustain the pressure of such a conference, quitted him.

They had not been long parted ere a growing persuasion that Stirn meant to destroy himself induced this man, whose feelings were neither delicate by nature nor much refined through culture, to go again in search of the youth. He found him in Owen's Coffee-house, and the conversation fell at once into the former channel, only the young man appeared upon the whole to be more composed, though he started from time to time as the door opened, and declared that in every one who entered he expected to see Mr. Matthews. Thus they sat together till about ten at night, when Stirn rose and avowed his determination of going to an ale-house in the neighbourhood, which Matthews and his friends were in the habit of frequenting. It was to no purpose that Crawford urged him to return to his lodgings and go to bed. The only answer which he got was a squeeze of the hand, so energetic that it wellnigh brought the blood from the tips of his fingers, after which they quitted Owen's together and proceeded towards the house of which Stirn had spoken.

At the door of that house the friends (for such they had now become) parted, Crawford making the best of his way to Hatton Garden, while Stirn entered. He found a good many persons in the coffeeroom, and among the rest Matthews, with two others, who occupied a table apart. Towards it Stirn immediately advanced, and took a seat beside them. It is necessary to state that, previously to this meeting, Stirn had sent Matthews a challenge to fight a duel, which the latter de

clined, and that the refusal was couched in terms which were certainly not calculated to soothe the feelings of the individual to whom it was addressed. Though the others, therefore, might wonder at the increased fury of Stirn's countenance, Matthews himself expressed no surprise, and received with infinite composure both the foul language and the threatening gestures with which he was assailed. One of Matthews' companions, however, of the name of Chapman, became so alarmed that he called Stirn aside and entreated him to restrain himself, and not to do any thing of which the consequences might be disagreeable either to others or to himself. Having said this, he hastily withdrew. Forth

with Stirn began to walk with a hurried step up and down the room, and became so completely engrossed by his own thoughts that he either did not observe, or entirely disregarded, the entrance of Crawford. For again had the dread of some vague evil overmastered the reluctance of the schoolmaster to witness any more of his late assistant's vagaries, and he now rejoined him, hoping to get him away, since to bring about a reconciliation was manifestly impossible.

Crawford had just reached the table, when Stirn confronted Matthews and said,

"Sir, you have accused me of theft and adultery."

"I have done no such thing," replied Matthews. " I merely said, and say again, that if my wife's virtue had been of the same yielding nature as your honour, evil would have come of it."

A sharp altercation ensued, in which the lie was banded from side to side; till at last Matthews exclaimed,

"You are a dirty fellow; you're not fit to stand on English ground, and ought to be sent back to your own lousy country."

The face of Stirn_grew pale as ashes. He started off to the other end of the room, and taking a written paper out of his pocket, held it up, as if to press it on the attention of Matthews. The latter not appearing, however, to notice the proceeding, Stirn held the paper in the flame of one of the candles till it was con

sumed. He then advanced once more and sat down; rose again, and placed himself beside Crawford, shifting his position so as to place another person between Matthews and himself, and while Crawford proposed to drink his health, made, or seemed to make, an effort to restrain himself. But it would not do.

"You will have it!" he at length said, speaking with clenched teeth. "You have wronged, insulted, and belied me, and refused to give me the satisfaction of a gentleman. I will take what I can get, and here it is."

So saying, he drew from his bosom a pair of pistols, which, as it afterwards came out, he had purchased and loaded the day after his expulsion from Matthews' house, and stretching across the individual who was nearest to him, discharged the contents of one into Matthews' breast. The wounded man made a spring from his chair, and with a single cry dropped dead. A second report was instantly heard; but its results were harmless. The hand which had been sufficiently steady to take the life of another wavered in its office when turned against Stirn's own life, for the ball passed him by and lodged in the wall.

The unhappy man had risen as soon as his vengeance was wreaked; and now, having failed to commit suicide, he made for the door. But he was seized, handed over to the watch, and locked up. His committal took place on the morrow, and he forthwith began a course of starvation, refusing either to eat or to drink, and assigning as a reason that his life was forfeited, and that it was better to die thus than to incur the disgrace of a public execution. To this determination he adhered for a full week, notwithstanding the earnest exhortations of the ordinary to the contrary, and became, as a matter of course, feeble and emaciated, though his resolute spirit never forsook him.

"I know what I have done," he used to say, "and would do it over again. The only thing I regret is, that my own life did not go at the same time with his."

However, for reasons which nobody at the time understood, he changed, at the end of a week, his system, and eat and drank like other

prisoners, and recovered both his looks and his health.

He was not put upon his trial till the 12th of September, and previous to that event every facility was afforded to his friends to visit him. Among others, came his excellency and his wife. The latter had faded and grown very thin, and exhibited in the cell an excess of emotion which well-nigh overpowered her. Stirn noticed this, and, with an expression in his eye of peculiar wildness, whispered something in her ear which caused her to start. She soon recovered herself, however, and looked him full in the face with an eye that quailed not.

"On one condition," she said, “I agree."

"I understand you," was the an

swer.

As the lady and gentleman retired, the latter was heard to ask the former what it was that Stirn had said to her; but she answered evasively, and to this hour there is a mystery about the communication which we cannot pretend to explain.

At length the trial drew on, and Stirn, in spite of the urgent entreaties of his friends, refused to plead insanity. That it could terminate only in one way is manifest. Stirn was found guilty of the murder of Matthews, and condemned to be hanged. He was not quite so composed during the proceedings as might have been expected. He more than once reeled, and would have fainted had he not been presented with a chair; and after sentence was passed, he petitioned the court that he might be drawn to the place of execution in a coach with a clergyman beside him, but the petition was denied. He then bowed, and was led away towards the condemned cell.

In passing through the press-yard, a countryman of his own accosted him, and stated that he was a minister of religion. Stirn appeared to know the man, though it was afterwards remarked that till that day he had never been visited by him, and the stranger was in consequence permitted to accompany him to his cell. They remained alone together about half an hour, at the termination of which the German withdrew; and by and by the ordinary called upon

him. He found him sinking fast. Poison, by whomsoever conveyed, he had manifestly received and taken, and not all the exertions of the medical officers of the prison sufficed to arrest its progress. He died that night a little before eleven o'clock, and escaped, as he triumphantly exclaimed, in his last agony, the disgrace of a public execution.

Thus died by his own hand a man who had undeniably taken the life of a fellow-creature, but whose moral guilt is not for one moment to be compared, in point of enormity, with that of multitudes who go to their graves having no weight of blood upon their consciences. To speak of him as insane would be to speak absurdly. He was perfectly sane at every moment in his career; but he had so entirely surrendered himself to the dominion of his impulses that they hurried him into all manner of outrageous acts, and at length placed the brand of Cain upon his forehead. For this he was much to blame; yet a portion of the blame may undeniably be shared by those who, not being ignorant of the peculiarities of his temperament, fostered and nourished his weakness, instead of checking it, by conciliating his humours when it was their duty to thwart them, and encouraging the growth of tastes which tended to confirm him in his folly. Poetry, music, and the belles lettres, are admirable instruments wherewith to soften a disposition naturally rugged, and to give susceptibility and refinement to a mind that is strong. But they accomplish this by weakening, in a certain sense, the powers which they refuse, as the act of polishing, while it renders a steel blade more trenchant, takes away from its solidity and diminishes its powers of resistance. Had Francis David Stirn been compelled in early youth to study mathematics instead of devoting his time to the perusal of the poets of Greece and Rome and of the countries of modern Europe, and had he, further, been denied the sort of musical training which rendered him more than an accomplished performer without arriving at the emi. nence of a composer, we venture to assert that the morbid sensibility which proved his ruin would have hardened into the right feeling which

best befits a gentleman for the purposes of life, and enables him to work good in his generation.

But the whole bent of his culture-moral, intellectual, and even physical-was faulty; and the consequences were such as the records of Newgate have preserved.

It is evident that, in the case now under consideration, the judgments of the jurist and of the moralist stand a good deal apart. The jurist affirms that the individual, having been convicted of the most heinous offence upon the statute-book, deserved to die; the moralist, admitting the truth both of the premises and of the conclusion, endeavours, nevertheless, to throw a sort of shield before the victim of the law, by contending that a court of conscience would deal with him more leniently than with numbers who escape from the hands of justice scot free. Perhaps the moralist may be right. Nevertheless, this much seems to be certain, that of all the sources of misery, and it may be of crime, by which men and women are surrounded, there is none more fruitful than that over-weening regard to Number One, which leads its victim always to consider how words spoken or deeds done may affect himself, to

the entire oversight both of the feelings and the just claims of others. Unthinking persons dignify a temper of this kind with all manner of sounding epithets. They describe it as that of a man of acute honour, of great spirit, of generous notions, of an excessive sensibility; whereas, in point of fact, it is selfishness, and nothing more, the meanest and most despicable of all dispositions. Nor does it greatly matter into what particular line of absurdity it may run. The foolish youth who, in order to keep up what he calls appearances, lives at a rate which his pecuniary circumstances do not warrant, may thank Heaven for the chance which has thrown his vanity into one chamber, out of the many wherein vanity presides, rather than into another. Îad his sensitiveness on the head of appearances happened to take the turn-not unfrequently its accompaniment, by the by which that of Francis David Stirn took, instead of being a spendthrift, he might have become a murderer ; in which case, duns would have changed places with peace-officers, and Newgate received him in the end, instead of the Marshalsea or the Queen's Bench,

THE POSITION OF MINISTERS.

WE are not going to be moved either by the queen's speech or by the extraordinary discussions that ensued upon its delivery, in both houses of parliament, from the determination at which we last month arrived. Of the ministerial project for regenerating our commercial system we as yet know nothing. Hints broad, if they be not very clear, may have been dropped in various quarters-and gossip is busy enough, Heaven knows, elsewhere than amid the precincts of the court. But whether it be through some defect in our understanding, or that matters really are as dark as to us they appear to be, we confess, that neither in Sir Robert Peel's explanation, nor in the not less ominous avowal of the Duke of Wellington, can we discover any just reason either to approve or condemn a line of policy of which we are unable to

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follow the direction clearly. these circumstances we beg to reserve to ourselves the right of choosing our side in the battle, if a battle there is to be, after the grounds of strife shall have been made manifest to us. And seeing that this cannot appear before the article which we now write shall have passed through the printer's hands, and taken its place in the standard literature of the age, our readers, be their prepossessions either for or against the policy of Peel, must have patience with a delay on our parts, which is unavoidable. We do not choose to follow the example of orators who flatter or condemn the minister unheard, according to the dictates of their own prejudices. Sir Robert Peel may be all that the more impetuous of the advocates of agricultural protection call him; and should it appear that he

deserves the opprobrium which they heap upon him, then our sanguine friends may depend upon it that we shall not be behind the most forward of them all in holding him up to the execration of his own times, and the contempt of that posterity to which he is somewhat too fond of appealing. But we must have sure proof of the offence before we sanction the punishment; for, as our old acquaint ance Talleyrand used to say, "It would be worse than a crime-it would be a blunder," to cover with premature reproaches a statesman whose position and talents equally entitle him to a fair hearing, and who, as he has done his country good service in times gone by, may, after all, be meditating nothing more than the best means of doing good service to her again. We repeat, then, that for the present we must persist in standing upon our neutrality; and we farther declare beforehand, that, whatever part we may hereafter take in the miserable strife which seems to hang over us, shall be the result of a consideration as impartial and deliberate as we may be able to give to the great questions which shall be brought forward for discussion.

Meanwhile, it is impossible to contemplate the general state of public feeling, and the chaos into which, not so much parties as society seems to be resolving itself, without the deepest anxiety and alarm. We are advancing, or we appear to be, to that war of opinions and of classes which has preceded, and that not at a remote interval, the downfall of all the great empires of the world. Religion is forgotten amid the bitterness of sectarian animosity, and polities have merged in the strife of interests the interests of order as opposed by disorder, and of man as opposed to man. Look, in regard to the former of these heads, at Scotland, with which we begin, because it is the least populous, and used to be the most quiet portion of the empire. It is torn by disputes which the individuals engaged in profess to treat as religious differences, but which, in point of fact, are begun, continued, and ended, in considerations wholly secular. What is all the stir between the Establishment and the Free Kirk about, except to determine with whom shall be left

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the right of dispensing the Church's loaves and fishes? Do not Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Macfarlan sign the same confession of faith, recognise the same form of church government, dispense the sacraments after the same fashion, preach the same doctrines, conduct the public worship of God according to the same rule? What, then, is the true ground of their differences? This, and nothing more - that the one seeks to introduce an absolutely democratic spirit into that portion of the Kirk's laws which takes care of the presentation to benefices, yet keeps a sharp eye towards the privileges of her ministers, by making the presbytery and not the crown the ultimate referee and patron; while the other, conceding a veto to the people on certain terms, seeks to avoid perpetual strife, and therefore assures to patrons the legitimate exercise of their rights, and acknowledges in the courts of law the only tribunals which shall be competent to decide wherein such rights consist. Yet they, and the silly people who adhere to them, imagine that they are at strife about some vital doctrine of Christianity, and hate one another with the rancour which is invariably called into active existence by disputes about questions of religion. Of Ireland, on this same subject of religion, we need not speak. Every healing measure which every successive government has enacted, seems but to have embittered the feud between Protestant and Papist. Listen to Mr. Gregg, and you will be taught by the least inflammatory of his speeches that, in striving to conciliate the Romanists, you have to the same extent exasperated their rivals. And if Mr. Gregg be warm on one side, and carry the zealous, both Churchmen and Presbyterians, along with him, surely we may regard Dr. M'Hale as his antipodes, swaying as he does, through a narrow-minded priesthood, the millions whom this same priesthood do their best to keep in ignorance and in poverty. And as to England, was her population ever so divided among themselves, not merely in the array of Dissent against Church principles, but in the strife of parties within the Church itself, leading as it has done, and is still leading, to the daily apostasy both of ministers and

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