concoct and support a false accusation; while in reality it throws very few impediments in the way of a true one. By the English system, society can be sufficiently protected without any unfair advantage against the prisoner; by that of France, very little additional advantage is gained for the public security, while the prisoner is exposed to fearful hazard should This he have to meet a powerful and vindictive accuser. subject is one deserving of a full and complete enquiry; but that we cannot now attempt. We must be content to hope, that this cursory allusion to the matter may lead some of the jurists of France to reconsider this part of their system; and to prepare the minds of their fellow-citizens for the adoption of a more effective and equitable mode of procedure.

M. Orfila came from Paris-the trial dragged on from day to day; while the chemists, having exhumed the body, pursued their enquiries respecting it. This enquiry was carried on close to the court in which the trial took place; and our neighbours, who are ever alive to the influences of dramatic display, seem to have been wonderfully struck by the horrible scene then disclosed. We, however, having no liking for such horrors, pass on rapidly to the close of this painful

case.

It should be remembered that the body, from the very moment of the decease of Lafarge, was wholly beyond the control of his wife, but was exposed, without any safeguard, to the machinations of her enemies. Who, then, can say, that those enemies did not place arsenic within the corpse? and who can presume positively to assert, that the phenomena which presented themselves to M. Orfila were not the result of such machinations? The letter of M. Raspail would throw doubt indeed upon the whole analysis as carried on by M. Orfila; but we are unwilling to entertain the suspicions which he would excite. We cannot, however, refrain from observing, that in a country where a rigid morality on such questions is the morality of the people, M. Orfila, having expressed an' opinion before the trial, would have been deemed by the public, and certainly by himself, a very unfit person to give a solemn opinion on the same point when the trial took place.

The result of M. Orfila's enquiry was, that he found arsenic in the stomach and its contents; but his enquiry as to the muscular flesh taken from the thigh was, so he expressed it, negative. This also agrees with our hypothesis. If the arsenic was put into the body after death, it would indeed be found in the viscera upon which it was strewed, but would not have been carried into the system by the action of the blood and the absorbents, as would have been the case if the poison had been taken into the system during life. Had M, Lafarge died of arsenic, would not the poison have been found in his flesh as well as in the viscera ?

Now then we ask, who is there, who, being a juryman, would from such evidence as this come to these two distinct affirmative conclusions

1. That Lafarge did die, poisoned by arsenic.

2. That his wife knowingly administered that arsenic ?

It must be recollected, that in this rapid analysis of the voluminous evidence adduced, we have been compelled to omit many things which require consideration by any one who would fairly estimate the value of the French system of procedure. The more prominent points have alone been regarded -the more marked evils signalized; but even after this short enquiry, we cannot but think that the most cursory observer will discover much to amend in a judicature which, upon such evidence, taken in such a manner, could have arrived at the conclusion which the French court and jury adopted. They have declared the unfortunate accused guilty of the crime laid to her charge. Whether she be so, no man can determine; though any one skilled in the estimation of evidence trained to marshal and employ it under a rigid and effective system can easily determine whether it would be safe--whether it would conduce to the security of society at large to deem her guilty, upon evidence which in itself is so untrustworthy, and received in a manner so well calculated to destroy what little value it might otherwise have possessed. Looking back through the whole evidence, carefully weighing each separate item adduced, trying its worth by every test which the experience of ages has suggested, we are satisfied

that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that the deceased came to a violent end: still less to show that his wife was the guilty cause of the death. The rude judicial system employed served to increase, and not allay alarm it made a woman a criminal without proving her to be guilty; and thus taught the people to feel, that not only were they exposed to the assaults of the wrongdoer, but also liable to incur even greater harm, from the very means intended for their protection. (1) (EDINBURGH REVIEW.)

(1) We have purposely avoided all allusion to certain extraordinary circumstances which tend to cast great suspicion on the mother of the deceased. The one hypothesis which we have suggested, is quite sufficient to make apparent the danger of the conclusion adopted by the jury. Our chief object being in fact to point out the still greater danger resulting from the means taken to gain that verdict.

"DON'T BE TOO SURE;'

OR,

THE DISASTERS OF A MARRIAGE-DAY.

James Inkpen was the confidential clerk of the highly respectable firm of Squeezer, Shirk, and M'Quibble, appearing in the Law List annually as duly-certificated attorneys, located in Raymond's Buildings, Gray's Inn. The adage says, Nemo repente fuit turpissimus, »—which, being interpreted, means, it takes five years to make an attorney, as some wag of ancient days rendered it; and though Jemmy had long since filled this lustrum as a limb of the law, still by some occult process, known and valued alone by gents., &c., Inkpen never rose to the dignity of a certificate; in fact, he was nothing more nor less than the confidential clerk.

For nearly a dozen years steadily, punctually, and diligently, did James Inkpen attend to the dull routine of a lawclerk's duty. Wet or dry, hail, rain, fog, sunshine, showery, or fair, he was as reckless of the weather as the most desperate disbeliever in the prophetic powers of Murphy. His post was his desk, and no jockey ever made for the post with greater, more certain and assured steadiness than did Inkpen for his seat of dignity as Chancery-clerk, and confidential ditto," in the middle room in the offices of the « respectable firm above-mentioned. Jemmy was a man of small

stature and of sharp features. He was of remarkably placid temperament, and never was known to have exhibited any disturbance of mind, save on two occasions; once when he found, by the mangle-marks in the fob of a pair of ■ ducks, that a sovereign which he carefully concealed therein upon the principle of the Vicar of Wakefield's daughter's guinea, " to have, but not to spend, had been unfairly appropriated by either his laundress or her mangle-woman, or both. The damning fact, that the impress of the George and Dragon which the calico presented, did not move them to repentance and restoration of the coin, caused Jemmy's indignation to become rife in the extreme. The second occasion was, when in a fit of abstractedness he lit his pipe at a meeting of his club, The Knights of the Blue Plume, da of an important affidavit, which he worthy, famous for supplying deficiencies in evidence, to swear to the next morning. With the exception of these two cases, we have every reason to believe that Inkpen had hitherto passed through life and its alternations of pleasure and pain comfortably.

n

with the memoranwas to get a certain

In fact, he was a happy man; he had one hundred and fifty pounds per annum sal., as he abbreviated it; the implicit confidence of his

respectable» employers; the friend

ship, that is to say, the deferential subserviency of the other clerks from the fact of his being the cashier, and the general good-will of all with whom he had business, from his unaffected disposition to be obliging and civil. But, though Jemmy voted himself, and, moreover, was voted by all his acquaintance, a good sort of fellow, still there was wanting, as he felt (at times acutely), a something to complete the measure of his felicity; and when Joe Spriggins, Past Noble Grand of the Blue-Plume Knights, and common-law clerk to Diddle'm & Co., used to pump out in a cracked voice the line of Moore's murdered ditty,

"But oh! there is something more exquisite still,

Inkpen would every Saturday evening remove his yard of clay from his lips, throw himself back in his chair, turn up his