peculiarity about the teeth, he was assured that his niece must have been the person, and was accordingly produced as a witness for the Crown upon Mr. S's trial. The disclosure of these new facts, though it might have diminished in some degree the public sympathy for the fate of the victim, had a proportionate effect in aggravating every sentiment of horror against the prisoner, by superadding the crimes of seduction and robbery to murder.

The trial came on at the ensuing assizes for the county of Limerick. A clear case of circumstantial evidence, consisting mainly of the foregoing facts, was made out against the prisoner, who had nothing, save the ingenuity of his counsel, to offer in his defence. When the issue was handed up to the jury, it was supposed that they would return a verdict of conviction without leaving the box; but, contrary to expectation, they retired, and continued long engaged in consultation. The populace, who watched the proceedings with extraordinary interest, murmured at the delay. This was by no means a usual or characteristic sentiment; but at this particular period, and in this particular county, the minds of the lower orders were already in rapid progress towards that point of political excitation, which soon after exploded in a formidable insurrection. Against the culprit or the crime they might have felt in the abstract no peculiar indignation; but he was a Protestant and a gentleman, and they naturally contrasted the present hesitation to convict with the promptitude that, as they considered, would have been manifested had such evidence been adduced against any one of them. At length, late in the evening, a verdict of Guilty was found. Sentence of death was pronounced, and the prisoner ordered for execution on the next day but one succeeding his conviction. Some very unusual incidents followed. Before the judge left the Bench, he received an application, sanctioned by some names of consideration in the county, and praying that he would transmit to the Viceroy, a memorial in the prisoner's favour. The judge, feeling the case to be one where the law should sternly take its course, refused to interfere. He was then solicited to permit the sentence to be at least respited to such a time as would enable those interested in the prisoner's behalf to ascertain the result of such an application from themselves. To this request the same answer was for the same reasons returned. There being, however, still time, if expedition were used, to make the experiment, a memorial, the precise terms of which did not publicly transpire, was that evening despatched by a special messenger to the seat of government. This proceeding was the subject of much and varied commentary. By some it was attributed to the prisoner's protestations of innocence-for he vehemently protested his innocence; by others to particular views and feelings, in which politics predominated; by the majority (and this conjecture appears to have been the true one) to an anxiety to avert, if possible, from the families of rank and influence with which the culprit was allied, the stigma of an ignominious

execution.

The hour beyond which the law had said that this guilty young man should not be permitted to exist, was now at hand, and the special messenger had not returned. Yet, so confident were the prisoner's friends that tidings of mercy were on the way, that the Sheriff humanely consented to connive at every possible procrastination of the dreadful

ceremony. He had already lived for more than two hours beyond his appointed time, when an answer from the Castle of Dublin arrived. Its purport was, to bid him prepare for instant death. I have heard from a gentleman who visited his cell a few minutes after this final intimation, that his composure was astonishing. His sole anxiety seemed to be, to show that he could die with firmness. Au empty vial was lying in the cell" You have been taking laudanum, I perceive, sir," said the gentleman. "I have," he replied, "but not with the object that you suspect. The dose was not strong enough for that-I merely took as much as would steady my nerves." He asserted his innocence of all participation in the murder of Ellen Hanlon, and declared that if ever Sullivan should be brought to trial, the injustice of the present sentence would appear.

The friends of the prisoner were, for many and obvious reasons, desirous that he should be conveyed in a close carriage to the place of execution. Expecting a reprieve, they had neglected to provide one, and they now found it impossible to hire such a conveyance. Large sums were offered at the different places where chaises and horses were to be let; but the popular prejudice prevailed. At last an old carriage was found exposed to sale, and purchased. Horses were still to be provided, when two turf-carts, belonging to tenants of the pri soner, appeared moving into the town. The horses were taken from under the carts, and harnessed to the carriage. To this the owners made no resistance; but no threats or entreaties could induce either of them to undertake the office of driver. After a further delay occasioned by this difficulty, a needy wretch among the by-standers was tempted by the offer of a guinea to take the reins and brave the ridicule of the mob. The prisoner, accompanied by the gaoler and clergyman, was put into the carriage, and the procession began to advance. At the distance of a few hundred yards from the gaol, a bridge was to be passed. The horses, which had shown no signs of restiveness before, no sooner reached the foot of the bridge than they came to a full stop. Beating, coaxing, cursing-all were unavailing; not an inch beyond that spot could they be made to advance. The contest between them and the driver terminated in one of the horses deliberately lying down amidst the cheers of the mob. To their excited apprehensions, this act of the animal had a superstitious import. It evinced a preternatural abhorrence of the crime of murder-a miraculous instinct in detecting guilt, which a jury of Irish gentlemen had taken hours to pronounce upon. Every effort to get the carriage forward having failed, the prisoner was removed from it, and conducted on foot to the place of execution. It was a solemn and melancholy sight as he slowly moved along the main street of a crowded city, environed by military, unpitied by the populace, and gazed at with shuddering curiosity from every window. For a while the operation of the laudanum he had drunk was manifest. There was a drowsy stupor in his eye as he cast it insensibly around him. Instead of moving continuously forward, every step he made in advance seemed a distinct and laborious effort. Without the assistance of the gaoler and clergyman who supported him between them, he must, to all appearance, have dropped on the pavement. These effects, however, gradually subsided, and before he arrived at the place of execution his

frame had resumed its wonted firmness. The conduct of the prisoner in his last moments had nothing remarkable; yet it suggests a few remarks, and furnishes a striking illustration upon a subject of some interest as connected with the administration of justice in Ireland.

In that country an extraordinary importance is attached to dying declarations. In cases exciting any unusual interest, no sooner is a convicted person handed over to the executioner, than he is beset on all sides with entreaties to make what is called a last satisfaction to justice and to the public mind, by an open confession of his guilt. As between the convict and the law, such a proceeding is utterly nugatory. If he denies his guilt, he is not believed; if he admits it, he only admits a fact so conclusively established as to every practical purpose, that any supplemental corroboration is superfluous. If the verdict of a jury required the sanction of a confession, no sentence could be justifiably executed in any case where that sanction was withheld. But this could not be. In submitting the question of guilt or innocence to the process of a public trial, we apply the most efficacious method that our laws have been able to devise for the discovery of the truth. The result, like that of all other questions depending upon human testimony, may be erroneous. The condemned may be a martyr; for juries are fallible: but for the purposes of society their verdict must be final, except upon those rare occasions where its propriety is subsequently brought into doubt by new evidence emanating from a less questionable source than that of the party most interested in arraigning it.

Then as far as regards the satisfaction of the public mind with the justice of the conviction (for upon this great stress is also laid) the public should never be encouraged to require a higher degree of certainty than the law requires. But the practice of harassing convicts for a confession before the crowds assembled to witness their execution, produces this effect. It teaches them to divert their attention from the best and only practical test of a question that should no longer be at issue, and to set a value upon a test the most deceptive that can be imagined. A voluntary admission of guilt may, to be sure, be depended on; but after conviction no kind of reliance can be placed upon the most solemn asseverations to the contrary. Death and eternity are dreadful things; and it is dreadful to think of wretches determined to brave them with a deliberate falsehood upon their lips : yet there are men-many-that have the nerve to do this. In Ireland it is of frequent occurrence; particularly in cases of conviction for political offences, and more or less in all others. A regard for posthumous reputation-the false glory of being remembered as a martyr -a stubborn determination to make no concession to a system of laws that he never respected-concern for the feelings and character of relatives, by whom a dying protestation of innocence is cherished, and appealed to as a bequest to the honour of a family-name: these and similar motives attend the departing culprit to the final scene, and prevail to the last over every suggestion of truth and religion. It was so in the case I am now narrating. At the place of execution the prisoner was solemnly adjured by the clergyman in attendance to admit the justice of his sentence: he as solemnly re-asserted his innocence. The cap was drawn over his eyes, and he was about to be thrown off.

An accidental interruption occurred. The clergyman raised the cap, and once more appealed to him as to a person upon whom the world had already closed. The answer was "I am suffering for a crime in which I never participated; if Sullivan is ever found, my innocence will appear." Sullivan was found before the next assizes, when he was tried and convicted upon the same evidence adduced against his master. Sullivan was a Catholic; and after his conviction made a voluntary and full confession. It put the master's guilt beyond all question. The wretched girl, according to his statement, had insisted upon retaining in her own hands one half of the sum of which she had robbed her uncle. To obtain this, and also to disembarrass himself of an incumbrance. her seducer planned her death. Sullivan undertook to be the executioner. After setting Ellen Walsh on shore, they returned to an unfrequented point near Carrickafoyle, where the instrument of murder, a musket, and a rope lay concealed. With these and the unsuspecting victim, Sullivan put out in the boat. The master remained upon the strand. After the interval of an hour, the boat returned, bearing back Ellen Hanlon unharmed. "I thought I had made up my mind," said the ruffian in his penitential declaration; "I was just lifting the musket to dash her brains out; but when I looked in her innocent face I had not the heart to do it." This excuse made no impression upon the merciless master. Sullivan was plied with liquor, and again despatched upon the murderous mission; the musket was once more raised, and— the rest has been told.

GRIMM'S GHOST.-LETTER XXIX.

Table Talk about Sheridan.

MRS. Lum, whose "Readings" were commemorated in my fifteenth Letter, has removed into Berners-street. I cannot say that I admire the street, frowned upon as it is by the Middlesex Hospital: however, there she is, and the first dinner-party was composed of Lord Robert Ranter, Colonel and Mrs. Nightingale, Sir Hans Dabs Oliphant and his lady, Augustus Thackeray, and Mr. and Mrs. Mudford. Mrs. Lum, who is a very intellectual woman, had rather not give dinners at all; but people won't be read to upon any other terms. "Now I am going to be sung at," said Madame Vestris, with a distasteful air, as she walked upon the stage to encounter "Water parted from the sea." For myself, I would rather be sung at than read at, on any day in the year, especially when Madame Vestris is the singer :-but every one to his liking. Mrs. Lum's soup and fish passed off very well, being enlivened with the Cayenne of Mathews's old joke, played off by Augustus Thackeray, viz. that the talk of the table, if it turns upon the viands that then graced it, must necessarily be soup-or-fish-ial. The first course too passed away without any accident; but, between its disappearance and the advent of the second, there occurred one of those hitches in the scenery, which, when they take place at either of our Winter Theatres are honoured by a hiss. How cooks manage as they do, is to me a miracle. To bring so many dishes to bear upon one given moment, notwithstanding the irregularity of guests in arriving at the place of appointment, appears to me a feat that may cope in merit with the skill of a Marlborough or a Wellington in bringing armies into the field. Upon the occasion in question, however, the cook, like General Mack, was at fault. Lord Robert Ranter saw Mrs. Lum's distress, and gallantly stepped forward with a story about Sheridan to relieve her." Did I not see Moore's Life of Sheridan, in the drawingroom?" inquired his lordship.-" You did," answered the lady: "I mean to read it to you this evening, provided we get through Southey's Book of the Church in tolerable time." Lord Robert bowed his gratitude, and continued: "I am surprised that so clever a man as Mr. Moore should have omitted the story of Sheridan and the plate-warmer. Your servant's recent rencontre with that machine reminds me of the anecdote." Mrs. Lum looked towards the door, and, finding it still closed against the second course, smilingly requested to hear it. "Sheridan," resumed Lord Robert," was dining at Peter Moore's with his son Tom"-"Whose son Tom?" inquired Mr. Mudford." Sheridan's, of course," answered his lordship.-" Oh I did not know," said Mr. Mudford; "I thought Peter Moore might have a son Tomhe was your last antecedent."-" Well" resumed Lord Robert, "poor Tom was at that time in a very nervous debilitated state. vant, in passing quickly between the guests and the fire-place, struck down the plate-warmer. This made a deuce of a rattle, and caused Tom Sheridan to start and tremble. Peter Moore, provoked at this, rebuked the servant, and added, I suppose you have broken all the plates? No, Sir,' said the servant, not one.'-No!' exclaimed Sheridan; then damn it, you have made all that noise for nothing."" Lord Robert, while narrating this anecdote, like a skilful general, kept

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